Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Altered Bonds

  Interlude 3 — Brooding Bones, Given Joy

  It was a beautiful night for stargazing. Kabutops hissed at the stars.

  He sat upon a little boulder jutting out of the rocky outcropping where his cavern home was. The surrounding area, a far cry from the marshy fields Swampblot Island was littered with, was a lush piece of paradise he and his wife had cultivated with care. A few orchards of Orans, Magos, Pechas, Persims, and other berries grew under their watch, and vibrant green grass rolled itself over the land. One could almost mistake it for the landscape of a Mystery Dungeon.

  Not that he knew how the greater Legendaries made their dwellings in the twisted labyrinths. No, he had to find this place through a pre-existing dungeon, one with a hidden path that led into this little valley. The place might have been a former haven for a Legendary, maybe even a human, for it had been pre-enchanted with runic rods around its perimeter. They quietly repelled intruders from approaching, and cast an illusion that made the area seem like just another patch of forest, from a bird’s eye view.

  He had built some infrastructure in the abandoned area, mostly underground, with a few earthly walls erected in places for aboveground experiments. It was a perfect sanctuary, a safe place for him to quietly conduct his work as an artificer. That mattered a lot to him — Abhorrents weren’t exactly the sort to be left alone wandering around the roads or hiding in caves, after all. Especially after what the idiot had done.

  His ghoulish green eyes snapped toward the newspapers lying around his boulder, each held down by rocks. Their headlines were left face-up for him to see in all their grandeur. Naturally, he focused on the worst of them, the first one that had appeared.

  [A Perilous Clash! Lugia Hunted by Abhorrent Aerodactyl]

  ~A flash tempest, filled with harsh gales, heavy downpours, and screaming thunder. This is the unusual weather pattern that took place around the shores of Grassbranch, Swampblot, and Cragpeak Island several days ago, fiercer and more sudden than the erratic storms that often run throughout Blitzfield Island. And now, not only has a second storm occurred, but a horrible story has been unearthed behind it: an Abhorrent has dared to track down and mutate the Legendary Lugia.

  When a Legendary Pokemon shows its face in Haven Archipelago, it is an extraordinary affair, and this was no different. The Berrypark Town Dungeon Board received an anonymous tip about an incident at the Rocky Shores Mystery Dungeon, where a shadow-lich Abhorrent suspected to be in the area had caused an uproar. He was found with a newly mutated Corvisquire, having activated a strange mechanism in the dungeon that is believed to be tied to Lugia — a stormbringer that is understood to control the seas and the weather.

  The aftermath? A dungeon breakdown, and a deadly bout of combat between the Abhorrent, the Legendary, and other parties unknown at this time. The once relatively safe Rocky Shores dungeon is now Stormsoaked Shores, a stormy place of islands, tentacles, and vicious Pokespawn out to drown their victims. Reports show that the beach area outside the dungeon entrance had become a battlefield, scorched with various element energies and with several spots vaporized by powerful lightning bolts. It is widely believed that the anonymous group that informed the Dungeon Board of the incident had interfered, keeping the mutant from making any further actions to antagonize and capture Lugia, up until the Legendary was in a safe position to strike him down. That mutant is now recognized as “Oblivion Matter” Aerodactyl, a leading figure in the spread of the Abhorrent plague. Woefully, their counterattack was not enough, and Aerodactyl managed to slip away using ghostly abilities.

  For the unaware, Rocky Shores had been recently discovered to have a mystical pillar dedicated to Lugia, found by a Feebas and Hattrem duo from Lakehome Town. Their discovery— (cont’d, Page 4)

  That numbskull.

  There was another paper too, tying together the existence of the ‘Silver Wing’ with Lugia, with speculation that the first storm had been a previous attack by Aerodactyl that forced the Legendary to go all-out. And in that process, Aerodactyl had managed to swipe one of his feathers, presumably for some darker reason related to the pillar at Stormsoaked Shores.

  You disappear from my life for a few years, only to pull something like this?

  The idea of mutating Lugia had to be a secondary goal, Kabutops suspected, but still a terrible one. He shook his skull head, trying to shove down the spiteful feelings within him. It was a consequence of his ghostly mutant state, he assumed — Ghost-types were prone to such feelings. It did not help, of course, that Aerodactyl’s actions had been a stone’s throw away from jeopardizing the lives of many. And for what? What was he getting out of it?

  The old fool had gone madder than the day he left him. Not for the first time, he wondered if he’d made a mistake to cut off ties in the first place.

  Kabutops raised his skeletal scythe-arm, covered in purple spectral mist that clung to it like slimy goo. A metal armband hung around it, holding a small array of orbs and a red-purplish Altered Gengarite in the center. Corroded spikes had been stabbed through the otherwise indestructible object, circular rings wrapping around them like angelic halos. They were empty of the mutagen ooze that once filled the Mega Stone, but the spikes still made it a nasty weapon, in case he was in dire straits. He’d used it at least once before.

  The mutation had been a much more controlled thing, back in the day. Not that Kabutops knew where Aerodactyl got it from, back then, though he had a few suspicions now. The black mutagen ooze had an anomalous structure that couldn’t be maintained while exposed to the elements — in other words, it dissolved in open air. Aerodactyl’s mutation granted him the power to directly forge Mega Stones, a perfect container that could hold the ooze without being worn down by its corrosive properties, but he could only make so many of those at a time. Too expensive.

  But that had changed in the last year, ever since Z-Crystal variants started appearing. Now the Abhorrent mess was an open, public concern. Mutants still were a rarity, but they appeared enough times now for people to freak out. That implied that either a Necrozma had given Aerodactyl a large shipment in exchange for some kind of favor, or that worse, one of their light-blessed ilk had chosen to assist him.

  It was neither. Kabutops glared at another headline, detailing the appearance of a Mew-hybrid mutant in black crystal armor. Primal Gear.

  The leader of the Abhorrents, they claim. Pah.

  It was arguably just as bad as having a real Necrozma on the Abhorrent side. A Mew was terrifying in ways no other Pokemon could be, what with their sheer versatility of powers. Maybe only human archmages could compare, considering how varied each one was with their fighting style and magic, or higher-level Missing Ones.

  More than ever, Kabutops wished he had a cure. Darn it, he wished he had strong-armed Aerodactyl into creating a proper cure, if at least so the experiments wouldn’t be so immoral. He’d been perfectly fine with sacrificing his own body, but having others do it, even if they had consented and known the consequences, had made him squirm inside. Did Aerodactyl still bother to seek consent first, in his maddening desire to understand the mutation and perfect it?

  “Brooding out here as usual, dear?”

  Kabutops let out a louder gasp than he meant to as he spun around, Cursola tsking at him with a faint smile. For goodness’s sake, how did she always creep up on him where others couldn’t take even a step without him noticing? “One of these days you’ll exorcise my soul out of the bony remains of my body,” he muttered.

  “Oh, I doubt my husband’s so weak of spirit to be sent to the afterlife by his loving spook,” she shot back with a wave of her ghostly arms. His wife was an unnerving sort of Pokemon, her white body-armor of ectoplasm having several long branches at the sides and back that resembled ghoulish coral. Not to mention a false ghost face, its ‘mouth’ containing her true blob-like body inside, with eerie red eyes and a stiff lip. A broken shell with legs held up her ethereal form, the remains of her pre-evolved body.

  She didn’t need to walk, of course, being a floaty ghost and all, but Cursola enjoyed the feeling of it. She approached him, her movements dead silent, taking in the newspapers he had been wringing his arms over. “This is hardly the kind of distraction that I meant by, when I said you needed to get some rest,” she chided. “God knows how you survive here while I’m away with our daughter.”

  “My side-projects are all the rest I need,” Kabutops stated. “Ghosts don’t need much sleep.”

  “Yet we still need it, you old coot.” Cursola made her ectoplasm coral branches rip off and shoot toward one of the newspapers, chortling as Kabutops flinched at the sudden motion, before grabbing it with the dislocated ghost limb. “Look at you, so jumpy and jittery without your sleep. Does your old associate’s abhorrent actions fill you with such dread that you fear your own dreams?”

  Her branches flung back toward her ectoplasm armor, re-fusing with it at once. Kabutops let out a tired noise, reminding himself that yes, he loved his wife very much, for all her bad ghostly habits. He turned to the newspaper she had picked up and moved into her arms, and stiffened.

  His gaze flitted toward his other scythe-arm. An Alter Band rested on it, looking like an unassuming white piece of cloth. “How is it that your insight always seems to get keener with age?”

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  “As if the Aerodactyl and Mew alone are what clouds your mind these days,” Corsola said with a smirk. “Now why is it that this silly little article was what made you such a moody little Ghost, I wonder?”

  She was holding one of the more recent papers, highlighting the explorer team that had apparently fought Aerodactyl and thrown Kabutops for a loop. A certain Team Heavendust, from the looks of things. The thought of it had warmed his heart — figuratively, his undead skeleton self didn’t have a heart of flesh after all — as much as it made it beat with intensity. An explorer group with a literal Shaymin was very eye-catching, and it was a blessing they had the ability to take down someone of Aerodactyl’s strength.

  But then there was the Lucario and the Alolan Vulpix kit. Both new members. And in their black-and-white portraits, Kabutops couldn’t help but pay unnecessary attention to the wristband she wore.

  “You thought for a moment that dear Eevee had found someone.”

  Kabutops had entertained it for a brief moment, yes. But he wasn’t an idiot. Something like this didn’t make sense, Eevee would’ve brought the Alter Band wielder straight to his home. Why would a human fiddle around with explorers instead?

  But the resemblance was there, he could’ve swore it. He had made a few Alter Bands, and the Vulpix’s plain white wristband looked quite like the one he wore — but it couldn’t be.

  “I fear I sent the young lad off on a wild Ducklett chase.”

  Humans. Kabutops had been narrowing down the reasons for why his wristbands failed at their main function, to let one transform into a ‘best-suited’ Pokemon version of themselves. And in the end, he felt certain it had to do with the primary enchantment he used, a copy of an old yet powerful runic spell copied from a place he refused to ever think about. He had even confirmed it, some time after Eevee had gone off, finding the spell had overwhelmed the magic matrix he had cast into the Alter Bands. That had caused interference with the runic patterns he’d used that were found in Transform Orbs, among other smaller enchantments, and he unfortunately couldn’t find a way to fix that.

  He needed both the spell and the Transform Orb rune patterns if he wanted to don a normal Kabutops form, after all. The spell on its own wouldn’t give him a Pokemon form, it would make him… something else.

  On the bright side, the research implied it should work fine for a human.

  Kabutops pulled himself off his rock, head hung. “A wizard human is my best bet for making the band work,” he thought aloud. “Where can you find one of those, though? They’re either as well-hidden as the Legendaries, or Their Highnesses have them all rounded up in his laboratory for unsavory tests. Even the Ruptures didn’t leave us with a peep about them.”

  And he didn’t even know if it would matter. Alter Bands were just a temporary solution to let him roam the cities again, not a true cure to the Abhorrent problem. A human and its spirit would provide many insights, but likely not what he needed to reverse the effect of the ooze. Could it maybe help him with making artifacts that could create more permanent transformations, to offset the mutation?

  “Does it matter?”

  Kabutops locked up as Cursola latched one of her branches around him, her touch numbing him into petrification — and yet, it was so soothing, so strangely pleasant. “You’re a clever mind, dear, don’t you forget that,” she told him. “You just need to keep looking into other avenues, instead of sticking your head in the sand and focusing on things you can’t solve. It might be good for you to go out and do some fieldwork in the dungeons, or to gather information in the cities.”

  “While I look like a drowned corpse monster, you mean? Why do you think I’m making the darn wristbands in the first place?” Kabutops said, but even still, he gave a slight nod. “I do need to change track though, you’re right. I’ve been so focused on engineering a solution, I forget that it’d help to understand the problem first.”

  As in, the source of the mutagen. Aerodactyl had kept that a secret from him, years back when they had been working together. Kabutops needed that secret to be pried open. What, or who, was the force behind it? What was it like? What was it linked to?

  Kabutops didn’t claim to understand Missing One-related matters all that much. But if his decades of research were worth anything, their forms and powers were heavily affected by certain stimuli, even more than an Eevee was. Assuming a Missing One was related to the source of the ooze, he needed to figure out those stimuli and work from there. And before that, he probably needed to get his blades dirty, researching the strange creatures to understand them better—

  One of the blank orbs on his metal armband flashed blue. Kabutops blinked, then snapped his gaze toward the small forest alcove at one end of his sanctuary. A small hill with a pitch-black tunnel sat there, leading back into the dungeon that let one enter the sanctuary, along with a few runic orbs on poles that served as detection wards.

  “Ma! Pa!”

  Floating out of the tunnel, a Ghost-type Corsola appeared, a pre-evolved version of her aging mother that still had her coral-like shell intact — albeit with a few ectoplasm spines jutting out from the holes in it. “Letter!” came her brusque voice. “From Eevee!”

  Kabutops moved even before his daughter had finished speaking, phasing out of the very air and reappearing right beside Corsola. It looked like a slow teleport to them, but for him, he had shifted through dimensional pockets to move — a fun quirk of his mutation that had taken a lot of skill to control. “Eevee?” he questioned.

  It annoyed him a little that Corsola didn’t so much as bat an eye to his spooky trick. “Check it yourself if you don’t believe me,” she said, “it’s got his signature and everything.”

  How did he get away with sending a letter? Did he use a Covert Cloak to cover his features or something? No, no, he was getting distracted — he needed to see the letter first.

  Cursola hummed in curiosity as she floated over to them, Kabutops taking the envelope from his daughter with shaky arms. She was right, Eevee’s name was listed right there as the sender, with his daughter’s home as the address. He tore it open with his natural scythe-blade, ghoulish eyes bugging out of the eyeholes in his skull as he read aloud the letter it held.

  Did your family show you the papers? I found one — look for the Alolan Vulpix. Her explorer team knows already of her, we’re all coming over soon. Make us all a cake, Jolteon says we deserve it even if she can’t taste it herself anymore.

  And yes, it’s us.

  ~Eevee, the true Nine-Tails

  The audacity of that brat. The sheer smugness laced in his letter, which in and of itself was a smug insult of its own. Kabutops recalled the image of the young Vulpix in the newspaper, then laughed out loud. Laughed until it made his bony throat sore.

  Cursola and Corsola watched him, his daughter dazzled at the explosive news Eevee had dropped. “So,” his wife said in a haughty tone.

  “No one asked you, old-timer,” Kabutops lightly spat.

  Cursola chortled, before embracing him. Kabutops returned it, then waved his daughter over, the girl huffing in a I’m-too-old-for-hugs way but still joining in. All the while, his mind was awash with a torrent of thoughts.

  Because yes, Eevee had actually done it, the madlad! He found a human, and the band did work on her! It worked! Not that he still had much of an idea of how to progress further with her around, but knowing that at least someone had benefitted from his faulty work made him warm inside. A human life saved was a worthwhile thing, he figured.

  But also, he had a human. A Faller? She probably was, given her youth and her supposed reliance on a Lucario guardian. No guarantees that she was a mage either, but oh, the knowledge he could still gain from such an encounter!

  And then there were the explorers. Explorers that Eevee was not only on friendly terms with for some reason, but also knew of the girl’s secret. And a Shaymin too, who might know of things about Legendaries and Missing Ones that he didn’t. They would be coming here, and they already had proven to be prepared to fight the Abhorrents. Perhaps they even meant to solve the matter altogether, and chase down Aerodactyl and the Mew? Because if that was the case—

  I could work with them.

  It greatly amused Kabutops to see both wife and daughter jump at his howling laughter.

  From his perch on a tree branch, Eevee stared down the walls of Noondaisy Town through a filter of leafy foliage. Up during the earliest portions of the dawn, the night sky still hung above him, quietly fading as a sliver of the sun’s radiance began to creep upon it. His siblings were still in sleepy ghost limbo, except for Espeon and Glaceon — strange to find those two chatting of all people.

  Kabutops should’ve gotten the letter by now. A self-satisfied expression settled on Eevee’s face at the thought of it. The shock Kabutops must’ve felt was almost worth as much as the joyous reaction he knew he’d have at his message.

  Shame he couldn’t leave us a direct way to communicate, Glaceon said with a little mirth, pausing her conversation with Espeon to respond to Eevee’s thoughts. You’re dying to see how he reacts when you tell him you walked straight into the post office to send that letter, aren’t you?

  Don’t tell me it isn’t a little funny, Eevee said. It’ll be hilarious.

  A minor amusement, agreed Espeon.

  See? Even our stiff sister agrees.

  Espeon mentally rolled her eyes at him. Then gave him a warning ping, Eevee instantly turning his head to the side. A few seconds passed before Mismagius rose out of the ground, right where he was staring. A chuckle left her throat.

  “Psychics take all the fun out of surprises,” she said.

  Eevee could imagine. “Thanks again for the help yesterday.”

  “Think nothing of it. The idea was a little too entertaining for me to refuse, anyway.”

  Illusionists. Kabutops would rip his transformation bands into shreds if he knew Eevee had relied on one to walk into Noondaisy town in broad daylight. Not that it was his fault though, Kabutops had never hoped to find an illusionist Pokemon who was friendly to Abhorrents. Certainly not one who was talented enough to make them look like their old, perfectly normal selves either. His attempts to create an artifact that could do the same hadn’t gone too well — illusions were a tricky thing to get right.

  Too bad Mismagius’s mostly here for Eira, Glaceon pointed out, Kabutops could travel more freely with her help.

  Interact with other Pokemon too, mused Espeon. It would be beneficial for gathering conventional knowledge.

  At least they had Team Heavendust though. Eevee never had dwelled on it much, but they might be a huge blessing for Kabutops to have. Both sides had a reason to tackle the Abhorrent situation, after all, and they could work quite well together.

  “I did come for a reason, by the way,” Mismagius said, making Eevee’s ears perk. “I thought I might ask for a tiny favor. Something you might enjoy — or at least, your siblings.”

  Huh? Glaceon popped out of Eevee’s head, the Ice-type phantom blinking at Mismagius as Espeon quietly projected her words to her. Uh, I mean, sure, miss Mismagius? What do you need us for?

  Mismagius’s smile widened at the appearance of Glaceon. “You in particular might be good for this exercise,” she said. “Our human girl does need a tutor for her innate Ice abilities, after all.”

  Eevee raised a brow. Glaceon briefly turned toward him with wide eyes, before nodding.

  I’m in.

  The witch cackled. “I know you would be. You will looooove what I have in mind.”