Part 1 – Rotom's New Form
"Hey Charon! Charon! Charon! Charon! Charon!"
The piercing voice, punctuated by electrical crackling, was ringing in the ears of the old scientist it bugged.
He was minding his own business, working in the peaceful laboratory.
Now, he was staring into space, struck by the paralysing voice.
He knew exactly who it was.
He growled, bending an ear to his friend, "What is it? Can you not see that I am clearly working?!"
The peppy voice replied, "Check out my new form!"
The disgruntled scientist turned to his friend.
"Eh?" his expression shifted from a scowl to confusion.
His friend was a poltergeist-like Pokemon, known for possessing machinery. He had witnessed the little ghost control lawnmowers, fans and various large appliances. Once, it possessed an oven. The pair quickly found it that it could use fire-based attacks. The man nearly had his hair burnt off.
He believed that he had seen all of Rotom's forms.
Yet, before him, was another, most bizarre.
He adjusted his round glasses, to ensure that his eyes were still relatively functional.
The creature had adopted a gangly appearance. Its oval eyes were near the top of its rounded torso. A spike protruded from the top of it. Two long arms were attached to its "head", each with three sharp claws. It spun around, showing two "horns" sprouting from the back of it, connected by a small control panel with various buttons. Its skin, like always, was a bright electric orange. Its aura was sliver.
"Ta-dah!" the Pokemon held its clawed hands out.
The scientist simply blinked.
"What is that?"
The ghost faltered slightly, "Er…" it closed its hands, "I'm not actually sure."
It smiled cheesily.
The old man's expression became intense.
"So, you decided that it was a perfectly reasonable idea to possess it, despite your lack of knowledge of what it is."
"Yes!" the Pokemon was still cheery.
The man was sterner, "Where did you find it?"
"Uh," the creature looked at the roof, recalling the events of the night before, "A ship."
"You travelled to a harbour?"
"No, no, no!" the creature waved its hands, "Not that kind of ship!"
The old man furrowed his forehead, more perplexed than before.
The Pokemon continued, "It was a spaceship! It was HUGE!"
It threw its hands out to emphasise the size.
"A spaceship?" the man repeated sceptically.
The creature nodded.
The man put his hands together, in a sort of praying gesture.
"You mean to tell me," the man's tone was scathing as he pointed his hands at his friend, "that you found a mysterious machine, on a spaceship, and decided to steal it."
The ghost hesitated.
"…yes."
Flames of irritation flickered in the old scientist's eyes. The creature continued to give him its stupid grin.
They locked gazes.
For about a good minute or two.
Rotom, unfazed, broke the staring contest by grabbing Charon's wrist.
"I can show you the spaceship! Then you would believe me!"
The scientist was dragged out of the laboratory by the overeager poltergeist. Despite being startled, he noted the grip strength of the Pokemon in this new form.
It was too strong to break out of.
Meanwhile, far away on a giant airship, one of its crew had woken up with a nasty surprise.
In its control room, an old butler with a purple bowtie was typing at a furious pace on the system's computer. Surveillance footage of the previous night from various cameras were constantly being cycled through on the massive screen.
His master, a bald bearded man in a long black jacket with red epaulettes, stood behind with crossed arms.
"How exactly did you misplace your robot arms, Hargrave?" he inquired, unimpressed.
The butler stopped typing, turned to his master and placed a hand on his chest, "Misplace? Sir, you know me. I never misplace a single thing. I am exceptionally vigilant!"
He faced the computer and continued with what he was doing, keyboard rattling.
His master, the Doctor, remarked, "You have had your moments in the past."
"We can't all be infallible, sir. Besides, I take great care of those arms," he took a hand off the keyboard to point to the ground as his voice flared with uncharacteristic anger, "They were right next to my bed last night and now they have vanished into thin air!"
"I'm sure there is a perfectly reasonable explanation to all of this…"
"Yes," the butler added, facing the computer once more, "a thief."
The Doctor regarded him with disdain.
"The likelihood of that is slim. It is near impossible to infiltrate the ship."
In that moment, in one of the darkened videos, the old butler caught a glimpse of light. He paused it suddenly, then rewound it and played it.
A small, glowing entity floated down the corridor, carefree. It resembled a globular lightning rod with eyes.
It hovered in front of the steel door of Hargrave's bedroom.
It phased through the door.
The butler's eyes popped upon seeing the creature. The Doctor, at this point, had a hand on the computer console as he leant towards the screen, watching it with narrowed eyes, attempting to identify the unknown flying object.
The was a moment of silence in that room as the two men watched that bedroom door like hawks.
Eventually, the door slid open and out came the butler's harness with robot arms.
Except it was now luminescent.
And had eyes.
And was floating away from the bedroom.
The footage stopped.
"Good God!" the butler exclaimed, "I was ransacked by the supernatural!"
"Impossible!" the Doctor spat at the screen.
But their cameras never lied. The pair knew this fact.
They stood in flabbergasted quietness, absorbed by it.
It was interrupted by an alert that popped up on screen. The alarm caused the two to jump out of their skins.
The Doctor reached over the keyboard and pressed a button.
Live feed of outside the ship was summoned to the screen.
Standing among dirt, rock and shrub, was a person in white.
A scientist?
He was old and had a weird moon-shaped hairdo.
Next to him was an even stranger thing: orange, lanky and levitating.
They were far away; detail was difficult to ascertain at that distance.
The two figures seemed to be approaching the ship.
The Doctor turned to the butler.
"Come," he commanded, heading towards the door with a swish of his jacket, "Let us give them a welcoming party."
The butler obediently followed.
Meanwhile, outside, Charon and Rotom beheld the gargantuan black spaceship before them. The old man was shocked at how his lively companion wasn't exaggerating in the slightest.
"See," the ghost playfully teased, "I told you so. But no, you thought I was a liar. Not so silly now, am I?"
With a giggle, it zipped away from the scientist, towards the ship.
"Rotom!" he barked, "Come back here!"
He ran after the Pokemon, kicking some dust up with each step. He didn't hear the door of the ship slowly open and land with a thud on the ground.
When he caught up to the creature, the ship overshadowed them.
He scolded his friend, half panting, "I suppose it is a good thing that we are here. You can give that," he pointed accusingly at the recoiling creature, "contraption back to whatever aliens you burgled!"
An amused voice interjected, "Aliens?"
Charon and Rotom turned to the source.
They had been discovered by the Doctor and Hargrave.
The Doctor scoffed, hands on hips, "You thought we were aliens?"
The Pokemon remarked innocently, "You don't look like aliens."
The butler dryly retorted, "Obviously, we're wearing our human skins."
"Really?"
"No."
Within seconds, he had pulled out, from his tail-coat, a handheld, gun-like launcher, had snapped on an unusual crimson cylinder to the end of it and was aiming it at the Pokemon.
In a rare fit of passion, he demanded, "Now, hand over my robot arms you little snitching spirit!"
Rotom became terrified. It never had a weapon pointed at it before. It hid behind Charon.
The gun was now aimed at the pop-eyed scientist.
He was taken aback by the surreal nature of the situation. Here he was, eclipsed by a what seemed to be a spaceship, with his friend using him as a human shield, about to get shot by an angry butler.
The Doctor sternly ordered the butler, "Stand down."
Hargrave's rage dissipated instantly on those words.
"Yes, sir," he meekly responded, lowering his gun.
The Doctor crossed his arms and addressed Charon, "Don't mind him. We have been looking for those all morning."
The butler nodded, reaffirming his master's words.
The scientist's eyes flickered between the odd pair. He glanced over his shoulder. Rotom had covered its face with its claws.
He swivelled around, grabbed the creature and faced the two men. It peered through its claws.
With a yelp, the Pokemon leapt from the robot arms and sheltered behind the scientist. The arms of the contraption bent backwards and clicked into place as the claws pointed down at him.
"Interesting machine…" he commented as he scanned the harness, raising an eyebrow.
"Yes," the butler concurred, sliding the weapon into his tail-coat, "they're rather…unique."
He held an open hand out to the scientist.
"May I please have them back?"
Charon stretched his arms. Hargrave stepped forward and took the harness from him. He slipped it over his head. It rested on his shoulders, claws hanging over his head.
The scientist quizzed, "What were you aiming at me exactly?"
The butler's voice became hushed as he leaned closer, "We can summon monster at will from cores. Powerful monsters. Mine would have ripped you apart."
He smiled briefly.
"Ah," was all the scientist could say.
"I'm sorry!" the Pokemon behind him squeaked.
The butler returned to his master's side, hands now behind his back.
The Doctor looked the scientist up and down.
"Who are you anyway?" he asked, noticing the yellow 'G' on the man's silver top.
A wry smile appeared on the scientist's face as he proclaimed, "I am Commander Charon of Team Galactic. Who are you?"
He noticed the red emblem consisting of circles on the Doctor's jacket.
"I am Dr Emmanuel Klipse, leader of the Eklipse Organisation," he gestured to the butler with his head, "This is Hargrave, my butler and second-in-command. Now, I never want to see you or any member of your team ever again."
Charon grinned amicably, "Well, it's nice to know that this meeting was just as unpleasant on your end as it was on mine. Good day."
And with that, he began striding in the direction he came from, with Rotom closely trailing behind. The Doctor and Hargrave wandered back into their ship.
As he walked, the scientist gazed over his shoulder, at the ship, one last time.
Rotom was back to its cheery demeanour.
It said gratefully, "You really saved me back there."
He turned to the Pokemon, "There are times like these that I would like to kindly remind you," he pointed at it, "that I greatly despise you sometimes."
The creature's face became neutral for a moment.
It smiled again, "I love you too, Charon."