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***

"ZEL!!"

Reva shook his head furiously, trying unsuccessfully to get his brain to comprehend what had just happened. The shiny drifloon had somehow turned his best friend into a diaper wearing toddler and her recently caught togedemaru into a wiggling egg. Not that Zel seemed all that bothered, on the contrary, the little tyke happily giggled and waddled after the departing yellow balloon. Stunned, Reva could only watch, mouth agape as the two got closer and closer to the edge of the palm forest...

Slapping himself, Reva realized he had to act and act fast. This was unlike anything he had even heard about before, but he knew the rumors about drifloons...there wasn't time to run for help. But he had to be careful, least he suffer the same infantile fate.

Running his hand over a well worn pokeball clipped to his belt, Reva pulled it free and began running towards his friend.

He didn't get far.

A mound of sand rose up suddenly, catching him off guard and causing him to trip hard to the ground. The pokeball, which had been held so tightly in his hand activated, a brief beam of red light flashing from it. Looking down concerned, his sandslash Dusty chuffed and chirped at him, the sun glinting off it's sharp spines. The two had been together since Reva had been Zella's current age. Out of instinct, Reva's hand flew down by his feet, probing for what had tripped him as he struggled back to his knees. The offending item felt, smooth, small, plastic? Reflexively, his fingers closed around it and brought it forward. Having got more then a fair share of sand in his eyes, he didn't notice the sand beginning to swirl around him.

It was a shovel. A kid's plastic shovel, small, yellow and white.

A sense of dread welled up inside him and to his further horror (this boy is going to need some therapy if he survives this) he found he couldn't let go of it.

A low, moaning warble filled the salty air as the sand right in front of him bulged up and rose over his kneeling form. It wasn't very large, or threatening, but Reva gasped nonetheless and fell back onto his tail. Two eyes blinked open and a triangular mouth yawned open. It was a pokemon, but one he had never seen before in the wild. There had been numerous warnings about them in the brochures for this field trip, though.

>...Sandygast, the sand heap pokemon. It is said they they are born from the grudges of the departed. Some Alolan natives use it's mouth's vitality draining abilities as a test of courage, but it's not recommended.< his pokedex helpfully chimed in.

Well that didn't sound good. "D-Dusty! Fury Cutter!"

The sandslash grunted an acknowledgement and leapt forward, bone white claws gleaming. With a mighty swing, it tore a good chunk out of the sandygast, but the wound immediately closed, good as new. A purplish glow surrounded the area as the haunted sandcastle began it's counterattack.

Struggling to peer through the haze, Reva could see that the baby Zella had stopped following the drifloon near the jungle's edge, probably halted by all the commotion happening behind her. Reva didn't notice the sand slithering faster now, whirling like water around his feet.

Then everything went dark.

It couldn't have been more then an instant. The sun burst through the shadows, stinging Reva's eyes anew, but as he rubbed them clean, the most amazing sight met his gaze. Someone had made a little sand castle! All for him! It had towers and a little shell and everything! Excited, Reva took a step forward and found his balance was so bad he fell to his knees. That was ok though, crawling seemed much easier anyway. His diaper made little crunching sounds as he crawled along, unphased at the warmth of the hot sand on his bare legs and hands. Nothing was all that important now, only the sand castle. Reaching his destination, he flopped heavily on his padded bottom and began scooping more sand onto the castle, determined to make it twice, no, three times as big as it was now. Even Dusty, his faithful sandshrew was here! He'd defintely help make it a super duper castle, just like he always did. Never mind the sad look in the pokemon's giant black eyes. What's that in the distance? It's another baby! And she's got a really pretty yellow balloon. That was neat, but it quickly faded from his concern as he began to heap sand onto the now grinning sand castle.

The end.

Ok, not quite the end.

The drifloon sailed weightlessly through the trees, it's stringlike arm tightly encircled around the youngster's wrist. No longer enthralled by the big yellow balloon, it was all it could do to prevent her from dashing off into the undergrowth, chasing a ledyba or some other colorful island inhabitant. The drifloon had a right to be possessive...this child was it's prey.

Finally they were deep enough in the jungle for the drifloon's liking. There was an unnatural silence here, as even the songs of the oricorios and the pikipeks seemed to fade away. They would not be interrupted.

Releasing the child's wrist, the pokemon sailed high up, careful to avoid any of the sharp palm fronds that covered the area like a canopy. Zel, attempting to follow the drifloon's ascent with her eyes, lost her balance and landed with a 'fwomp' on her backside. The purple diaper she wore ensured that this was a painless ordeal, but it was a startling thing nonetheless and tears welled up in her eyes as she begun to snuffle and cry.

This was what the drifloon was waiting for. Despair, even childish, silly despair, was delicious.

Now, many who come into contact with drifloons (or worse, those who tame them as partners) labor under a bit of a misconception regarding their mouths. Many think they don't have them, and that the ghostly balloons are nourished some other, more, spectral way. Others claim they have a tiny little mouth, right below the 'x' on their face. it was suggested somewhere that they used it to...eat clouds, or some such.

This is not the complete truth, nor really anything close to it. The complete truth is that if you see a drifloon's real mouth, it'd be the last thing you ever see.

Something closely resembling a seam split across the driflooon's entire body, slowly parting. Rivlets of drool began to run down it's sides and a long, green tongue lolled out. It slid across many sharp sharp teeth.

The toddler looked up again as saliva dripped down on her head.

And all went black.

The end.

Did I get you that time?

With a start, Zella's eyes shot open. The sun was out, the air was hot, but the shadows stretched across the clearing, cast by the enormous palm leaves overhead. It was beautiful, it was pleasant, a perfect picnic spot...had Zel not looked down and found that she was in fact, naked as the day she was born.

With a shriek, Zel covered herself with her arms and dove into the nearest bush. There was a great calamity of rustling and snapping and shortly the now restored teenager emerged, covered in a makeshift outfit of palm fronds and leaves. Huffing, she surveyed the clearing, eyes demanding answers, when she noticed strips of a yellow cloth like material strewn about the jungle floor. Curious despite herself, she gingerly kicked at it with a toe.

The breeze caught it just right, and it flipped over to reveal a tattered blue 'x'.

In a flash, the memories all came flooding back to her. The drifloon, her...babyfication, Piffpuff...and...Reva!

Even though that scene was still a bit muddled (she saw it through the eyes of a sparkle chasing toddler, after all) she realized that her friend had indeed suffered a similar fate.

But what had saved her?

As a child, Zella never got to play with or around balloons. All it took was one wrong move, a sneeze, anything, and all the balloons in the nearby vincinity went bye bye. As one could imagine, she was not very popular at birthday parties.

This balloon had tried to eat her.

"HAH! That's what you get, ya gas filled plastic windbag! You tried to snack on a hedgehog?! What are you, an airhead? Oh yeah, I guess you were!" she yelled, feeling very proud of her choice of insults. "Leave me naked in the jungle while my best friend gets possessed by a haunted sand castle? Take that!" Zella was about to kick at the popped pokemon when her own words came back and smacked her over the back of the head.

Reva!

Looking back down at the pile, she gasped in relief as she saw buried among the leaves, pieces of drifloon, and shreds of a diaper (let's never talk about that ever, nope, never again, no sirree) the pokeballs she had brought with her to the beach gleaming brightly.

Scooping them up, she got a tight grip on her palm leaf skirt and took off running. Luckily, the ground was soft, thin dirt, and it was plenty easy to follow the wobbly steps of a toddler being dragged along to her doom by a nefarious balloon, only in reverse.

But what was the plan from here?