[Pokémon] Beliefs (PG)

[DGexe]

Disclaimer: I don't own Pokemon. Tada. Also, I haven't written in about a year, so critiques would actually be lovely to see, please.

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Summary: Have you ever met a certain little child from Lavender Town? Yes, that's the one... the one who delights in asking people if they believe in ghosts... did you ever wonder what would happen the day someone finally got tired of the inquires...?​

Beliefs
The tale of one question asked one too many times​

I had been watching that annoying brat for the last thirty minutes. That was thirty minutes of my life I'd never get back, by the way. I never really bothered entertaining my brain with visuals of juvenile antics, but hey… there was nothing better to do in this small town.

Okay, okay, so maybe that was a small lie in itself. After all, there was that huge tower that commemorated the deceased Pokémon of trainers past, but there was no way in anyone's heaven or hell I was going to venture in there. I didn't care if there were Ghost types to battle. That place was filled with dead bodies, and the thought of a Gastly or Haunter using those corpses as their playthings….

"Ha, ha, ha. That white hand on your shoulder, I'm just imagining it."

By Arceus, he was at it again! That's how he got everyone—the little brat would ask a passerby if they believed in ghosts, and if they answered "No" or something along those lines, he'd make that particular comment or a variation of it. I'd already seen five people, including the poor woman this boy pestered now, glance at and over their shoulders nervously afterwards. And they'd do it for the next few minutes thereafter.

As far as I knew, the boy hadn't noticed me yet because I was pretending to mind my own business by the Pokémart; when you look like you're playing with a Jolteon, you too can look pretty innocent. After the second attempt by this boy, I didn't need to see what was occurring to know it was even happening anyway. I just had to hear it.

Sparx ran circles around me as I pretended to be enthralled by his rather Eevee-esque, childish behavior. He was just as fooled as the boy probably was and had no idea that in reality, I was down right irritated. On the other hand…

Is the child still going at it with strangers?​

Just barely above a whisper, a voice beside my right ear purred those words. It was deep, eloquent like a proper gentleman, and it bore just the right amount of wraithlike touches to it. Sparx, unable to detect it, never did pause in his high-speed laps.

"Does it sound like it t' ya?" I quietly answered back, turning my head to try to follow Sparx, as if I was speaking to the 'eon. In the back of my mind, there was a sensation as if someone had just grinned—it wasn't so much feeling lips pull back against my skin as much as it just unexpectedly knowing the action had just happened.

Sounds and looks that way, Kiddo. You don't like it one bit. He's an annoyance, even for a child.​

I shifted on the grass and reached up to yank my coat's collar about my neck. Although there was no actual malice in the context of those words, I could still feel like there should have been. It made my skin crawl and gain a desire for protection.

"Is tha' yer hint for 'let us do somethin' 'bout it'? He's only five people in…."

It could be…​

The grin widened.

So shall we, my dear…?​

The prospect of finally turning the tables on the child actually did feel like something worth my time. The moment I began to entertain the notion, however, warning bells began to ring in the back of my mind. "You know better," they seemed to say. "This could go very badly." They were right, unfortunately. I enjoyed going along with the pranks He could come up with, but there was always that underlying danger that something could go very wrong.

"Are ya goin' t' be'ave yerself?"

At that moment there was a nod to accompany the grin, and just like before I simply acknowledged that it had occurred. Following the action was a small amount of pressure on my left shoulder, followed by another one upon my right. They distinctly felt like hands, albeit clawed. Instinctively, I tilted my head to look, but nothing was there. After ten years of these sensations, I should've been used to it, but it still felt so unsettling at times.

Now shall we?​

"Yer a little too insistent." Sparx had stopped running around me to have a seat beside my legs, and he looked up at the sound of my voice. His spiky head tilted to the side in confusion, but I waved it off. "Not ya, Sparx. Someone else." The electric 'eon then inclined his head in the other direction and looked around to see if I'd been speaking to someone he had missed. Obviously, there was no one to be found who looked like they were having a conversation with me.

I slowly rose to my feet, giving the Jolteon at my side little indication as to what exactly was going on. A few clicks of the tongue let him know I wanted him to follow, and obediently the electric canine padded at my side. We made our short way across the grass, not exactly heading straight for our target as much as we appeared to simply be walking towards the Pokémon Tower. I even spoke up to my Jolteon about how we'd catch a few Gastlies for the team.

"Hey, Miss!" It worked like a charm; as we passed the boy by, he overheard my one-sided conversation and turned to see who else he could dupe. As politely as I could muster, I ceased walking and swiveled on my heels to face the kid.

"Yeah? Do ya need somethin'?" I inquired with a perk of one brow. My otherworldly companion was practically beaming with malevolent glee as the whole charade began. The little boy couldn't sense it and instead gave me his most innocent smile. He was getting ready to throw the question out; under those layers of incorruptibility, I could see how pleased he was to find another target.

"Do you believe in ghosts, ma'am?"

Thoughtfully, I gazed up towards the towering building in our midst and brought my left hand up to scratch at my scalp as if in deep thought.

"Y'know, I'm not too sure, kid." This made his face fall, just slightly. Apparently no one had given him an uncertain, indirect answer before. "I mean, after all, there are Ghost-types, an' those 'ad t' come from somewhere or somethin', and then there's all th' rumors 'bout possessed channelers an' monks an' shamans…" My rambling uncertainty was starting to grate upon the boy's nerves (and possibly very short attention span). I could see it clear as the sky upon his face; he was making his best brow-furrowed, pouty lipped visage at me.

"Miss…"

"… Oh, I'm terribly sorry. Ya don't want t' 'ear m' ramblin' replies, do ya? Aah, yer just like any other kid. Even when I was yer age…"

You're stalling.​

Actually, I was biding my sweet time, although He was right. Any more of this old-timer rambling and the kid wouldn't want to listen to another word out of me. I folded my arms across my chest and peered down at the boy with a skeptical look. Did I believe in ghosts…?

"…No, I guess don't, actually, t' really answer yer question."

That boy took the bait. His fair little face lit up like a light bulb, and very innocently he pointed towards my right shoulder to show me something. In an additional show of innocence, he followed this pointing up with, "Ha, ha, ha, oh, well, that white hand on your shoulder, I guess I'm just imagining it!" Hook, line, and sinker! We have a winner, folks!

"Oh? Are ya now…?" I calmly replied back before curling my lips into a sincere smile. There was an awkward pause, just for a moment, before the boy truly realized what I had said and actually looked up at the shoulder he pointed out. At that precise moment, his brain had come to another revelation that something wasn't quite right in his joke. I was no longer playing along, and neither was He.

The invisible force on my right shoulder had, over the course of our conversation about ghosts, slowly materialized into the iconic white hand. It looked like any old deathly-white, disembodied human appendage, with the exception of a missing pinking finger. There were four fingers and the stub, and the remaining fingers were tipped with chipped nails. It sat upon my shoulder and gently began to dig into the black fabric of my coat. The boy stared at it in disbelief and took a few cautious steps back. I didn't allow him to get away, however—I stepped forward for each step backwards that was taken.

"Do you believe in ghosts, little boy?" I inquired before my lips curled into a threatening grin. The hand on my shoulder slowly began to transform: it started to turn a very deep purple at the fingers, overtaking them knuckle upon knuckle like some sort of perverse bruise, until it spread out over the rest of the appendage; the showing bone and muscle at the wrist and stumped finger faded out and smoothed over into cold, lifeless flesh; and every chipped nail upon that hand slowly extended out into cruel looking claws.

"Do you?"

The poor boy looked to be on the edge of tears by this point, and he had now taken to cowering on the ground. We weren't finished yet, however. My otherworldly companion took His own cues and slowly began to separate from my shadow, rising up like some kind of spectral demon to feast upon unlucky souls. The spiked, bodiless "head" that made up the Haunter loomed over the boy and I, and I could sense his cold eyes glaring down at our victim with cruel delight. Sparx apprehensively began to back away from us with his coat bristled over in fear. The Jolteon knew who the spectral being was, but he knew better not to interfere when He and I were "busy".

My torso tilted downwards towards the child as he silently began crying; streams of tears poured down his cheeks. The Haunter didn't close the distance I was making. My body only paused once I was in whispering earshot, putting me nearly face-to-face with the now fearful child. Very softly, I whispered.

"Joke's over."

That seemed to be enough for him. The child finally unleashed a proper cry of terror and bolted from his cowering position, running for dear life. Possibly caught under the assumption that his soul was going to be snacked upon, he headed in the general direction of a very small cluster of houses, screaming for his mother between blubbering cries. I straightened up and turned to watch, settling my hands on my hips and grinning at a job well done.

"So, how was tha' performance?" I asked while looking up to the Haunter still looming above. The Ghost and Poison type mockingly waved in departure to the fleeing boy before turning his attention back to me. The unusually green jack-o-lantern mouth curled up into a highly sadistic expression of pleasure.

"It was most impressive for a mortal, Kiddo. I didn't think he'd run off after so long…"

"Hm, yeah, tha' was an unusually long time t' b' cowerin', I suppose."

"… Ah, wait," the Ghost-type mockingly mused aloud, "I believe they call it 'paralyzed with fear', my dear trainer."

Beside me, Sparx suddenly alerted us to his presence again by letting out a high-pitched whine. It was one I recognized as looming trouble, and out of a desire not to get hurt right after a good prank I turned to see what was getting the Jolteon's attention. Standing a few yards behind us was an elderly man with brown slacks and a white shirt covered up with a yellow apron. How in the Arceus-made Earth the old man snuck up behind us I'll never understand, but he certainly did not look pleased to see us.

Ψ​

"Man, I didn't think 'e could give us a verbal beat down like tha'."

"And I thought he looked after orphaned Pokémon, not annoying little brats."

As it turned out, the elderly man Sparx had seen was Mr. Fuji, who as I found out was renowned for his kindness to all Pokémon and the owner of the Lavender Volunteer Pokémon House. On top of that, he apparently was not too pleased when new comers to the town showed up and caused some trouble of their own for any reason. My Haunter and I were given a good little speech about taking pranks too far and were told to go apologize to the boy and his family. Mr. Fuji's empowering words had almost been powerful enough to work.

Almost. We skipped out of town without so much as a stop by the Pokémart, heading due west for the neighboring town of Saffron. The trip was going to take a couple of days on foot, but maybe if we were fast enough, we could get far enough ahead to avoid causing more trouble or being pursued by it from the citizens of Lavender Town. Word would probably spread, if it hadn't already, about how the Haunter and I had terrorized that boy.

At my left side Sparx walked along, occasionally giving me displeased looks over the prank I had helped to pull off. Taunter, the Haunter of course, floated after us with a genuine grin. It took a lot in life to keep him from grinning. Today had turned out to be an oddly wonderful little adventure, even at the expense of one joke-pulling child and the end result of an old man berating us.

Of course we'd never be let back into the streets of that small, sleepy town ever again. On the other hand, that was perfectly fine with us. I already owned my own Ghost-type, and once more he'd proved to be a very good companion and fellow "vigilante prankster". We were always guaranteed to find some sort of enjoyment out of the things we bothered to do.

It was always worth all the trouble of getting into trouble.​