"Charon…are you awake?"
The soft voice roused the exhausted scientist.
"Ugh," he groaned, still buried in sheets, "What time is it?"
The voice crackled with trepidation.
"Charon, I'm scared."
The scientist sat up, rubbing his eyes. Awkwardly, he felt for his glasses on the side table, found them and slid them on. Sure enough, it was Rotom.
"Why?"
It wasn't unusual for the Pokemon to come running to the scientist whenever it got into mischief and often he would the one to haphazardly fix the situation.
But this was different. Rotom was never this frightened of anything.
"There's a strange Gengar man…"
The scientist raised an eyebrow, "Gengar man?"
The ghost nodded, "He had the look of one: the eyes, the smile, the really, really spikey hair…"
"Right," the scientist was as sceptical as he was concerned.
"I think he might be one of those aliens. He had a red glowing cylinder on his sash."
Charon's eyes widened.
One of them. In the Galactic Headquarters. In the middle of the night.
He threw his blankets to the side and sprung out of bed. In a blink of an eye, he slipped on his dressing gown and slippers.
"Where is he?" he quietly commanded his friend.
The Pokemon zipped out of the bedroom. The scientist followed behind, running.
It was frustrating that the intruder didn't set off any alarms. Perhaps, he really was like a Gengar: a ghost that could fade away into nothingness.
The most irritating part about the situation was that no one was going to believe the scientist. He tried to inform the other commanders and his leader about the possible threat posed by these aliens called Eklipse. The commanders regarded him as if he spontaneously grew a second head. His boss didn't emote, let alone react. He simply gave the scientist one of his intense dead-eyed stares.
I warned them that something like this would occur, the scientist thought as he raced through the base, Now, otherworldly invaders have come knocking on our doors! Of course, this happens when they didn't listen…
Suddenly, Rotom stops in its tracks. Charon skidded to a halt with a puff. The little spirit indicated to the scientist to be silent as they approached. It snuck around towards an open door in the shadowed corridor. The scientist copied, but not before arming himself with his slippers, one in each hand.
They peered through the door.
It was the base's main computer. Flashing lights could be seen all over the machine. The fans whirred quietly.
The scientist whispered, "Cover me. I'm going in."
He entered the room in a fighting stance, poised to whack anyone with his shoes. Rotom mirrored him with its lighting-shaped appendages.
But there was nothing except the beeps and boops of the machine.
Rotom turned slightly to the door and gasped.
The room flashed as it discharged a bolt of electricity.
A yelp came from behind as a metal cylinder rattled the steel ground.
Charon spun around, jolted by fright. The cylinder had rolled to his foot and touched it.
He gaped slightly at what was before him.
Barely in the room, in a fitting black outfit, clasping a seized gloved hand was a very tall man. He did look similar to a Gengar with his spiked hair and wide-open eyes. Instead of a grin, he had a snarl, directed squarely at the electric ghost. His features were lit in a menacing crimson by the glowing container on his sash.
Charon briefly glanced down.
He dropped his slippers, exchanging it for the strange cylinder at his feet.
The intruder stepped forwards. Charon and Rotom moved backwards, the former springing up with the cylinder pointed at the threat. It seemed to be a rod of sorts with a handle.
The man's snarl curled into a sneer.
The scientist demanded, "Who are you?"
There was an unnerving, high-pitched giggle from the man as his eyes flickered between the two.
"Wouldn't you like to know. Say," he tilted his head to the side a bit, regarding him, "you're that little scientist who found us, aren't you?"
"Y-yes," the scientist shuffled backwards again, "The last time I checked your boss told me that he didn't want the likes of Team Galactic to be anywhere near your base."
He made a prodding motion with the rod, filled with an irritated disgust.
"So, why in Arceus' name are you here?!"
The intruder emitted another laugh as he looked down, stepping back into the door frame.
His eyes flicked up, now twinkling with a malevolent mischievousness.
He taunted, "You're going to have to catch me before I'll ever talk."
He raced off, leaving Charon and Rotom baffled for a moment.
They scrambled out of the room and after the Gengar man. Charon was half-skating across the metal floor in his socks, sliding into corners whenever he reached them. Rotom had rocketed past him. It could easily outfly the intruder, but, much like a spirit, he kept disappearing into the darkness and reappearing again.
He was leading them.
Eventually, the scientist and the electric ghost entered the warehouse at the back of the base.
The two scanned their dimly lit surroundings. There was nothing but crates of equipment and supplies, some stacked on top of each other.
"Oh great!" the scientist groaned, "It shall be impossible to find him now!"
Suddenly, slicing through the quiet, there was a snicker from above. They turned to the source.
Standing on top of a stack of crates, gleaming wickedly, was the intruder.
"Enjoying our little game of 'Cat-and-Mouse'?" he asked.
"Game?" Charon retorted, "You think that you can just waltz into our base, make a mockery of our security and treat it as a game?! WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?!"
Rotom jerked when the scientist shouted.
The intruder's eyes flickered with sadism.
"Dom Pyro," he proclaimed with a snigger, "And," he plucked the luminous cylinder from his sash, "I have somebody to introduce to you."
The scientist and the ghost regarded him with tense confusion.
He lifted the hand with the cylinder.
"Dragonburn," he announced with glee, "LAUNCH!"
He whipped his arm and hurled the strange container. It spun through the air, over the perplexed couple, leaving a luminous trail behind it. They watched its trajectory.
It reached the concrete ground.
Ting!
The tiny container erupted with vermillion light. The scientist shielded himself from it.
He looked back. He froze, pop-eyed.
Before him was towering red and black monster. It resembled a bipedal bat-eared dinosaur with a spear-tipped nose and crystalline claws and spines. There were lines on its body that seemed to glow with power. Its eyes were the same.
It growled loudly, flicking its tail with anticipation.
"What is that?" Rotom's voice quivered.
Charon couldn't reply. His mouth hung open. He had never seen anything quite like this beast before.
The intruder cackled like the madman he was.
He called out to his monster, "Pretty Pretty! I have some little mouseys for you to play with!"
In that instant, the bizarre dinosaur seemed to grin evilly.
The rod that the scientist had managed to hold onto slipped out of his hand. It rattled the floor.
The dinosaur bellowed. Charon and Rotom screamed.
The dinosaur charged. The pair skedaddled, fleeing from the snapping jaws.
The giant lizard rammed into crates as it rampaged. They crashed into the floor and walls as they were batted away with its head.
It even belched flames at its prey, igniting the surrounding boxes instead.
Its controller, still perched on his vantage point, watched in utter delight. He leapt from the crates and landed on the hard ground.
As he picked up the rod, a voice with a scathing tone hissed through his earpiece.
"What in God's name are you doing?"
He slid the rod into the sheath on the back of his sash.
Slyly, he replied, "It's called a distraction, Clockwork Man."
There was an exasperated sigh from the other side.
"I hope you realise that I can hear you all the way from where I am," the voice said.
The maniac simply chuckled, spying where his curious cylinder had skated to.
Meanwhile, Charon and Rotom were huddled behind a box that had been swatted to the side by a strong reptilian tail, desperate to not make a sound. The shaken scientist was worried that his pounding heart was going to give their location away. The little ghost recoiled as monstrous snarls and shrieks echoed above.
They were going to need one Hell of a miracle to escape unscathed.
And in two magic words, they received just that.
"Dragonburn," its controller commanded, "return."
The giant reptile grunted, looking to its master, before its entire body shattered into a vibrant red aurora. It slithered back into its tiny container.
The intruder snapped the core back onto his sash and ran out of the warehouse, disappearing into the night.
Cautiously, Charon and Rotom peered from their hiding spot when they realised that the beast that terrorised them had vanished.
They were met with the site of scattered crates, some cracked open and spilling their contents onto the concrete floor. Some were smoking or even on fire. It was in complete chaos.
The scientist flinched as the chilly water from the fire sprinklers hit his face and neck. The entire place was becoming drenched from the delayed downpour.
In that moment, a thought floated into the scientist's head, one that was a greater grievance than what was before him.
How am I going to explain this to the Boss?