Anthony and his Pokemons already talked about what they would do while accompanying Samantha Stacy to the table she and her Ghastly decided to 'haunt'. Thus, after the boy whose name Anthony didn't know was named Benson screamed, he immediately made Ghastly, who was giggling rather uncontrollably, turn invisible as he also slammed his door alongside several other people who were using the stall part of the wide male's comfort room, again using his neutral-looking face to his advantage as he looked around nervously.
"W-what was that?"
Anthony muttered, and after a long bout of silence, a much older teenager was able to regain his calm enough to flush the toilet he just used and buckle his belt before replying.
"Someone seems to shout very loudly, sounding real scared..."
Anthony nodded slowly as he zipped his pants before looking around once more, then his eyes widened as he slowly opened his mouth whilst his index finger pointed at the urinal directly.
"He's so scared that he banged himself into the urinal?"
Anthony felt quite guilty as he never intended to make anyone bleed in this activity; however, like it was said earlier, he's banking on his ever-neutral-looking face, thus he's confident that his guilt will not show itself. One of the males nodded at this before slowly walking out of the male's comfort room.
"There might be some Ghost Pokemons out there, or worse, a real ghost, like the Pokémon Tower of Lavender Town. We have to get out of here."
Anthony nodded before coming out of his stall alongside the 4 other boys. This is what he planned: waiting for someone cowardly enough to immediately know that there might be a ghost inside the comfort room. First, this would increase the chances of him and Ghastly's made-up horror story gaining traction in forums; second, he could also make the person vouch for him when he came under suspicion that he was the one behind all the pranks.
To make sure that the boys who saw him will do just that, he socialized with them with his Miltank and put up his lab report about the Pokemon, which still has a blank 'practical physical endurance and discipline' part before separating ways. Anthony made it so that he got out of the Pokemon Center in haste to put more on the act of being terrified of the idea of encountering a Ghost-type's prank. Of course, he looked at Nurse Joy to confirm if she understood who was the one who caused the commotion that was starting to get flocked at, and when he received a knowing nod, he finally relaxed.
_The first part is a success; now I just need some courageous people to get pranked by the same thing again and again so they can make blogs about it. However, I may not get away with causing someone to bleed again, so I hope they won't be sliding themselves into the floor of a comfort room and just run with all their life like a normal person._
Anthony and Miltank, alongside the now materialized Ghastly, looked around to find a bench to review the next step of their plan when Anthony felt a slender hand tap his shoulder, which made him jolt a little. However, he immediately calmed down when he saw that it was Samantha Stacy who, while walking ahead of him, looked at Anthony and asked.
"I see yours did well."
Anthony nodded at this before replying.
"It did. How about yours?"
Samantha shook her head.
"I thought that we interns would be suspected if another commotion were to happen in the Pokemon Center, since we were seen going in at the same time. Also, Nurse Joy can only neglect complaints about a stall being haunted to a certain degree."
Finally, Anthony was able to see a suitable bench where he could review the performance of his Ghastly; he went and made Miltank sit on it before looking at Samantha.
"Where do you plan to go?"
Samantha raised her index finger and pointed in the direction of the Pokemart, making Anthony smile a little before sitting down on the bench in the park near the Pokemon Center and grabbing his ballpoint pen as well as the lab report template provided by Prof. Oak.
"Good luck."
Samantha nodded before going to the street where the Pokemart is; however, just when the little girl was about to enter the Pokemart, she slapped her forehead and shook her head before going in a different direction.
_Yup, that's more like the Samantha I see when talking to other people besides me. This stiff face really has the disadvantage of being seen as a person who doesn't want casual conversations... but I do wonder if this activity will work since it's seemingly being done yearly... wouldn't people be more immune to this occurrence? I'll ask Prof. Oak._
Anthony didn't say anything and then started to scribble a few sentences in his lab report before making Ghastly appear, making it project what kind of illusion the boy just experienced in Anthony's head. Of course, he made it so that he would be the 3rd person and would just be watching from the sidelines; he doesn't want to scream in public, after all. Then, Anthony described how the boy saw the bowl's distance from him stretch a hundred or so meters, how he was tapped in the back by a boy smaller than him yet looked the same as him, as well as the scream and the drawn blood.
Anthony is reluctant to unveil the truth about the forehead (allegedly) of the first victim of his temporary Ghastly banging himself into one of the urinals, as Prof. Oak might get angry, but in the end, Anthony reckoned that the Pokemon Professor would get more mad at him if he tried to hide the truth and then Nurse Joy is to report the occurrence to him. Anyway, it's not like Anthony always makes people bleed; this one is just an isolated case.
After finishing his lab report, he went and released Zubat from its Pokeball before standing up and walking back to the lab inside the public cemetery of Pallet Town.
_After this, we will go back tomorrow to harvest the negative energy that seeped into the stall, then overmorrow and more days until there is enough evidence for blogs and clickbait video creators that would start writing and telling stories about it until Ghastly finally gets its personal generator of negative emotions energy for a while, or at least a week before we graduate._
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Pallet Town Public Cemetery, around the entrance, next to the public crematorium.
"I wouldn't need to disturb my snack time if those double agents just silently sat there until the end of their organization..."
Prof. Oak sighed whilst grumbling, which the 3 interns who had finished their lab reports heard but chose to ignore. The Pokemon Professor seemed not to care if the children heard what he just said; instead, he looked at the three of them as if he said nothing.
"Okay, good job, you 3, you can go and either rest or continue haunting people and places if you don't have any questions."
As the 3 interns nodded, Anthony slowly raised his hand.
"Actually, I'm just wondering, Professor, won't the people become immune in the 'pranking season' since it's always happening in here?"
For a moment, Prof. Oak seemed to look at Anthony with little animosity, as he seemed not to be able to read his face that exudes his relaxed attitude; however, in the end he helplessly sighed and then replied.
"No, the truth is, during normal curricula, the interns are still required to get out of town to make their haunted stories in other places. Now, for all of you to not get targeted by the seemingly desperate mind of Giovanni, I decided to just make you do your activity inside Pallet so the lab and the government can respond better if something happened to any of you."
Anthony nodded at this, affirming that he understood.
_Huh, then that means next year, if Prof. Oak already deemed it safe for the internship to go back to its normal curriculum, there's a chance that the daycare center of my parents would be targeted. After all, it's owned by famous people and is also quickly gaining traction; apparently it has profits enough for my mom and dad to buy land and expand their artificial biomes... I hope I won't fall victim to that; I don't wanna scream like a baby..._
After Prof. Oak made sure that the other interns didn't have any more questions, he dismissed them and told them that they were free to do whatever they want. This made Anthony say goodbye to Ghastly while making sure to promise it that they would continue scaring people tomorrow.
_Well, besides that, this means that all of our arrangements would be quite effective. Maybe it can even amplify each other to some extent... for now, I think I'll continue my studies for the Breeder's Exam; that's the last requirement to be an associate field researcher after all._
Thought Anthony as he went back to his room.
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For the past weeks of the last month of the internship to become an associate field researcher, Anthony, alongside his temporary Pokemon, Ghastly repeated the same routine: Anthony goes to the cemetery to fetch Ghastly, both of them will go to the Pokemon Center while Ghastly is invisible for Zubat and Miltank who has been training and exhausting themselves to recuperate and heal inside the center, and Ghastly sneaking into the toilet to scare people that enters the same stall they first haunted.
Of course, in order not to get suspected, Anthony made his appearance at random. Sometimes they would go in the afternoon, sometimes in the morning, and sometimes not at all. Sometimes they would also appear either before or after the Ghastly scare. During this time, the self-induced negative emotion energy started to appear in the toilet, making Anthony need to risk being caught just so that he could observe what it looks like and how many there are.
The 'energy' looks like a black gas that's slowly suffusing the ground, which is the same color as the body of Ghastly. Anthony also observed that it's indeed not a conventional energy, as it doesn't have a temperature; it's just there, yet Ghastly seems to get energy from it. In this weeks, the long-awaited article for the 'Curse Toilet Seat' finally came out, which goes like this:
"Young trainer Benson Wall, alongside other veteran and rookie male trainers, reported the same haunting event in the same toilet stall of Pallet Town Pokemon Center..."
It's quite a lengthy blog from a bunch of mono Ghost-type trainers that, instead of collecting badges, are looking for possible Ghost-type sightings all year round. Anthony also wanted the talent fee given to the ones that got interviewed; however, in the end, he just enjoyed the explosion of negative emotion energy and the good stuff that he was able to write into his lab reports. While he's at it, he also experimented on his phone camera and realized that negative emotion energy can be captured in it, albeit rather blurry and seems to dissipate if a Ghost-type is not nearby, so he sent his shots of the torrent of energy and the screenshot of the article to his mom and dad as well as Cynthia.
Anthony, of course, immediately received a reply:
"Ha! Yeah, we do remember messing around with the satellite lab of the demographics lab of Kanto! So it's that time of the internship again, huh? That also means you're about to go back home."
"Heh... now your life seems to have become as colorful as mine, huh? I did that too when I was an associate field researcher intern in Sinnoh. Congratulations on the publication, by the way."
The first one is replied to by Anthony's mom while Cynthia texted the latter, which made Anthony feel like he doesn't have any original experience in this world.
In any case, Anthony also compared notes with his friends Mary and Andrew, making him see differences in how differently-natured ghost types handle pranks despite the yield of negative emotional energy being inherently the same. Mary's Ghastly is polite, so it decided that it wants to prank people in their dreams, making them do the same thing again and again in the dream for what feels like eternity and making such a dream be experienced by victims for 1 week straight.
In the end, they were able to collect large amounts of self-induced negative emotions energy in an apartment. Andrew's, however, is a prankster-natured one, so instead of scary illusions, it settled to annoy people until they started to get scared with things like illusory turds being stepped on repeatedly, a plastic bag dripping with garbage juice landing square on their face, or them being unable to get the keys to their vehicles.
Because the article had already been released, Anthony was able to focus on studying, resting, and training his partner Pokémon Zubat and his long-term Pokémon-raising partner, Miltank.
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Read my novel Sophia Demiurge, remove the open and close parentheses
http://wbnv.in(remove this)/a/3ak49Kj