On a distant shore of Sinnoh, far beyond the reach of the Pokémon League, there walked a trainer looking for a way to express gratitude without words.
She was dressed somewhat like a doll, wearing only black and white. Light clothes, considering the season, but as they say, different strokes for different folks.
Like many others, she carried a bag for her personal effects. Unlike others, she also carried a basket on her back, made of bright reeds and laced with sweet-smelling flowers.
A Pokémon sticks their head out of the basket. Their fur is white, though a green grass-like tuft runs down their head and back.
"...Shaymin?" the girl said. "Are you well?"
The Pokémon's spirit pulsed, accompanied by a burst of a pleasant aroma, smelling like honeysuckle.
The girl considered this for a moment. "...Someone capable of generating great gratitude?"
Shaymin nodded.
"...Alright."
She turned on her heel and turned back towards Sinnoh's mainland.
If there was someone else Shaymin had taken an interest in, Marley thought she ought to bring the Pokémon to meet them.
The Lights in the Sky Are Thunderbolts - IX - It's Been So Long
The four lab trainers spent the next week or so in Oreburgh, either training, enjoying the small amounts of existing scenery, or challenging Roark.
Hilbert, much to his annoyance, spent much of that time in bed resting, so he wouldn't stress his burns. They would take a long time to heal, but in the initial stages of recovery, not agitating them further was important.
As previously stated, he had opinions about sleeping and felt he had already gotten his fair share. It really felt like the universe was just messing with him, at that point.
Walking around town was a little bit worse, though. He offered to pick up takeout for everyone one night and the shop's owner had insisted on giving him the whole order at ten percent. Eventually, Hilbert accepted, but made sure to tip the other ninety percent plus a little more. It was only right, really.
Sinistea was getting better and better at using Water TE, but also increasing the power of their draining attacks and support moves. Sweet Scent was seemingly a random development. Vapor had a lot to do with water, who'd have guessed?
Golett needed some time to recover and draw their spirit energy back together. After combining with Hilbert for an extended period, and with all of the energy that had been flowing through Hilbert's Platinum Soul, the difference between the two spirits was almost invisible. They had to reorganize their spirits manually.
They didn't have to battle anyone over that period, but the protracted nature of the aftereffects was troubling.
After Hilbert's vision had cleared and he could tell himself apart from Golett, he walked up the mountain that separated Jubilife and Oreburgh. It placed some strain on his burns, but he managed to get to a small, empty plateau without too much trouble.
His heart pulsed.
Empty of spirit, Golett's form grew out of the rocky mountain. Coal dust layered their being and striped the surface, running diagonally beneath the markings and symbols that quickly formed. Its eyes and the spiral in its chest were devoid of life entirely.
Hilbert began writing out the same four characters as he had before, pouring a careful combination of his and Golett's energy into a scalpel. It cut solid stone away like it was clay.
Before he could impress a new spirit upon it, he felt the winds shift around him.
He smirked.
"Hey there, Machamp. I'm glad to see you're still sticking around."
The spirit had formed behind him. Its eyes were closed, though they lacked emotion. Their four arms hung by their side, despite not having a tether to hold them there.
Hilbert's expression shifted into a smile. "You're coming with me whether I want you to or not, aren't you?"
A moment passed, and then the spirit nodded.
"Thought so. Can I try something, then?"
The spirit nodded again.
Hilbert fished an empty Pokéball out of his bag before offering it to the spirit.
"I'm not sure if it'll work, and if you prefer being outside, I totally get it. Most people probably won't notice unless you're being obvious, so I'm fine with it."
The spirit didn't seem to be listening, and simply pressed their hand to the Pokéball. There was the signature red flash, and the Pokéball clicked, but the spirit remained where it was.
Hilbert fished out his Pokédex and then tapped it to the ball. It read Machamp as a species, though the diagnostics data was coming up with all errors.
"Eh," he said, "It'll be fine." He put all of the junk away and looked back at Machamp. "Good to work with you; let's help a lot of people, yeah?"
Machamp nodded feverishly.
"Great! But first, you wanna see something cool?"
Not waiting for a response, Hilbert turned back towards the unmoving golem and pressed his finger against the empty spiral on its chest.
"Singularity."
They left for Jubilife again not long after. With the four of them together, Hilbert couldn't help but feel that he was forgetting something, though he couldn't remember quite what that was.
Hilbert offered to have Golett turn into a motorcycle again, and after convincing them that it was actually something Golett could do, they still declined because he didn't have a license and even teenagers didn't trust other teenagers on motorcycles. It was mostly Dawn who was skeptical of the idea but Barry proved to have some brains in him.
All four of them couldn't fit on the one motorcycle, he pointed out.
Despite this, they weren't totally immune to teenage stupidity, as Barry insisted they go to his favorite childhood restaurant to celebrate once they were back in Jubilife.
He, Hilbert, and Lucas had all won their gym challenges, after all, so that was what they ought to do, he explained.
Hilbert wasn't so sure, but as it was only 2009, he had no real reason to be distrustful of children's entertainment restaurants and/or establishments.
So, another day or so later, they ended up standing in a small parking lot on the outskirts of Jubilife City. Distantly, Hilbert heard the joyous, nails-on-a-chalkboard-like sound of children shrieking for no good reason.
"Dude, I promise this is a good idea," Barry said, "It'll be fun and nostalgic and stuff!"
Hilbert looked at the sign hanging above the establishment. Below a cartoonish depiction of the Pokémon, in neon signs, was TEDD E. URSA'S.
Lucas stared along with him. "I sense a great disturbance in the force."
"The movies suck," Hilbert said out of the corner of his mouth, "Read the books and extended universe stuff, that's where the good stuff is at. Also, your reference timing is off."
Lucas actually scoffed, which he wasn't sure the boy could do. Hilbert had assumed he was just a bookish doormat, which was fair since he'd only interacted with him while Barry ran interference.
"Couldn't we do something that won't damage Professor Rowan's reputation?" Dawn asked for the third time.
"You don't have to come," Barry said. "We're going to have fun, you can go do whatever girls do when guys are being guys." He made a shooing motion.
"That's sexist," Dawn remarked.
"There's a shoe sale that way," Barry added, pointing for emphasis.
Dawn snorted. "Like I care about that stuff."
"I, for one," Lucas said, "Am absolutely shocked that an entire half of the human population is not a monolith of interests and behaviors. Shocked, I tell you."
Hilbert rounded on them. "Hey, cut the shit, I'm trying to sense impending doom."
"That's something you can do?" Barry asked, sounding legitimately curious.
"No, but I'm trying, so shut up."
Truth be told, he hadn't seen a children's restaurant in his visions of the world ending.
And by whatever god had put him up to this, that was a dumb sentence. Quite possibly the dumbest thing he had ever said.
"Barry."
"Huh?"
"Oh, um, trying to break a record, sorry," Hilbert said. "Anyway, we're good to head in. Dawn?"
She rolled her eyes and said, "Yeah, I'll come in with you guys, but I'm not paying. You dragged me along."
"Gold digger," Barry said.
"That's not happening," Dawn said, referring to the implication, "Present and future tense."
"Probably for the best," Hilbert muttered. "Can we go now? I want to eat some stale pizza and drink some flat soda."
It wasn't actually someone's birthday that day, so the restaurant had enough space to seat them soon enough. A very, very tired looking young lady took their order of drinks and returned to the back. On a stage across the dining area, robotic fur suits 'played' some kind of song, though it was drowned out by the sheer noise of the restaurant.
"We can alternate playing games and waiting for food," Lucas suggested.
Hilbert eyed another half-pint run past their table, trailing what was probably pink eye.
"Sounds good," Hilbert said.
"Yeah, I'm down," Barry said.
"Whatever," Dawn said.
"Can you stop acting like an edgy middle schooler and have fun?" Hilbert asked. He hadn't even wanted to go there but he was getting a little irritated by her apathy.
"No, it's part of my charm," Dawn said, flipping her hair.
"You don't have charm, that's for main characters," Barry said, thumbing his chest and looking inordinately snooty.
"NPC," Lucas added helpfully.
"You shut up too," Hilbert said to the other boys. "I'm going to go first; you guys can alternate and then I'll wait last."
They started shuffling around but ended up agreeing in the end.
Hilbert wandered around the arcade for a little bit, and after a few loops, he found Barry attempting to play skee ball.
Being blond, it was only natural that he was trying to throw overhand.
Barry did throw it that way, and it bounced off the inside of the machine and directly into the 20,000-point hole.
Hilbert could do nothing but watch as Barry repeated this exact maneuver many more times and ended up walking away with a new high score and an armful of tickets.
He looked closer at Barry's spirit. There weren't any Legendary Pokémon he was aware of with the domain of luck or fortune, but…
Nope, still completely normal.
Insane enough, but spiritually normal.
He played a round, and steadfastly refused to cheat the ceramics using Golett.
He walked away with nine tickets. Hilbert sucked at ball games.
Not long after that, he found Lucas playing some kind of gun game by himself, using both controllers and shooting down robot men and Pokémon in explosions of motor oil.
He glanced at Hilbert, though his attention was still clearly on the screen. "Do you want to try?"
Hilbert looked at the hordes of enemies rapidly appearing on screen. It was probably one of the later levels in the game.
"I'm good," Hilbert said.
A few minutes later, Lucas cleared the entire game with a 100% rating, before walking off with a pile of tickets even larger than Barry's.
Hilbert eyed the machine.
Guns had always been an odd topic to discuss, much like the development of nuclear reactors and intercity roads that cut through straight wilderness.
In fact, it was such an odd topic that he didn't want to even think of it, so he didn't bother with the machine at all.
He played a few games of pinball, only cheating a little bit (it really wasn't fair when the ball went straight into the drain without a chance to hit it) before stumbling on Dawn playing a racing game.
It was sort of funny, he had to admit, seeing the normally unflappable girl on a fake motorcycle, leaning forwards and into turns in the game like her life depended on it. He couldn't help but watch as she started lapping the computer racers, which wasn't something he thought could even be done, considering that most games like it had computer rubber banding.
After easily clearing first, she glanced over her shoulder at him. "Did you want to play?"
Hilbert eyed the machine next to her. "Eh… I'd probably lose."
"Duh. Come on, race me."
"Well, I don't-"
"No balls," Dawn challenged, looking entirely too smug for Hilbert's comfort.
"Oh, yeah?" Hilbert's brow furrowed. "No…"
There was a minute of silence as Hilbert couldn't think of his next line.
"...Did you forget-"
"Listen, I was unconscious when we were supposed to review that in health class, alright?"
Though, there was that one time Hilda offered to help him to review… He still had no clue what she meant by that, but he was probably better off not thinking about it.
"Okay, I'll just pretend you said 'no ovaries' and we'll call it even."
"Thanks," Hilbert said, swinging a leg over the fake motorcycle. His knees stuck out at odd angles because of his height, but he would have to manage.
Dawn laughed at his misfortune.
Hilbert glared at the screen, as if its designer was at fault. Which it was. Totally.
The game started soon enough, and they both managed to pull ahead of the other racers.
Dawn's hands did some kind of crazy ninjutsu kind of motion on the handles, turning them back and forth in small intervals. She began picking up speed, still accelerating even when the max speed was reached.
"What the hell?" Hilbert said.
"Sucks to suck," she said, grinning. "It's a frame perfect time skip, you wouldn't understand."
Hilbert glared at the machine.
Faster.
Still nothing, and Dawn disappeared over the digital horizon.
Faster.
Dawn chuckled, as even in 2009, it wasn't politically correct for women to giggle anymore.
Faster!
"Damn it!" Hilbert shouted, electricity pouring out over his limbs into the machine. "Zekrom, help me out!"
Hilbert's racer blurred, turning the screen around them into a stream of lights that would surely trigger any epileptics in the area. His speedometer blinked out for a moment before turning into a sideways infinity.
"What?" Dawn shouted, her screen distorting as spacetime distortions began being simulated by the machines.
"Sucks to suck!" Hilbert yelled.
Just before he crashed the finish line, Hilbert's screen cut out.
In fact, so did every other screen in the row of racing games.
An error screen popped up to replace it.
Hilbert's face went blank.
A manager, who was already approaching due to his disturbing use of profanity, tapped him on the shoulder.
"Uh," Hilbert said, "Can I finish my pizza first?"
Hilbert ended up in a cluttered office, sitting behind a desk and watching time tick past twelve A.M.. Naturally, he was bored out of his mind.
He hadn't done too much damage to the physical cabinets, but the crash he had caused would cost several hundred thousand Pokédollars to fix. For some odd reason, the pizzeria needed a night guard and was having trouble filling the position, meaning Hilbert got the opportunity to sit in a boring, empty restaurant for the next week when he ought to have been getting a little bit of sleep.
It wasn't like they needed him to do anything, he just had to sit there and watch cameras to make sure no one broke in and no wild Pokémon snuck into the kitchen to steal food. It was a trashy enough restaurant where that was an actual problem.
He ran through the cameras again like he was doing time trials. The kitchen was broken because a Joltik had gotten in and chewed through the video cables, the hallways were empty of movement, and like most of the restaurant, light, no one was trying to steal from the storage closet, the front door had been secured by a metal grate for some reason, and the stage…
Hilbert did a double take, raising his eyebrow.
The mascots in the establishment were basically giant stuffed animals with a robotic endoskeleton that made them move and use their voice box. They didn't have moving mouths, as traumatizing children was only a secondary goal of the owner, but they could respond to basic prompts to maintain the illusion they were alive. Something, something, Hey You, Pikachu!? It was an old game, but the technology had existed for a while.
Anyway, Teri Torchic, based on the Pokémon it drew its surname from, was standing between a few tables and not moving. This was about thirty feet away from the stage where it ought to have been standing. It was armless as ever, and with its bulbous head, hardly intimidating.
Hilbert was more confused than anything else. If he was scared, he might have looked deeper with his spiritual vision, but he wasn't. A dump like that having glitchy machines? He believed in that more than he did spirits- and he was one of the few people that could actually see them!
He grabbed a flashlight and ducked out of the door, securing his employee-mandate hat to his head. He was almost certainly violating labor laws, but he had broken the racing cabinets. Fair was fair.
Shuffling down the hall, Teri was in the exact same place he had seen her. She seemed to be examining a plate that had been missed by the clean up crew.
"Hey, Teri," Hilbert said, waving around his flashlight for emphasis.
The robot turned its head and seemed to stare at him, though their face was entirely unmoving.
Its voice crackled, glitching further like he expected. "Hey-a- kid." It said, cutting between a mishmash of lines.
"No, it's after closing time, you don't have to start the routine," Hilbert said. "Let's get you back on stage, alright?" He placed a hand on Teri's back and gently pulled it towards the front of the dining area.
"What- are- you- doing," it crackled.
Hilbert remembered that he had been warned against touching the robots for some reason. "Oh, sorry. I'll let you head up there by yourself."
Feeling self-assured, he walked back to the security office and checked the cameras.
Teri was slowly toddling back to the stage, having no arms to balance themselves out with.
"I kinda feel sorry for that robot," Hilbert murmured, before reclining in his seat and settling back into his routine.
"Yeah, the robots walk around," the manager said. "Creeps out a lot of people, which is why you're working the night shift."
"I see."
"Also, you broke an arcade machine."
"I said sorry."
"That's the most important bit."
"Okay, no more stupid questions, gotcha loud and clear."
He let Sinistea sit out on the desk during his second night of work, seeing they wouldn't spill themselves on anything and there was literally nothing else for them to do. Machamp was shadowboxing behind him, which at least provided a bit of air conditioning. It was still winter but the office was stuffier than the mascots.
Speaking of.
Hilbert leaned out one of the doors and shouted, "Pouty! Stop trying to get in the kitchen! The kitchen staff lock up the knives when they leave for the night!"
Pouty the Poochyena stopped rattling the door, unable to rattle the handle due to their lack of opposable thumbs.
"Why-" it asked.
"You're not allowed to kill yourself, it'll make the kids sad," Hilbert explained. "You've got a lot to live for, you know."
The hallway was silent for a moment.
"Like- what," it said. All of the lines in the voice box were entirely monotone, even when they had been synthesized.
"Well, making other people happy, making pizza… making," Hilbert said. "But the main thing is making people happy. People buy your plushies, right?"
"I- suppose," the robot responded.
"Kids feel secure with you around, you see? Isn't that a good enough reason?" Hilbert added.
The hallway was silent again, and then filled by the brushing sound of Pouty plodding back towards the stage.
Satisfied with a job well done, Hilbert pushed his swivel chair back to the center of the room.
What a strange robot, he thought as he spun around and stared at the ceiling.
Suicidal as it was, it ought to have been named Marvin.
"Why does Pouty Poochyena want to kill himself?"
"What?"
"I mean, I'm not a psychiatrist, but they've got a few symptoms of depression and they keep trying to get at the knives in the kitchen."
"Yeah, the robots used to deliver orders to tables. Cleaning up the sauce wasn't worth it after a while, but some of the code is still in there."
"That doesn't make any sense."
"You know what doesn't make sense? Breaking an arcade machine in a children's restaurant because you suck."
"Fair point-"
"That's pretty nonsensical."
"I've been made aware."
"In fact, this whole situation is-"
"Right, no more stupid questions."
Hilbert considered bringing one of the others along for his shift. He didn't trust Barry in an empty arcade, much like one wouldn't trust a kid in a school during the summer or an alcoholic unsupervised at a tailgate. Dawn was a girl and it would have looked too much like a date. A particularly shitty date, but still.
So, he managed to drag Lucas out for the night, promising it would be better than sleeping.
Lucas insisted there weren't a lot of things that were better than sleeping, which Hilbert had to vehemently disagree with.
Besides, what kind of teenager would turn down an all-nighter?
Hilbert snuck Lucas in, which is to say they both walked through the front door without any trouble. The management was just that lax, and if they weren't paying extra for it, they didn't care.
Lucas sat in the lotus position on the desk, while his Monferno, who had recently and dramatically evolved during their battle against Roark, did the same on the floor.
The boy whipped out a DSi, loading up his copy of Pokémon Crossing: Fly Me To The Moon and otherwise avoiding boredom the best he could. Monferno was attempting to train is control over his native TE, which led to short bursts of heat that Hilbert could put up with, but would rather go without.
Apparently, it was some kind of ki meditation technique that most Fighting-types could use, with Hilbert being unaware because he was culturally Unovan.
Also, he didn't really care. His thing was spirits, not ki, and he couldn't see much of a change in spirit energy while Monferno trained.
The Pokémon suddenly leapt up, as if the energy in the building had changed. Other than Machamp floating around incorporeal, there was no reason for much of anything.
Checking the cameras again, Hilbert saw Zealy the Zorua running down the left hall. Absent-mindedly, he slammed a button and the door appropriately slammed shut.
The mascot slapped at the door for a few minutes, though the sound of fluff was incredibly muted. Just through the window, they could both see the white-furred Pokémon attempt to bash the door down.
"T-that doesn't freak you out?" Lucas asked from the floor, where he had fallen in shock.
Hilbert looked at him blankly. "Why would it? They're just robots."
"They look creepy as hell!"
"Hey, that's rude. Like, calling a woman old, rude," Hilbert said, chastising the shorter boy. "I can see spirits, I would know if they're haunted."
"Did you check?"
Pause.
"Why would I need to?" Hilbert asked, confused. "They're not, I would know."
"Why does Zealy try to bash the door down?"
"They're happy to see you."
"Really?"
"No, moron. They've got old motors, they're programmed to run occasionally to loosen them up and keep them from breaking."
"Oh."
"Speaking of broken things."
"Never mind."
"Like that machine."
"Okay, no stupid questions, I remember."
Lucas did not return the next night. It was probably better for his blood pressure that way.
Another mundane night, though the robots were moving around a lot more. Maybe their motion computing hardware was degrading? Anyway, it was impossible for it to be a haunting, because nothing bad could ever happen in a beloved children's franchise, except maybe the acquisition of some nightmares.
Tedd E. Ursa himself started walking towards the office, and when he politely asked him to turn around, the robot didn't seem to listen
Hilbert reclined in his chair as the robot stood in the hallway corner, hiding from normal vision and the cameras.
"Are you just going to stand there the entire night?"
Tedd didn't say anything in response, not even with a glitchy voice box.
"Like, there's mold and stuff over there. I'm pretty sure there was a mop hung up there the other night."
Still no response.
"Why- here," the robot asked.
"That's what I'm asking, yeah," Hilbert replied. "Me, I'm here because I got a little too excited to be here and had a heated gamer moment. You?"
"I- have- nothing- else," the robot said, though the clips had been cut together from incredibly cheery audio.
"Well, you've got the entire rest of the place to yourself, don't ya?" Hilbert said. "I mean, you're the head honcho, the lead guitarist, the man in charge. Big boss. You can basically do anything, and you wanna stay in a dark corner?"
"Where- I- belong," the robot replied. "No- one- wants- Tedd E. Ursa!- any- more."
"Ah, sure they do," Hilbert said, before hearing Zealy trying to run up behind him. He punched the button without a glance and the door slammed shut before he continued speaking. "I mean, kids still come here, right?"
"Kids- for- fun games and prizes!- not- Tedd E. Ursa!"
Teri poked her head out in the doorway. "Pizza!"
"That- too," Tedd added.
"Nah, no way." Hilbert didn't say that the food was trash, despite the robot's lack of emotion. It was responding how it was programmed to, and Hilbert's hidden no-consequence fantasy was being nice to people. "Your name's on the building, boss. They're coming for you. Now, let me get that cleaned up and then you can stand over there, alright?"
Tedd was quiet for a bit and then began shuffling out of the corner.
The final night. The home stretch.
Hilbert wasn't quite sure how he ended up sitting in the dining hall surrounded by giant plushies like they were having a sleepover, but that was how things turned out. Small, electronic candles granted some light to them, but not much.
"So, what did you all want?" he ventured.
"There-"
"Is-"
"One-"
"But-"
"One-"
"Is-"
"Many."
The machines took turns to speak, as if controlled by a single processor.
"Huh. So, sentient AI?" Hilbert asked.
Each of them turned to look at him like he was being stupid.
"In- good- spirits," Tedd said.
"I hope you are, otherwise you would turn out like Skynet," Hilbert said.
"Spirits," he repeated for emphasis, though it sounded the exact same. "Spirit- spirit- spirit-"
"I can see 'em, what about it?" Hilbert said.
They looked at him again.
"You- can- see," they said in quadruplet-speak, leaving out Pouty who pouted even harder in response.
"Yeah."
"See- spirit," Teri chirped.
"You want me to look around?" Hilbert asked. "Well, alright, I don't think I'll find anything, but-"
Of course, when Hilbert actually focused, he saw a great plain of spirit energy spread throughout the establishment, flowing between each of the machines but focusing in each one at a time.
"Oh," he said. "Well, now I feel like a dumbass."
As you should, frankly.
"So, let me take a guess; you're a gestalt created by the excess spirit energy of all of your patrons, you're not feeling very appreciated as a brand and concept, as most of your energy comes from the older style of business and you think kids come for games or to play around rather than listen to your music, also you play a part for each of the machines because you're associated with all of them at the same time, probably some sort of dissociative identity disorder while is strange for a ghost but I've seen weirder things…"
The machines were silent for a moment.
"That- is- correct," they said.
"Oh. Cool. You wanna come with me? It'll help with your brand recognition if you possess some smaller plushies or something."
Immediately after, the spirit swirled off deeper into the back rooms. A minute later, four six-inch tall plushies bounded towards him, vaguely anthropomorphic and bipedal. The machines were marched back up to their stage, and in Zealy's case, their area called Trickster's Cove.
Hilbert eyed the four plushies, each of them possessing a distinct TE while being possessed by a singular spirit in total.
"Alright," he said without much more thought. "At least you weren't like, the ghosts of children murdered and stuffed into those suits. Would hurt the brand."
The Teddiursa plushie nodded frantically in agreement.
The spirit pressed the button on the offered Pokéball with four of its eight hands. All four were absorbed into the ball with a flash of red light.
Hilbert considered the ball for a moment.
"Weird. Well, it's one in the morning and we might as well make that an even two, and why not round up to half way, and I know it's a bad omen but four doesn't sound too bad, and Unova works on a base ten math system so we'll do five, and at that point, it's basically six AM, so my shift's over."
Hilbert threw his employee hat at the wall and watched it crumple to the floor.
Over motel continental breakfast the next morning, Hilbert regaled the others with his tale of hard-won friendship, the epic highs and lows of working the night shift at a run-down pizza restaurant.
Save for Lucas, who shivered at the thought of it, Dawn and Barry didn't believe him.
"You tamed a spirit haunting a pizza restaurant who's not angry, just misunderstood, by being so stupid you didn't think of the possibility there was a haunting," Dawn summarized.
"Yeah," Hilbert said, tossing the spirit in question's Pokéball while letting his other arm hang over the chair's back.
"Despite dealing with hauntings being in your job description, which you wrote yourself," she clarified.
"Yup," Hilbert added.
"Hilby-"
Hilbert threw his fork. Barry dodged it and Lucas went to go pick it up, apologizing to nearby patrons for the disturbance.
"-I'm not saying it didn't happen, but that sounds like… hard to believe," Barry said.
"Believe it," Hilbert said, offering a half-hearted peace sign. "My Pokédex categorized them as a Shuppet, which makes enough sense."
"After they possessed a bunch of dolls," Dawn said.
"Not dolls," Hilbert said, wagging his finger, "Action figures."
Barry laughed and they all went back to their food.
Dawn moved to speak but hesitated. "I'm still not sure if I believe you on the whole spirit thing."
Hilbert stopped eating and leaned in over his cereal. "You're gonna have to be more specific."
She sighed. "Well, I'll admit that you're very knowledgeable about Ghost-types and the occult, and I don't think you burned yourself in Oreburgh because of some kind of Munchausen's syndrome. But… empiricism, you know? I can't see it, so I can't really trust in it, even if you do."
Hilbert shrugged. "It's really no problem. People don't see eye to eye on a lot of things like that, I won't hold it against you. It's one of those things where you've gotta believe in what you can't see or what you can't be sure of."
An awkward silence enveloped the table as they returned to their food.
"Sort of like religion, yeah?" Barry said.
"Thanks for saying what we're all thinking," Lucas said dryly. "It wasn't clear that the conversation had gotten too deep for eight o'clock in the morning.
Hilbert gave them an odd look and shook his head. "I'm not sure about that, really. The point of religion is faith in something higher, and that's not really my issue. I can see spirits whether I believe in them or not. Same reason I don't go around saying 'by Zekrom's thunder!' or anything like that."
"Most people don't do that," Dawn pointed out. "Also, none of us have a clue what a Zekrom is."
Hilbert waved vaguely. "Legendary Pokémon in Unova, physically a black thunder dragon, spiritually the concept of Ideals. They give me power sometimes, that's another thing you'll just have to trust me on." He paused and rewinded the conversation. "That's what I was actually talking about. Hope, faith, trust; it's the stuff you need even when you can't see or can't tell why."
Dawn looked thoughtful at that. "I… no, it's nothing."
Hilbert looked at her, gears turning in his head. "You think in terms of concrete Knowledge and logic."
"Well, yes," she said, brow furrowing. "You're thinking it was Uxie, aren't you?"
Hilbert shrugged again. "Hey, the first thing I did when I got out of my coma was talk to my mom. Your parents might be able to help, since both of yours were around when you were growing up. I can't force you to trust me on this."
Her expression softened. "I'll do that."
Hilbert nodded and looked at Barry, who was giving him an amused expression. "What?"
Barry shook his head. "Nuthin'. Didn't you say you were going to head to Eterna ahead of us?"
Hilbert nodded again. "Yeah, I can meet up with you guys again there, but I've got business to take care of. Stuff I saw in my visions, you get it."
"Stuff we'll have to-" Lucas began.
"Stuff you'll have to trust me on, yes," Hilbert said, though the gears got turning once again. "Remember, you've got a ton of spirit energy, so if you get kidnapped by a bunch of Lucario, don't say I didn't warn you."
Lucas looked skeptical. "If you say so. I mean, what are the odds?"
Hilbert looked at him blankly.
Lucas shrunk away from his gaze slightly. "I, uh, well, I'll keep that in mind."
Hilbert stood and secured his satchel to his spine. "So long," he said with a salute.
AN:
I hope I'm doing a good job at portraying Barry, Lucas, and Dawn as normal, if quirky teenagers. As an allegedly normal teenager myself, I may be off base.
More importantly, this chapter is probably the silliest that this story will get. Really, there's no way to take a Pokémon FNAF parody seriously, even when you're the one writing it.
So yeah, the new addition is Shuppet. Their spirit is the result of residual spiritual energy like Sinistea, not the result of an unfulfilling life like Machamp.
No matter how hard I try, how forced the jokes are, or how ridiculous the implementation is, the funniest part about this chapter is that it's all canon now. Lol.