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Rotom. Is. Dreaming . It has to be a dream, because things like these don’t just happen to poor, pitiful Rotoms. Rotoms do not happen upon rooms with rows and rows of tech with glowy bits and metal bits and other-sciencey bits. Rotoms were not spoiled for choice when it came to mischief causing opportunities. Rotoms did not wander out of subways and find heaven .
The electric type spun in dizzy, elated circles as it took in the sheer wonder around it. Oh how could it choose! Big and bulky? Streamlined and elegant? Oh Dragons, that one had a giant cannon attached to it! Rotom was going to weep with joy. It spent a long time staring with starry eyes and a dumb grin on its face.
Oh. It had to choose? But there were so many choices! How could it ever pick just one kickass, massive machine to possess? Oh it was getting a headache just thinking about it! It looked around the room, now dismayed by the sheer amount of decisions to make.
But, hoh boy, Rotom was tired . It had been a long day… Wandering the new subway tunnels had taken a long time… And it had to dodge some subway workers in case it wasn’t supposed to be there… And get away from those strange people who seemed not to have any Pokémon… Maybe making a decision could wait! Maybe it deserved a little break! In one of the very cool robots! Just a little nap in the circle thing giving off a metric ton of electricity! That sounded amazing. Dragons, that sounded amazing.
Rotom drifted towards the nearest machine. The energy was like a siren call, one that Rotom could not refuse even if it weren’t such a great napping place. Mhmm. Nap. Rotom felt a sleepy smile stretch over its face. It approached the power source, and pressed itself inside. It left nothing but a faint pleased chirp and a couple sparks behind.
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Rotom was having such a nice nap when it happened. It had slept so deeply, It had drifted off into the spiritual realm. It was simply blissful to be swaddled in ghostial presence and speak to fellow ghost types who just got it like no other type did. In fact, it had been talking to a Duskull about the interesting speech patterns of Porygons.
AND THEN IT GOT HIT WITH A ROCK. Rock! Boom! Right in the face! Incredibly rude.
Thoroughly grumpy, Rotom slid out of the energy core, ignoring the surprised exclamations from surrounding humans. That Camerupt had made a big mistake, one that was quickly solved by an Astonish. Rotom may not have had the type advantage, but it had the motivation advantage! And a very nice, rejuvenating nap behind it! (and probably the surprise of popping out of a chest!)
The Camerupt barely had a chance. It collapsed onto the floor with a wail. Surprisingly, there was a trainer behind it. A trainer that had ordered their Pokémon to attack a weird looking mechanical thing. Not that Rotom was judging, but Rotom was judging. You simply did not attack weird things without knowing if they’d blow up first. But humans were always doing weird, unadvisable, dangerous, and or stupid activities, so this wasn’t out of pocket. Rotom shocked them as they ran away anyway.
Well, that’s that. Rotom considered going back to sleep, before it turned around to see several humans around its nap spot.
Humans were always annoying about whatever Rotom possessed, they were always like oOoOo Rotom you can’t record people doing dumb shit in the cameras! Or oOoOo Rotom you can’t possess the ice cream cart and crash it into the forest! Stupid. Ice cream is for children and the Phantump were being left out . It didn’t hurt that the Trevenant taking care of them was gorgeous , but Rotom was doing it for mostly altruistic reasons.
It stood to reason, then, despite Rotom’s completely innocent Purrloin napping, that Rotom was about to get another rock lobbed at it (via rock type or spare pebble).
Instead, an arrow flew ineffectually through Rotom. Being a ghost type, this had no effect. Or well, a little effect, because it was really funny. The grown ass man with a real ass bow and apparently enough skill to hit a lightbulb DIDN’T KNOW HIS TYPING. TODDLERS knew that shit.
“Oh did someone get hit with one too many Confusions when they were a baby?” Rotom mocked. Rotom laughed meanly
Until it was hit with a Charge Beam. Which was weird, because there were no Pokemon around to use a Charge Beam. It was then and only then, that it noticed that its nap spot was moving . And talking . And- Oh Dragons, Rotom got itself into another Aqua suit and Magma Suit Incident.
Look, humans made machines that were shaped like humans way too much for a Rotom to be able to tell the difference between a robot and a mech!
Anyway, since its nap spot was already inhabited (What a bummer!) and also shot lasers (Double bummer! Rotom wanted to shoot lasers!) Rotom cut its losses and moved on. There were better things ahead, like probably circling back around to that room with all the mechs and swiping a different one. It spun towards the exit — but not before giving the humans a parting gift in the form of a nasty shock — and started leaving. The humans didn’t have much that could actually hit Rotom, and what could hit it was easy to dodge. They were persistent, but soon ran into a whole horde of ground types and had to fight them. Again, without Pokémon. What a bunch of weirdos.
Rotom ambled through an unfamiliar subway tunnel, small talking with the Graveler and occasional Onix. Compared to all the excitement it was facing earlier, this was pretty boring, but it was the good type of boring, where you got to meet someone new or say hello to an old friend and were getting away from rude humans who tried to shoot you.
Strangely a lot of the humans Rotom stumbled upon looked really scared. Most ran away before Rotom could try to calm them down. Not that it was very helpful… but it could try, right? It had the most luck with children, because they enjoyed the noises it made and were grateful for the light it provided on the way out of the subway tunnels. Most ghost types loved children, and Rotom was no exception.
Leading them out was pretty easy, though Rotom had to stamp down on the instinct to keep the children. An unfortunate side effect of being so attached to them, but one that used to be very important. Lost children 500 years ago rarely were able to find someone to take them in, so ghost types typically took up the slack. Nowadays though, humans were a lot less wary of unfamiliar children and could take care of it themselves. Not that it stopped some ghost types.
Rotom guided them to what looked like Officer Jennys. Strangely, these Officer Jennys were not in fact from the Jenny family, or even women. But they seemed to fulfill the same role. When did Nimbasa diversify its police force? Rotom couldn’t imagine how the Officer Jennys had lost their stranglehold on law enforcement that quickly.
Rotom’s drifting was interrupted by loud angry voices. It decided to make itself scarce.
Wandering around aboveground, Rotom could see that the city only shared base level similarities with Nimbasa. It hadn’t noticed earlier, but now that it had, it was very obvious. But, Rotom didn’t think the distance it had traveled was enough to have reached Castelia. Weird . Did the humans build a city smack dab in the desert and it just hadn’t noticed?
This city was very big, Rotom was noticing. Very big. Bigger than any city it had seen, and including Castelia, which was supposedly the biggest one. Rotom doubted that Unova had the people or resources to build a city here without serious upheaval that Rotom would’ve noticed even from within the tunnels.
As unnerving as this was, Rotom figured it was just some more Sinnohian bullshit. It was a mess over there, and Rotom had never visited the region because it was absolutely certain that it would’ve been drafted into upholding the time and space continuum or something because Arceus couldn’t be bothered to do it itself. The gods of Time and Space fought in the region like it was their personal boxing match, the Pokémon that created literally Everything slept for centuries at a time there, Giratina… did something there probably related to making sure Palika and Dialga didn’t explode existence. The amount of energy there was just ridiculous, and it only made it more suspicious that the head god had recently meddled with Nimbasa.
Despite Unova’s complete removal from Sinnoh, Arceus had still stolen Ingo from his home and put him back like nothing had happened. Rotom would not put it past it to dump a whole ass city onto their laps and dip out for another 3 centuries. Fucking Arceus. What an asshole!
So Rotom continued wandering, mentally mapping the way back to the subway. It found a cafe and stole a cake made of berries it had never eaten before without any intrinsic medical properties. It watched a street performance by a jazz band, and wandered around a park, quite confused at the Pokémon who didn’t appear to know any moves.
It was then when Rotom found it. The second heaven of the day.
It had been working on learning the language of the squirrels within the local park when it heard a loud staccato of beeping noises. Asking around with the newly bridged language gap, the animals (apparently not Pokémon) told it that it was the construction crew, and if that didn’t make Rotom excited, nothing could. Because, if this city had no Pokémon, and the humans were as squishy as the normal ones, they had to use something for big construction projects, right? Something big, shiny, mechanical, and ripe for the possessing?
Rotom’s hunch was right. It gleefully took stock of the huge towering machine with a gargantuan metal ball hanging from a rope, the pogo sticks that carved into concrete with no trouble, and finally, the large, yellow machine with tracks and a metal blade for pushing things. Rotom could practically hear it calling its name.
But there was no way Rotom was being hasty about this, not again. Rotom would wait until the humans were gone, and the street was quiet. When night fell, it had no trouble seeing as it slipped between obstructions and floated over dangerous ground towards its prize. Finally, finally, it slipped between the sheets of metal and into the motor. It roared to life under Rotom’s careful watch. Possession was not something you wanted to mess up on, after all.
Rotom slipped past the physical components, grasping for the spirit printed onto the bulldozer’s being. Buzzing thoughts, feelings, and memories from previous operators streamed through Rotom’s consciousness, and planted themselves within its mind. Rotom’s presence settled on the cool metal, and its eyes opened.
Rotom did not start doing donuts, even if there was no one around to see it.
It wheeled back and forth, getting used to the way treads moved. It was the odd kind of familiar, where you had never done it before but had experienced it anyway. dProbably because of the stolen memories. When Rotom had deemed its possession to be complete, it started focusing on trying to learn the move that came with the machine. Most possessions afforded a special move that Rotom couldn’t normally learn, and this bulldozer was no exception.
Rotom probably should’ve expected Bulldoze.
Bulldoze, of course, was ground type, which opened a whole other can of worms. Was Rotom’s secondary typing Ground type now? Oh! It was so glad it ditched that stupid mech! Rotom had no type disadvantages now. None. Not one! Suck on that, human-in-a-mech-with-lazers! Rotom was going places. Rotom needed to get as much mileage out of this before the League wisened up and banned it.
It blazed down the subway stairs with a speed that would make a Deoxys blush . It was a fast ground type, or at least not a slow one. Dragons, it was absolutely insanity. Rotom could imagine the whiny little trainers sniveling over fairness. What was fairness before the unflinching gaze of an electric-ground type? Nothing.
And, you know, after stomping the league competition, it could probably retire and help protect the subway afterwards. A lot of the Pokémon who lived in the tunnels had come to live there because of Team Plasma and its sequel, and while the Subway Bosses had been enough to keep them away before, the way Ingo had just disappeared clearly showed a fault in that system.
What happened when the Subway Bosses weren’t around to help? Reshiram knows that Emmet was barely prepared for casual Pokémon battles, let alone for Team Plasma’s underhanded tactics and experimental Pokémon. Maybe, if something horrible were to happen, Rotom would be able to help, instead of standing aside and being useless as the subway fell into disarray.
No use thinking about all that — It’d take something more than Team Plasma, or even Arceus — if it were to try again — to separate the twins! They were a two-car train, and they would run you over if you tried to disconnect their cars!
Besides, Rotom had the other denizens of the subway tunnels to terrorize now, and it might run into those humans again and show them what’s what! Who needs super cool lasers when you have no type disadvantages?