Chapter 18

Ces Batards De L'autre Cote De La Rue was dark and eerily silent as the two invisible figures glided across the now empty parking lot and sailed up onto the roof. Once they were both well within the shadows cast by several small chimneys and the rooftop portion of the ventilation system, Wraith dropped the illusion of invisibility on his companion as he faded into the visible spectrums of light himself.

"Well that was fun," commented Nezumi sarcastically, hopping down off the haunter's spectral, disembodied hand to the broken gravel of the roof, his body weaving back and forth as he regained equilibrium, "I hope I get frequent flier miles for it, though. I think I prefer my feet on the ground. And so long as we're on the subject, I'd especially prefer to actually be able to see my feet!"

Wraith chuckled, gliding along a few feet off the roof, surveying the scene. "At least you 'have' feet," he chided in an amused tone before floating up to the ventilation grate and poking at it with his three fingered hand, "Say, how 'bout this way?"

Nezumi closed his eyes, giving his head a good shake to make certain his brain was turned around the right way and glanced over at the dark floating shape of his friend. "Oh, VERY funny, Fang Face!" he replied in a warily annoyed tone, recalling the first time they met, "But I think we've spent enough time in ventilation tubes for one life time."

"Aww, come on," laughed Wraith, trying to look innocent, but not really succeeding, "I'm on YOUR side now, remember?"

Nezumi smiled, somehow unable to muster anger towards his old friend. "You're just lucky I'm not claustrophobic," he muttered, scampering over to the metal grating and looking at the near total darkness between the slats.

"Umi forgives me," the ghost added in his own defense as the rattata began squeezing himself between the slats in what seemed like an impossible feat of squirming.

"Yeah, well, ah-!" responded Nezumi, his voice echoing as he shifted his weight in an attempt to get his stomach through the thin opening, "Draco-babe's still kinda impressionable, and she's just a wee bit too forgiving sometimes. Ow-! Oh man, I really need to loose some weight!"

Wraith suppressed a laugh as the rattata fell forward and had to grab one of the metal slats with the end of his curled tail to avoid falling into the darkness below. "Need some help?" he inquired with a wide grin as he phased easily though the metal grating and caused his eyes to glow an eerie amber colour.

"Naw," commented Nezumi as though he were fine with the concept of hanging upside down by his tail over a dark abyss, "I think I'll just wait 'till I sprout wings and can fly my way down!"

The ghost tilted his body from side to side in a manner of shaking his head before reaching out with on hand and snatching Nezumi up by the tail. He then glanced down, causing the wave of strange, spectral light to illuminate the surprisingly long drop to the bottom. Wraith then let out a long, impressed sounding whistle and held Nezumi closer to his face.

"Looks like a long drop," he commented mischievously, "Good thing you had me here to save you!"

"Don't even think about it," the rattata chuckled as they descended, passing by several offshoots that would soon be keeping the second floor living area warm all Winter.

"Don't worry," the ghost assured him, his tone sounding less maniacal, "I've never actually wanted really hurt anyone."

"No, not you. Never!" replied Nezumi offhandedly, waving a paw dismissively for effect, "You just want to scare the living daylights out of folks from time to time that's all."

"Well, you have to admit that fear a fairly strong emotion," explained Wraith as they reached the bottom and he let Nezumi down with the utmost of care.

"So's amusement," added the rattata, sniffing around to figure out their next move.

"Yeah," the haunter agreed thoughtfully, "And I do like making people laugh, but every once in a while, you just have to give someone a good scare! It's so... So yummy!"

"Yummy?" inquired Nezumi, stopping in his tracks and blinking loudly.

"Yes," mused Wraith, closing his eyes for a moment and causing the lights to go out again, "the living have such tasty emotions! And their nightmares aren't half bad either!"

Nezumi shook his head and sighed before finally catching the old scent of frying meat that once wafted down the shaft from somewhere farther ahead. "Ah! Now THAT'S yummy!" he explained, glancing over his shoulder at the bewildered looking haunter.

"Sorry, guy," replied Wraith with a shrug, "I don't remember food. Or much of anything from my breathing days."

"Gee," commented the rattata, a look of distant horror in his eyes, "I can't imagine not being able to taste stuff. Food's great!"

"Eh," replied Wraith with what passed for a shrug, "C'est La Morte."

Nezumi furrowed his brow, thinking hard for a moment before suddenly grinning broadly. "Alright then, my fine, ectoplasmic friend!" he announced, raising up on his hind-legs and folding his forelegs across his chest, "I think it's about time that you got an edge-you-vacation in fine queeze-een!"

Wraith stifled a laugh, knowing better than to let his voice echo too much. "And just how do you propose to do that?" he inquired with smirk, "Just 'cause I have a tongue, doesn't mean I can taste."

"Ah!" replied Nezumi with a gleam in his eye, "But I can!"

Wraith gave the rattata a suspicious look, floating closer as one eye grew and the other shrank to compensate. "You have a plan?"

Nezumi nodded. "Yup," he said in an amused whisper, glancing around as if expecting someone to come along and find them plotting, "You know that trick you can do? The one where you link minds with the Boss Lady? And sometimes she can see what you see, and you can see what she's seein'?"

Wraith rubbed his chin, looking thoughtfully as Nezumi spoke. "I think I see what you're getting at," he replied, turning his gaze back to the rattata and nodding, "Alright then. But you might want to close your eyes first. Human minds are more complex than rattata's."

"Eh, I can take it," assured Nezumi with a shrug before looking Wraith straight in the eye, grinning broadly and saying, "Alright, Fang Face. Hit me!"

Wraith cackled as he reached out his disembodied hand and pushed a single finger through his friend's forehead without encountering resistance. His consciousness then quickly slipped past Nezumi's less than adequate mental shielding as though it wasn't even there and almost immediately found the center of the pokemon's consciousness. With a satisfied smile, the haunter accessed a continuous stream of hazy memories he'd only glanced at in passing when they'd first met.

In less than a heartbeat's time, the haunter had quickly scanned through all of Nezumi's limited long-term memory and was amused by the images of himself in his friend's mind. It even gave him a strange warm feeling to know that they both thought of each other as brothers now, and that Umi was indeed the little sister they both sought to protect. Even though she'd be able to easily defeat both of them at once in only a few years time.

When he touched the rattata's thoughts about Miranda, though, he felt a sudden, strange sadness. Though Wraith himself had no actual 'parents', having long since transcended the mortal plane and having forgotten even what he was in life, the fact that Nezumi secretly thought of Miranda as 'Mom' caused the ghost to take pause. The rattata had never spoken of his real mother, and her fate had been lost in the garbled jumble of memories Nezumi had accumulated growing up with humans.

But amongst the faded memories, Wraith found an image that caused a pang of guilt. He'd felt the emotion before in himself, but only rarely, and in small measure, but the image of Nezumi's rattata siblings being devoured by a hungry persian made the haunter feel more genuinely guilty than he'd thought possible. Wraith then once more recalled the first time he'd met Nezumi and Umi. When he'd quickly scanned their minds to discover their worst fears. Umi's had involved the cold, but that wasn't surprising. Dragons HATED being cold more than anything else in the world. But Nezumi's fear involved felines. Persians in particular. At first Wraith had thought it was simply a common rattata trait, the logic standing to all reason. But now as he quickly reviewed the images of a younger Miranda risking her life against a feline that outweighed her, and could have easily made the human its next meal, the haunter knew what true guilt was.

For his part, Nezumi felt nothing more than a slight tingling as the dark shape passed between his eyes and literally touched his mind. Less than a second later, he felt a slight wave of disorientation as a flood of memories zipped past, too quickly to make sense of, followed by a wave of sudden nausea.

"Oh... !" he exclaimed uneasily, staggering backwards on his hind legs as he developed a strange sort of double vision. For a moment, Nezumi could see Wraith looking down at him almost sadly, but at the same time, he could though the haunter's eyes a little rattata staggering almost drunkenly from side to side before falling over on his back.

"Oh, sorry," muttered Wraith, turning down the sense-link, "As I said. Human's are more complicated than pokemon."

"No worries!" assured Nezumi, clutching his head against the sudden ache behind his eyes, "Let's just get moving. We only have a few hours ta kill, and I wanna see what they have in their kitchen before we do any serious snooping."

"Alright then," Wraith replied, pretending to crack his knuckles before floating past Nezumi, his the glow from his luminescent eyes reflecting off a nearby ventilation grating, "Just let me check to make sure the way is clear."

Nezumi nodded slowly, giving himself a second headache in the process before following the ghost at a slow, careful pace until he regained equilibrium and he got used to the peculiar echoing effect in his ears.

"Hey!" whispered Wraith, his voice a dark hiss as the light from his eyes went out, "Check this out! Um, close your eyes first."

The rattata complied, shutting his eyes as he approached the grating. To Nezumi's surprise, his mind was filled with a sudden storm of confusing images. Many of the shapes, were familiar, and even the sensation of being suspended in midair was becoming commonplace, but what Nezumi hadn't been ready for, was colour.

All his life, the rattata had seen the world with eyes that were designed for nocturnal foraging. The world of colour was foreign to him, as Nature had decreed that night creatures had no need for such things. And now, Nezumi's mind swam with images that were both familiar and yet completely alien to him.

Only the dull white of the walls in the small office held any solace from the seemingly blinding dull green of the carpet, the somehow nauseating brown of the desk, the somehow loud red colour of the LED of the digital clock that sat upon it.

"A computer!" cackled Wraith in excitement, suddenly severing the connection and phasing through the grating, leaving a light sheen of ectoplasm upon the metal to mark his passing.

"Gah!" spat Nezumi, holding his head as he opened one eye and stared gratefully out at the wide assortment of grays, blacks and whites that his mind was used to, "That's enough of that!"

After a moment to make sure he could keep his last meal down, Nezumi scampered up to the grating and peered curiously through the slanted metal bars. "Eww!" he complained, getting a face full of ectoplasm for his trouble, but still thankful to see that the office was in shades he understood once more.

"Pssst! Hey, Fang Face! You gonna open the door, or what?" he called, his voice a squeaking whisper, but the haunter had already vanished into the large white box with the dark glass screen and Nezumi knew he'd be a while.

"Oh, for the love of gouda!" the rattata muttered, taking several steps back from the sealed exit, "I guess I'll just have to do it myself."

Nezumi closed his eyes and took several deep breaths, partially to prepare himself and partially in hopes of catching a scent or two from the kitchen. "One, ten... Eighty-four-!" he exclaimed before racing forward, kicking in a surge of adrenaline from a special gland as he did so, allowing Nezumi to travel far faster than was normal for the split second it took him to plough into the grating.

There was a loud -pop!- as the loose screws came loose from the plaster wall and the rattata came crashing through the thin metal barrier, but the shriek Nezumi let out as he suddenly fell out of the air at near terminal velocity was far more ear-splitting.

"Ahh!" he cried, tumbling end over end for what seemed like forever before landing with a bounce upon the dark leather sofa that rested against the opposite wall.

"Shh!" hissed Wraith, his disembodied voice echoing eerily from the computer speakers, "You could wake the dead with that yell!"

"Look who's talking," the rattata muttered, brushing the ectoplasm and dust out of his fur.

"You know what I mean," responded Wraith, suddenly making a peculiar, happy sound before cackling quietly to himself.

"Oooh!" he whispered over the speakers, "This is pretty good!"

"What is?" Nezumi inquired, bounding off the couch and running across the dark carpet to where he could climb up the leg of the desk.

"I think it's a love letter," chuckled Wraith, followed by a faint explosive sound as he emptied the computer's recycle bin.

"You can read it?" asked Nezumi, blinking loudly as he struggled onto the desk and sat before the keyboard.

"Well, not 'exactly'," admitted the haunter as the monitor flickered to life, "But the way the one's, zero's and two's line up occasionally make pictures I can sorta understand."

"Wha-?" Nezumi replied, his head flopping to one side, adding to his sudden slack jawed expression.

"Never mind," assured Wraith, suddenly appearing on the screen as a two-dimensional haunter that took up most of the screen, "It's how these things talk. It's not something you need to worry yourself about."

"Good," commented Nezumi, giving his head a shake as he glanced curiously up at the image of his friend, sniffing the air between them, "Say, are you sure you weren't one of them 'pory-what's it's' before you, you know... Kicked the bucket?"

"I don't think so," the ghost replied thoughtfully, his disembodied hand rubbing his chin as he spoke, "Otherwise we wouldn't have met."

"How's that?"

Wraith shrugged. "It's all technical," he muttered dismissively, suddenly turning his attention to something inside the system Nezumi couldn't see, "but to put it simply, those bleeders at Sylph grabbed me 'cause they were too lazy to make a computer that thought for itself. That was before they made those porygon things."

"I see," replied Nezumi slowly, trying to recall the fuzzy memories as Wraith mucked about in the computer for several minutes.

"Okay, here we go," said Wraith finally before reaching his hand towards the rattata, "This'll take a while, but I'm sure it'll have something on it the Boss Lady'll want.

Nezumi watched in curious fascination as the haunter's hand touched the inside of the glass screen before pushing forward and slowly entering the real world once again, the dark hand passing through the barrier, and seeming to go from two dimensional, to three.

"Show off," chuckled the rattata, watching as the hand opened one of the desk's drawers and began rummaging through it.

"Hey, most of you skin bags are born with these things," chuckled Wraith as Nezumi's curiosity got the better of him, and he leaned over the edge in time to see the haunter's hand tossing several small, black, flat things out, "I'm just testing my new limits. Ah! Here we go!"

"What's that for?" inquired Nezumi, watching as the haunter's three fingered hand lifted a flat, shiny round thing from the pile of junk at the bottom of the drawer.

"Evidence!" cackled Wraith as somewhere beneath the desk a quiet mechanical sound signaled the opening of a small empty tray.

"Eh, whatever," replied Nezumi with a shrug, rapidly becoming bored and wondering where the kitchen was.

"Alright. Let's go," came his friends voice a moment later, this time without the odd reverberation from the speakers.

"Do you get to eat now?" Nezumi inquired, ignoring the strange sounds coming from the computer, paying more attention to keeping himself still as Wraith picked him up again.

"So much that you'll have to evolve a larger stomach," assured Wraith as he exited the computer with a strangely wet sound and flew them both towards the door.

"Great!" exclaimed Nezumi excitedly, rubbing his forepaws together and not paying attention as the ghost passed non-corporally through the wooden door, and he himself went crashing into it before landing on the carpet.

"Jerk," he muttered, exhaling all the air from his lungs before preparing to crawl through the small opening that separated the door from the floor.

"Sorry," came Wraith's muffled apology as he waited for Nezumi to squirm out the other side, "I forgot."

"Yeah, well just don't- Hey, what's that smell?"

"I don't smell anything," replied Wraith with a chuckle, knowing that Nezumi was perfectly well aware of his lack of a nose.

"Hm, this isn't good," the rattata muttered, his nose close to the floor as he crawled about, barely remembering to yank his tail through the small opening.

"So what is it?" inquired Wraith in a bored tone, glancing down the short hallway towards what he suspected was the kitchen.

"I dunno," replied Nezumi pensively, glancing over his shoulder as he followed the bored ghost down the hall, "But something nasty's been sitting outside that room quite a bit lately."

"Well, it's not here now," replied Wraith, only half paying attention as he pushed a door open and peered inside.

"Yeah, but, can't you like, 'feel' it, or somethin'?" Nezumi persisted, suddenly feeling his skin crawl as he glanced over his shoulder and noticed a few short dark hairs mixed in with his coat, "Somethin' mighty creepy?"

"Naw, all I sense is stress," said the ghost hungrily, licking his lips as he sailed into the kitchen and began absorbing the residual traces of human emotion that still hung about the room.

Nezumi shook his head in dismay, his hunger temporarily forgotten as he yanked a course black hair off his back and gave it a quick sniff. "Ew!" he exclaimed, tossing it away in disgust, "reminds me of somethin', but I'm not sure what. Hm. Now where has Fang Face gotten himself off to?"

Within the kitchen, Wraith had to keep himself from laughing as he floated along the pristine aisles, past workstations and gas- powered ovens where busy humans had exerted so much energy in a relatively short period of time. The emotional residue wasn't as fresh as it would be coming straight from the source, but it wasn't exactly stale either.

With a wide grin, the haunter let his fingers trail through the invisible pockets of tension, anger and joy, cackling to himself as he sampled everyone, discerning more than twenty distinct human presences in the expansive kitchen.

"Tasty, tasty..." he murmured, not noticing as Nezumi scampered along the dark aisles with a worried expression upon his face.

"There's that scent again," commented the rattata, scampering under a counter and sniffing around until he found the passing scent of one of his own kind mingled with the peculiar scent of whatever guarded the door to the office.

"Yo, Fang Face!" he called quietly, "You noticed any sign of that weird thing yet?"

"Huh?" called Wraith, lost in his own musings as he greedily feasted upon every bit of emotional residue he could find left over by the controlled chaos of the busy kitchen.

"Forget it," Nezumi muttered, trying to follow the rattata scent but finding the nauseating scent of chemical floor cleaner clogging his senses as soon as he emerged from underneath the workstation, "Just help me find where they keep the food. I can't think on an empty stomach anyway."

Wraith let out a loud belch, having cleansed the room of any trace of human passage on the spiritual level. "It's over there," he muttered, reaching out one of his hands to direct the rattata, "Here, I'll get the door for you."

"Thanks," Nezumi replied, his stomach suddenly growling as the followed the hand to a row of gigantic steel doors. With little effort, Wraith's spectral hand yanked the lever attached to one of them, and the door slid open with a quiet hiss, "Yikes-!"

Nezumi cursed and tried to shield his eyes from the blinding light that switched on in the room beyond. As he stood blinking, the rattata could feel the cooler air billowing out around him and the distinct scents of several kinds of expensive cheeses traveling with it, disguised by the dozen other scents that filled what was only one of several walk-in coolers.

"Wow," chuckled Nezumi wryly as he stood up on his hind legs to get a better look, "If I was a Disney character, I'd break into song!"

"Good thing you're not," shuddered Wraith, floating in several feet above Nezumi's head and giving the room a quick scan. "Oooh!" he commented after a moment, "Someone's been doing something they shouldn't in here!"

Nezumi tried not to worry about what the ghost was on about, and instead set about clambering up one of the tall wooden shelves to where the cheeses were located. "Mine," he chuckled to himself, momentarily forgetting about the strange scent and the itchiness he felt where the creature's stray hairs had touched him, "All mine!"

"Have fun," cackled Wraith, quickly absorbing the emotions of two lover's who seemed to have made the warmest of the cool-rooms a convenient place to steal kisses at work before going intangible and passing through the wall to the next room.

"What the-?!" he exclaimed, blinking loudly as his spectral senses picked up the emotions of great amusement and mild satisfaction.

Curiously, Wraith concentrated and caused the eerie glow to return to his eyes. What he saw gave him a confused sensation of amusement and sudden remorse. The room was similar to the previous one, only far colder, with a special table set aside for meat wrapping in the center, and hanging in a neat row from the ceiling were several mismatched forms of creatures Wraith half recognized.

At first he dismissed them as the usual tauros, piloswine, and the occasional mareep humans were known to have a taste for, but his time haunting Miranda's pokedex told him otherwise. There weren't many, and Wraith's quick analysis of the room's emotional residue told him that this room served a special purpose. Something dark and Machiavellian that made him smile, but it was the sight of one deceased pokemon that made the humor of the situation pass rather quickly.

"I hope this isn't what I know it is..." Wraith muttered nervously, biting the ends of his fingers as he reached his other hand to touch what he was certain was one of Nezumi's distant relatives.

"Okay, that's it," the ghost muttered, turning away as the body swung ominously back and forth, setting several others off as well, "I think that disk should be ready, and his hard drive nice and formatted!"

Wraith passed through the metal door as though it were nothing and took a deep breath before chuckling at himself for imitating the reaction he'd seen in his mortal friends. "Weird," he muttered, glancing down at his hands, "I almost feel unnerved by that experience. I must be hanging around the living a little too much."

"Then perhaps you should go back to living amongst the dead," hissed a voice that caused a peculiar chill to run through Wraith.

Unwilling to be intimidated, the haunter swiveled to face the unfamiliar sound, quickly reviewing the exact wording of what was said in pokespeak to hear the sound that would meet human ears. "Umbreon."

"Ah! I see that you've discovered part of our little secret," the feminine voice continued with a low, sinister chuckle that made Wraith smile.

"Your intimidation is amateurish," chided the haunter, discerning the dark shape of something quadrupedal, with long slender ears and a short tail that twitched unpleasantly at the ghost's comment.

"What?!" the umbreon hissed as an eerie yellow glow appearing upon her forehead in the shape of a small ring, "How dare you! I am a creature of darkness! And you! You are but a shadow of that true darkness!"

"Oh, give it up!" laughed Wraith, refusing to take the evolved eevee seriously even as he quickly searched his memory for information on the twisted little vulpine before him, "You're like one of those pretentious humans who paint their skin white, dye their hair black and go around muttering 'Oh the angst! I'm so do dead! Like, oh woe is me! I think I'll go and brood now!'"

The umbreon glowered, her eyes gleaming red in the darkness. "Watch your tongue, spirit," she warned as peculiar green sparks ignited between his teeth as she spoke, "Lest I awaken my master and we discover what the culinary properties of haunter's are!"

"Hey, Fang Face, what's shaken'?" inquired Nezumi, waddling out of the first cold room with a rather full stomach, "Whoa-! Who's the Goth chick?"

The umbreon turned her attention to Nezumi the instant he appeared, her nostrils flaring as she caught his scent. "Ah!" she chuckled hungrily, "Another tasty rattata dares to venture into my master's darkened kitchen!"

"Well," commented Nezumi with a wide grin, his whiskers twitching as he oriented on the dark shape, "You ain't so bad lookin' yourself, little lady!"

"Um, I think she means to eat you, Nezumi," interrupted Wraith drolly.

"Oh. Well that's no good."

"For you, perhaps," chuckled the umbreon at Nezumi's sudden disappointment, taking a few quiet steps forward as her teeth gleamed dangerously.

"Look, uh, we really should be going," said Wraith, dropping one of his hands to grab Nezumi by the scruff of the neck.

"Oh, no!" chuckled the umbreon, "I can't allow myself to appear to be a bad hostess. Won't you stay? Won't you stay, for dinner?!"

At that moment, Salmonella let loose with the attack she'd been withholding. Sickly green flames burst forth from the end of her short snout, filling the kitchen with an unnatural green light whose shadows seemed alive with malevolence.

"Incoming!" shouted Nezumi as Wraith yanked the rattata and himself out of the way, barely evading the attack.

"What was that?!" the haunter exclaimed as the flames died away and the dark eevee chuckled at them.

"Bale Fire," she replied with a satisfied grin, "something new my master cooked up for me. And you know, it's VERY effective against ghosts. Which is unfair really, seeing as all your pathetic techniques will barely breach my defenses."

"She's right," muttered Wraith as though through gritted teeth, "There isn't much I can do that'll touch her."

"Ha! Then we'll just have to double team her!" replied Nezumi confidently, his eyes gleaming as he grinned broadly at the umbreon, "Alright, Fang Face! Hit her with everything you've got!"

Salmonella yawned and sat down on her haunches to scratch herself behind the ear as Wraith held out his hands dramatically. "Nightshade won't help you," she replied in a bored tone as a field of eerie green light formed around her in a thin bubble and dark purple lightning crackled across Wraith's stubby pointed fingertips.

"Maybe not," chuckled Nezumi from his precarious position, a sphere blue/white light forming just inside his mouth, "But a little something the Boss Lady likes to call 'Hypothermia' just might!"

As one, the two pokemon fired off their attacks. Wraith's nightshade arching from his hands in a wide, wavering beam of dark purple un-light, as the crackling blue/white beam of cold burst forth from Nezumi in a thin cone.

The two peculiar attacks merged partway to their target, and immediately altered one another, shifting through various colour combinations as they seemed to struggle against one another. Finally, though, they became one. A long thin beam of focused indigo that snaked and arched its way to its target like a hungry serpent before striking hard and fast against the umbreon's force field.

Salmonella let out a frightened shriek as the barrier collapsed and the beam of frozen nightshade ploughed into her. The result was an explosion of purple light that crackled with blue/white lightning, and left the floor tiles both frozen and warped. The result to Salmonella however, was a very angry, and very cold umbreon sailing across the room and crashing into a pile of neatly stacked pots and pans.

"Y-You'll pay for that!" she promised once the cacophony of crashing metal subsided, "I'll swallow your souls!"

"Hey!" called Wraith from the door to the hallway as he flew at breakneck speed from the room, "That's MY line!"

"Ah! Swallow this!" laughed Nezumi, sending a poorly aimed ice beam into wall several meters away from the umbreon before being whisked out of the room.