Ophelia collapsed to the ground and crawled towards Tami's body, screaming and crying the entire time as she reaches out weakly, touching her fallen teammate on the chest. "You're okay, Tami! You're okay! This is nothing! Nothing! You... we... I..." Ophelia stammered out before punching Tami's body in what was left of her chest. "Get up you idiot!" Emery moved quickly to wrestle Ophelia away before she could abuse her body further.

Tami was standing over them, looking down at herself in shock. "I'm dead?" She touched the hole torn in her chest, black smoke slowly rippling out of it. She turned and looked around in confused anticipation. "What now? Hello? Arceus?" She took a few hesitant steps away from her body. A barely visible red string pulled taut from a point on her that no longer existed and stretched down to the same point on her real body.

"Don't move any further." I said aloud as I stepped towards her.

"Shut up!" Ophelia screamed at me. "Some Ghost Hunter you are! You can't even protect your own allies!"

"Ophelia, stop!" Emery adjusted his grip on the girl, who pulled at his arms with the clear intent to show me just how much she was grieving right now.

Tami looked at me. "You can see me? Am I dead?"

"You are. Or maybe just barely?" I'm not sure where the information had come from, but I felt like I knew what I was talking about. Excalibur's cloth gripped tighter to my arm. "You can't go too far from your body or you give up what little of a chance we have to bring you back right now."

"Bring me back? Into that mess?" Tami pointed at her body's destroyed chest cavity. "I'd just die again. There's not really a point, is there?"

I turned to Allison. "Do any of your Pokemon know healing moves?"

"Ballet knows Moonlight, but it only works at night." Allison was just as confused as everyone else, though she also had a hint of disgust on her face. I felt like she knew what I was doing.

"There's no healing from something like that. Even if we did, it wouldn't bring her back, it would just make her look pretty for her funeral." Donald sighed softly.

I took off the long black coat the church had provided me and laid it over top of Tami's body, sitting down next to it. I looked up at her. "Sit down. We'll be waiting a while." Tami looked at me with disbelief, but sat next to me anyways.

Percius looked at Donald, and the two exchanged worried glances that were both exchanged with a solemn look from Allison. "It might be a good idea to set up camp here anyways." Donald said softly.

"Set up camp? Set up camp next to Tami's corpse?!" Ophelia shook off Emery and then stood there, unsure where to direct herself. "You lot are psychotic!"

"Jackson may look like an idiot, and he may act like one some times too." Percius assisted Donald in unloading the camping gear from his pack. "But the last couple times he had a stupid idea, it worked out just fine. I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt he'll go three for three."

"To be fair one of the stupid ideas was stolen from me." Donald added. It was a joke, but said in a very serious tone.

Ophelia's mouth gaped as Donald joked minutes after the death of her friend. "You're insane. You're all insane. I thought only Ghost Hunters were known for losing their minds but he's got all of you going absolutely bonkers." Ophelia tossed out her Pidgeot and climbed onto it, flying away.

"She's leaving." Tami said softly, watching as Ophelia disappeared into the distance.

"I know." I replied similarly, and turned to watch as Tami's Noivern perched itself like a gargoyle above her body, it's head swiveling periodically.

As the sun began to set and the other boys went into town to get food, Allison approached me. "Jackson." Her tone was stern and serious.

"Allison." I replied without looking at her.

"It's your sword, isn't it? Excalibur is the Ghost Pokemon the Legendary Trio are looking for." I looked up at Allison, and her face wasn't one of her painted on expressions of neutrality. Her face was deep-set worry that creased her face in odd places and puckered her lips unflatteringly.

"I don't know what you're talking about." I had never been good at lying. The fact I had made it this far was only because no one was asking me that exact question. She didn't even have to speak for me to cave in on myself. "Yeah." I sighed softly. "It is."

"And the story about your brother giving it to you-"

"Is true." I cut her off. "Professor Van Hallsworth sent me the apricorn after my brother died. All of that is true. The only thing I've lied about is... the fact that Excalibur is a Pokemon."

"A Ghost Pokemon." Allison repeated. "A Pokemon that if its found in your possession could be the end of you, this team, your family's reputation. Is it really worth keeping something that could cause so much pain to your life with a single accusation?"

"Are you going to be the one who tells people?" The question wasn't something I had thought about saying. It just came out. Excalibur's cloth squeezed my arm. Allison's eyes darted from me to it repeatedly, as though expecting further movement that never came.

"I'm going to tell Donald and Percius, at least. We owe it to them." Allison crossed her arms and turned away from me, taking a few steps to put distance between us before she talked over her shoulder. Her massive white ponytail obscured her body. No way to tell where her weak points were. I wouldn't be able to effectively stab her in the back if she tried to screw me over. I reached over and tugged at Excalibur's cloth as it squeezed again.

"I don't owe them anything." I said with a scowl.

"They both just vouched for you to complete strangers while you're talking to the air like a crazy person." She scowled back.

"I'm not talking to the air, I'm talking to Tami."

"Tami's dead, Jackson. Her body is behind you with a hole the size of her own head in the chest."

"Not her body. Her ghost."

"Only truly terrible people become Ghosts, Jackson. I can't imagine Tami was a serial murderer or a member of a Dragon Cult."

I pulled out Excalibur's apricorn and tapped it against it, the sword turning into red light and being absorbed. A red spiral lingered on my arm from where its cloth had been constricting. "Not a Ghost Pokemon, just a lingering essence of her."

"Like her soul?"

"I'm not sure I'd attach that term to it, but sure." I shrugged and looked away from her in disinterest, instead turning my eyes to Tami. Her form was translucent and she was staring at me.

"Can you tell Allison I'm sorry for all the trouble?" She mumbled softly.

"In a few hours you can tell her yourself." I turned away from her too, staring down at my boots. Allison decided she had bothered me enough and went into her tent until the other boys returned as the moon began to rise.

"Alright, show us the rest of your idea, Jack." Percius leaned on his lance as he waited for something to happen.

I looked at Allison. "We'll need to heal her body first." I instructed, followed by Allison nodding and sending out Ballet to instruct her in the use of Moonlight. As the brilliant moonbeam struck Tami's body, it didn't move or react, but the hole in her chest slowly knit itself back together, the new skin pink and smooth under her heavy clothes for enduring breakneck winds. "And now I just have to-" I paused for a moment as I reached for Excalibur and found it wasn't on my back. Panic set in for a moment before I collected myself. "I need to..." I hadn't learned how to lie better in the last few hours; I'd only learned I was more of an idiot than I thought in the last few seconds.

"You need to?" Donald prompted.

"And you should." Allison voiced her opinion with no context.

My eyes darted around the clearing for something to use as a distraction. Some way to get myself out of this. Some way to make it so my secret remained a secret. I looked at Percius, then to Donald. For some reason I wasn't worried they would turn me in, I was more worried they'd start to actually hate me. Emery on the other hand, I was worried he would turn me in. I let out a breath. "You have to promise you're not going to do anything you'll regret." That isn't what I wanted to say. The look of prepared aggression and concerned confusion on their faces told me it wasn't what they wanted to hear either. "I mean, you have to promise you're not going to be mad at me."

"Percius is always mad." Donald snickered, turning to him. Percius rolled his eyes. "Lay it on us, Jackson. I can't imagine you can surprise us any more than you already have."

I let out another breath I didn't know I had been holding and steadied myself as I produced the apricorn. "I don't know about that." I pressed the button and Excalibur appeared in a flash of red light, floating in front of me. It seemed just as surprised as Donald and Percius were as it stared at them.

"Edge."

"The hell is that thing?" Percius scoffed. "Some new kinda Steel Pokemon?"

"Is that... Excalibur?" Donald took a few steps towards it. It turned slowly to look at him, blinking its blue gemstone eye.

"Yeah. It is."

"You've been using a Pokemon as a weapon?" Percius scowled and pointed at me accusingly. "You've got a lot of nerve, facing me down with two Pokemon and making me look like an idiot."

I hadn't expected this reaction, but I honestly didn't know what reaction I had been expecting until Emery spoke up with the exact words.

"Is that a Ghost?" He said softly, fear tinging his voice as he watched Donald approach it. I nodded in confirmation.

"A Ghost that's going to get your teammate back." I reached out and took Excalibur's hilt in my hand, turning to Tami and tossing him back in the air. No point in any deceptive theatrics now. Excalibur reached out with its cloth like a gentleman holding out his hand to assist a lady into a carriage, and as Tami took it she immediately compacted into a ball of smoking black void, and Excalibur floated slowly down to her body and fed the ball into her mouth.

Tami shot awake with a gasp, coughing up blood that had settled in her lungs. "Mew Themselves, I'm alive again." She panted, looking down at her hands. She only had a moment to regain her senses before her Noivern was on top of her, pulling her up into the biggest winged hug I had ever seen, which wasn't very many to be fair.

"She's alive. But... how? Shouldn't she have gone to Arceus the moment she passed?" Emery questioned softly.

I sat back down where I had been previously, slinging my blood-covered black jacket over my shoulders. "I don't really know why or how, but when we die, we have a set distance from our body we can travel. Some people have a longer one, some people have a shorter one."

"Like how some Future Seekers can astral project during meditation. Some can go quite far, and others are very limited to the space they can utilize before their connection breaks." Allison spoke up.

I nodded. "It's dictated by a red string attached to the chest, even if the chest is missing from grievous wounds. When it's pulled taut, that's your limit, and if you pull again, it breaks, and you go Arceus-knows-where. While it's still attached, certain Pokemon can manipulate it in odd ways, like Excalibur leading Tami back to her body."

"And where did you learn all this?" Emery put his hands on his hips, his face reading disapproval despite the fact we had literally just brought his teammate back from being dead for several hours. But it also occurred to me-

"I have no idea." I thought for a moment. "I just... do."

Donald nodded. "My mom had that happen once. She channeled a spirit and afterwards she suddenly knew how to play the violin. When you come into contact with spirits in a natural, non-aggressive way they'll sometimes share knowledge with you. Excalibur must have some experience in doing this kind of thing." He paused. "Which is... disconcerting, to say the least. Especially if your brother owned Excalibur before you. Who know what he was doing with that kind of knowledge alongside a Pokemon like that."

I looked to Excalibur, and despite the way it had just so delicately revived Tami and it slowly floated through the air, the image flashed through my mind of Oscar wielding it to slice these red strings before they were pulled taut. But Oscar hadn't actually owned Excalibur. He had thrown the apricorn at it as his final act. But that still begged the question of why Excalibur knew how to do that. Maybe Excalibur was a lot older than I thought it was. "Whatever it was, it's only helpful to us now." I concluded, turning to them. "So, you're not going to tell anyone the truth about Excalibur, right?"

"Lips are sealed. Last thing I need is to lose another Ghost Hunter I care about." Donald pantomimed zipping his lips and locking them.

"It's effective blackmail, I suppose." Percius shrugged, though the seriousness in the way he said it worried me.

"Normally I would." Allison closed her eyes and stuck her nose in the air. "But I'm more interested in studying a Ghost type Pokemon up close, and this one seems docile enough, since it's had a near infinite amount of opportunity to strangle you and hasn't yet."

I looked at Emery, who was looking at his shoes with worry on his face. I must have been scowling horribly at him because he became alarmed when he looked at me. "You saved Tami, so the least I can do is keep this a secret, I just don't know what's going to happen when we get back and Ophelia's been telling everyone Tami died and Tami just... isn't dead."