Into the Unown (Pokemon Fanfiction OC)

Chapter 275

“Nghhh… Nitey, cut it out~” Nina moaned in protest at the Dragonite incessantly poking at her nose.“Nite! Niiiiite!”

The girl awoke with a chuckle and found herself laying atop a bed of fragrant young grass and surrounded by all of her beloved Pokemon. “Hehe… Hey guys, thanks for coming to get me.”

The Pokemon cried and rushed in to smother their human in a suffocating pileup, nearly sending Nina back to Limbo again.

“Urgh, guys… Calm down… Can’t breathe…”

“Es!” With a single cry from Espy and a mental wave of admonishment, Nina’s Pokemon finally settled back down to give her some space.

“Thanks, Espy… But erm… What happened?” The girl breathed in and took the chance to survey her surroundings. 

Nina and her team appeared to be sitting around in a neatly trimmed open garden with a warm and radiant afternoon sun bearing down on them, looking very unlike the gloomy and gothic estate they had been exploring prior.

“Where is this? Were we Teleported away from Lavender Mansion?”

“Hohoho.” Nina’s confusion was answered by a genial laughter from the back. “Not at all, girl. You were simply relocated to the mansion’s inner courtyard.”

Nina jolted in surprise and turned around to face the speaker; hunched back, bushy eyebrows, bald head and a warm smile, it was none other than the fabled Mr Fuji whom she had been searching for.

“Mr Fuji! And… Lady Agatha!”

“Pfeh! Dispense with the formalities, girl! There will be none of that aristocratic nonsense in my house!”

And sure enough, standing right next to Fuji and waving at Nina with her black Gengar-shaped staff was a sprightly old woman with sharp features and a full head of graying blonde hair.

“B-but I thought you were…” Nina sputtered in disbelief before recomposing herself. “Pardon me. I meant, with all due respect, ma’am, I was told by Professor Oak that you had already passed…? Ow!” The question was met with a bonk on the head with Agatha’s staff, feeling very real and very solid.

“Do you not have eyes, girl?!” The woman exclaimed as she gestured towards her legs, looking a touch wispy and translucent. But more importantly, hovering just a few centimetres off the ground. “Of course I’m dead! How else would I be prancing about otherwise?”

“Now, now, Agatha… The girl’s question was valid and you know it.” Mr Fuji chimed. “And besides, she had just awoken from quite a tumultuous ordeal, so give her some time to reorient herself, will you?”

“Pfeh!” Agatha scoffed and turned her back on the group before drifting off into a little gazebo in the distance. Meanwhile Mr Fuji chuckled and turned to address a young girl standing by his side — one that Nina hadn’t noticed was there until now.

“Gretel, my dear, do you mind preparing some refreshments for our guests here? I’m sure they must be famished after such a deep slumber.”

The blonde haired girl, which Nina judged to be in her tweens, nodded wordlessly and trudged off, her vibrant red dress contrasting starkly with the surrounding greenery.

“Sorry about her.” Mr Fuji continued, pulling Nina’s attention back towards the man, whom she just noticed, looked a little faint and wispy around the edges as well. “Even after all these years, Gretel’s still not confident in her ability to converse in our world’s language.”

“Our world’s language…?”

“Gretel’s a Faller, my dear.” Fuji responded with a knowing smile. “An individual who fell into our world from a different dimension.”

Nina immediately perked up at that knowledge. She had known that Fallers were a thing but had not met one in person before due to how highly secured they were. In fact, Fallers usually fell under the protection of Interpol the moment they were discovered and Nina had questioned her uncle about them on several occasions but was unable to pry too deeply without giving away her own identity.

It made sense, such obfuscation was necessary in order to safeguard a Faller’s privacy. In fact, it gave Nina an odd sense of assurance because, no doubt, similarly extradimensional aliens would likely be secretly absconded into a government facility somewhere and secretly experimented on were they in her original world instead.

“Come now.” Mr Fuji beckoned. “I’m sure you have many questions and I would be glad to answer them. But for now, let’s make ourselves comfortable while we wait for Gretel to return.”

Nina nodded as she and her Pokemon followed the spectre over to the gazebo where Agatha was.

“So… What’s this all about?” Nina asked the two elders after taking out her Dragon Scale pendant and sitting down. “I’m guessing this has to do with this stupid annoying rock around my neck?” The girl added, referring to the Mew Gem on her pendant.

She had expected to be reunited with Mew again at this point but that precocious pink cat was completely absent and so was that stinky green onion who had been stalking her all this while.

“Also, what does Lady— I mean, Madame Agatha have to do with this?”

Mr Fuji laughed while Agatha cackled. “I understand your frustrations, girl,” said Agatha. “I wasn’t exactly planning to be stuck babysitting this old fart in my afterlife either.” The woman sighed. “Honestly, can’t even die in peace around here…”

“So what was the original plan then?”

“The original plan!” Agatha spat. “Was for me to put an end to this accursed family! But when Gretel finally delivered my ashes back to the mansion, what did she find? This decrepit old Growlithe squatting in MY property and using it as a cage for his little pet abomination!”

“Wait, wait, wait…” Nina gestured. “I feel like I’m missing the bigger picture here. Mind going back a little?”

Mr Fuji sighed at his companion. “To understand the whole story, you must first understand the secret to Agatha’s eccentric clan of Ghost Specialists.” He turned towards the grumpy old woman in question, as if expecting her to elaborate further.

“Pfeh!” The woman scoffed, but obliged all the same. She explained, in her typically curt fashion, that her clan had been one of the oldest in all of Indigo, and that until the Blackthorns came around, had also acted as a de facto leader of sorts for the disparate region.

“But once those lizard heads came barrelling in, those decrepit old fools became desperate — desperate for more power…” And so they sought to create the ultimate Ghost Pokemon, one that was capable of decimating the Blackthorns in their sleep.

“Spiritomb…” Nina gasped as Agatha smacked an unassuming gray stone onto the marbletop table, one covered in ominous green cracks and exuding a sinister purple Aura.

“Nite!” Nitey cried out in alarm and the rest of Nina’s Pokemon all shifted into a battle-ready stance.

“Oh shush!” Agatha waved. “Ain’t nothing’s going to happen with me around!”

Nina looked towards her agitated Pokemon in confusion and received a flurry of images from Espy — a retelling of their ordeal while she was deep in slumber.

The girl frowned. “So that dream… It was all Spiritomb’s doing?”

“That’s right.” Agatha nodded. “In their foolish pursuit of power, those short-sighted fools inadvertently laid a curse on their own bloodline. They made it so that each successive head of the Murasaki Clan would have their souls claimed by the Odd Keystone before their time, until 108 vengeful spirits had been gathered to form the creature known as Spiritomb.”

Agatha scowled, her face twisting into that of a demonic revenant. “And I was meant to be the 108th.”

“Hence why you eliminated your clan until not a single member remained but you…” Nina continued, having recalled what little history Professor Oak had told her of Agatha’s family.

“Kukuku... With every drop of my bloodline erased from this world, this stupid rock will have no choice but to come after me for completion.” Agatha smirked — a vicious smirk filled with vindictive glee. “And unlike the fools that came before me, I am not so weak nor willing to just let it claim my soul without a fight!”

And so Agatha resisted, fighting to suppress the Odd Keystone every second of her life until her golden age where she would pass away in peace, a final middle finger to her ancestors who would so willingly condemn her into an eternal existence of grief and suffering.

“So the original plan…” Agatha gestured towards Gretel who had returned with a tray full of tea and snacks for Nina. “Was for this foolish little stray I picked up to scatter my ashes all over the mansion, so that my accursed ancestors may watch — watch as their final hope for plenitude fade away right before their eyes… Haha! HAHAHA!” The old crone cackled while Mr Fuji and Gretel just sighed in tandem, likely exasperated by the sheer tenacity of the woman’s spite.

“Scheiße!” Gretel exclaimed, completely taking Nina aback by her Germanic flair. “You lie to me! If you live, should tell me! Make me travel alone…”

Agatha snorted. “We’ve already been over this, girl. I was, and still am, dead! What you see before you is just a phantom — a lingering echo of Agatha’s ego. And besides, you weren’t exactly alone, were you?”

At the woman’s words, a peppy looking Haunter emerged from Gretel’s shadow to give her a slobbering lick, eliciting giggles from the girl.

“Hehehe… Terry is good boy. You, Agatha, you bad girl!”

The ghost of Agatha scoffed, but Nina could see the faint traces of a happy smirk pulling at the corner of her lips.

The girl chuckled, took a sip of her horrendously oversteeped tea, then turned to address Mr Fuji. “So? I’m guessing you’ll be taking over the continuation of this story?”

Fuji sighed. “Yes, to understand this story, you must first understand the follies of my youth…” The man stared off into the distance, eyes glazed as his mind was lost in recollection.

***

Author's note:

Gretel is the MC of that other Pokefic I conceived but never wrote. I think I told you guys about it in the afterword of Part Two. 

I included her in the story mainly for my own closure, just to tie up a loose thread in my mind. She's not going to play a big role or become a secondary MC or anything, so no need to worry too much. Just think of her as an ocassionally recurring NPC

Additionally, for anyone who might be seeking advanced chapters. Releases on Flareon will be paused for a month while I take a break. Since we just wrapped up Part Three there.

Public releases will be on break only once we hit Ch 290.