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What type would you expect to be the best disposed towards the reincarnated?
The obvious answer seems like it would be Ghost types, right? What with the whole… you know… ghost thing, and all the myths about a bunch of Ghost types being reincarnated from dead humans, like Froslass and Yamask.
Yeah, no. At least not in my case.
Most of the Ghost types that I’ve interacted with have been… not particularly big fans of me, to put it lightly.
Heh, it’s almost like I was destined to have a scar near my eye in both my lives, even if it’s much larger (and not quite as self-inflicted) this time around.
But if not for the Ghost type, what other types would you expect?
I’ve heard people theorizing about it being Psychic type, because they have greater cosmological insight into the nature of this life and the next, or the Dark type, because it represents the void that comes after life and also the existence of Yveltal, or even the Poison type, since they have such an understanding of causing it.
Admittedly, each of those ideas were fairly niche, with only a couple of type specialists really buying into each of them (and, in the last case, the idea mostly comes from the writings of Warden Melli of the Diamond Clan, which I don’t necessarily trust, given his egocentrism), but they are still out there.
But very few people are confirmed reincarnates, and even fewer are still alive today (suicide rates are unfortunately high, not least of which out of grief from being torn away from the people and world you knew), and most of us tend to keep to ourselves on the subject of… well, anything that could remind themselves of our past lives. As such, most of us don’t really put a whole lot of thought into that question.
I have, and in my opinion, it’s kind of a dark horse: the Fairy type.
I know it might not be what you’d expect at first glance, what with Xerneas and Comfey being significant Pokémon that people think of when they hear “Fairy Type”, but if you think about it, it makes sense, if you look at it sideways and squint. Fairy types are… otherworldly is a way to put it, but it’s not necessarily the complete way to say it, I think? One of the key elements of the Fairy type is a disregard, ignorance, shunning, or some other rejection of some aspect of reality, be it intentional. For example, Togekiss tend to reject needless strife, which is one of the things that makes it unusual to find it on serious Battle Trainer teams as opposed to Coordinators or just as companion Pokémon, and Mimikyu are little baby eldritch horrors, which breaks a whole bunch of different rules of reality.
People almost totally disconnected from life, be it their former or current… well, it’s not a perfect match in isolation, per se, but it really helps get your figurative foot in the door as far as Fairies are concerned, and while I don’t know for certain, I suspect certain historical trainers with multiple fairies on their teams (excepting Akari Berlitz, formally of the Galaxy team and currently of Twinleaf town with her daughter, Dawn) to have at least some of their memories from past lives roll over, as it were.
That’s not necessarily the only way to facilitate connections with Fairy-types– some people who suffer from hallucinations prefer the Ralts line or the Fidough line as medical alert Pokémon (with the latter being more known for working with people with other conditions, such as diabetes), and there’s always those clowns who insist that the Fairy type makes trainers gay (it doesn’t, but statistically speaking queer people are more likely to use Fairy types even if that’s a chicken or the egg problem- are queer people more likely to use Fairy types for the aesthetic or the reputation, or are Fairy types more drawn to queer people for something in their nature?), and in fact the death connection is one of the least understood aspects of the Fairy type.
None of this should be taken as any kind of definitive proof of Fairy types having an atypical relationship with life and death or Ghost types being universally distrusting of non-Ghosts that come back from the dead, it’s just what makes sense to me given my own personal experiences with some of these different typings.
A transcript excerpt from the lecture “What Type Is Death?” by Amber, former Champion of Unova.
“I’m still a little confused about what you mean by ‘sword stances’,” said Oshawott, frowning with no small degree of confusion.
I hummed, mentally adjusting my estimation of Oshawott’s theoretical understanding of combat downwards several notches. She’d showcased an incredible degree of kinesthetic awareness of her own body and a limited ability to predict the oncoming attacks of both Bianca’s Tepig and Cheren’s Snivy, but her motions in combat were rather basic, so I had thought to take half-remembered sword kata and martial arts concepts and explain them to her.
I had forgotten, in my excitement, that instinctual talent did not necessarily equate to an immediate grasp of theoretical concepts, and that the relatively newly hatched Pokémon didn’t have the intelligence and enthusiasm that both Bianca and Cheren had had to develop over the last eighteen years in order to catch up to my head start.
“Okay, so… a lot of what I’m saying is intermediate combat theories from back before Pokémon training was super widespread, but a lot of the way that weapon fighting works is that you have to have a solid stance in order to make better attacks and defensive moves,” I said.
Oshawott nodded. “Okay, yeah, that makes sense,” she replied, looking down at her scalchop with new eyes.
“Once we stop for the night,” I continued, “I’ll find a stick somewhere so I can demonstrate some of the concepts I remember.”
Oshawott’s reply was cut off by a rapidly loudening whine of tiny wings buzzing, which was shortly revealed to be heralding the tiny form of a Cutiefly.
Instead of beelining for Oshawott for a battle, like both Oshawott and I had expected based on the diminutive Water type, the diminutive Bug type instead landed in my hair with a high-pitched “Thank you, o mother Seikamater, for providing such a good nest for a nap.”
“Hello there,” I drawled, imitating Ewan McGregor’s delivery of the line almost on instinct. “Any particular reason you’ve decided my hair is such a good nest for your nap?”
The Cutiefly squeaked, leaping back into the air almost reflexively, before humming back over to look at me, then down to Oshawott. “Does she understand us? Or was that just a really good guess?”
“I’m not that good of a guesser, little one,” I replied.
“Wow, you’re just like that other green-haired guy! The one who really thinks that Trainers are inherently immoral!” Cutiefly gushed, causing my spine to stiffen.
Even to this point, I was hoping that I wouldn’t have to be the one to deal with Team Plasma’s bullshit, for multiple reasons.
First off, the fact that the most recent sighting of Rayquaza known had been to destroy a meteorite threatening the whole planet meant that we were in a Mega timeline, which already threw off what I remembered the games (which wasn’t a whole lot, given that even before my death it had been multiple years since I had played my copy of Pokémon Black).
Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, even in failure, Team Plasma would cause a significant amount of harm to both people and Pokémon, the degree I could only guess at depending on the exact implementation of their aims.
Just the emergence of their castle alone would be catastrophic for the local ecosystem, even if they had planned it to avoid directly killing any humans or Pokémon.
“And… what do you think about the things he said?” I asked.
The buzzing of its wings slowed for a moment. “I think that his arguments have merit, but the evidence and examples that his examples are built off of is limited in such a way that makes both me and most of the rest of the swarm think that whoever showed him the information wanted him to have an underinformed position.” The wild Pokémon looked at Oshawott, then back at me. “On the topic, I actually left the swarm so I could find a Trainer to help me prove him wrong about Training being inherently immoral. Would you be willing to help me?”
“The fact that Amber can actually hold a decent conversation has nothing to do with it, does it?” asked Oshawott dryly.
Even though nothing changed on the wild Cutiefly’s face, I got the impression that it was blushing. “Maybe a little? It’s just… the best way to disprove him, in my opinion, is to work with a Trainer that’s like him, at least as far as communicating with other Pokémon is concerned.”
I looked at Oshawott, who shrugged. “That’s better thought out than I would have expected. I have no objection.”
“Alright then,” I said, rummaging around in my bag for a Poké Ball. “Welcome to the team, Cutiefly. I’m Amber, she/her, and this is Oshawott, also she/her.”
“Nice to meet you two,” replied Cutiefly. “I’m Cutiefly, they/them.”
There is a subtlety to names, as far as Pokémon are concerned, that humans always have trouble with.
They use sights, scents, and other sensations that don’t properly translate to most humans to distinguish between different individuals of the same species in a way that is blatantly facilitated by aura, and also shifting as Pokémon evolve.
For example, Oshawott’s name gave off the scent of sea spray and steel, the burn of well-exercised muscles, and the gleam of sunshine off the edge of her scalchop, whereas Cutiefly’s name carried with it the burden of knowledge, a sense of indignance, and the sensation of rolling around in pollen (which was… weird, given the intensity to which my past life had had allergies to the stuff), as well as a sensation that I neither had the senses to understand not the words to explain.
Hell, even humans weren’t exempt to that- whenever Oshawott referred to Professor Juniper, her name for her was intertwined with the sound of a keyboard clicking, the sensation of a hand patting a head, and the flavor of an Oran berry.
Let me tell you, hearing what felt like the core of my being exposed every time a Pokémon said my name was… trippy, to say the least.
After registering the official capture on Cutiefly, we continued on, but this time with the little bug sitting just in front of my ponytail.
“So, Cutiefly. What’s it like living in a swarm?” asked Oshawott, her natural wariness defused a little by the diminutive Bug Type joining the team officially.
“Well, to properly explain that I have to talk about the Origin of the Swarm. Seikamater is…”
“I don’t know that I really agree with all that," said Oshawott, frowning. “I mean, yeah, I guess some trainers can be bad, but I’ve never seen any like that.”
“To be fair,” I replied, “at least part of that is the selective effect that living with Professor Juniper and her affiliated breeders has- they run an environment that just naturally selects for a more upstanding type of trainer.”
“She’s right,” said Cutiefly, buzzing faintly with agreement. “When the swarm went on its roaming times, we got the chance to see… a wider spread of trainers, and while most of them are good people who are good to their Pokémon… some are not.”
“Excuse me, your Pokémon…” I turned to face Natural Harmonia Gropius and gave him a level look.
My first impression of the man was that he was waifish, almost malnourished- he had a diaphanous quality about him, as if he’d be blown away like even a middling gust of wind.
Looking closer, his gray eyes were both strangely vacant and oddly piercing, resulting in an unnerving gaze.
In short, he was the kind of boy that, had I been about 20% more like my original grandmother, I would have been inclined to stuff into a chair and browbeat into eating tamales or pozole until he no longer looked like I could accidentally break him by sneezing too hard. Not necessarily my scene, even setting aside the level of deprogramming he’d need to undergo before he could have a steady relationship (or, you know, my lesbian tendencies), but between the regal bone structure that hadn’t had the chance to shine and his compassionate nature he would probably make someone very happy once he was in a headspace to do so.
“What about them?” I replied, the malice I held for his father wholly absent in my answer to him.
“What they’re saying, I… I can’t say I’ve heard any Pokémon talking like that before.”
“What, you weren’t expecting them to discuss their experiences in the context of y-the fuckin’ speech?” I raised an eyebrow.
He frowned. “You can understand them too?”
“Evidently.”
“...I see,” he said, looking more than a little shaken. “I-in that case, would your team consent to a battle with me?”
I looked up to where Cutiefly was buzzing around my head. “What do you say, you want to stretch your wings a little bit?”
“Sure thing!” Cutiefly replied, buzzing down to look curiously at N.
I turned back to the boy. “Well then, are you ready?”
“I do believe I am. If you would, my friend?” His tossed Poké Ball contained, as I expected, a Purrloin.
Say what you will about his stance on training and his upbringing, but N was a legitimately good Trainer. Even with the disadvantage he was working at (low-level Purrloin aren’t exactly known for their ranged combat abilities, whereas between Fairy Wind and their natural agility Cutiefly was all but guaranteed the win), he made us work for the victory, and he was magnanimous in defeat.
“Maybe I’ll see you around sometime,” I said, offering my hand for him to shake.
“Perhaps,” he replied. “Fare thee well, Amber, Oshawott, and Cutiefly. Until we meet again.”
And then he walked away, humming the vocal line from Valentine’s Day.
“Shouldn’t have published that,” I grumbled.
As it turned out, waking up as a baby in a world so similar and yet so distinct from your own was… rough, and I’d fallen into music instead of the writing that I preferred in my past life. In diving so deeep into music, I got good enough that I could replicate at least some of the music I remembered from my past life. Not everything- even setting aside questions of skill that prevented me from trying to replicate something on the order of A Thousand Suns, my memory of my past life was imperfect at best. But… those songs that I knew better than my own heartbeat (The Catalyst, Phantom, Cruel Angel’s Thesis), those I could reproduce individually, and even some of the ones that I knew less well but had still heard scores of times (something like Valentine’s Day or aLIEz) I gave a shot, to greater or lesser extent.
Originally, they were just experiments in my newfound skill, but when Mom had come onto my room while I was sitting there listening to Valentine’s Day, trying in vain to figure out how to retool it to make it that little bit more like the original I’d listened to so many times back on Earth… well, her encouragement had led me to release a number of songs then and there, with more later, to eventual success.
Still, I’d never managed to shake that feeling of frustration from working on Valentine’s Day like I had with so many other songs, which made its runaway popularity popularity rub me the wrong way that little bit more than I’d expected- not enough to make me hate it, but enough to build it up in my mind as “the one that could have been greater”.
Still, I couldn’t afford to be too begrudging of it- I had confirmation that I was going to have to deal with Team Plasma now, with Ghetsis’ speech and N, and while I couldn’t just buy myself a full team to stand up to PETA’s slightly more ethical cousin, the money my music brought in would let me have access to the kind of resources that would make it much easier to ramp up in time to fight off the attack on the Pokémon League, hopefully enough to capture Ghetsis and prevent him from getting his mitts on Kyurem.
“What do you mean by that?” asked Oshawott. “Valentine’s Day is catchy.”
“Well…”
We walked off, with both Oshawott and Cutiefly paying attention to me, oblivious to a pair of unsettlingly blue eyes watching from under a bench.