//------------------------------//
// Ch 15: A Haunting Refrain 
// Story: A New World, An Old Haunt 
// by Professor Frogenshtein 
//------------------------------//

In the hills near Fillydelphia, at the edge of the forest around Foal Mountain, a cheerful ghost-type hummed to herself as she looked for something to occupy her time.

"Salagadoola mechicka boola hmm hm hm-hm-hm hmmmm..."

It was evening on the third day since Arceus had moved all of the pokémon to this new planet, and she'd spent the time since Arceus's announcement learning more about this world. The increased presence of magic energy was almost intoxicating; the thoughts of what spells and enchantments could be achieved excited the ghost-type terribly.

"It'll do magic believe it or not, hm-hm-hm hm-hm-hm hmmmm..."

Of course, magical mayhem would have to wait until after her team caught up with her. Causing a racket would just bring trouble and make things harder when the maestro came to pick her up. She hoped it was soon; the delicious fear and surprise from the nearby town was starting to fade, being replaced by a general unease dotted with bits of acceptance that formed a sickly-sweet taste, turning her stomach and making her long for some good old home cooking.

"Put 'em together and what have you got? Bibbidi bobbidi... Hmm?"

The ghost-type was interrupted from her thoughts when she heard what sounded like voices close by. Turning invisible and heading towards the noise, she came upon a lopunny and a diggersby in some sort of argument.

"Lola, please," said the diggersby, a pleading look on its face, "after so long, I finally get to see you again..."

The lopunny cringed, teary-eyed, backing away from the diggersby. "Get away from me, Dillan," she said, shaking her head as she choked back a sob, "I can't... I can't..."

"Lola," said the diggersby, Dillan, his eyes also watery, "don't do this- I lov--"

"NO," the lopunny, Lola, shouted, lashing out with one of her powerful ears, "you never loved me; the Rangers told me the truth when they arrested you!"

The attack went wide and missed completely, the lopunny unable to aim through her tears; Dillan flinched regardless, struck much harder by her words.

"The truth? The TRUTH!?" The diggersby clenched his front paws, his expression turning hard even as his crying eyes became softer. "Did they tell you the truth that my court-appointed lawyer didn't even try to defend my case? Did they tell you the truth that they stripped me of my license and took away every last member of our family!? Did they tell you the truth that my family sent me to a sanitarium where they forced hundreds of pills down my throat to try and 'fix me'!?" The tension in his body snapped, and Dillan fell to his knees as his eyes streamed freely with emotion. "Did they tell you the truth... that not once during those five years did I ever stop thinking about you?"

The lopunny trembled, taking a slight step back as she put a hand to her chest, her eyes filled with uncertainty.

The ghost-type had seen enough; the feelings of sadness and betrayal in the air were bitter enough to make her want to puke. There was only one thing for it.





"You're pulling a little to the left. And shout louder, you need to make him feel it when you hit!"

"Come on, man, I've been dead for 3 days tops."

Lucius frowned from the side of the arena and crossed his arms as he looked pointedly at Dante. "Do you want to learn astonish or not?"

The incident back in Hollow Shades worried Lucius; this new world had no experience with ghost-types, and it would only take a few mistakes from a few less-than-peaceful spirits to inflame the kind of fear and prejudice they had worked so hard to destroy back on Earth. Not to mention that the stoutland they encountered brought the question of how many... 'unenlightened' individuals Arceus might have brought along, and how many of them held the kind of radical ideals that would have them all exorcised. If those ideals seeped over to the inhabitants of Equus, Dante could become a target, and the newly-made yamask had precious little experience in the physical aspect of battle. Loath as he was to admit it, Lucius might not always be there to protect the professor; Dante needed to be able to protect himself if that ever happened.

Of course, he hadn't said this out loud. Ol' Boss needed to focus on gathering the crew as soon as possible; right now they were just "testing out his new powers" while the mansion headed to the next stop.

"Sir Lucius," called a voice, and the gengar turned to look at their 'practice dummy' Durendal, "are you quite certain we need to continue? I believe Sire is executing the move admirably at this point."

"You're just saying that because you don't want to get your shield dented," Lucius grumbled, but he had to admit that the sword had a point. Also, he was right. "Fine, let's move on to special attacks."

Floating over to a panel on the wall, Lucius entered the combination to open the 'battle storage unit' and removed a purplish disk and a greyish disk from inside. "Here, catch!" He tossed the disks to Dante, who caught them in both hands.

The disks gave a brief glow, and Dante's eyes widened as his mind assimilated the information they contained. "This is..."

"Good old TM30: Shadow Ball and TM17: Protect," Lucius grinned. "You would've learned them later anyway, we might as well get a head start."

Dante grinned in turn, foming a sphere of ethereal darkness between his hands. "I've heard it before and I'll say it now: Science really is amazing."





Frothing Stein watched with great interest as strange alien fruits grew at a highly accelerated rate from the branches of small berry trees.

Science really is amazing, isn't it?

Stein had been curious about the sort of plant life that could grow on another world, and the exciting new beverages he could create from the produce they bore; the fact that Prof. Amaranth's team had a botanist who could literally talk to trees made the whole process even easier.

Said botanist, Acacia, was quite an interesting individual. She was reserved, hardly speaking at all; when she did speak, her words were marked by a thick 'Kalosian' accent, as some of the others had explained it.

"And these 'rawst berries' are used to treat burns?"

"Oui."

The trevenant's reluctance to speak did not mesh quite well with Stein's inquisitive scientific mind, but the unicorn was trying his best to accommodate by asking simple yes or no questions.

"Fascinating... May I...?" Stein gestured at the light-blue berries, and Acacia nodded, picking one and handing it to him.

Outside appears to have seeds embedded in the skin... Aside from sky blue color, somewhat resembles a strawberry.

Stein bit into the fruit cautiously, chewing slowly.

Texture is, again, not unlike a strawberry; flavor, however, is rather bitter. Potential use in making of beverages - further data is needed, suggest full chemical analysis at home laboratory.

"Very fascinating." Stein looked back up at Acacia. "Roughly how long does it take for these to grow normally?"

The trevenant drew back a little, examining the tree.

"... Douze- twelve."

"Twelve months?" Stein tapped a hoof to his chin. "That seems reasonable; get some samples to the missus, fiddle around with the flavoring, get the trademarks through legal..."

He stopped; Acacia was shaking her head.

"Not twelve months? Twelve weeks then?"

Acacia brought her hands together in a 'compressing' motion.

"Twelve days? That's pretty fast." Stein blinked. "... Just curious, what's the shortest time it takes for a seed to grow into a berry tree and bear fruit?"

Acacia folded her hands. "Cinq jours," she stated, matter-of-factly, "five days."

Before Stein could comment on this admittedly remarkable fact, the conversation was interrupted by the arrival of another of the mansion's occupants.

"Casey, babe!" shouted Jack, bounding over from the greenhouse entrance to give the trevenant a hug, "nobody told me you were back!"

The bark around Acacia's face became a more reddish brown, and she stared fixedly at her hands.

Stein raised an eyebrow. "You were there when we found her," he pointed out to the gourgeist, "you were on the search team."

Jack brought a hand to his head, thinking for a moment. "No, I would've remembered that," the pumpkin pokémon posited, "I just remember finding that awesome leaf!"

Not the brightest lantern at the nightmare night party, is he?

Not even close.

"Anyways," Jack continued, "I was just going around telling everybody that we're about to send down Mr. Lucius, sir, to pick up Miss Hanna."





Just east of the mansion, in the shadow of Foal Mountain, a mismagius sighed in content as she watched a lopunny and a diggersby make their way into the sunset, hand in hand.

"Hannelore Melodia Von Magus-Amaranth," she spoke to herself, "you've done it again and reunited the broken bonds of old love."

It had been simple, really; she'd gotten frustrated at how stupid the lagomorphs had been and opened their hearts to eachother's feelings with a destiny bond. Then she appeared and shrieked at them until they ran screaming, magically gluing their hands together for good measure. The mismagius congratulated herself again on a job well done. She was the best matchmaker. It was her.

Hannelore was almost sad that she'd miss the emotional roller coaster the two would no doubt go through, but such is un-life. She had to wait where she was until she could join back up with the band; she had her own romantic interests to look out for.

"Hello, Hannelore."

Speak of the devil. Hannelore turned around to smile at the gengar headed towards her.

"Lucius."

The shadow pokémon looked toward the horizon at the still-fleeing couple, his face carefully devoid of emotion.

"Meddling again, I see," he said, raising an eyebrow.

The mismagius scowled and waved dismissively. "Oh, I was just cleaning up another one of the rangers' messes." She smirked at the gengar, an impish glint in her eyes. "What about you, did you miss me?"

Lucius grinned. "Like a bad rash."

And so the two ghost-types flew back to the mansion, cackling all the way.