When I opened my eyes, the first thing I noticed was that I was lying under the sand of the beach.

  It was quite comfortable, to be honest; almost like I belonged there, although I didn't quite know how I’d ended up in that situation. All the events of the previous day fshed through my dazed mind as I woke up, highlighting among them my new evolution, the final battle against Kingler, Cap's evolution, and my little chat with Yezalel, but I didn't remember burying myself.

  Perhaps it was a peculiarity of my new species? A defense mechanism rooted in my soul? An instinctive need to burrow underground while I sleep?

  It wouldn't be the strangest thing in the Pokemon world, really. Pokedex entries could confirm it, and I didn't mind too much as long as it wasn't harmful… apart that it looked quite fun to emerge from underground to the incredulous gaze of some unsuspecting trainer. I had to put that on my ‘things to do when I get back to civilization’ list, which I would do when I built my raft. Again.

  Avoiding random thoughts, I cleared my head with a quick burst of Calm Mind and pulled my hand out of my ‘grave’, zombie-like, easily digging myself out converting a small pulse of my Ground-type aura into a half-baked Dig. After surfacing, the bright morning sun filtered into my corneas, giving me a bit of a migraine, and I had no choice but to praise the sun by striking the iconic Y pose.

  Accompanying the warmth of the new day, a comforting weight settled on my head, greeting me to the sound of, “Hey, Sandy. You're finally awake.”

  "Good morning to you too, Cap," I replied with a yawn, taking advantage of my silly pose to stretch my arms and back.

  Gosh, I'd missed doing that. Nothing like hearing the creaking of your shoulders and spine in the morning, no matter how unnecessary it seemed. Being able to shape my body at will was great, of course, but the ingrained habits of a sedentary life were hard to overcome, and the old ways always had their charm.

  Oh, I was rambling. As usual.

  "So… Yesterday was absolutely crazy; a trip like no other I've ever lived so far," my feathered friend said after a few moments of silence, in his usual pyful tone.

  That was just a facade, of course. I didn't need to turn on my special thing to notice his discomfort, and I didn't need to be a genius to figure out the source of it. A brush with death doesn't go away overnight, I could only hope that Cap wouldn't take refuge in indifference.

  On the other hand, making humor out of these things is quite useful to mark a point of 'this happened, it was bad, but I'm over it', so I would py along until he decided to open up about it.

  “You can say that,” I affirmed, nodding my head and giving a small smile. “You'd think dying would dictate the end of the journey, but…”

  “…nobody expects Sandy the Necrossander,” he finished for me, confusing me a little with his st term.

  “Necrossander? Is that what I am now?”

  “No idea. I’m pretty sure your evolution is new, like mine, so I doubt there are any official names,” Cap replied ftly, shrugging off his wings. “I just wanted to make a pun with Necromancer, and that was the first thing that came to mind. Besides, you keep saying ‘necro’, ‘cross’, ‘oss’, and ‘sand’, so your new form’s name should be something like that.”

  Blinking slowly, I remembered that, indeed, that was a thing. I’d gotten so used to the automatic transtion my Poke-mind offered me that, to be honest, I had completely forgotten that I could figure out the name of a Pokemon species just by listening to what the pocket monster in question says.

  That my mind could do that in such a… natural way, opened up a series of rather interesting questions, but I had just woken up and wanted to check other things before doing that, so I simply turned off that strange ‘ability’ and said a couple of random words, confirming the ex-seagull’s specutions.

  "You're right," I murmured, rubbing my chin. "It must be something like that, although Necrossander is too long, and I never say that ‘er’ at the end… I think Necrossand sounds better."

  “Necrossand… Not bad. By that logic, my new form will be named Frigash, though I don’t think that will matter much. It’s not like there are other Pokemon of our kind, anyway,” Cap stated, rolling his eyes before adopting an uncharacteristically serious tone. “By the way, thank you so much for saving my ass. I don't quite know how you did it, but I know you had to spend a lot of your potential to help me, and without you, yesterday would have been my st day on this world. I can't do anything to make up for it, so please accept my thanks at least.”

  “Don’t even mention it,” I said after a few moments of silence, trying to downpy it. Seeing that wasn’t going to work, I decided instead to grab the bird that had made my head his nest and hold him up to my face, fshing a genuine smile. “I don’t regret anything, and it was a team work. A little of my ‘potential’ is a fair price to save a friend. Besides, I’m sure you would have done the same for me if that were the case.”

  “I definitely would have… if I knew how,” replied the ex-seagull, which, now that I looked closer, looked a lot like a frigate (the bird, not the ship, of course) beneath his ectopsm, only with white feathers and a much ghostlier appearance. “No, seriously, how the hell did you so easily manipute not only your potential, but mine as well?

  "From what I understand, only absurdly powerful Pokemon like Yezalel can control it, and I doubt you're at that level yet. On the other hand, I've never heard of an ordinary Pokemon using another Pokemon's potential, no matter how much it gives permission and helps. That's only within the reach of a…"

  "Legendary Pokemon?" I finished for him, recalling those moments.

  “Exactly! With a capital L!” he excimed, pointing at me with one wing as he began to float motionlessly, probably using his Ghost or Flying nonsense, maybe a mix of both. “So, I repeat; how did you do it?”

  “No idea,” I replied in the same ft tone he’d used before, pcing my now-free hands on my hips and shrugging. “I mean, I know how I used mine, and I have a couple of experiments I want to do ter, but I have absolutely no idea about how I used yours. I remember us synchronizing, sharing and synergizing our wills, and the Will of the World seemed to like it, so it gave us a han—”

  "Hold on," Cap cut me again, looking a little pale. "Did you say Will of the World? In capital letters, and with a strange feeling when you think about it?"

  “Yeah. Any problem?”

  “No, nothing. Nothing at all. I was just surprised when you mentioned the fucking Azelf so casually, you know, The Will of Arceus.”

  “…Oh.”

  “Oh, indeed.”

  "That expins a few things…" That was the euphemism of the century, but I didn't want to get too far into it if I could help it. "Anyway, how are you feeling? Kingler gave you a hell of a beating, after all."

  "Pretty good, actually. I haven't felt this alive in a long time," he replied, mid-zero-gravity backflip, pying along. “The evolution should have fixed most of my injuries, both new and old, which, combined with your efforts using Heal Pulse, the healing rain, my ability Rain Dish, the evolution itself, and my new Ghost type, makes me feel at least 10 years younger.”

  “Great. I was kind of worried; you've sort of died and all that. Anyway, we have to get checked at a Pokemon Center when we get to a civilized pce. Just in case.”

  "Of course," Cap said, leaving us in a comfortable silence for a few moments.

  “So… you fancy a fight, old bird?”

  "Doubt offends… Or that's what I'd normally say," he decred, giving me a rare, genuine smile. "I still have to fully verify my new form, and I'm sure you do too. After yesterday's storm, it's not a bad idea use the calm waters to check things out, Sandy."

  Nodding, I smiled back and stepped back from the spectral frigate to check on some of my own things.

  If he needed help with anything, he'd ask, but for now, my pte was pretty full. Making a quick checklist, I need to revise my new appearance, ‘stats’, moves, abilities, skills that weren't governed by poorly defined game mechanics and, of course, figure out what I could do with the remaining potential in my soul.

  The list was a little overwhelming, but I wasn't in a hurry. I could do some of those things as I went along, and it didn't matter much how long it took me to complete it; I had time. The only thing that mattered was… well, completing it, duh.

  I just hoped the next inevitable conflict would wait patiently until I had finished it.

  Screw the fgs.

  Starting with the simplest point of the list, I raised my hand and a shovel emerged from my shade, pcing its handle in my palm. This one was made of deep bck bone, just like the ones I summoned the day before, and that was what Shadow Bone had become after my evolution.

  The move had gone from just covering my shovel in Ghost-type energy to being able to form my own creepy structures using it, apparently, though I still had to perfect that aspect. If I could isote and remove the restriction of only being able to form spades, Shadow Bone had the potential to become one of the best tools in my extensive arsenal, if not the best, but that could wait.

  Going a little further, I wrapped the dark replica of my ‘real shovel’ in a thin yer of Iron Defense, giving it a metallic sheen and allowing me to use its Steel bde to look at my reflection. A pair of earthy brown will-o'-wisps greeted me in the makeshift mirror, momentarily distracting me from the rest of the peculiarities.

  My appearance had changed a lot.

  I no longer resembled the little sand slime I'd grown accustomed to.

  The ebony skin was still there, even though my Water Compaction ability was off, and fine lines even darker than it ran all over my head. Those lines were located in the same areas where I’d used Shore Up to join the pieces of my shattered skull, giving me a somewhat macabre but rough look, as if I’d survived countless battles and those were the scars from the wounds I had received (which in a way wasn't false).

  The face, my face, looked disturbingly human. I had no nose or ears, but that could easily be fixed by molding the sand from which my flesh was made. The only downside was that it would require some of my concentration to maintain the shape, but after all the experiments I'd done building my sand muscles and tendons, it had gotten stupidly good.

  However, even without taking that into account, I still fell squarely into the uncanny valley. That's because, combining a 99% human silhouette with pristine skin and ‘scars’, my new appearance reminded me a lot of those old, abandoned porcein dolls in horror movies; life-size for a bigger score.

  The absence of eyelids also highlighted my abyssal sockets filled with the will-o'-wisps that simuted to be my eyes, totally inhuman, and those same brown fmes formed my ‘eyebrows’ and my ‘hair’, which waved freely despite the fact that there was no wind.

  Overall, I looked cool as hell.

  I vaguely resembled a tiny Ghost Rider, tiny because I was still a mighty 150 centimeters tall, but a short imitation of that bastard was still incredibly cool. I'd need a motorcycle at some point… Added to my ‘things to do when I get back to civilization’ list.

  The rest of my body, unfortunately, wasn't so spectacur. I just had a standard humanoid appearance, somewhat scrawny and pitch-bck, but I could modify its shape at any time if I was willing to concentrate. Also, since my real body had fused with my skeleton, I could actually change my height whenever I wanted… Which didn't really bother me as much as I liked to compin about it.

  I didn’t have any obvious sexual characteristics, as is common in most Pokemon species, and from a distance I looked pretty much like a brat if I got clothes, to be honest. While I was a little sad about losing my amazing honka donka badonkas, the mere fact that I could compin about something as minor as that, after being reincarnated as a Sandygast of all things, was nothing short of a miracle.

  Sighing, I looked at my almost completely human hand, aware that if I didn't know how it was formed, I would never guess that it wasn't entirely human.

  I wasn't going to be greedy.

  I could get the body I wanted, molding my sand into the figure I most desired. I might even keep it forever as my standard appearance, as long as I found a way to anchor it as my ‘normal form’, but things like that didn't matter to me as much anymore. Not after everything I’d done just to achieve a sense of normalcy.

  I could become a true master of disguise if I invested time and potential into my innate gift for Transform. Learning the move was not out of the question, too, and Interpol would give anything to recruit someone with my characteristics if they were even remotely close to what I imagined, but that wasn't my path.

  It was useful to have those proficiencies, it was comforting to know I had them, I would have fun using them and they would help me in combat, but that’s all. I didn't even have any clothes yet, for the love of Arceus. What ‘master of disguise’ spends half a month naked on a beach?

  Turning my attention to more interesting things, I dispelled my grim spade and lit a bit of those strange brown fmes that I had for hair and eyes in my hand, wanting to study them a little.

  They weren't Fire as such, as they emanated an intense Ground and Ghost type aura, so I doubted they were Will-O-Wisp after observing them for a bit. The ember was too cold to cause a burn, too calm to belong to a type as explosive and temperamental as Fire…

  It was all specution, unfortunately. I had no reference material to back it up; Sandygast's compatibility with that type is almost nonexistent, and it can't learn any Fire-type moves except for Sunny Day (which can be learned by practically all Pokemon, so it wasn’t exactly a good example).

  However, the 'types' seemed to have their own quirks, their nonsense as I'd been calling it until now. It wasn't unreasonable to imagine that the Fire-type had them too…

  Getting my thoughts back on track, I focused my short attention span on the tiny sparks of that ‘mysterious fire’ I had lit in my hand, but before I could delve into its secrets, my burning eyes caught sight of Mr. Krabs approaching along the coast.

  Hey, writer Lichant here. I've been a little sick this week; the random weather changes are killing me. That, combined with my somewhat low motivation and the fact that I've gotten pretty addicted to Pokemon Close Combat, has led me to put this fanfic on the back burner for a bit, but I'm back now and hope to get back to my previous schedule of one chapter every three or four days.

  That's all.