bottlecaplogs | October Catchall! (a Mix of Open and Closed)

Not too long after Dolly has officially moved into her guild-assigned residence... someone knocks on her door! ...At least it's probably a person? the knocking sounds kind of like wood-on-wood...

Out on Dolly's front porch, her upstairs neighbor, a slightly undersized Mimikyu with a bright red scarf wrapped around his disguise's neck, waits for a response. (He'd knocked with his tail-stick - which sports a sparkly black-beaded bracelet.)

It was a strange thing to have two moveable ears as Dolly's perked up upon hearing the odd wood on wood knocking. That sure was something curious right there! Upon seeing who it is, Dolly was certainly surprised!

The Mimikyu did make Dolly think of one of the dolls she had been working on not too long ago before arriving here. ~~There was no judgement on size from Dolly given she was absurdly small herself.~~ Oh...so that's what caused that interesting sound, that's pretty cool.

"Oh, hello there! Wood you like to come in for a bit?" Dolly goes to open the door with the ribbon feelers to invite her surprise guest inside.

Something deep within the Ring-Spirit tells him a pun has just been committed, but he tries to ignore this instinct. It would only lead to maniacal laughter and a potentially off-putting first impression. Instead he waves his tail-stick in greeting before shuffling in.

"Hey there. I live upstairs... I was friends with the guy who just moved out from here, so, seemed like a good idea to see who was taking over the place! Are you a local pokemon but a new recruit, or one of the newly-arrived?"

It does not occur to him to offer or ask for a name.

It hadn't occurred to Dolly to share her human given name, it was mostly a fae habit to only share when presented with a name first. Dolly lets the Ring-Spirit inside, eager to know her new neighbor.

"It's lovely to meet you, I've been meaning to meet the other neighbors myself. I'm one of the newly-arrived, had the 'distinct' pleasure of being in Skull Town when Froslass arrived."

Froslass sure was something else to witness! Absolutely horrific in every sense of the word, negative one out of ten wouldn't recommend. Right, back to topic, Dolly offers a warm smile.

"Would you like anything to drink or eat?"

"Oh yeah, Froslass... I heard about her, but nothing very clear. I didn't go over until near the end, to help tend some of the torches before everyone sent them out to sea... What was going on in the Outpost? Some people mentioned a party, but others were talking about fighting... and I'm not sure anymore whether local pokemon would necessarily see a clear distinction between the two."

He sounds lightly puzzled by it all, which he is. Almost like 'the experience of being mind controlled' is in fact kinda hard to explain, especially if the one trying to explain hasn't clocked it as having been mind control just yet.

He isn't sure whether the offer of food is merely a social nicety or if Dolly is actively trying to change the subject... but, food is interesting enough in its own right.

"If you're offering, sure."

"Well, a lot of cursing happened there for some pretty petty reasons and meat puppeteering if that makes sense? There was also a lot of maid outfits for it, I still don't understand that one. Other times, it was eerie levels of smiles, like the forced kind you'd see on some mannequins." Dolly pauses a bit at the fighting part.

"yeah, it was a mix of festivities, entertaining Froslass like a Queen, and battles. I ended up getting dragged into one by a really musical sounding dinosaur figure and I ended up blasting him with an iridescent shimmer? I don't know what I did there."

Yep, blasting Kaiba with Dazzling Gleam sure did shook Dolly there a bit. Weaponized iridescences wasn't on her bingo list of things to happen. On a different topic, with a nod, Dolly goes to her rations and pulls out some jerky and berries to share. It looks more like hospitality rather than a dodging the topic.

"Here we are, please help yourself to some."

"Damn. Sounds like a wild ride! And well worth missing out on. Glad I stuck to tending the torches."

He accepts a bit of jerky, tugging it beneath his costume to gnaw on. (Does he have teeth under there? Even he's not sure!)

"The forest ghosts seemed to think it was all in good fun... Which I guess tells you what you need to know about the local ghosts and their sense of humor. I really do think they generally mean well, but they can get a bit rough when they're messing around. So... yknow. Keep an eye out for that."

(He's still embarrassed that his Spiritomb friend put one of his Bottlecap Bay friends in the hospital simply because of what he suspects was a minor trespassing issue. ...And Shoka likely wasn't the only town pokemon hospitalized over that either, it's just that she's one of a few whose well-being he actually cares about...)

The mystery of how Mimikyu eats, its likely osmosis at its finest. Definitely the case right there, no questions to be asked. Dolly goes to enjoy meeting her new neighbor though. "It seriously was a wild ride, I'm just glad to be done and over with that one."

Dolly didn't blame the Ring-Spirit though, that was the same case with her fellow fae back on Earth. Sure it was highly illegal to manipulate a human's emotion like a puppet, but the idea was similar at best. Maybe this was the norm for the Ghost types here, just good nature fun that can get a little carried away at times.

"Thank you for the heads up, I'll make sure to keep that to heart next time if I go see the local ghosts here."

There was no fear or distrust in Dolly's voice as she said it, more like a mutual understanding of it being just how it was. Sort've like ghosts were pretty common place where she came from or at least that was how it sounded like.

The Ring-Spirit relaxes at Dolly's reaction, false head nodding along eagerly. "Oh, good, good - you get it! No real harm meant, but sometimes they don't pull their punches as much as they probably should... and some of the newly arrived here take it all a bit personally. Even Shoka, who was a ghost back in her own world... well, I guess she wasn't the sort of spirit that messed with the living very much."

Having finished absorbing(?) the jerky, he pauses to consider what else to add. "Hm. If you'd like to meet one of the forest ghosts under a slightly more, ah... controlled situation, I could arrange for you to meet my family. They ended up off in the forest instead of washing ashore near town like I did, and they went much more 'native' in their acclamation to this world."

(This is... a lot of baloney. Not that the Ring-Spirit realizes! It's just that his friend is in fact genuinely a forest-native Spiritomb. ...Who has been quite happy to lead the Ring-Spirit to believe that they're his absent family of ghosts... But they are at least genuine in their current friendliness towards him and his, if a tad opportunistic in their approach.)

Wait..not everyone here was a human? That..that's pretty new..okay that's information that's very VERY good to know as Dolly commits it to memory, "I suppose, it was similar back where I came from, had to blend in with the public, otherwise it'd land folks like me in trouble. It's understandable though, there's nothing malicious there and sometimes gets taken the wrong way. It's just in good natured jest."

[Oh? Family can arrive here too? ....Fernando would be a terrible Pokemon...Dolly is going to need brain bleach for that one.] "Sure, I would love to meet your family. It sounds like they had a pretty rough start at the beginning though, I'm glad that they're safe now and doing better."

[ Neither does Dolly! This just sounds like a happy coincidence that the Ring-Spirit found his family again in the Pokemon World. Congrats Spiritomb, you've managed to trick more folks into the family lie. Though, it could be true..maybe it's found family? ]

Edited (Forgot the brackets :x) 2025-10-27 01:05 (UTC)

"Ah, you had to keep a low profile too? I spent some time like that, back... well, I guess it was... home..."

...and it is really weird for him to think about the place as 'home' when he'd been set on destroying the place, but uh. well whatever he doesn't have to deal with that plane ever again. Moving right along!

"Anyway, yeah, I remember how it was before I could clear some things up with my host... I had to keep a really low profile, h-heh. Couldn't even let him figure out he was possessed." (Shit that sounds bad, wait -) "Before I could explain myself I mean! We couldn't talk at first, see, but eventually we could ...and that went horribly." (Gods, he'll never forget how all that went. He rouses himself with the reminder that it had been temporary.) "But we worked it out!" (And how long did it last?) "...And then un-worked it out. Uh."

The glowing eyes peeking out from his costume's torso are getting a bit thousand-yard-starey.

He's not sure how to go about changing the subject. Help.

"...So what were we talking about?"

"Pretty much, my kind had a pretty strict contract to abide by if we wanted to stay there. It wasn't the most ideal deal there was, but we didn't have any other options. Pretty much blend in with humanity, don't stand out, and don't cause harm to the humans or we all get returned to our birth island."

Home is a weird topic for sure, Dolly had three homes before landing here for home number four! Dolly goes to listen on to the Ring Spirit, curious to learn a bit about her neighbor.

Oh? The Ring Spirit had to live inside someone else's body for a time? Well that's perfectly normal, totally normal, nothing wrong to be seen there! Dolly knew a few campus classmates that were possessed. Sure one of them was hellbent on turning the cafeteria into a den of undead horrors, but that was a rare one off incident.

"..Oh you had a body roommate?"

Oh..it wasn't a great body roommate situation for the Ring Spirit..

"Oh! We were talking about possibly meeting your family. I'd like to meet them if that's alright?"

Dolly inadvertently slides in to help change the subject. She earned a cookie right there.

"...H-heh."

'Body roommate' eh? Sounds like a nice dynamic...

"I had a landlord, and... I was a bad tenant."

He's mostly come to terms that the bad blood was his own fault. As much as he hates admitting fault... things, ultimately, had been solely his fault. He still wishes there had been... well, more effort on his end. Too late now.

...But then Dolly offers a subject change, and he latches onto it for dear life. "YES! My family! That sounds great!"

Hm! He'll have to figure out the logistics for this. "Lets see... It might be better for you to meet in town... either the Bay or over at the Outpost. Bringing a stranger into their territory unannounced might come off as too presumptuous. So I'll send off word that you'd like to meet! Maybe they'll have time to get together within the next couple months... I imagine their neighbors have already warned them about having to prep for winter here, and they're accordingly busy..."

The Ring-Spirit's already perking up as he ponders arrangements.

"They're all one pokemon, by the way - a Spiritomb. I think condensing like that helped them a lot, their souls were pretty ragged before we made it over here... They're the village of Kul Elna."

...And something finally occurs to him.

"...Oh. Is there something I should introduce you as...? I forget about that, since... I don't really have a name, myself... though Shoka calls me 'Freakazoid', which serves the purpose well enough... but then again, Pokemon in this world seem to usually just go by their species name, so maybe I'm overthinking things."

Dolly listens and watches the Ring Spirit after talking about his former Body Landlord(?). That sounds like an incredibly rough situation to have been in for both parties and an even harder thing to talk about....

And here come that mood shift coming in like a wrecking ball, catching Dolly off guard a bit! Okay cool, changing the topic to that one instead!

A few months doesn't sound too bad at all to Dolly, that's pretty reasonable amount of time. "I think the town is a very good place to meet up in a few months from now. Winter preparations are going to be worry for sure for them and don't need the added surprise of a visit on top of it."

That...okay that makes sense. If it was like an entire ghost village, surely they're going to be much more comfortable in a Pokemon that's like a generational home for them. Yep...a centuries of being on Earth with different sorts of magical beings did a number on Dolly's sense of what's normal.

"The raggedness must have been unpleasant beforehand, I'm glad they got a Pokemon form that's comforting for the village of Kul Elna...Oh! My true name is cursed, but people have been calling me 'Dolly' for the past century and is usually my go to when introducing myself when asked."

Dolly tilts her head in thought, "Oh, if you're alright, may I give you a handle to go by? I'll understand if you want to wait a bit on that though."

October Catchall! (a Mix of Open and Closed)

A Visit: closed to Dolly

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1/2 [cw: discussion of possession]

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1/2 CW for continuing Possession mention AKA body roommates

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1/2 [more reference to 'body roommates']

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2/2 I love that these eldritch goobers' conversation, its perfect