CHAPTER 14: A TEAM METANG

Traveler’s Inn, evening

Although not having sank beneath the horizon entirely yet, the sun had ducked behind the trees of the forest as the group arrived at the place that Erin had arranged for them to stay at on this night. It had a Victorian feel to it, as if some incredibly wealthy business mogul may have used it as a summer home in the distant past.

“So, this is where we’re staying tonight?” Terry said, looking up at the structure, then whistled. “Nice place.”

They all entered the building and were greeted to the smell of a fire in the fireplace as they entered what was, in the past, the atrium of the mansion. Nearby was a staircase, which presumably led to the bedrooms, including the one they would be sleeping in tonight. The teams marveled at their luxurious surroundings as an odd alien in what appeared to be a hat and dress came up to them, with a floating cotton-candy ball with canine features floating on her side.

“Welcome to the Traveler’s Inn! We’ve been expecting your arrival,” the hatterene said in a uptight, yet friendly manner. “My name is Rouge, and I’m the owner of this place. The swirlix is Jean, by the way.”

The floating cotton dog nodded in affirmation. “We hope you have a good stay. We’re pulling out all the stops to make sure you are comfortable. An exquisite dinner, the finest larvesta silk sheets, and a complete and utter lack of ghosts.” He quickly added under his breath, “Lack of ghosts not guaranteed.”

Now, a part of me is gonna be disappointed if there aren’t ghosts, Ryan thought.

“With the help of other fairy types in the area,” Rouge continued as she led the group up the stairs and through the hallways, “we’ve been upkeeping this mansion that’s been around for over one thousand years now. It’s thanks to our magic that it hasn’t fallen into disrepair, you know.”

“I don’t doubt that,” Lena replied. “Anything less and the whole thing surely would’ve rotted away by now.”

As they continued down the hallway, they passed a wall of small paintings of previous owners of the mansion, all of them fairy types ranging from grimmsnarls to ribombees and everything in between. A few of these former owners had unfamiliar colors that, Ryan realized, weren’t even the shiny colorations. The oldest paintings, which had been preserved using fairy energy, depicted the humans that had cared for the mansion back when they still lived on this planet. Suddenly, a question he had meant to ask for a while now surged to the front of Ryan’s mind.

“Excuse me, Rouge?” the eevee asked. “Do you know where all the humans went?”

The hatterene shrugged inside her ‘hair’ although none of the others could see. “The most common theory is that some accident happened that caused all the humans to be turned into pokemon, and that their descendants are the civilized pokemon, like you and I, that walk the Earth today. Exactly what that accident was, few have lived long enough to witness it, and fewer still remember. What we do know is that some humans managed to flee the planet for the stars as long ago as fifty years before that incident occurred.” She hesitated a moment. “Given how fancy this mansion was, and still is, the last human owner was likely among them, but that’s not important. Why do you ask?”

The brown fox shook his head. “Oh, no reason.”

“Not sure I believe you, but if it’s too personal I won’t press further.”

The group of pokemon had now arrived at a doorway, which the hatterene opened. Inside were two king-sized beds that each featured an overhang. There were also dressers, which were purely decorative due to the fact that the most clothing any of them had was their respective kerchiefs.

“Once again, I implore you all to have a nice stay! Feel free to take a look around, by the way,” the hatterene said as she closed the door behind her.

---

After the team discussed sleeping arrangements, they decided to leave their bags in their room and go explore the mansion, as their host hadn’t taken them around much of the mansion.

By this time, the sun had set, but thanks to the luminous orb embedded lamps lining the hallways, it was still possible to see, even if the atmosphere was still a bit on the gloomier side of things. One large, askew set of double doors on the first floor caught their attention.

“A library!” Terry said, turning to Lena. “Maybe we can find something that could help you remember something, like a phone book or something else with a list of names!”

“Wouldn’t those all have rotted away by now?” Ryan thought aloud.

“They’ve probably been preserved… because of fairy magic… or something,” Terry replied. “And hey, even if we don’t, we might find a lead on getting home! Probably won’t have anything about your parents, but well… we can’t always have everything we want, can we?”

“Well, let’s go!” Lena said, grabbing Terry and heading in. Sofia followed alongside Ryan.

“I’m coming too,” the sprigatito said. “I could use a bit more knowledge in the ol’ noggin.” She knocked a balled-up forepaw against her skull.

“What about you Ben?” Ryan asked. “Or you other two, for that matter?”

“Nah,” Ben declined, “reading was never really my thing, ya know?”

“Same,” Felipe added.

“And although I’d love to dive into a library,” Quincy said next, “someone needs to keep these two from doing something stupid.”

The fuecoco gasped. “Hey!”

As Felipe stormed off, Quincy and Ben also left the other four to the library. Little did they know that there was another being in there with them. Not a ghost, but something else entirely.

S.S. Pernautica, command bay

Martin yawned. “I’m getting bored controlling this thing. Kori, what do you say we test out the self-awareness functionality, let it do its own thing and see what happens?”

“Is that such a good idea to do right now?” Kori replied.

“There’s only so much damage it can cause in a library protected by fairy type energy, you know.”

“Yeah,” Kori responded sarcastically, “a steel-type totally can’t breach fairy-type protective energy, and I’m the commander-in-chief as well!”

“Don’t worry, we can still watch what it does. Besides, if things start to go off the rails, I can fire up the override command and take back control,” the commander answered before pressing a button to set CSP-375 to self-aware mode.

Travelers’ Inn, library

The faux-metang shuddered violently as it gained autonomy, accidentally bumping into a bookshelf and deactivating its cloaking mechanism in the process. Little did it know that on the other side of the shelf, a sneasel was browsing the books, just as her companions were as well. It had slammed into the shelf just hard enough to catch Lena’s attention but not enough to knock over the shelf. It also caused a book to fall from the top shelf, slamming onto the floor in front of her. She cringed at the sound.

“What was that?” she heard Ryan call from elsewhere.

“Just a book hitting the floor,” she called back, before picking it up and reading the cover. “It’s titled ‘The Interplanetary Exploration Federation: A History’ and it’s by Lawrence Harlingen… Harlingen…” The dark weasel allowed the last name to roll off her tongue several times before gasping, and Ryan came over to where she was.

“Are you okay?” Ryan asked as Terry and Sofia followed from wherever they were.

“I-I… I think so…” Lena said, grabbing her head. “I just- I think I just remembered something… the name Harlingen… sounds… familiar…”

The eevee, pachirisu, and sprigatito lit up at this. “That’s great!” the brown fox cheered, wagging his tail excitedly. “How familiar, exactly?”

“I think… that may be… my last name.”

Sofia raised a brow in surprise at this. She may not be the brightest bulb, but she at least knew that pokemon seldom have last names aside from their species name.

“Wait, so… are you saying that… you used to be human?” Sofia asked, confused. “That can’t be right. You heard what that hatterene lady said, the only humans left are out roaming the galaxy!”

“Well, believe it, catto,” Terry retorted, “and she’s not the only one either!”

A pause. Then, Sofia responded with what was, in Terry’s opinion, the stupidest statement he had heard this whole month.

“Wait, you think I’m human?”

The pachirisu facepawed. “No! I’m talking about myself and Ryan! We’re humans!”

The sprigatito’s jaw dropped, and Ryan tensed up. “Terry! I wasn’t ready to tell them yet!”

Sofia was about to say something when Lena interrupted them. “Wait a moment. There’s something behind you,” she said, extending a digit from the arm she wasn’t using to hold the book.

The other three pokemon slowly turned around and found themselves staring at a shiny metang wandering the library.

“What is that?” Sofia asked nervously.

Ryan looked over at her quizzically. “Have you never seen a metang before?”

“Meh… tang?” the sprigatito enunciated.

“I should’ve known you haven’t,” the eevee muttered. He then added, “Nobody panic. It’s probably the beldum from before. Only difference is, it seems to have evolved since the last time we saw it, but that’s not a big deal as long as we do not engage.”

Before long, the metang had turned a corner and disappeared behind another stretch of bookshelves.

“That was seriously a close call,” Sofia sighed, before turning back to her eevee companion. “But Ryan, you’re a human? Well, were, but you know what I mean. I guess that explains a lot, but why didn’t you think to tell me?”

The brown fox sighed in response. “Well… no offense, but you strike me as the type who would… ehm… ah…”

“He’s trying to say that you can’t keep a secret,” Terry interjected.

“Would you cut it out?” Ryan said through clenched teeth, glaring at the pachirisu before turning back to Sofia. “But… yeah, sorry… he’s right. If the guild knew I was human…”

“…you think they’d drive you out?” the sprigatito asked, ignoring what Terry had said about her. “Because I can’t speak for them, but I won’t do that, and I’m sure my teammates wouldn’t either, nor would we let them. After all, human or not, you’re still our friend.”

The eevee smiled at this affirmation, but shook his head. “Thanks, but no, I don’t actually think that they would. Even if I used to be a human, it’s not like I am one anymore. No, my actual reason is that I would hate all the attention that I would be getting, even if it wouldn’t be negative attention.”

“You seemed pretty happy to be recognized for your hard work as part of an exploration team, though.”

“That’s different. That’s a situation where I’m getting attention for an accomplishment, something I did on my own… with the help of my uncle and friends, but that’s besides the point. This would be getting attention for something out of my control, something that I didn’t even really want. Like, I’ve thought in the past that ‘oh, it’d be cool to be a pokemon, I guess’ but I never seriously desired it. It’s kinda the same reason that I don’t want to evolve.” Ryan added the last sentence extra quickly, hoping the others wouldn’t catch on to how he actually felt about it.

“Are you saying you don’t like being here, that you don’t… like… me?” Sofia asked sadly, her ears drooping.

Ryan facepawed, disappointed that that’s what she got out of this. “No, of course I do. Just because I didn’t want something doesn’t mean I can’t wind up enjoying it anyways. It’s just… I don’t really feel like I belong in this world…”

Ears still drooped, but not as sad now, Sofia said, “I know you don’t want to, but maybe evolving would help you feel more at home.”

The eevee shook his head. “I seriously doubt that becoming an umbreon or a glaceon, or any of the others, for that matter, will help with my lack of a sense of belonging.” He sighed. “It could be worse, though. At least my uncle’s here with me. And as grueling as it can be sometimes, exploration is a pretty rewarding experience. Besides, I’ve got friends here. Actual friends! I’ve only had a couple of close friends since I was twelve, when… my…” Ryan trailed off, realizing he really didn’t want to go into that story right now.

“Is something wrong?” Sofia asked, tilting her head.

Before Ryan had a chance to answer, Terry interrupted. “It’s just that his-“

“Terry!” Ryan shouted. “Can we not discuss that right now?”

Although it had been listening from a distance before, Ryan’s yelling caught the metang’s attention, and it glided over to where they were, careful to avoid the bookshelves, a tedious task given how narrow the walkway between each shelf was.

“Well, I’m sorry,” Terry responded, “but you aren’t going to be able to avoid the subject forever. If they really are here, you’re gonna have some explaining to do if- and when- we find them.”

Sofia was really confused. “Um, I still don’t understand.”

“Is everything okay over here?” a robotic voice asked.

Ryan was about to answer when he realized that that voice didn’t sound like any of his friends. “Wait, who said that?”

He turned around and immediately came face to face with the metang from earlier. He jumped back and yelped, with his tail raised in fear as his body trembled. Lena carefully scratched him behind his ear to calm him down.

“Don’t get your tail in a twist, it’s just the metang from earlier,” the sneasel said, then muttered, “What happened to not panicking, eh?”

All Ryan could do was grumble in response.

“Do not worry,” the automaton said, “I will not hurt you. My programming only allows me to act in self-defense, and none of you seem interested in attacking me, so I cannot attack.”

“Programming?” Sofia asked. “Like, ones and zeroes and stuff? Terry was just showing me a book about that a bit ago, you know. Complicated stuff.”

“Affirmative. And yes, my programming is highly complex in order to allow me to have autonomy.”

“I don’t really know what any of that means,” Sofia admitted, “but, uh… do you have a name?”

“Affirmative. My name is CSP-375.”

No one said a word for a moment. Then, Terry spoke up.

“I think we’ll just call you Mike. You know, because you sound like a text to speech voice I found online once that went by the same name,” the pachirisu said. “Mike, can we ask you some questions?”

“Affirmative.”

“What exactly… are you? An android? A living being?” He muttered, “Delusional?”

“Define android.”

“Basically, it’s a robot that looks like a living being.”

“Then, to answer your question, I am an android. I was built to resemble the species of pokemon known as ‘metang’ to allow the Interplanetary Exploration Federation explore potentially dangerous planets remotely.”

“Wait,” Ryan said, “Interplanetary Exploration Federation?” He pointed a forepaw towards the book that Lena was still holding. “The same one that that book is about?”

A red laser came from the metang’s eye and scanned the book before answering. “Affirmative.”

Lena stepped forward now. “Can you tell me about a man named Martin, or the Harlingen family lineage?”

“Processing request… ” Mike droned as a tiny hourglass spun in its left eye. A ding was heard as the hourglass disappeared. “Negative. I am unable to access the IEF database while deployed.”

Lena sighed with disappointment. “Aw, and here I thought we might get somewhere on figuring out who I am…” The sneasel placed a claw to her chin. “Still, we could use a sentient robot for our team…” She turned back to Mike. “Hey, bot-boy! How’d you like to accompany us to Pojoin Town? We could use someone strong like you!”

The faux-metang lifted a claw to its ‘chin’ while an hourglass swirled in it’s red eye before answering, “…affirmative.”

“Yes!” the sneasel fistpumped, and the others couldn’t help but smile, even if Ryan was a bit uneasy at the idea having such a powerful ally. What if it went rogue and assumed that one of them was trying to attack it? “Wait’ll the others hear about everything that just happened!”

“Oh, they will in due time,” an unfamiliar voice said from the middle of the circle that the four pokemon and the robot had formed, and a small pokemon in a pikachu-shaped cloth appeared seemingly out of thin air. The non-robotic pokemon screamed in fear.

“Sheesh, I was just coming to tell you that Rouge and the others finished preparing dinner a short while ago,” the mimikyu said in its squeaky voice.

“O-oh,” Ryan said, still shook from the sudden appearance of the disguised ghost. “Yeah, I think we’ve spent enough time in here for one night. Let’s go eat.”

The other pokemon agreed and left the library, except for Mike, who decided to continue exploring since it doesn’t need to eat. Even as everyone enjoyed their meals, Ryan included, the eevee still couldn’t shake the feeling that having a potentially violent robot on the team could turn out to be a bad idea.

---

S.S. Pernautica

“See? See?” Martin said, pointing at the holoscreen as the faux-metang trailed Lena. “That sneasel really is my daughter!” He shook his head. “Oh, Kori, to think you doubted me.”

The intern shrugged. “I still don’t think giving Mike- er, CSP-375 autonomy was such a good idea. What if it goes rogue? The eevee looked like he thought the Same thing.”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. I didn’t get to Class I, which, by the way, is the highest non-elected rank in the Federation, by not taking risks! Speaking of risks…” Martin stroked his chin. “I think I’m going to seek permission for the two of us, and possibly Gardy as well, to fly down to Earth ourselves.”

Kori lit up at that idea.

“It’ll be a couple of weeks before we have an answer, but even so, make sure to pack your bags and prepare yourself, physically and mentally, for that trip.”

“You got it, boss!” Kori answered with the most enthusiasm she had had since starting up her internship.