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posted 4 months ago, edited 4 months ago
Birthday gift for @Acerretone I did last year of his adorable fursona
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Pokéumans: Re-lived Part 1 "From parallel worlds" Chapter 4 "Rescued?"It was fairly early that Saturday. The sun hadn’t risen yet as people started arriving to the station, with the dense trees surrounding the area making it even more dark though the people didn’t mind nor care as long as they were hidden, some of them were residing in said station, whereas others came from their home in the nearby towns and cities. Spirits were relatively high after a visit from the director of the region’s main Pokextinction base, which also operated this station remotely. One of the people that had arrived was a scientist, his job was simply to take over research, particularly in pokextinction’s new top project and “principal” duties at the education centre of the station for the weekend, His life outside didn’t matter, his personal details didn’t matter, the job was what mattered. He arrived on a white ford, far from fancy, and registered inside as he got through the several security locks that were at the entrance typing code after code, inserting fingerprint after keycard, until eventually, it opened. The first thing he did was head into the main office. The nameless scientist quickly made sure to read through the updates and notes that the other nameless scientist who worked throughout the week left behind. He quickly took interest in how all but one of the transformees in progress had already moved onto the taming stage of their re-education process, even one that had been brought in the very same week. Beyond that though everything seemed to be going as normal, and by that he meant stale. It was frankly a little boring having nothing to do, all the transformees were still on their first stages of re-education or they had already completed it and were moved to other stations or even the main regional base as this one didn’t really require much pokéuman workforce, as he walked across the building eventually reaching the doors/pods he did take notice that the masquerain pokéuman was almost finished with the taming process, but the scientist would still have to wait a little more so the classrooms would remain empty for longer, oh well, not like there was much use for a masquerain. While walking through the base floor he ended up coming across the guard of this building, who as usual seemed to have a weird and honestly somewhat cruel enthusiasm for the treatment of the pokéumans, though not like he cared much, the guard could do whatever to the freaks so long as they were still alive to be studied on and re-educated. The scientist briefly checked up on the first and second floor, the first was empty and the second was more focused on research than re-education and since that wasn’t what his focus was, he paid little focus to it, he stroke small conversation with the other staff members there, including what he recognised to be the extraction team but that was that. Returning back to his office for what he’d assume to be the rest of the day at first he simply took notes and reports about the transformees but as there wasn’t much to update on he simply waited, the guard as usual pestered him and barged into his office for “security” when he knew it was really just to annoy him. However what was weird is that he only did it once, after he left he never came back and though at first the scientist was happy and didn’t think much of it, it didn’t take long for him g realise something was off and so, even though his survival instincts told him otherwise he grabbed a laser pistol for protection and exited his office to see what was going on. The building was eerily silent, more than usual, and the scientist felt a massive chill on his pine, keeping him almost paralysed but he continued on trying to look for the guard, he became even more nervous when he couldn’t find him anywhere despite the job of the guard being to literally patrol across the whole area. Even more scared but even more determined, the scientist walked upstairs to the first floor, the floor was mostly just classrooms for the second stage of re-education, teaching the tamed pokéumans all they needed to serve the pokextinction organisation, these classrooms currently were not being occupied though so they were just sitting there empty, locked and collecting dust, the scientist walked from classroom to classroom, and as he was close to not finding anything and thinking he was going insane he suddenly noticed a door who’s lock had been broken. The scientist by this point was completely petrified yet as he very slowly turned the knob open he was met with the unconscious body of the guard. Without looking away from the body and in a state of shock, the scientist moved his hands towards a communicator, trembling and shaking constantly almost dropping it, before slowly moving it towards his mouth and turning it on. Bzzt “Hello, extraction team of station 3? Can you read me? This is scientist #87 I have found the body of the guard unconscious inside one of the re-education classrooms which appears to have been unlocked forcibly, I believe there could be a hidden attacker in the facility.” He had already been agitated as he contacted the other people at the facility, but what they replied with only made his skin crawl worse than he had ever felt. “Are you sure? From what we can tell the guard is currently with us at the very moment.” The scientist dropped his communicator at that, he couldn’t think, he couldn’t rationalise himself, all he could think of at that moment was that he needed to get away and fast, as he ran downstairs his first thoughts were to head to his office, he was about to enter when suddenly a loud alarm sounded throughout that could only mean one thing, one horrible thing. The prt were attacking. A few unassuming cars drove through the highways in the outskirts of the city, in-between the borders of Mexico city and State of Mexico, as it was fairly early in the morning and the sun was only starting to rise traffic was low and most cars drove almost by themselves. One of these cars appeared to be like any other, in it, four friends, all in their twenties were heading to a large meet-up in the state, or at least that’s what they would say if asked by any onlooker. The people in that car were all fairly different from each other, from body type to fashion style, the driver was a fairly bulky dark-skinned man, with a little bit of heft and a little bit of muscle, and a little bit of beard, he also appeared to be the oldest one though not by much, he dressed pretty unassumingly all things considered, a simple pair of sweats and a hoodie, but seemed to be the most relaxed of the bunch as noted by his happy expression. The second one was by contrast the youngest of the group, the lankiest and the lightest skinned, he was blonde, looked to be around 19 and had by far the most energy as he was fidgeting a little on his seat, he wore glasses, shorts and a somewhat ironic Digimon shirt, his expression was slightly nervous and slightly excited. The third person, the only woman amongst the group sitting at the front right next to the driver was also fairly thin although had more of a swimmer build, she had short straight hair and had a slight alternative emo look to her as she wore a leather jacket, boots and jeans, a fully black shirt, several piercings and a red highlight on her hair, her expression was serious and slightly neutral. The fourth person had a similar thin yet athletic built, he wore a jean jacket, and a fairly average attire. He also had the most serious and frustrated expression of the bunch. They all seemed to be a diverse group, but one thing all of them had in common is, although in different positions, they all wore the same exact silver ring in their hands. The man in the jean jacket let out a groan of frustration before he suddenly spoke. “How much longer until we arrive? I’m getting impatient.” The driver replied. “Relax Diego, just because you failed your final exam doesn’t mean this meet up is going to go badly either.” One can’t be blamed for not noticing at first the weird, almost coded way the group spoke. Though it wasn’t the most subtle either. The girl then spoke. “Both of you better not try and pick up any girls while there, especially you Rodri, I know you have your habits.” She said as she turned to the driver Rodri seemed to flinch as she spoke, immediately he replied in a whisper and a tone completely different from how they were talking about before. “Do we really have to make that comparison Vale? It feels really inappropriate given they’re kids and all...” “It’s either that or getting found out y’know? I’m not the most comfortable with it either for obvious reasons.” Vale whispered in response. “Fine...” Rodri exhaled defeated before his mood slowly recovered. The lanky one decided then to speak up. “We probably should be careful, I heard the other class’ teacher is also going there.” Diego then exclaimed in shock “What?! Why didn’t you tell us until now Jaime?!?!” Jaime replied. “It was a rumour, it could always be wrong, they could’ve already left as well.” Diego sighed. “You better be wrong.” The car drove across the main road in-between wilderness, hills and the occasional buildings, before switching to smaller roads and eventually, as the four friends looked towards each other, nodded, and the girl fiddled with her ring, the car changed direction entirely from existing paths right into the forest. The car continued driving through the woods until deep enough to not be seen, the occupants once again looked at each other and nodded, before all of them exited the car, and then, one by one they all took their rings off, flashing a bright light that revealed four different Pokémon. Rodri became a Chesnaught, Vale became a Zoroark, Diego became a Gallade, and Jaime became a Rotom. They all looked at each other and the chesnaught spoke. “Ok everyone, you remember the plan right? We’re not far off from the pke station it’ll only take a bit of walking.” The rotom raised his arm-like limb. “Yes Jaime?” “I still don’t understand why you’re only here as backup and you can’t be brought in alongside Diego, you’re the strongest of all of us.” “Because.” Rodri replied. “This station’s main focus is the brainwashing and indoctrination process of captured transformers, they don’t wanna risk a possible breach by bringing pokéuman workers so they mostly use humans, having there suddenly be two pokéuman workers would arouse a lot of suspicion, and I may be the strongest but I’m the least qualified to sneak around, besides I’m the one that came up with the plan so, no biggie.” The rotom, Jaime, seemed to nod at that although it was clear he wasn’t 100% on board, but he trusted the chesnaught regardless. The group of pokémon walked through the forest for a good while, eventually spotting the clearing where the station was located, they hid behind the dense foliage watching around for the building they were looking for until... “Aha! There it is.” Rodri said pointing to the entrance of the largest building. As soon as he did the rotom quickly zipped around, the zoroark following closely behind, and entered into the digital security system of the entrance, it took a while for anything notable to happen but eventually the door opened and the zoroark headed inside, motioning for the gallade to follow, the gallade, right before entering put on grey contacts on his eyes, making him look like the brainwashed pokémon. It didn’t take long for the duo to find the guard, they took notice him immediately as he had just exited the scientist’s office. “Huh? Intruders!!! G-gah!!” Before he could alert anyone about the intruders he was swiftly and silently knocked out by the duo of agile pokémon, the Zoroark quickly used her illusion abilities to take the form of the unconscious guard and carried him around her arms, knowing that she had to hide him somewhere. “Urghh... Why are they always heavier than they seem?.” She muttered to herself. “Alright... If this is a brainwashing facility there’s most likely a bunch of rooms for the different stages, the brainwashing pods are too risky for us hmm... What else, what else.” The gallade spoke quietly. “There’s probably plenty of classrooms in here as well, usually they’re in the first floor and they’re mostly left unbothered without the threat of us falling to the brainwashing, we should see if any of them are empty.” “Got it.” Vale replied as she quickly climbed up the stairs with the gallade following, She prepared herself to cautiously sneak around and avoid being detected until she realised that all the classrooms were empty. “Weird... There’s nothing here.” Said the zoroark. “I suppose the pokémon they have are all only on their early brainwashing stage, still we should probably remain cautious as the extinctionists could walk down at any moment.” The disguised zoroark simply nodded as she quickly ran across the halls, eventually choosing a classroom located close to a corner where after a while of figuring out how to break the lock and having to break her illusion temporarily she eventually opened the door and left the unconscious body of the guard in. She quickly retook the form of the guard, eventually heading back to the stairs to get to the second floor, the one that had what they came here for. “Are you sure you won’t have any trouble making an illusion of the guard’s words? You only heard him speak like, two words.” Diego asked in a concerned whisper. “I made sure to train my best of my illusionary capabilities, don’t worry.” The zoroark responded using the guard’s voice. Neither of them spoke as they both arrived at the top floor, the gallade wearing a completely emotionless expression on him and the disguised zoroark trying her best to not draw attention to herself. They came across several scientist that paid them not mind, although they often seemed to give them odd looks, the group of infiltrators assumed it was due to the brainwashed pokemon following, they couldn’t have imagined that it was because the guard they impersonated wasn’t exactly known for being reserved. It took a good while as they had to do their best to avoid detection and they often hid from view for several minutes but they arrived in front of the door of the main laboratory, however before they could enter a scientist walked in front of them to stop them. “Hey what’s the big deal?” the “guard” asked “You know full well you’re not supposed to enter here.” The scientist responded. “But it’s my job to patrol across every part of this building!” “We don’t care, we’re not giving you the luxury of getting yourself involved with pokextinction’s top project. And where did you get that pokémon?” “He was transferred here to assist on the very same research, I was tasked to bringing it to you.” The scientist raised a cold eyebrow. “Shouldn’t that be the bottom floor scientist’s job?” “Excuse me?” the zoroark replied, having to use her illusions to disguise her surprise, suddenly before anyone else could say anything they were both interrupted by the scientist’s communicator going off. Bzzt “Hello, extraction team of station 3? Can you read me? This is scientist #87 I have found the body of the guard unconscious inside one of the re-education classrooms which appears to have been unlocked forcibly, I believe there could be a hidden attacker in the facility.” The zoroark and gallade internally screamed “Oh shit!” as they heard that “Are you sure? From what we can tell the guard is currently with us at the very moment.” The scientist replied on his end of the communicator as he glared at the “guard” in front of him. No words were needed as the zoroark dropped the illusion and the gallade removed his contacts and both charged at the scientist... Rodri had waited a while, he was admittedly a little bored but for the sake of his teammates he hoped they wouldn’t need his help, he knew missions like this were never going to be quick, especially one of such importance, it helped that being around trees and nature was in his element as a grass type. People always asked him why he seemed to always be so calm and happy most of the time despite his position, mostly the students at the base who looked up to him, truthfully he didn’t really think he was calm, but for the most part he simply wanted to be a good pokéuman and help others who needed it, if anyone needed someone to be there for him he would be that someone, he always liked to see a bit of himself on people. His daydreaming got suddenly interrupted by an alert from his communicator. “Rodri!! Diego and I have managed to gain access to the lab holding the files and particles we needed, but we’ve been discovered, there was a scientist working independently from the others we were not aware of, we request back up IMMEDIATELY, the whole station has been alerted already, get Jaime as well so that he isn’t discovered, over and out.” Came from the communicator Rodri smirked and ran as fast as he could to the entrance, he came across a few pokextinctionists on the way but he was strong enough to deal with them quickly, he eventually made it to the entrance and started whispering to the electronic lock. “Hey, Jaime, there’s been a change of plans so it’s best for you to get the hell out of here, I’ll barge in myself.” With that the chesnaught left the entrance, walked over to a wall of the building and crashed inside with a combination of rollout and spiky shield, breaking the wall inside. “Phew, a huevo.” He muttered to himself (I’m not translating that) as he entered and briefly collected himself before he started running through the hallways of the base floor. The pokéuman had ran through the halls of the extinctioist facility, often switching from a bipedal and quadrupedal stance depending on the space he was in. He had come across a few pokextinctionists who tried to fight him once the alarm turned on and they noticed him but even with their mighty tech they were no match for the raw strength of a Chesnaught. “We’ve managed to get a hold of the particles, and despite them being alerted and us originally believing the director was in the facility they haven’t made their presence known to us so it’s probably a good time for a retreat, we’ve got all the info we needed, over.” Came from the chesnaught’s hidden communicator. *“Understood, I’ll meet up soon but I’ll scout for any leftover info just in case, there’s only one hallway left and the bottom floor seems to be devoid of people.” Just as the Chesnaught said that, he was suddenly ambushed by a trembling scientist who tried to threaten him with a gun but was quickly put unconscious with a vine whip attack. “Be careful Rodri, don’t try to do anything you’re not supposed to.” Came from his communicator. “Don’t worry, I’ve got everything under control. Over and out.” With that the Chesnaught continued, he quickly realised the hallway he entered was none other than Pokextinction’s infamous education chambers, or rather, brainwashing chambers, as he looked throughout the windows of the many rooms he found identical sights in all of them. Several different pokémon, some blissfully smiling, some had an emotionless look, but all of them were in a still, pacified position as they were drenched in the purple light keeping them controlled and turning their eyes into a cold empty grey. “I can never get used to this no matter how many times I see it.” Rodri mumbled to himself, he was about to leave as he came across one final room on a corner where he suddenly stopped as he realised there was something different about the Pokémon inside. ”No way.” Inside the last room was a low-key toxtricity, he was in the same pacified position as everyone else and at first it didn’t seem like there was anything different from him over anyone else, but the chesnaught could see one vital difference he had over the other brainwashed pokémon. His eyes weren’t grey. Rodri could not believe it, he blinked in disbelief before eventually realising that he didn’t have enough time to be confused. He immediately broke the door open and, with his eyes closed, broke the purple light that was brainwashing the toxtricity, the toxtricity fell unconscious, clearly unable to handle a sudden stop to the attack on his mind, he looked to be somewhere around ten years younger than him, as usual. Rodri carried the toxtricity on his shoulder, careful not to impale him with his spikes, before grabbing his communicator and directing it at everyone. “Hey so... Slight change of plans hehe, don’t worry I’ll catch up soon.” “Rodri you did not.” “What have we kept telling you!!!” “Are you crazy?” “It’ll make sense once I get there, ok? Out.” Rodri closed his communicator as he looked over at the unconscious toxtricity he carried. “Well, whoever you are, you were very lucky right now, and something tells me there could be something special about you, I just know it.” ... “L... x...” “L.... X!” I stirred awake for a moment, but not enough to be conscious, I could make out a few unfamiliar voices. “Don’t do that ever again!!” “Just let me drive and take care of the toxtricity!!!!” “You realise how dangerous what you did...” Then it faded into the background .... ... A vision “L...x, c... you h.... me?” “You... m... ...cial th... y.. ..ow!” Huh? Suddenly everything got really bright... I woke up groggily in a completely unrecognisable yet familiar environment, however I felt extremely tired and drained, it took me a while to even open my eyes, then it took me a longer while to actually be able to move my body, I was probably in bed for an hour, I tried to remember what had last happened to me let’s see, I was captured by pokextinction, My transformation had almost finished, everyone else... Oh, right... An alarm sounded, a scientist grabbed me and sent me too a weird room and then everything just got blurry, a little painfully so, Like TV static. In-between everything, I heard bits and pieces of conversations surrounding me. “He’s awake!...” “Be careful in case he’s still conditioned...” “Wow, He must be tired...” Eventually I was able to fully sit up and look towards my surroundings, once again I woke up somewhere I didn’t know, but it was a much less hostile environment than the cages, I wouldn’t call it friendly though, it was still fairly monotone, only a lot lighter than the dull cold grey of pokextinction, I could also see a little bit of green and blue, but more than anything I noticed how I was in a bed, covered by a singular sheet that reminded me a lot of the ones in hospitals, looking around then the whole room appeared to be a hospital, a tiny desk surrounded me beside the bed, I could see a tiny tv in front of me beside an entrance into what I was assumed to be the bathroom, and curtains, lots and lots of curtains. but, where was I? “Finally able to stand up?” Came from a voice that just entered the room, as I looked over in its direction, I found myself with a fully formed togekiss wearing a nurse hat who looked to be an adult though I have zero idea how I was able to tell that. Despite all the craziness of last week I still couldn’t help but be shocked at the sight, but I knew there were more important stuff and whether I liked it or not I was getting used to this mess, and I would’ve rather ask questions than sit there with my mouth open. “W-where am I? Who are you? What’s going on?” Involuntarily left my mouth. “Easy there kid, you do not have the energy to make such questions so fast, everything will be answered eventually but for now keep yourself calm.” The togekiss replied with a tone of voice that made it clear she was the kind of nurse that was just plain done with everyone’s shit and was going to be a nightmare to be with, I groaned internally both at that realization and at her response, being familiar with this kind of nurse. “You’ll get your questions answered, provided your following check up goes well, and I don’t have the time to answer them so you’ll have to wait for your “rescuer” to get here.” The nurse continued as she then walked over to the door and opened it. “You can finally come in.” “Huh?” Suddenly, almost bursting from the entrance a chesnaught appeared, running quickly at my direction as he stared in amazement. “You’re awake! Are you ok? What’s your name? I’m Rodrigo Palagot, but you can just call me Rodri.” He said with a smile. The togekiss nurse quickly pulled the chesnaught away from me. “The same as it is for him goes to you, leave him alone until we know he’s completely okay.” “I’m sure he’s fine, his transformation still hadn’t finished when he was in the pod.” The chesnaught replied nonchalantly, it was a bit weird how casual he seemed to be, he felt almost naive in a way. “No but it was close to finishing and with pokextinction you never know.” I jumped a little at the mention of pokextinction, though I wasn’t exactly able to follow what they were talking about, it seemed like the chesnaught noticed. “Don’t worry kid, I’ll tell you what you need to know, you see, you are a pokéuman, a hybrid between pokémon and human, you were captured by pokextinction, an organisation that kidnaps pokéumans and-“ I interrupted. “I-i already know the basic stuff... If I’m right at least.” My voice trailed off into a whisper as the sentence went along due to slight nerves. The nurse nodded and then looked over at the chesnaught. “Rodri, you know full well you can’t tell him anything until we’re sure he’s safe and checked up.” “Alright fine.” He eventually said, accepting defeat. The nurse then turned over to me. “Now it does seem like your back spikes have finally grown meaning that your transformation has finalised and thus you can go have your check-up.” I quickly moved my hands to my back to check and even though I couldn’t see I could feel my back spikes and, more importantly, I could truly feel that I was now 100% low key form toxtricity. “It was weird how they decided to send you to the brainwashing chambers with your transformation unfinished, but I guess they were getting desperate given how the classrooms were empty.” Rodri mentioned “So I was right about the brainwashing...” I muttered out loud to myself. “This kid already knows a lot more than most, I do think it’s best that we start his check-up as soon as possible.” The chesnaught continued. “Fine.” The nurse replied bluntly as she motioned for me to get up and follow the chesnaught, we exited the room and walked through a few hallways and I immediately took notice of my surroundings. The area was still fairly sterile, but it was a lot less hostile than the pokextinction building, while that was like a horror movie, this was more closer to a subway or a school or a military base, the last comparison seemed the most appropriate as I walked around and could see green and blue tones all over the walls, even a few murals that definitely reminded me of the military bases my dad worked at, sometimes I would see framed pictures of seemingly important people, only they weren’t people but pokémon, fairly strong pokemon, I would as well occasionally bump into other still strong looking Pokémon walking around. A venusaur, a tyranitar, A talonflame, etc. Seriously, I’m already not surprised by the existence of real life pokémon but why and how?? The pokémon I bumped into all seemed to be fairly busy and a bit reserved when they looked at me, but they were totally open when they talked to Rodri, who seemed to be fairly respected here. I was starting to wonder where the chesnaught was leading me into until finally we arrived at a small office door. The chesnaught knocked. “Hey, Luis, the patient’s here.” “Come in.” Came from inside as the door opened, when we walked in I quickly saw a fairly typical hospital office, fairly similar to the ones I’m used to going at the military hospitals my family takes me. Including a desk with two chairs, a bunch of equipment at the back and a hospital bed in the front of the desk, but what took my attention the most was the labcoat wearing hypno that was on the desk.” “Good afternoon, I am Doctor Luis Rosales, pokéuman neurologist and specialist in mind alteration. I’ve been made aware of your situation and I will be in charge of your mental check-ups for lingering brainwashing, I would like to elaborate more but unfortunately for security concerns I am unable to until we conclude the first check up.” I was a bit confused though I was kinda making a little sense of it given my theory but I decided against saying anything anyway. The chesnaught then spoke. “It seems from the time he was in pokextinction he already knows a few things here and there so I’m sure he understands.” I nodded although it was more a half truth than anything. “Very well, now then Rodri, you said you found him in pke’s brainwashing chambers on your mission from yesterday with his eyes still having his natural colour and his transformation unfinished right?” The pokémon in a labcoat asked. I thought to myself. “Uh huh, I noticed quickly that his eyes weren’t gray despite being in the chamber, then as I got him out I realised he still had patches of skin where he now has his spikes.” Rodri replied. “I see.” The Hypno took a few notes. “Then I shall begin, and do not worry, none of the check-ups will hurt.” With that the hypno closed his eyes and pointed his pendulum at me, at first I thought he would swing it but instead it stood still as a pinkish purple aura glew from it, a few minutes passed and it suddenly stopped and the doctor reopened his eyes. “Very unusual, I couldn’t feel a single trace of the brainwashing. Hmm. Young toxtricity, you don’t mind if ask you a few questions?” I nodded. “Very well, what is the last thing you remember dreaming about?” Um... I quickly had to think as I wasn’t good at remembering my dreams, I first came to the weird voice I heard before I woke up on the hospital bed but I wasn’t sure if that counts as a full dream so I answered with the last dream I had with my transformation.” “I... Dreamt, a day before I started transforming, that I was a toxtricity in the middle of a war I believe...” The hypno seemed a little bit surprised at that “Interesting... Very interesting...” “What are the questions for?” “I’ll explain once we’re done, What was the last thing you remember before waking up here?” “Umm... I was trapped in a cage by pokextinction... I noticed the guard that usually checks up on hadn’t appeared for a while, then suddenly a scientist came over, dragged me from my cage outside of the room and i realised alarms were blaring all over, the scientist then dragged me to a weird room and then I...” I tried recalling what was after but once again I had that weird feeling of static from before. “I... I don’t remember, it’s fuzzy.” The hypno’s tone got serious after my reply. “Fuzzy how, elaborate.” “I-i dunno, it’s a bit like static? I guess? It kinda makes my head hurt a little. The doctor cocked his eyebrow hearing that. “Really? That’s weird, you didn’t feel a soothing sensation?” It was my turn to be confused. “...No? Far from it honestly.” “Amazing...” I could hear both the hypno and the chesnaught mutter as the hypno quickly began writing more notes again. “Do you remember seeing a purple light?” “No.” They hypno suddenly turned to the chesnaught. “Do you remember seeing a purple light on his pod?” “I’m pretty sure I watched it filtered through the window, when i broke in I closed my eyes and immediately broke the lightbulb regardless of if I was right or not.” “Hmm...” the hypno was lost in thought. “Can I... Ask now?” “Ah, forgive me, of course, I will first answer you anything related to this session and Rodri here will later take care of answering any general questions, your first check up went extraordinarily well, if there’s any brainwashing lingering on you, which seems very unlikely so far, it would be rooted so deep in your subconscious that the base sees you currently as under your own will, and thus, considered safe, we will still have to do a few more advanced tests in the following days but if they go as well as this one, you’ll be good to go very soon.” With that explanation I was slowly starting to make a little bit more sense of what was going on, and most of my questions were general but I still had a few things to question about. “How exactly does this brainwashing work?” The hypno thought for a little bit before replying. “Well there are many different types, the most standard, which seemed to be the one you were experiencing is the full brainwashing that they do to almost all the pokéumans they capture and most humans subconsciously, this is caused by exposure to a purple light and the most notable symptoms are the subject losing total and complete emotion and eyes turning a grey colour if they have them, with an almost zombie-like devotion for pokextinction. There is also a version of this brainwashing that is much more subtle but much more fragile, it keeps your eyes and normal colour and doesn’t make you a completely mindless drone, but it does manipulate your emotions, particularly focusing on your aggression to align you with pokextinction’s ideals, this first check-up was to detect these two kinds of brainwashing as they tend to be the most common, and as you can tell, you seem to be clear of both of them.” I nodded, somewhat following the hypno’s explanation. The hypno however, seemed to take note of my lingering confusion and spoke after taking a deep breath. “Alas, it is clear to me that you still need to understand the full picture to fully grasp my explanation, Rodri I’ll let you do the honours, I’ll see you at my office tomorrow at this exact hour Mr.... Oh, right, what was your name? We don’t need your full name yet, just however people refer to you.” I gulped before answering, it almost seemed like the hypno had read my mind as I usually answer my full name when asked, although now that I think about it it’s entirely plausible. “Lex.” We arrived back at the hospital room, the nurse wasn’t there at the moment but I knew well she would come back from time to time, it’s not like I had never been at a hospital before, but the circumstances were definitely far, FAR, from the ordinary. Rodri walked fairly leisurely as we arrived. “This is going to be where you’ll stay for the next few days until we conclude your check ups, after that you’ll be able to descend to the bottom floors alongside everyone else, I was honestly surprised at how well the first check-up went for you, if that rate continues which I very much hope it does you’ll be out of here maybe next Tuesday!!” He explained in a cheerful tone. Despite his best efforts it was impossible for me to follow along with anything he said, I clearly did not have context for anything of what he was going on about, bottom floor? Everyone else? What did he even meant by that? Where even were we? I felt sunlight in the doctor’s office but there was something odd about it. And despite all of these questions running through my head I didn’t focus on any of them, I instead focused on one I had since I was in the middle of my transformation that was sitting on the back of my mind for days. And I could finally ask it. “Are my parents brainwashed, Rodri?” I looked over at the chesnaught, and I could tell he had an expression of surprise, as if he expected any of the questions I had circulating through my head except for the one I ended up asking, he took a few seconds to compose himself before a lot less confidently replying: “W-well you see... Ok, listen, I know you’re tired of this and just want answers but there’s one very important thing I must tell you before I can answer any of your questions.” I think he could see how disappointed I was at hearing that, he continued. “Look, it’s a long story, literally, I have to tell you a whole story to get the general concept of what you’re dealing with, every transformee hears this story when they arrive here, although, speaking of, you seemed to know a little bit of us from polextinction.” His normal, happy and somewhat carefree expression shifted to a very stern stare that just had the slightest thing of worry. “Did they tell you the story of pokéumans?” I was taken back by his sudden and drastic shift in demeanour. “N-no, another transformee told me we were pokeumans and we were kidnapped by polextinction and that was pretty much it, he said he heard it from someone who had a failed rescue attempt.” I answered with nervousness. “We... Er, I still have not a single idea as to why any of this is going on.” The chesnaught’s demeanour seemed to brighten up with relief at that Phew “alright, here goes, I’m about to tell you, the story of how us pokéumans came to be, like I said, it’s very long, and it comes in three parts, all of it is true no matter how crazy it may seem, believe me, I thought it was insane too, you might want to sit down for this.” I nodded along, sat down on the bed and awaited him to start telling this story... Yet he didn’t. “Just... Just give me a minute, I’m trying to make sure I don’t miss any details.” “Oh, fair enough.” I replied, Rodri seemed to focus for a bit before breathing in and out and beginning: “It was a long time ago, after the age of the dinosaurs but before the age of the humans, creatures known as pokémon came to be, no one is certain as to how beyond what’s known of the legendary pokémon, but they came to be and they were the most intelligent species on the planet at that point.” I opened my mouth in surprise before he continued. “These pokémon, with their diverse and supernatural abilities to control the elements adapted to any and all environments and were smart enough to build a civilization that advanced a lot faster than ours, this, is called the lost era as it has been completely erased from history. These times were mostly marked by happiness, as pokémon fighting was part of their nature and not something used for conflict, so wars were uncommon. Eventually, after a few centuries humanity began to evolve from the Neanderthals. The original pokémon were very cautious about them, some saw them as dangerous, others were simply curious, the natural reaction to anything unknown. The pokémon realised though that these humans were not as advanced as them, and so they decided to help them, to some degree, they created an almost magical kind of mineral that could non-permanently change their form into a human’s, under these guises the pokémon well... They mixed with the humans, starting families and sharing their knowledge so they could develop together. And things went well at first! However, as time went on, the humans, who grew smarter thanks to the pokemon ended up becoming more... Devious, they started subjugating the original Pokémon, forcing them to obey the humans, getting treated as inferior, in response pokémon started rebelling, and soon enough it was an all out war. Families were torn apart, everyone was hurt or killed from either side, eventually, after many, many years the pokémon couldn’t take it anymore, so they called upon the legendaries and decided to leave the humans alone to their own devices, erasing all trace of their existence. How, you may ask? Well, it was a great effort, the ground types dug up fossils and bones and anything that could be buried, any single record of their existance of any kind was taken away, utilizing uxie, beheeyem and any pokémon with power over the mind they created a massive memory wipe to all humans, making sure they remembered nothing, and regressing them back to a previous stage, essentially undoing all their influence as far as it was possible for them. Every single legendary, including some we don’t even know about yet combined their powers to open a magic wormhole into a new dimension, and overtime, every single pokémon crossed to the other side. They did however agree to keep a legendary in this dimension to keep an eye on the humans, who would eventually evolve all on their own, this duty ended up falling to the holder of the dna of all pokémon, Mew. This does not explain why we exist yet however, but it is what you must understand first before anything else, now we move onto part two of this story. For millions of years mew wandered the earth hidden amongst the humans, secretly watching them grow and develop as we normally did, however, despite her best efforts, one can only stay hidden so much for so long, and in the year 1910 her total secrecy came to an end. You see there was this scientist, who was a genius and years ahead of his time period, yet was forced because of it to work almost entirely in secret, he was stationed on south america on an expedition through the Guyanan jungle, when he suddenly found a little, unusual, pink hair, that seemed to belong to no species known yet, and possessed unusual properties as far as they could investigate, this scientist quickly took this mysterious single hair on an island where he and a team of scientists worked, you see this scientist had been researching cloning and was actually close to a big break, a machine that could create a full clone from the tiniest piece of DNA and he decided to use this hair from a mysterious specimen as a test subject, trying to recreate whatever creature it belonged to. Unfortunately, something went wrong with the machine, and there was a nuclear reaction that shook the whole world, kinda like Chernobyl, but even more intense, this one however had unusual effects on the populace, you see, despite erasing themselves completely from history some of the pokémon’s influence simply couldn’t be undone, with the humans still carrying a gene leftover from their pokémon ancestors, this gene had laid dormant and undetected up until now, but when the invisible reaction circled through the earth it awoke, and many humans from every continent, of every background started to transform into pokémon. Creating what we know as pokéumans Back to the scientist, as his island was the closest to the genetic shockwave, it ended up evaporating in the explosion from the world, alongside the workers in it, the scientist, who was the closest to the reaction actually survived, but, his gene was altered, not turning into an ordinary pokémon but into a Mewtwo, a completely new being coming from the mutations of mew and the scientist’s own DNA, this change left him insane as he was bombarded with all the knowledge that was kept away from the humans about the lost era at once, he gained so much power and intelligence and suddenly he wanted nothing more than to take over the world. Taking the name of Mr. X. Mr. X quickly took notice of all the other humans changing into pokémon, and his advanced brain hell bent on conquest very quickly created a plan, using the human’s fear of the unknown and lesser knowledge he wandered across the earth recruiting horrified humans and manipulating them, making them think he wanted to cure or even get rid of these strange new creatures, and thus pokextinction was formed, eventually, by his own psychic abilities and manipulating a few pokéumans as well he ended up turning practically the entire human race into sleeper agents, ready to capture any pokéuman at the sight of their transformation, and erasing everyone’s memory of the shockwave and of his previous human life as well to make sure he was never challenged. Mew would obviously take notice of what was going on and she quickly developed a counterplan to fight Mr. X, rounding up all the transforming pokéumans, most of whom were children on their early teens as it appeared that the gene manifested the strongest during puberty, rescuing a few of the pokéumans Mr. X kidnapped and began the pokéuman organisation headquartered in Japan, an organisation who’s goals are to help rescue new pokéumans and give them a new home after the previous one had been taken away from them, develop their natural abilities and, if possible, train them to combat the pokextinction threat, it varies from base to base, but here we try to give them as much of a choice as possible. Mew also decided to try and let the world be aware of us in a subtle way, eventually taking a human alias and developing what you now know as the pokémon games and eventually the pokémon franchise, you probably recognise who I’m talking about, this also helped future transformees get a glimpse of their hidden true self and get them ready for what they will become with information about their species, notice how huge pokémon got after its release? It’s because a lot of people saw some of themselves subconsciously on the many creatures they discovered on their videogame consoles, usually a sign of being a pokéuman is being a devoted fan of pokémon and feeling an almost personal connection with a specific pokémon, that being the one they transform into. This facilitates us and pokextinction to locate transformees so they can attempt to kidnap them and we can attempt to rescue them. Anyway, all of this became the status quo to this day, a war has been fought in secret hidden from all of humanity between pokéumans and pokextinction, pokéumans hide in bases usually underground across every corner of the world, right know you are in the top floor of one of them, the Base Pokeumana Desierto de los leones (In english: Desert of the lions pokéumans base), located in the national park of the same name here in Mexico city. Pokextinction meanwhile prefers to have several facilities organised by a local branch that rivals a nearby pokéuman base, the branch that kidnapped you was the Base Lider de Pokextinción CDMX (In english: Mexico city Pokextinction Leader base) You were specifically brought in and rescued from their main re-education facility.” Rodri said the last part with air quotes. “The only kind of agreement both organisations have is to keep this war a secret from the rest of humanity, neither side affiliated at least directly with any organisation of the human world, we’re not working with the government and pke, aka pokextinction aren’t working with the cartel for example. And to ensure this secrecy given the amount of people who normally would suddenly go missing from the world and be taken from their families to never be seen again, pokextinction prepares exact clones of every single person possible, using the DNA they take of the transformees they kidnap and we pokéumans are forced to let them do their thing, as we are unable to reveal ourselves to the world, it would be too dangerous, this means that above there’s a clone of you and a clone of me who are continuing our lives from where we left off.” ((So that’s what happened to my family...)) I thought to myself. “But we’re still not done yet! Time for the third and final part of this story, 100 years after the beginning of the war, and more specifically 12 years ago something insane happened. Mr. X went missing, eventually declared dead. The full details of what happened are unknown, even after all this time, there’s been many rumours of what ended up going on, most say that he was defeated by an unknown pokémon of equal power to Mr. X, some say from new york, there were even reports of portals allegedly going to the pokémon dimension opening in several bases, particularly in the United States.” ((Because of course there were there)) I thought to myself. “No one really knows what truly went on, Mew and the pokéuman who is said to have defeated Mr. X’s whereabouts are unknown, the pokéuman headquarters and the new York base suspected to be involved became increasingly secretive and private, no one being able to communicate with them, and thus all we have is incomplete rumours. But one thing is for sure and that is Mr. X’s reign was over. The war, however, isn’t. It has been going on for too long at this point and Mr. X’s impact was simply too great to be undone so we just... Kept fighting. Pke, after the fall of their leader, ended up fragmented into disorganised pieces, every base by themselves, some continued the rivalries they had earned with the local pku bases, some tried to continue the original mission, which as human values changed slowly shifted from eradicating us to taming us to keep humanity safe, while some strayed from it drastically, they even say there have been pokéuman and pokextinction bases that worked together and made truces since then. Although evidently you can tell the base that kidnapped you wasn’t one of them.And now you know the story of pokéumans Lex, you are one of us.” Rodri took a deep breath after telling the whole story. “I will leave you with a few minutes to process all of this information as I know from experience that you’re going to need it, once you’re done, I will let you ask any questions you want and I’ll try my best to answer them for you, I hope most of the basic ones were covered in this backstory.” I could not believe a word of what I had just heard, but then again nothing was surprising anymore, I had been slowly introduced in the past week to all of this universe and this story pretty much was the missing piece that I needed for everything to click and make sense, I guess it’s easier to process this way rather than find everything out all at once, and I was perfectly content to take this story as fact, don’t get me wrong there were holes and a few questions left to answer, but nothing too different to what’s normal when talking about history in such a condensed way, especially with such a large time frame. In the end I was able to collect my thoughts and I was feeling bittersweet, I understood this was a complicated situation but then again from his explanation it seemed like it was this way for everyone else, and I had proof of it with Alan and Lázaro and Yulian... If only they could’ve made it here. I only had one question to ask now. “Rodri?” “Mhm?” “I’ll never see them again, ever, will I?” I didn’t have to specify who I meant by them for Rodri to nod in response. “I’m sorry.” I was a devastated and didn’t protest when he came to hug me, it was a horrible feeling, especially knowing I had basically been replaced with a clone and they would never realise that I had lost them forever, but frankly I already accepted this a while ago in worse circumstances. I tried to change topic and signal a little bit to the chesnaught to stop the hug. “So um... This base, you said we were underground?” “Oh! Yeah, you’re right now in the first floor of the desert of the lions pokéuman base, hidden deep underneath the woods, this is the largest and oldest base in all of Mexico, we take pokéumans from all over the valley of Mexico and nearby.” He suddenly exclaimed, bursting with energy. “If you’re wondering how we manage to live underground like this, well, us pokéumans are good at coming up with new inventions and ingenious solutions to our problems, we’ve already figured out a completely healthy alternative to sunlight, which is what you felt in Luis’ office and it helps me a lot as a grass type!” Rodri was quiet for a bit, seemingly realised he had gone a bit off topic from where he started before continuing. “Usually, you’d be in a civil hospital the floor below but due to the circumstances of your rescue we had to keep you on the top floor.” “The top floor?” I asked. “Yup, this floor is dedicated exclusively to the PRTs affairs. The remaining floors are for recreation, education, and housing.” “PRT... Wait, that’s another thing I heard from when I was at the pke base!” Rodri smiled in surprise. “From your transformee friend like you said, I assume.” “I... yeah, he didn’t know what exactly it meant.” Rodri chuckled. “Don’t worry, I was going to explain to you anyway.” “The PRT are essentially a global military for pokéumans, when we talk about the pokéuman organisation as a whole we usually refer to the PRT.” He explained. “The name stands for Pokéuman Rescue Troop. (In spanish: tropa de rescate pokeumana.)” “It’s essentially the force that takes care of rescuing pokéumans from pokextinction and combating them and is the main line of defence of pokéuman bases, not every pokéuman has to join but most choose to do so, and I was one of them, I am actually chief commander of this base myself, pretty much the highest rank below the headmaster.” He said very casually, as if he had no idea he sounded like he was bragging. “Um... I think I’ll pass on joining that.” I said, not fond of the idea of joining the pokémon equivalent of the military Rodri simply chuckled and said it was alright, from then on the rest of the day passed, Rodri exited the room shortly after this conversation ended, as because of his important position he was often busy taking care of his job and overseeing the PRT, but often came back at brief intervals to check on me and continue explaining basic things about pokéuman society and just in general have a chat, though sometimes a random PRT member would barge in and interrupt him because he was needed somewhere, but he always made sure to come back and finish, he didn’t seem to struggle keeping up with either responsibility which was admirable. Rodri explained to me stuff like what the headmaster was: essentially the leaders of every pokéuman base and a weird hybrid between heads of state/government and school headmasters, he also explained to me that if everything went well with my check-ups, I would meet him soon to officially get registered as a resident there, he unusually didn’t want to elaborate when I asked him about who this base’s headmaster was, however. The nurse also came to the room on occasions, usually when Rodri wasn’t there but not every time so I had a few moments alone, her visits were a lot less remarkable, she really just brought me trays of food, mostly human food that she said would help me adjust to the great changes in my biology, but with every tray she brought a glass of water that I couldn’t recognise the flavour of, and whenever I asked she would just say “Try it.” She definitely reminded me of my grandma, who was also a military nurse funnily enough. I was apprehensive at first but eventually after I tried it, I found that it was delicious! It was a very hard to describe flavour, strong, potent but good weirdly enough, she still refused to tell me what it was though. Rodri kept conversing with me whenever he could, telling a few personal details like age, where we came from, etc. And other facts about each other like how he was an honorary elite PRT member, explaining what that meant, or giving me the details of the mission where he rescued me from pokextinction, apparently, they were looking to take info from pke that could be related to the dynamax phenomenon from the sword and shield games, I could’ve asked for more details but I didn’t really feel the need to. He also told me that mega evolution is a thing, not that it meant anything for either of us. At some point, clearly a lot later in the day we both ended up talking about the beginning of our transformations and how we were first kidnapped, apparently Rodri transformed the day after the X and Y games released and as soon as he evolved his chespin into quilladin, he grew a quilladin’s nose. “Yeah... Not the most flattering first sign, but it was essentially that or a sudden rapid gain of weight.” he explained, rubbing the back of his head a little in embarrassment. His rescue attempt seemed to do a lot better than mine, though, he even claimed to hold his own against pke, again, it didn’t seem to occur to him that it sounded like he was bragging, he said it so innocently. Once he finished telling his story I could see him starting to tear up thinking of his human life. He made no effort to hold it in and I tried my best to console him, I approached my hand slowly but he moved it away. “No, don’t worry, this is only natural.” He said as he cheered up a little. He then surprised me with what he followed with. “Hey Lex? Do me a favour.” “H-huh?” “Don’t try to hide your feelings, I’m sure you most likely miss them too, and it hurts, a lot, because being a pokéuman is losing everything to never have a chance of getting it back, even the smallest thing you took for granted, it’s not just losing your families and home, it’s being unable to go to that restaurant you liked, or to the neighbourhood you grew up in, or have any of the experiences of life you had so commonly before, taking a walk on the streets, going to big events, any belonging you had no matter how important to you is gone, you. Lose. Everything. You are cut off from everything and no one, trust me, not a single person is able to handle that much loss. Everyone here experiences the same thing and you wanna know what we do with that knowledge? We empathise with each other, and we work together to ensure we all get the best we can in this shitty situation we are forced to live in. So believe me when I say you have no reason to try and pretend this hasn’t affected you, or that it’s not continuing to affect you, I don’t even know if it’s possible to get over something like this, all we can do then is stick together now more than ever, that’s what being a pokéuman is.” Rodri said. His breath was shaky and emotional but he had a fire in his speech that was admirable, you can tell he meant it, you can tell he was passionate and you can tell why he was such a high importance PRT member from it, it reminded me of Alan’s speech too, they both essentially came to the same conclusion, I couldn’t help but smile and tear up a bit as well. Almost as if he read my mind, Rodri spoke. “I really wish we could’ve helped those friends of yours, but unfortunately despite it being our main mission we aren’t always able to rescue everyone, and it always crushes us to know we failed in our mission to help our new generation. But we really can’t afford to dwell on that as much as it hurts, instead we should focus on those we could save against all odds, like you, Lex.” I was a little flustered at that description of me. “R-right, I suppose...” “Well, it’s getting late.” Rodri said as he stood up and walked over to the exit. “I would love to stay and watch over you for the night, but I’ve got things to do, even at this hour, plus I think you’re old enough to sleep by yourself.” “I guess, I’m not an adult though.” I replied. “You’re not a child either.” Rodri argued. “Besides, with how low our life expectancy as pokéumans is you’d be seen as an adult for most responsibilities give or take already.” He said as he opened the door. “you would only be a year away from joining the PRT.” And with that, he left and shut off the lights. I decided to head to sleep soon after, though not before messing around with the single bedsheet I was wearing, it was a little cold, but I was tired enough for it to not bother me, it had been an interesting past couple of days, that’s for sure, despite everything, I was kinda glad it was all over to a degree, at least for now, as my consciousness fade there was one leftover thought crossing my mind. “So humans and pokémon had se-.”Pokéumans: Re-lived part 1 "From parallel worlds" Chapter 3 "Kidnap"“We’re here. Now we can do this the easy way for you, or the easy way for us.” My kidnapper unchained me and got me out of the van by force, I yelped as soon as I was forced to stand up and I could feel the trigger of a pistol in the back of my neck.” “Quiet. Now follow.” I didn’t have much of a choice in the matter. I tried getting a good look at the men who kidnapped me, there were only two of them, the slightly taller one walking up front with me having to follow him and the second, slightly shorter one had the weird laser pistol pointed at me. They were fairly uniform and wore military/police like attire that made it hard to tell apart other physical features, it didn’t help that it was starting to get dark as it looked to be around 5 or 6 pm and our surroundings made everything look even darker. Speaking of my surroundings, we were deep in the forest, seemingly in the outskirts of the city as I knew we couldn’t go so far, honestly I was surprised my allergies weren’t acting up given there were trees as far as I could see, we walked for a long long while, my legs practically limping as I was fully out of energy but I could fully feel my kidnapper pressing his gun even harder at my neck anytime I slowed down so much as a milimeter per nanosecond, eventually I could start making out silhouettes of a few buildings and we made it out to a clearing. We walked until we arrived at the front of the largest building, which looked to be two floors high, I could see the man in front of me fiddling with a control panel to enter before the man behind me suddenly covered my eyes with his arm. “H-hey, what gives???” “Silence!!” The man shouted as I felt a kick on my back, we got into the building where even though I was let go the interior was so dark i could see about the same as when my eyes were covered, the most i could tell from the building was monotone cold grey all over, there were no windows and the environment was as sterile as a first aid hospital, as the man let go on me i don’t know what came over me but i quickly tried to run away from them. “HEY GET BACK HERE YOU FREAK!!!” I looked back at them expecting them to shot or chase me but instead they seemed to be saying something and fiddling with a device I couldn’t see due to the darkness, I ran across a few hallways, quickly getting tired and changing to a hurried, panting, walk and as I turned to a corner i suddenly felt myself getting sprayed by more of that purple gas once again, as I lost consciousness I could only muster a weak: Ack cough “N.. no…” “..o, he’s n… de…” “I… he wa… u…?” “Hey y…” “Hey!” I woke up with a startle, I instinctively tried to stand up but my body still felt paralyzed from the gas, there was a face right in front of me I couldn’t make out because of my blurry waking eyes. “About freaking time already.” “What the- w-where am- who are… you?” As the events I had just experienced came back to my memory I could finally process the image in front of me… But it wasn’t something I would’ve liked to see, at first you may think it was a kid not much older than me from its blurry silhouette, but look closer and you’ll find the person or creature in front of me had strange, black mammalian legs and an arm, with displaced patches of fur all over, two black ears with yellow rings and, most terrifyingly, in his otherwise normal human face, he had almost demonic like blood red eyes. “W-w-what the hell is going on with y-“ Suddenly, I realised what was going on, I looked at his eyes and then at his black and yellow fur with a sense of familiarity, I then I looked at my own hands and finally everything clicked. “O-oh… So I’m not the only…” “Yup, you better get used to it, if what I heard is correct there’s no going back once it’s done, of course, we’re first gonna have to wait see for ourselves.” I stared at him in perplexion. “But- but what’s going on!? Why are we transforming into pokemon?!?! My eyes blinked and I was in shock. The soon to be umbreon continued. “I can’t promises that I’m completely right or that I know the full answers, but if what I heard about from everyone else is correct, we are becoming pokéumans.” “Pokéumans… wait, everyone else?” I questioned “One at a time.” He answered, he seemed unphazed by our situation, though not out of indifference but out of custom, as if he were simply used and tired of this. “Yes, we’re pokeumans, seemingly we’re hybrids of pokémon and humans, and well, you’re probably aware of how you didn’t exactly come here through your own will?” That was an understatement “Uh huh.” “Well… Look at your surroundings.” When he said that I realised I had no idea where we were, for all we know I couldn’t even be in the samd building as i last entered, although I doubted it, given how similar the atmosphere was. I looked around and quickly realised we were in a small cage similar to the ones used to keep animals, because of course we were, and I could see plenty of other cages around us and also in front of us separated by a hallway, I could see stuff inside every cage but the darkness made it hard to make out what, but I had a reasonable guess. “Everyone here is a pokéuman? Everyone here is going through what we’re going?” “Yup.” “But… why? Why are we being kidnapped? And by who? And even so, what exactly are pokéumans?” The half umbreon sighed. “I’m afraid I only know the answer to one of those questions, and that is that we are being kidnapped by a secret organization called Pokextinction .” “Pokextinction…” I repeated unintentionally. “Yeah, I don’t know what their goal is, nobody here does, but it’s definitely not something good with a name like that and the conditions we’re in.” He stayed quiet for a bit, seemingly disappointed at the lack of information he had. “Look, I don’t know exactly why we’re here, what will happen to us or why all of this is happening, but there’s a lot of things that were pretty easy to deduce, and there have been people here that know more than we do, most of what I know is because my former cellmate told me, he told me we’re hybrids who are born human but eventually have their Pokémon form awaken from inside, this form is of their favourite Pokémon, mine as you could guess is umbreon. I gulped, this was a lot of information to take in and yet there were still so many questions that I unfortunately knew I wouldn’t get answers to, at least not from him, still i decided to be grateful for what little information he has, even if there’s no way to confirm it I have no option than to believe him and accept this information. Let’s just hope I’m not completely off the marks now. “I’m unable to tell what you’re transforming into though, I can’t even see a sign of your transformation.” “Oh!” I exclaimed, then showed off my hands “It’s these, I woke up with these this morning, they’re a toxtricity’s” “I see, one of the newer ones, You’re lucky that your pokémon already came out so you could recognise it and bond with it, some I saw were becoming completely unknown Pokémon.” “Uh huh…” I nodded as I processed all of this, then I realised an important detail i had overlooked from his explanation. “Wait your former cellmate? What happened to them?” The umbreon’s expression, already pretty unenthusiastic soured even more. “What happens to all of us once our transformation is complete, and unfortunately I don’t know what that is either as I’m only halfway done, you started just today you say? I’ve been here for about four days, and he was almost finished when I met him, he told me all about how he had been kidnapped after he started transforming and had been trapped inside a van, however he had been rescued by some fully transformed pokeumans who called themselves the PRT, who explained a lot to him before they were ambushed by polextinctionists and he was kidnapped once again and brought here, and once his transformation finished, the pokextinctionists that patrol this room took him out of the cage into another room, and I’ve never heard from him again, nor from anyone else who’s transformation has finished, nobody has the energy to fight back, or to escape, they make sure these cages are immune to anything we could throw at them, and they themselves get prepared as well when they take us, it didn’t help that he was turning into a masquerain of all pokemon. I gasped in surprise at the umbreon kid’s story. “Huh?” The umbreon replied in confusion “So those pokemon trying to help me… they were part of a group called the PRT?” “It happened to you too?” The umbreon asked with a bit of questioning and a raised eyebrow. “Yes!” I exclaimed enthusiastically “I was also taken by a large van, but then I was saved by a trio of pokemon, unfortunately we simply couldn’t avoid the barrage of lasers, but still, they’ve got to be the PRT if what you’re saying is correct.” Lex beamed. “Maybe they’ll come to rescue us the-“ “Not happening” interrupted the other pokéuman. “I had that hope at first as well when he told me about the PRT, but after he got taken i quickly gave up, they might’ve tried to rescue you and him, but they sure don’t try with everyone.” My expression fell “You mean you weren’t rescued?” “Nope” the umbreon responded bluntly, “I got gassed and kidnapped and at no point did anyone come for me, I simply arrived exactly as they intended and couldn’t fight back in any way…” “I see…” I replied, saddened yet understanding. “Look, I do still have some hope that maybe there will be an opportunity to escape, i just don’t want to be mindlessly praying for some miracle, although don’t tell the cellmate to our right that I said that.” I could only nod in response. “By the way, I never got your name, and I’m pretty sure you never got mine, I’ll try to introduce you to the others that are still here with us in hell once they’re awake so we can at least have some form community in this shitty situation and so we accompany each other on our transformations, I’m Alan.” The umbreon said as he extended his changing arm for a handshake. I was a little unsure of the idea of socialising even in a time like this, but I decided to be nice since he was my only source of information and so I shook his hand and breathed relief when I didn’t seem to poison nor shock him. “I’m Lex.” SUNDAY I wasn’t dreaming but I wasn’t conscious either, I felt a weird pain on my lower body, and I could vaguely make out muffled noises coming from who knows where, and they were getting clearer and louder until I could make out a CLANK of metal and a loud angry voice shouting- “HEY GET UP POKÉUMAN SCUM!!!” “Gah!! Where? …Oh.” I woke up startled and disoriented not recognising my surroundings, that is until the memories of before once again came back to me, although it was still fairly dark I could see a lot better and I could generally tell that it was roughly around the morning now. I looked at the entrance of my cage and could see a cruel human face smirking at us. “If you think you’re gonna get to sleep through your abominification, I’m afraid we’re not giving you the choice, freak.” The person, a polextinctionist I quickly realised, said “What the hell is wrong with you? Who are you and why are you doing this?” “SILENCE.” The extinctionist said. He then turned to himself as if we weren’t there to hear him “God above how I wish these creatures would lose the ability to speak once they started changing, it would make things so much easier.” ((Impossible… he sees us as animals?)) I thought when suddenly I was interrupted by a whispered voice coming from my side. “*Probably best to keep quiet for now, the guards can get very cruel if you provoke them, I’ve experienced it myself.” I turned around and quickly recognised the half umbreon kid from yesterday, Alan, whispering to me. “Please… please don’t use god’s name in vain.” Suddenly spoke another completely different, more timid and meek voice, i quickly realised it was coming from a cage beside us and so I quickly tried to look over who it was and I could make out a kid, who at first looked a lot smaller than me until I realised it was because he was shrinking and was really not a lot younger looking than me, his face had fully changed into a pokémon i at first couldn’t recognise but through the lilac fur and his half grown ears I realised he was about to become a noibat. I muttered expressions of shock with my mouth but my attention shifted to the extinctionist guard walking over to the other kid’s cage and talking to himself with a sneer. “Oh boy, it’s the “catholic” one again, listen to this kid, do you seriously still think your god is going to help you at this point? Do you even think he’s even real by now? Do you seriously expect god would have mercy or care for a creature who’s becoming a demon not to his image?”. The guard spat out as he shook the noibat kid’s cage with a kick, causing the kid to jump and cover his ears, I imagine they’re probably becoming a lot more sensible with the transformation. I could see the noibat starting to let out a few tears although it was clear he was trying his best not to audibly cry, this however did not stop the guard from noticing. “Don’t waste your tears, I know what you things really are and I won’t be manipulated by your attempts to act like us humans, and one day, humanity will show you creatures your place.” And with that, the guard exited the room, but not before kicking and shaking more cages. I walked over to the noibat who even though was alone at this point still tried to avoid crying audibly. “Hey.” The noibat jumped looked over at me in surprise. “W-who are you?” “He’s the new guy from yesterday remember? The guy that showed up unconscious.” Alan walked over to our conversation and explained. “He’s turning into a pokemon like us, you don’t need to worry, he only just started.” With that the noibat seemed to calm down a little. “A-ah, right.” “N-name’s Lex.” I said, a little nervous since I could understand why the little guy is so shaken up. “L-l-lazaro.” The noibat replied. “W-what are you turning into…” “A toxtricity.” I smiled a little. “It’s a recent addition but it’s always been my favourite ever since, so at the very least there’s one positive about this at least, I’m sure you feel the same.” “Ummm…” Lazaro seemed to reply unsure. Then I felt the touch of a paw tap my back, I turned around to find Alan staring at me and he whispered: “Hey so… Lazaro is a bit of a special case,” He began. “You might’ve realised this already from what you saw but his family was fairly religious and thus he never really played Pokémon, and was never familiar with any Pokémon aside from like Pikachu, I had to explain basically everything about what’s happening from scratch and that’s why it has him so distressed, from what he told me it seems his own family kidnapped him and brought him over to a bunch of pokextinctionist, poor kid, betrayed by his own family and was unfamiliar with what was going on at all, he really thought he was becoming a demon and I can’t really blame him.” ((His own family?)) I nodded in understanding and couldn’t help but look at him with pity, he possibly had it worse than any of us. Before I could even say anything I felt a sudden pain on my tailbone forcing me to fall down on the floor and scream, I could over hear Lazaro getting startled and praying quietly on the other cage. Suddenly I heard a small rip on my pants and could feel something moving. “Wha-“ “Hmm, I was starting to wonder when it would comtinue.” Said Alan. “Oww… what happ- wait… Is that what I think it is?” I exclaimed as I quickly figured what the pain was. “Yup, your tail is starting to grow. You spent a while seemingly without any changes, the last one I could make out was when you were asleep and your purple skin crept up more onto your arms.” “They did?” I looked over at my arms and yup, the changes rose to over my elbows. “At this rate your arms will be full toxtricity’s by tomorrow.” “Wait… How long does the transformation take?” I asked, raising an eyebrow. “If the pokextinctionists are going to take us once we’re done I would like to know how long that’s going to be in. Alan answered “Honestly? No flippin idea, it seems to vary from person to person and completely randomly. Our best estimate seems to be around a week, often a little more or less, I started 5 days ago like I said, and most people here left seem to be almost done aside from us three, you see how we’re the only ones awake? Everyone else, despite the guard’s best attempts is sleeping through the painful transformation and simply waiting for whatever awaits them once it’s finished, they only ever wake up whenever they give us food not even because they want to eat but so the guard leaves them alone.” I nodded after hearing all of it, a little defeated at knowing there wasn’t really any hope for escape but understanding that’s simply how things were. “I see…” Then I turned over to Lazaro “How long have you been here Lazaro?” He replied nervously. “Um… Since last Sunday I think, we… we were getting ready to go church but then it… started.” I winced a little, church was by far one of my least favourite experiences but I knew I had to be respectful and I understood this was hard on him. “How many of us are there?” Alan shrugged, “I dunno, as far as I can make out this isn’t a very large room and it has about 4 cages for two pokemon but ours right now is the only one at full capacity, the rest only have one, honestly I don’t know if there aren’t many of us or our kidnappers are just not that good but there aren’t ever really many pokéumans here.” He said. The conversation then died after that, the rest of the day then passed panfully slowly, we chose a good time to end our conversation as the guard came back almost instantly afterwards and started kicking and shaking the cages where the other pokéumans were sleeping although not actually getting them to wake up, and checking on us three who were awake. I’m used to tuning a boring day out but that’s because I often have stuff to do, but now that I don’t really have any more questions to ask it drove me insane to simply lay on the cold floor as periods of time happened where the guard kept coming back doing the same things over and over, occasionally getting interrupted by one of us experiencing more of our transformation, my tail grew more, Alan’s own tail started growing as well and Lazaro’s ears fully changed into a noibat’s, which caused him a bit of strain as he wasn’t used to the noise amplification at first. And in other, much more rarer occasions he would arrive with food platters containing a weird disgusting mush and would put each one inside each cage, forcing Alan and I to share, it was horrible and didn’t do anything to fill our stomachs or be nutritious but we didn’t really want to starve either, I could see the other pokémon waking up and I was almost tempted to talk to them, but the guard being present made and I could tell they were barely awake with how almost robotic like they woke up, grabbed their plate and ate. Is this what this place does to people? I can’t say I blame them. Throughout the day I kept thinking back to my famiy, having the realisation that I might not see them ever again… Eventually we could see the already dark interior get darker and we realised it was becoming nighttime, honestly the interior is so dark and sterile I have no idea where the light comes during the day time but oh well, at some point and i don’t recognise when I ended up simply drifting asleep… MONDAY It was more of the same as yesterday, only this time I managed to avoid getting woken up violently by the pokextinctionist guard as my transformation did the job for them. I felt a pain in the top of my arms and yep, just like Alan predicted, my arms are fully pokemon now, with purple spikes piercing the shirt I was wearing, I guesd that’s the last I’ll ever see of those clothes. I looked around and saw everyone else was still asleep, I thought about waking them up but I realised there wouldn’t be a point in it. It wasn’t long until one of them woke up, being Lazaro, he too had seemed to change in his sleep as his body was starting to get covered in fur. He didn’t really notice the changes and once he was fully conscious he started a quiet prayer that I could vaguely make out but didn’t care much for, much later and after the guard showed up to check on us Alan woke up as well. There wasn’t much else for the rest of the day aside from how our transformations were developing, once my arms were done focus shifted almost entirely to my tail, which fully grew by the end of the day, Alan’s tail was close to catching up with mine and we could see his face starting to stretch into a muzzle, Lazaro’s changes were mainly on his body and one of his legs, becoming full noibat. I’m pretty sure we were all going insane, with the constant pain coming from out bodies, the monotonous grey exterior that was all we could see and the cruel treatment from the guard it was almost impossible any kind of energy or positive emotion, the only sounds that we ever made were the involuntary screams we let out as we transformed. That is until suddenly at the very end of the day the door to the room opened but instead of the sole guard a group of extinctionists in full of the gear they had while they kidnapped me and fought the prt barged inside with force. “*It seems one of us finished transforming and you’re about to see what happens once the transformation is done.” Alan whispered to me as he stood very still and tried to blend into the background, I copied him as well but I tried to see whay was going on. It was hard to catch what the extinctionist were doing as they were interacting with the cage in front of us, but I could make them out talking to the pokéuman captive, seemingly waking them up, then they opened the door and the pokéuman, a scyther, ended up following them the same way I did when i arrived. They then closed the door of the gate and exited the room but not before they all glanced at every single one of us left. There were no words between anyone after this, even the other pokéuman we never talked to (a wartortle) was awake and in distress like us, even Lazaro who I expected to pray simply stood quiet, I myself had originally wanted to ask why they kept me in the same cage and didn’t move me to the now empty one, but the words were never able to leave my mouth, I eventually rationalised that it was for if a larger pokemon arrived. Everyone knew this was what was going to happen to them and yet not knowing what happens beyond that was terrifying, for all we know we could be killed, or experimented on, or it could be something far worse. There was simply no way to tell. TUESDAYThis time we were woken up by the guards kicking and rattling the cage around, when I woke up there weren’t any visible changes to my body which meant that I was going to feel all of them. …Although that wasn’t exactly right, I did notice a few clumps of hair falling out and when I touched it I could feel it be a little… static-y? I don’t know if this is a completely unrelated reaction, given how I have very thick overgrown hair that I don’t really put an effort to take care of but also given how low key tox had a double electric mohawk I can’t rule it out entirely. At first it seemed the day would be like yesterday, but quicky another group of extinctionists arrived however it was clear they weren’t here to take anyone as they brought in another half pokémon, an Onix. it seemed like it was a normal onix but looking closer I noticed he still had a lot of human facial features, an arm and a half grown leg. The extinctionists looked like they were struggling to carry the thing, which didn’t look too big compared to most depictions of onix it seemed but it was probably very heavy still. The group sighed once they dropped the onix inside the cage (which even though smaller than normal clearly could only fit the onix now instead of two pokémon). “Ughh… Phew… What a heavy thing, ugh, how I wish normal society could appreciate all the crap we have to through here just to contain these creatures and keep the world safe.” Said one of the pokextinctionists. “Agreed, if we ever reveal ourselves to the world everyone better be fucking grateful.” Said another I couldn’t believe myself, these people realize all of us were human right? It’s not like we’re degrading into mindless dangerous creatures… Right? The group continued talking amongst themselves. “Hopefully once his transformation is done he’s a lot easier to control, doesn’t look like it’ll take too long for this one.” With that the extinctionists left, though not before giving us a glance that could probably kill us, and it was probably the intention. Once they left, Alan started to speak “Looks like they brought another one, although this one intrigues me, he seems to be over halfway done with his transformation.” I looked over at him with a confused expression, he noticed and elaborated. “Like you, the people that are brought here are often just starting their transformation, this is as they’re very quickly found by pokextinction, some might have already transformed a good amount if they had and kept or gained the ability to escape them, but with that species and a transformation that advanced I really doubt this guy could’ve evaded Pokextinction, so this is definitely unusual…” He explained. “Ah, I see “ I replied. We waited for a while and th guard even showed up to do his routinely check up until eventually the onix started to wake up in a… surprisingly high pitched voice. “Where am I? Mum? Dad?” It started saying. I tried to speak to him, but I felt a sudden pain near my tail, I started seeing purple spikes growing out of my skin and i realised i was developing toxtricity’s punk waist belt thing. Alan approached the newcomer instead. “Hey, kid, know you’re scared, but you’re with people like you, I’m Alan, this is Lex, and in the other cage beside us is Lazaro.” The onix looked at us very nervous, and as I examined his remaining human features I could notice he didn’t seem very… old. Before I could question anything the onix decided to reply. “My name is Yulian.” The onix replied, and after hearing his voice clearly there was no doubt in my mind, but as I was about to ask Alan quickly got ahead of me. “How old are you Yulian?” “I’m nine years old.” Yulian said in a very young sounding voice. “Nine years old...” Alan repeated out loud, and I’m not too sure I didn’t do the same thing. Eventually I decided to ask. “H-how did your transformation start?” He responded fairly slowly. “Ummm… It was… was a week ago, my legs started fusing and they felt like a rock and I told my parents and they got really scared and i think they didn’t know what to do but then they decided to hide me which I liked cuz I didn’t have to go to school and I realised I was turning into an onix, and I like onix, a lot, but it was sad because my parents got worried, and then today people came into my house and argued with my parents but then my parents stopped arguing and they came into my room and they spwayed a gas at me and I fell asleep and the people took me to a creepy van and I woke and I was very scared.” Lazaro seemed to jump as he hears yulian’s part about his parents, at first I was surprised he heard from all over his corner until I remembered what pokemon he was. “What happened when your parents stopped arguing?” Lázaro then asme “Um it was kinda weird cuz one minute they were like screaming and stuff but then they just stopped and came in and they were very weird they didn’t say anything and their eyes looked kinda gray.” Yulian replied. “That’s very similar to what happened with my mum!” Lázaro explained “She was very happy as we were talking and getting ready for church but then her behaviour changed completely and started telling me horrible things once we noticed my transformation, at first I thought she was simply scared of me because i thought i was transforming into a demon but…” Suddenly, I had a reminder to all the weird people who chased me down when I started transforming all of them seemed to be mindless and had grey eyes and the fact there were so many of them almost seemed like they were random bystanders, and so a theory sprung up to my mind. “Could… could there be some sort of brainwashing going on?” Everyone looked at me in surprise once I said it, and yet nobody could deny how much sense it made, before any one of us could speak suddenly yet another group of geared pokextinctionists arrived at the room, all of us quickly scattered apart from each other, aside from the young newcomer. “Hey!! What are you doing! Leave us alone!!” “SILENCE!!!!!” screamed one of them “You will quiet now or else we’ll use our weapons on you, understood?” Yulian seemed to be resisting the urge to cry, and I felt my heart ache at seeing the poor kid struggle, i quickly realised how young all of us were, aside from maybe alan, who i don’t see past 20 anyway, were kids. Why was this happening to us? And why did the pokextinctionists fail to realise we are children and treat us like animals?! The group of extinctionists then woke the wartortle of the other cage up, examined it and then opened their cage and made them follow the group like they did the scyther, and once again as they exited they looked at us with a sneer, it was genuinely horrifying, and the four of us looked at each other in terror, we were all that was left, and soon, the next ones to leave were going to be one of us. And now that brainwashing was an option, I’m pretty sure we all considered it as a possibility for what could happen once we left… The rest of the day went on as normal, but everyone was extremely tense after what had played our, the only noises were those of our bones readjusting and the screams we had to let out to deal with the pain, Alan’s tail finished growing and his muzzle was getting close with his nose changing into an animalistic one and his face grew black fur all over, this was by far the most graphic transformation so far as we could all hear clearly how his bones rearranged and all the KRIK s and CRACK s that came with it. Mine wasn’t that much better, my belt kept growing pushing itself out of my skin in a very painful way and I could feel my lower body’s bones constantly going SNAP and POP and I saw my legs starting to shrink, and my fingers… god my fingers hurt like i couldn’t describe, I could feel them fusing and growing into three identical digits. Lázaro and yulian’s transformations were a lot less extreme as they had already advanced a fair point, still seeing and hearing what was left of the noibat’s face and arm to change rearranging itself left little to be imagined in terms of pain, on top of that his lower body like mine also started to change, althoug his changed a lot faster and was quickly covered in fur in a FWOOOOSH . All that was left for him to change was his other arm. He was praying throughout the whole thing, I almost wanted to join. Yulian by far had the less painful transformation, but it was probably the hardest to percieve, his was minimal, but something that would stay on your mind forever, it was essentially seeing his human leg shrink into more rock like the rest of his snakey body, it was pretty gross. I, and I have a feeling everyone else constantly tried our best to distract ourselves from our transformation, but for me it simply became difficult as any kind of distraction served as a reminder of how I was ripped away from my family, home and enjoyments and was left purposefully with nothing at all, I’m pretty sure this counts as torture, and instead of distracting me all this thoughts only caused me to inclement the pain I felt and I eventually was left silently crying, I thought to my parents, at first I worried for them as they were probably searching for me and collapsing at my disappearance, but, given how there seems to be so many of us pokéumans, and now that we theorize Pokextinction has acces to some form of brainwashing, I kept coming back to the possibility that my parents and everyone could’ve been brainwashed to forget that I ever existed, and that made me feel even worse. In the end, I, and everyone else, cried ourselves to sleep. WEDNESDAY We woke up like we were used to, well, except for Yulian the newcomer, but still, we were all rattled awake by the guard (what kind of kick does he even get by doing this?). None of us really talked to each other as the discussion from yesterday still lingered in our memories. All of the noise that happened for most of the day was the sounds of our bodies continuing to morph unnaturally, the reactions of pain we all had and occasionally Lázaro praying, as the days went on his prayers notably went from the typical existing prayers you hear in church and into personal pleas to god, which I really couldn’t fault him for, every day everyone’s composure worsened in different ways and Lázaro, closest to finishing his transformation was also closest to breaking down. At some point I started hearing a skrik coming from my body and I could very well tell it was the start of my transformation for the day, my “belt” so to speak finished growing and my legs’ shifting size was also close to be done, though it made any position I took extremely painful and despite having woken up not long ago I had practically no energy because of it. Alan wasn’t much better as his face finished changing into an umbreon’s muzzle, fully getting covered in black fur, then, possibly the most painful part of anyone’s transformation began as his back suddenly starting cracking all at once, slowly shifting his stature from a two legged one to a digitigrade, this particular transformation lasted for practically the whole day with all of us staring constantly, Lázaro was in tears, Yulian looked disgusted and I was pretty much hyperventilating and Alan could not stop howling in pain. Even when the guard showed up he simply couldn’t hold his pain. “AAAARGHOO!!!!” “HEY YOU, SILENCE YOU HEAR?! SILENCE, OBEY YOUR SUPERIORS.” The guard’s efforts were fruitless however as there was simply no way Alan could keep quiet with a change like that, his size started to shift drastically, becoming smaller yet because of the way his bones were contorting his shirt ended up getting ripped a lot, luckily black fur spread rapidly on him keeping him warm in this cold environment. Yulian’s transformation was more of the same from.yesterday, only it was his leftover human arm this time that shrunk, we probably would’ve been equally disturbed if Alan’s transformation wasn’t also going on. Eventually, all of our transformations slowed down to their normal slower rate, we all gasped in somewhat relief, even if we could still feel ourselves changing, that is except for one of us, the person who’s final change had just completed, and was now hopelessly and desperately repeating prayers to himself until he simply couldn’t anymore and broke down “I… I… sniff I’m sorry… I-I just c-c-can’t anymore sniff I don’t… sniff I don’t wanna get brainwashed o-o-or die or wh-whatever they wanna do to me, I n-never wanted to be a pok-kemon and I never wanted to go through this… p-please sniff ” All of us wanted to say something, I wanted to say something to let him know he wasn’t alone in feeling like this, but in the end, the only one that did, the only one that could, the oldest between all of us was Alan. “Lázaro, all of this that has happened to us has been completely and utterly unfair, I understand it too and I think every single pokéuman that has been on this room understands it too, but… even if you’re certain that things are not going to end well, do not lose hope, even if it’s just dreams, that is the last thing we can afford, you lead a good life i can tell that easily, you were a good person and if your conscious or biological life ends here, know at least that you did good and no one no matter what can take that away from you. And maybe who knows, maybe in the future others will not have to deal with this, you did good in praying, regardless of what’s true or of what we believe in, it meant that you were alwahs reaching out and calling for help for you and for everyone like you, and who knows, maybe our dreams and our prayers might just get answered.” I couldn’t help but be moved by the speech, I would’ve loved to be able to say something similar but I simply wasn’t confident enough for such a statement, still I tried to add my piece as well. “I agree with Alan, I think it’s best to at the very least know we fell with honour, they may see us as mindless animals but we know we aren’t, we know we were good, and that’s all we need to know.” Lázaro did not cheer up after this, nobody would, but it’s clear that the words meant something to him as he was able to regain his composure and accept his fate. We waited for the inevitable for a while, at some point the door opened but it was just the guard again, he did seem to take a notice to Lázaro but it still took until it was seemingly getting close to night time before the group showed up. We had already gotten pretty used to their existence and what they came for, but now that they came for someone we knew the perspective shifted completely differently, instead of rapidly barging in the men entered slowly from the shadows like in a horror movie, we watched them completely silently as they walked in slow motion until they arrived at Lázaro’s cage, even Yulian who seemed like he was going to say something ended up quiet, but this time not out of shock, but out of solemn acceptance, the group of extinctionists slowly inspected Lázaro’s body to see if the transformation was confirmed, and for the first time I could overhear what they were saying to him, and to every other person before. “You are now entirely one of them, you will follow us, you will make no attempt at resisting us, if there’s any humanity left in you you will understand that this is for their good.” With that they opened the cage, and Lázaro walked out slowly, I could see his face, it was obscured, but I didn’t see worry, I saw firm determination on him, he followed the group with someone pointing one of their laser guns in his neck from the back, and then they all walked away from the room. Alan, Yulian and me stood in silence afterwards, all of us in our private thoughts clearly shaken by what had just happened, but one by one we remembered what Alan had said and kept our hope to honour Lázaro, we then decided to head to sleep, awaiting tomorrow, knowing this wasn’t the end. THURSDAY The day once again was more of the same, but this time we tried to remain tough, we didn’t try to hide the pain that came with our transformations, even as we knew one of us was leaving today, although everyone still processed this differently, particularly the youngest person in this group, and the one who was closest to completing their transformation. In truth, Yulian hadn’t really understood fully what Alan meant the day before, all he knew was that he had to remain strong, and even though he was in actuality very nervous, because of the way young self interpreted being strong, he chose to hide it rather than embrace it. All of us could feel the climax of our changes reaching us, my feet and legs finished changing, getting significantly shorter and making my pants finally fall off, I tried adjusting to walking but it was pretty hard with an unbalanced body like this, though it seems that wasn’t going to be for long as the next change was in my chest, pulling up my shirt I could see my skin getting blue and weird purple bumps starting to develop, I could also see my stomach get slimmer, closer to what i was like a few years prior, I prodded the bumps slightly and though it was faint I could make out a curious sound out of them, being familiar with toxtricity I already figured out what this implied. With Alan’s body and back finishing changing and adjusting, all that was left was for his body to be fully covered in black fur, with an occasional golden ring of fur growing qs wll, once again I could hear crack s and pop s as his bones finished rearranging, and I could see Alan’s whole composture becoming far more comfortable now from his wobbly shaky self to a lot more natural one. All that was left for him to change was his other arm. Yulian had the very last change happen to his body, his human remains on his otherwise onix face, his nose and teeth shrunk the rock of his skull, and his eyes, although a more subtle change, transformed too, it was very obvious that Yulian was in physical and emotional pain and yet he tried his best to not let it show at all, he had to be strong, he had to. In the end however it wasn’t the transformation that was the final straw in his self containment. SWOOOSH The door switched open and once again, the team of pokextinctionists entered. It was hard to tell if they were the same guys every single time, but right now it wasn’t important to focus on those questions as Alan and I watched as they slowly approached Yulian’s cage. Yulian was trembling, but he was not crying, his body was panicking, but he was not crying. The extinctionists told him what they told to Lázaro the day before, but he was not crying, they opened his cage, let him slither out, but as soon as one of the men cocked his gun at the back of his neck, Yulian simply couldn’t stop hiding it anymore. “AAAAAAAAAGH!!! NO!! LET ME GO!!! YOU ARE EVIL!!! HEEEEEEEEEEEEEELP!!!!!!!! HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEELP!!!!!!!!” Every single pokextinctionist in the group was fighting to restrain him, but Yulian did a pretty good job at resisting them all things considered, forcing the one holding the gun to resort to using it. PEW!! “HEY!!” I screamed “LET HIM GO YOU MANIACS!!!” Alan exclaimed The men simply ignored us and once the onix fell unconscious they dragged him away together, shortly after one of them closed the door but not before giving us one of the most chilling stares I’ve ever seen in my life. As if warning us to never ever do the same thing. … “DAMN IT!” Alan screamed as he punched the ground with his remaining unchanged hand, “HE WAS 9!!!! HE WAS JUST A KID!!!! HE DIDN’T DESERVE ANY OF THIS!!!!” I could see Alan starting to cry himself, the only one so far who hadn’t up to this point. “This is so fucked up…” I felt bad for stating the obvious but I genuinely struggled at trying to say something adequate for what’s going on, especially as I was also processing it myself. “It’s not fair…” He said, the day ended pretty much after that. FRIDAY I didn’t wake up because of the guard this time but because of my transformation again, my chest continued adjusting, changing colour completely into blue and the four bumps in my chest finished growing with a THUD into possibly toxtricity’s most notorious… Body part? I suppose? And for whatever reason as they finished and I looked at them I felt the urge to play them like a guitar or… no that wasn’t right, a bass . I had never played any of either instrument before, I’ve attempted acoustic guitars before but I was simply unable to focus on playing the notes and getting into a rhythm, yet when I played myself as a bass it came so naturally to me, I could feel how it was the static electricity and the percussion that helped make the noise, and I ended up replicating a riff I had from a song in the back of my mind. I had to stop playing as the guard showed up and woke Alan, the day somewhat went off as normal although there was a thick silence between us throughout it, we knew we were both close to transforming and we knew one of us would leave today, Alan was closest as he only had an arm to change left but the transformation was so unpredictable I could very well catch up and go first, my hair’s static went crazy, everything that wasn’t falling off was high up in the air as I could feel the electricity become less static and form almost solid shapes, which also meant that there were a lot of BZzzZzT s and KRRst s noises throughout the day. In the end though, as we could hear above all the buzzing from my electricity Alan’s leftover arm finished changing, his fingers shrunk and cracked becoming less dexterous and he lost his opposable thumbs, the rest of his limb shrunk and rearranged itself to be more like a paw and started getting covered in clumps of black fur, with a ring of yellow fur forming on his shoulder. He didn’t scream in pain from the transformation, it was probably not the forefront thought on his mind, but after it was completely and he knew it was only a matter of time before the guard came to check on him and then the group of extinctionists took him away, that’s when he screamed. “RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!!!!!!!” Tears fell from his eyes and his breathing became irregular “WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY?!?!!!” There was very little that I could say “I’m sorry.” He cried silently for who knows how long, if it weren’t for our transformations our perception of time would be completely shattered, the guard showed up to his check up and once he left we knew next after him would be the extinctionist, in the meantime my hair either fell out or somehow dissolved into pure electricity, leaving me growing my blue double-mohawk, I could feel my back and the rest of my face starting to change as well, even if i couldn’t see it. Alan stood silently for a bit after his breakdown, but then decided to speak to me. “Lex?” “Huh?” “If somehow you manage to make it out of here, no matter how impossible that sounds, do us a favour and make sure to give these guys what they deserve.” I didn’t really know if I should be honest or go with it, so I decided simply on nodding, immediately after, the group showed up, this time they approached our cage, one of them glanced at me and pointed their pistol probably to indicate that I shouldn’t attempt anything and back off. This still didn’t mean that I could now see very clearly what they were doing, with their hands they checked all over Alan’s body, seemingly for the slightest proof that he was fully transformed, they even opened his mouth, I was furious at the sight, they were treating him not even as an animal, but as a monster. They once again told him the same rehearsed speech they told all of the others. “You are now entirely one of them, you will follow us, you will make no attempt at resisting us, if there’s any humanity left in you you will understand that this is for their good.” It was downright insulting to hear for the second time, how dare they question how little humanity we had left? We are the exact same people we were as we started transforming, and it was them who were putting our identities and selves at risk, I simply couldn’t take it anymore and as they opened and closed our stage and they made Alan exit, I shouted at them. “W-whatever it is you’re planning to do will fail!!! You hear?! You will fail!!! A-and only then will you realise how despicable you people truly are, and i KNOW you can understand this, don’t try to feign ignorance so you can see yourselves as superiors you-“ My speech got interrupted by a harsh kick on my cage by one of them “QUIET FREAK!! HOW MANY TIMES DO WE NEED TO REMIND YOU?!!! NEXT TIME WE WILL USE FORCE!!” Despite everything, I felt myself smiling, I knew full well that I had provoked them and thus to some degree my words managed to reach out to them, even if they were doing their best to ignore it, I looked over at Alan and could see him smiling as well before he left with the group. Once all of that was over, and even though I gave the extinctionists a piece of my mind, it was too much for me, my composture gave in and I fell to the floor crying, after all now it was only me left. SNIFF “No…. no… SNIFF someone… please, help us… help them. . . . I fell asleep shortly afterwards, it wasn’t particularly late but I just simply didn’t have the energy to keep myself awake, I could finally understand the scyther and wartortle, i pretty much slept throughout everything, the guard, meals, etc. I at the very least maybe thought a new pokéuman would arrive but it just never happened. I thought I would stay asleep until the next day, but in the middle of the night, when almost nothing was visible as I felt a great pain on my skull I was woken up, I recognised it immediately as my transformation, although I didn’t understand why I didn’t sleep through it this time. Still, I could feel my face rearrange itself, every little bone and organ shifting, parts merging, others separating, every little thing becoming something completely different, my mouth extended with my lips disappearing, my teeth shrank into my skull, except for my canines which merged with my skin exterior of my mouth, turning into an amphibian snout, I could feel the inside of my mouth growing larger as well, particularly my tongue, the blue of my stomach spread to my former bottom lip while the top started becoming purple, my eyes changed little, simply changing colour from dark brown to black, my ears had a very drastic change, they changed from almost flat and open structures, slowly morphing and shrinking into themselves becoming hornlike protrusions, I inexplicably could still hear for them but everything was slightly muddled, like wearing headphones, a similar horn also grew in my front inbetween the beginning of my double mohawk. Once it was all over and my changes slowed down again I was breathing heavily, for a moment I felt anxiety as I thought my transformation was over… but no, I could feel my back was almost done changing but there were still patches of human skin left, and none of my back spikes grew yet, there weren’t even any bumps. Suddenly the door to the room opened, and it was so dark I couldn’t even make out anything about whatever entered, I tried to blend in with the dark and pretend to be asleep, but I was also curious about who it was. “-nd unfortunately we haven’t been able to find new transformees yet, sir.” Said the one I could make out in the back. The other did not respond audibly. The first one then turned in my direction. “The one we have left is the one in that cage, it appears his transformation is almost finished, director.” The other said as he turned away and examined the rest of the area, the director, it seems, did not respond, I got very curious, especially as I wasn’t referred to as a in “it” this time, I tried to look towards the two of them, and I found myself looking at a silhouette that at first felt human but there was something slightly off… I couldn’t put my finger on it but it was somehow familiar. “Personally sir, I would suggest throwing out the guardian from his position, he seems to take unusual glee in provoking the transformees which only makes it harder for us to do our jobs.” Again, the way the other one talked was unusual, refering to us as transformees instead of creatures, monsters or freaks. Suddenly a shiver came down my spine, for whatever reason I could feel myself getting watched coming from the mysterious director, it was as if he was studying me, analyzing me, as if he were… curious?. The director said nothing and eventually both left the room, I felt a little bit of relief, but my head was swimming with confusion as one question prevailed among any of my thoughts. “Who was the director?” SATURDAY The day began very unusually. I didn’t wake up because of the guard shaking my cage, or my transformation speeding up, instead I woke pretty much as normal, I could feel I changed a little as I moved my hand through my back and felt several little bumps, but it was very obvious they hadn’t fully grown yet, I sighed. The most painful part of the day was waiting, there was no one here, nothing to do, nowhere to go, but I knew that this would change soon, once the transformation ended it would be my turn to leave, yet the transformation was taking long, and being all alone in a room devoid of everything made everything feel so much slower. There was something unusual about this wait however, even though I lost track of time I still realised and found it weird that the guard never seemed to show up, he never seemed to come check or get me food even if by this point it felt like he should’ve already done it two times. Was I being punished for yesterday? Was the guard being replaced? I didn’t really understand what was going on until suddenly, the door opened but the guard didn’t enter, and neither did the group of extinctionists, instead it was one lone person who looked to he a scientist given how he was wearing a labcoat, the person rushed into the room as if having to hurry up, he then looked over at me and i felt a cold feeling entering my back. He started opening my cage, he struggled a little with the keys as if he wasn’t used to doing this before as opppsed to everyone else who had opened the cells before, eventually however he managed to unlock it. “What are you- argh!! Hey!!!” I screamed as he suddenly grabbed my hand, which I could see was covered in some latex-like gloves, possibly to protect himself from my electricity and poison and dragged me outside the room in a rush. “SILENCE FREAK!” he shouted in desperation as his other hand pulled a pistol and shakily pointed it at me. “S-shouldn’t you take me out until my transformation is finished? My spikes have yet to finished gro-“ “I SAID SHUT UP!!!!!.” “As we got out and into the building I could then figure out why the scientist was so desperate, immediately inside the rest of the building I heard a loud alarm noise, and I immediately understood that there was an emergency, before i could figure out if this was good for me the scientist started dragging me again all over the building. “Ow- agh.. ah.. hey!” The scientist made many turns across several corridors and even walked some stairs before we entered a hallway that was filled with large thick doors that had a single window showing what was inside, the man however ran through all of them so I couldn’t really tell what was in any of them, I saw multiple words in inscriptions and notes but we went too fast to read them, then the scientist came to a sudden stop and he let me go causing me to fall head first on the floor. “Ow!” As I rubbed my head to soothe my pain, I didn’t manage to notice the scientist had opened one of the many rooms in the hall and then he suddenly grabbed me in the shoulders and pushed me inside the room he opened before the door shut in front of me. “HEY!! WHERE AM I?!?! LET ME OUT!!!!” I banged on the doors in desperation, before quicky losing my breath and falling on the floor tired, I realised I could no longer hear the alarm so nobody could’ve heard me, the room was in total darkness up until a blinding purple light came out in from of me, as i adjusted to this new source of unusual and captivating light I looked around the room which seemed strangely like a very tight dorm room, I saw a bed and a desk and I wanted to keep examining but I was too distracted by the blinding lights, it was so bright and eye-catching and pretty… and… m… mesmerising. . . . . The pokéuman had ran through the halls of the extinctioist facility, often switching from a bipedal and quadrupedal stance depending on the space he was in. He had come across a few pokextinctionists who tried to fight him once the alarm turned on and they noticed him but even with their mighty tech they were no match for the raw strength of a Chesnaught. ”We’ve managed to get a hold of the particles, and despite them being alerted and us originally believing the director was in the facility they haven’t made their presence known to us so it’s probably a good time for a retreat, we’ve got all the info we needed, over.” Came from the chesnaught’s hidden communicator. “Understood, I’ll meet up soon but I’ll scout for any leftover info just in case, there’s only one hallway left and the bottom floor seems to be devoid of people.” Just as the Chesnaught said that, he was suddenly ambushed by a trembling scientist who tried to threatened him with a gun but was quickly put unconscious with a vine whip attack. “Be careful Rodri, don’t try to do anything you’re not supposed to.” Came from his communicator. “Don’t worry, I’ve got everything under control. Over and out.” With that the Chesnaught continued, he quickly realised the hallway he entered was none other than Pokextinction’s infamous education chambers, or rather, brainwashing chambers, as he looked throughout the windows of the many rooms he found identical sights in all of them. Several different pokémon, some blissfully smiling, some had an emotionless look, but all of them were in a still, pacified position as they were drenched in the purple light keeping them controlled and turning their eyes into a cold empty grey. “I can never get used to this no matter how many times I see it.” Rodri mumbled to himself, he was about to leave as he came across one final room on a corner where he suddenly stopped as he realised there was something different about the Pokémon inside. ”No way.” Inside the last room was a low-key toxtricity, he was in the same pacified position as everyone else and at first it didn’t seem like there was anything different from him over anyone else, but the chesnaught could see one vital difference he had over the other brainwashed pokémon. His eyes weren’t grey.Pokéumans: re-lived part 1 "From parallel worlds" Chapter 9 "A new normal"“So, how did it go young pokéuman?” “…” The shiny toxtricity in front of me smiled warmly and cocked his eyebrow in curiosity. “Is there anything you need to talk about? I’m supposed to help you in these visits you know.” “Why didn’t my ability help me? I was destroyed back there, with everyone to watch… I-I didn’t even want this, any of this.” I pleaded. “How are you so sure it didn’t? Sure, just because you may have an advantage it doesn’t mean that you’ll automatically be good at something.” Kalled said. “But everyone’s supposed to be good at this… we’re pokemon, that’s all everyone seems to talk about a-and I don’t know but I thought maybe it was supposed to come naturally to me b-but-” Kalleq cut me off before I could continue rambling. “Ah, that’s not necessarily true, some pokemon are stronger than others in battle, sure, but that doesn’t mean every pokemon is meant for battle, some pokemon heal, some provide services and every pokemon has their own set of skills that make them useful, every single one.” Kalleq argued. “And what about toxtricity? Aren’t we supposed to be punks? Y’know, aggressive, tough, cruel fighters? I’m nothing like that and I don’t want to be like that!!!” I shouted, Kalleq’s smile seem to drop for a moment as he went lost in thought for a moment, he stayed quietly before speaking. “Well… I suppose you could say that about us.” He then took a deep breath. “But personally, between you and me, I never cared for it, I never cared for battle, for toughness or for any superficial aspects, I went through my own path, I may be a toxtricity, but I could be any other pokemon just as much! It doesn’t define me, and I don’t think it should you, I think… I think I understand what you’re going through young one, and frankly, if there are people out there like us who don’t put all of our value on our toughness or our ability to battle, then they’ll be the ones that will forget about the tournament the easiest.” I held my head down for a moment before looking up “Do… do you think there are others like that?” Kalleq chuckled. “There’s already two of us; there will always be more.” I couldn’t help but chuckle as well. “Yeah… I suppose you’re right.” “Till we meet again.” And with that, I woke up I woke up quietly, not a sound coming from the room allowing me to peacefully stretch and rub my eyes to be greeted by the artificial light of- WAIT! “What the- Where’s everyone?! What time is it? Did I miss breakfast or…” It didn’t take a lot for me to realise what had gone on, walking over to Demian’s alarm, the one that usually blasted at ultra-high volumes and woke everyone up, it was fully switched off, I also noticed everything else that could be shut off was shut off and every curtain and door and anything that could bring out light in the area was tampered with to ensure it did so as little as possible. “SHIT, SHIT, SHIT, I BETTER NOT HAVE MISSED BREAKFAST!!” I screamed as I ran down the halls, my worst fears only being confirmed as I didn’t bump into anyone while running at tiring speeds, telling me everyone had already left their dorms and were possibly even already at school, I walked down all the way to the cafeteria, to find it predictably empty... it was then my turn to run all the way back to the academy area, even if I knew I’d already miss my first class, but before I made it back to the stairs I bumped into a familiar figure. “Rodri?” I exclaimed, I stopped in my tracks almost like a car pressing the brakes at the last moment, causing me to fall face first into the chesnaught’s fluffy body, luckily it seemed like he had already noticed me, and I didn’t take him by surprise. “Hey Lex! I’m so glad to see you, wait, shouldn’t you be in class?” he asked, raising his eyebrow in a tinge of worry that he seemed to try (in vain) to mask his enthusiasm. “I-I know I’m happy to see you too but t-that’s the thing my arseholes roommates made me sleep in so I could miss my class…” At that point I couldn’t go on, I was too exhausted, and I had to put my hands on my knees and take a long minute to catch my breath. “Do you… have the time?” Rodri shrugged for a moment; he raised an arm to look at a small band he had on one of his spikes. “8:32, they definitely won’t be able to let you in class at this hour I’m afraid, you’ll have to wait until it’s 9.” He seemed to let out a guilty smile, showing off his large lower fangs in full glory… which I didn’t recall being right for a chesnaught but I didn’t want to give it much thought, I also noticed he displayed a new article of clothing, a golf cap. I sighed, Rodri decided to continue, seemingly realising I noticed his new attire he commented on it with a blush. “Oh, this was a gift by a… friend of mine, ahem, but regardless!” He said as he then shifted the topic to something that, unfortunately only made me feel worse. “While you’re waiting we can catch up on how you’ve been doing! I saw you in the tournament yesterday though I never got to found out how you did after it, I hope you enjoyed it at the very least!” I looked at him with the most dead inside expression I could muster. “I never want to enter a tournament ever again.” He stared at me with genuine shock, something which made me raise my eyebrow in confusion “W-w-what? Why?! What happened there!” “URGH!! I never even wanted to get in there in the first place!! I didn’t want to draw attention to myself, not after being lumped with all the delinquents and borderline criminals of the base!!! I know that stupid Demian signed me up to humiliate me and his stupid fucking plan worked and guess what!! It would’ve been ONE thing if I lost a battle, it’s another to make it to the second round without any motivation only to get absolutely decimated by a FAR more experienced fighter for EVERYBODY to see!! And all people will think is that I, a newbie who already has a bad reputation, has trouble with people and looks like someone who’d hold you at gunpoint on the street seemingly got cocky and arrogant and entered a serious competition without any training!!! T-t-they all p-probably think I deserve that h-humiliation, but I didn’t want any of this… a-anything.” I was at the verge of tears, but I forced myself to stop after I realised, I had been salivating and I didn’t want to risk releasing any potential acid or toxins, I took a deep breath and shifted to a neutral expression, wiping my tears as well, actions that felt all too familiar for me to do. “I… see.” Rodri spoke quietly, he didn’t seem to be in the mood to continue the conversation from that point. “I know full well you don’t trust him, a-and I’m pretty sure you don’t seem to like him at this point but, at the very least let the headmaster know about this, he’ll probably ignore it but that’s all I need, just… I need to stop thinking about this and head back to school.” I stated simply, the white-furred pokemon only nodded and left. I eventually made it back to class, luckily about time for the next one to begin, but it wasn’t any more pleasant than the rest of the day had been, the classmates weren’t even subtle with their murmurs and bickering, no doubt about the tournament, happening all over the classroom, several looked at me in disdain, others in preoccupation, but there was one exception, the Litleo that seemed to be my neighbour appeared disinterested at first, but as classes went on, I could notice him looking at me almost with an expression of pity? It… made me a bit curious as to what they felt, he didn’t seem like a bad person, but then again, he also hung out a lot with Raúl who I wasn’t looking forward to encountering in electric battle class. I could barely focus on any of the classes, despite waking up later it only made me feel even more exhausted and depressed, except however in social formation, where an interesting topic happened to be discussed: “We’ll be discussing the nature of Pokéumans, because yes, we are a lot more driven by instinct and our biology than humans, but it’s a completely normal part of us, a lot of us tend to feel wrong as humans because of how our behaviour is influenced by our physiology, but once our transformation happens most of us find ourselves comfortable with what we’re naturally wired for, you see a lot of fairy and psychic type pokemon at the medical staff, and that’s without even mentioning the amount of blisseys and audinos and comfeis that all flock to that job, but it’s in their nature, even when they were a human to gravitate towards helping and nurturing others, ground type pokemon are often a lot more comfortable in the sand, grass types enjoy the sun a lot more than other pokemon or humans, even individual species have their own patterns and behaviours that they naturally enjoy, cubones tend to be emotional and melancholic, and it’s something that comes naturally to them, alakazams tend to be intelligent and well spoken, so much so they’ve come across as arrogant to others in the past, but recent studies have shown that it is simply due to their brains being wired differently, and it’s normal for them, and it’s normal for you to, and what’s more, every single one of these abilities is helpful to our society.” The teacher explained. I scoffed, but I couldn’t help but wonder both through the same question that kept ringing in my mind then, What’s the use of “the punk pokemon”? All I’ve seen here is people be afraid or disgusted at me, and my own “kind” seems to do more harm than good. I swatted the thought away, surely this can’t be it, I’m not just naturally supposed to be rude and imprudent towards everyone and anything, I’m not gonna let myself be bound to what society has to say, especially Demian, we’re still human in the end and that’s what matters most! Only… was that really true? I had to catch my own thoughts right then and there, what if it is just natural for us? We’re another species, wouldn’t seeing this entirely through a human perspective be what pokextinction is doing? But then again maybe we shouldn’t let ourselves be controlled by our own instincts, we shouldn’t be told what to do, because that’s what they want. I had to put all of that on hold for the moment as I couldn’t reach a proper conclusion to that train of thought yet. Classes passed and I was surprised to see that even battle class was uneventful, for one Raúl decide to keep his distance which I found myself appreciating but also being intrigued by. By the time lunch rolled around I felt a sudden pang of hunger, I skipped breakfast sure but it still felt a lot stronger than it should, I considered briefly heading back to my dorm but I decided I should try to avoid confrontation especially when I’m this much on an empty stomach, I made it to the cafeteria with my supplies, fairly earlier than others, sat down in a table after being served a tray of breaded chicken, my favourite, it definitely lightened my mood and made me more approachable, I was about to finish when I was approached yet again by a familiar group of three. “Hey Lex.” Spoke the tatsugiri who seemed to lead the group, she was sporting a beanie with a cat themed design and a cute face, very different from her somber expression. “We wanted to apologise from what went on at the tournament, well, mainly Raúl.” The eelektrike rolled his eyes somewhat but did look rather upset at himself. “Look… I didn’t mean to shame you for your loss man, I just got curious about why you decided to participate in the first place and-“ “Raúl” Said Litleo. “Fine… fine, I’ll try not to pressure you further if that’s what you need, I’d like to apologize to Gael too but he mostly keeps to himself.” I couldn’t help but shrug. “I’ll let him know, I’m just tired at this point because I got signed up against my will but clearly no one’s going to realise that! But what do I care my reputation here was over from the moment I arrived.” I mused as I played with the little crumbs left over in my plate. “W-well in fairness you did have an unfair matchup and performed well on your first match, you did some unique things like using the English moves.” Whispered Litleo, looking away from the group, I couldn’t help but feel at ease, he was clearly the shier one of the group and I very much related, though it was definitely easier for him to appear as such compared to me and my grumpy old face. “I did also hear a lot of noise coming from your dorm the other day, they almost sounded like attacks?” Inquired Itzel “NO! W-well…” I didn’t really want them to get involved in something I’d inevitably want to learn how to deal with myself “It’s nothing you should be concerned with, I can deal.” “Well if you say so, but if you ever need somewhere to crash, we’re right in front of you.” I raised a brow, why were they all suddenly being so nice? They reminded me almost of how Gael acted when we first met, and like then I had no clue why that would even be the case, people see me as a bully now just by being alongside Demian and his associates, why did they behave differently? It was only Litleo who appeared to be amicable to me in class. “Well… I might actually, there’s some stuff going on today s-so mind if I-I… um, w-well, just for a few hours I think.” With that, the tatsugiri nodded and the group headed off to their own table and eventually the lunch period ended, when I made it back to my dorm, I looked over to the door in front of it, with a lot of nervousness, I knocked and I was allowed in, the atmosphere was tense for a bit and I was quiet, I stayed quiet even as everyone else slowly started to relax and ease off, chatting, playing stuff on the tv and generally hanging out while I simply stood in the corner, I couldn’t let myself relax, I had too much weigh in my mind, and eventually, after a slow hour, I left the dorm quietly and unnoticed. As I got out, I suddenly heard Gael’s familiar, albeit muffled, voice suddenly shout in what seemed to be pain, not having a moment to react, I practically banged the door’s touch activation open and I found Gael sitting alone on a bed, crying and holding his face in pain. “GAEL?! ARE YOU OK??!! WHAT’S WRONG?! ARE YOU HURT!!??!” I exclaimed, rushing to his aid as soon as I stepped foot inside. “L-Lex?!” Gael looked at me surprised, clearly he hadn’t noticed my arrival, and I saw it, a massive red bloody scar was present in his right eye, not only that, but similar scars were also present on his pincers, almost like sharp claws grotesquely piercing out of his body, his pincer tail was splatterd in blood as well, he also sported some shiny metal clips, one in his ear, two in his left wing. “What happened to you!! Did Demian hurt you?! Do you need to go to a hospital!!” I was practically grabbing him by the arm almost rushing him out of the dorm before he stopped me, clearly still agitated from whatever had been going on.“No!! No!! NO!!! No it’s just… It’s not blood it’s not anything painful it’s just… I think I might be developing hybrid traits, at the worst time possible…” The gliscor? Explained, as he was slowly start to find some composure. “Hybrid traits? Aren’t we already hybrids?” I asked, but before he could reply memories flashed in my mind, for a long while one could wonder how we could tell each other apart from others of the same species of pokemon and while people generally have different minor traits something that was common was for other pokemon to have certain aspects that set them out, that made them look like other pokemon, before I could continue my train of thought then, Gael shook his head and sniffled. “No, some pokemon well, it’s actually fairly common that, uh, we have traces of dna of separate species and combined that with our unstable combination of those genes and our human side, some of us develop mutations and develop traits of other pokemon we tend to favour… my second favourite pokemon is zangoose and well…” Gael started breaking down again. “I…I just sniff why now??? Why me??? Now I even look more predatory!!! I saw how you looked at me, I was covered in BLOOD, it may be a pattern but who’s gonna realise that?! It. Looks. Like. BLOOD!!!!” Gael continued to sob and I stood speechless, I found myself surprised yet also relating myself to him, I wanted to say something, but the part of me that was afraid of confrontation, of putting myself out there in fear of messing up was trying to suppress that urge like it always managed to do, and yet, there was something different this time that overpowered that urge, something that made me speak. “Gael… I’m sorry, I probably should’ve stood by your side today, you’ve been doing a lot for me all these days and I’ve been brushing it aside like it was nothing, I-I especially didn’t mean to ruin your cover with Demian, I let myself get carried away by my frustrations and well… I’m really sorry, and if it helps you… I don’t think you feel predatory, even with your new features, a-and I mean it!!! Whenever I see you smile I was at first surprised with how sharp your tooth were b-but it was honestly so sincere that it felt comforting, t-to me anyway, I never had that even as a human…” I looked away for a moment, feeling a little sheepish and, ashamed, to me it felt like I was doing more harm than good. “I-I want to be friends with you too y’know because… you’ve been so patient with me a-and I appreciate it like you have no idea and I r-really wish I was better at showing it!” To my surprise however, I saw Gael’s expression grow less weary, there almost seem to be a glinter of something in his eyes, admiration? Maybe? I didn’t allow myself to consider such possibility. “Y-you like my smile?” He asked shyly, I couldn’t help but chuckle “Y-yeah, honest! I actually think it’s a little ease-putting.” “W-wow… I never heard that from… anyone, I mean well, even I was trying to befriend you I’d never guessed you’d find me to be, well, assuring? I guess? I’m honestly not even sure I fully understand what you mean but I expected everyone would just see me as a hungry beast.” The gliscor sighed for a moment. “Especially now that I have claws shooting out of pincers, arceus, I look like an edgy internet OC, not helped by these stupid piercings Demian forced me to get… they both still feel painful, I had heard that developing hybrid traits is like a second transformation but experiencing it… it’s something else, it hurts, just like it hurts when I was first taken, when I was all alone.” “We’ve all been there, I’ve been there, you’re not alone, a-at least I’ll try to make sure of it, like you have for me, plus… I-I kinda like how the piercings look on you, n-not that you should keep them if they hurt or feel uncomfortable but you look cool, in an admirable way, not edgy or scary I think.” The gliscor grinned, in the same assuring way I described before he spoke with one single phrase. “sniff Thank you.” Gael sniffled once again, but quickly wiped away his tears (being careful not to accidentally hurt himself with his new claws) He then tackled me in a sudden glide-hug, which caused me to fall back into my bed, after we got up, we laughed and laughed, it was then I realised me and gael had truly something special, and that I should rightfully treasure it I just didn’t realise how special. “If I’m being honest, I’ve actually thought about getting a piercing myself, but my family wouldn’t even let me, not even an earring.” I commented “Really? Why’s that?” Gael asked, I rolled my eyes. “They thought it would look gay or some shit, it’s also why they don’t like getting me anything pink coloured even though it’s my favourite colour, it’s so stupid though like who cares if I’m gay!!” “Well… are you gay?” Inquired Gael curiously. “Nah, I just like pink man, and I’m just not really feeling like finding a girlfriend.” I commented “I see…” Gael added in a strange tone. “Well, neither am I.” A while after, someone knocked at our door, and slid a letter under it, we walked over and noticed it was from Rodri! “Huh… I think that might be for me.” I spoke “Did you get in trouble?” Gael ask with a much calmer than before twinge of worry “No, no, I think he might just want to see me, er…” I opened the card and excused myself to another part of the room to read it privately. To Lex I’m deeply sorry about what happened in the tournament, I offer my deepest condolences, and I hope it hasn’t brought you down, that said, I haven’t been able to keep your comment about having a dream messenger off my head, I feel like you might need some advice for training, I’m not saying you should enter a tournament again if you don’t want to be a battler, but it’s something to keep in mind, I’ll have to explain in more detail in person though, so please meet me at the cafeteria at 4pm, it should be vacant around that time so we should have enough privacy, with that out of the way, best of luck -Rodri “So… what does he want?” Asked Gael, I found myself thinking for a moment, should I tell him about my dream messenger? Even though I wanted to be better for Gael this time that sense of “inspiration” that kept me from taking the coward’s way out didn’t come, and I simply didn’t want to have to deal with a potential confrontation from telling a non prt member about this information. “He wants to meet up in the cafeteria at 4pm tomorrow, it’s just some… things we need to talk about.” “If you say so.” Gael spoke, we both decided to let the topic go and we focused on other things, we were talking about how we were doing at school when I ended up bringing up the topic of that day’s social formation topic “They were talking about the natures of pokemon and how they supposedly influence our behaviour, how cubones cry and alakazam seem arrogant and all that stuff, I’m oversimplifying but y’know.” I explained “I know what you mean, I also had a similar class, I scoffed at first in fairness but honestly? As time goes on, I’ve realised there’s unfortunately some truth to it, I can still get pretty aggressive and fierce at times, and I can’t deny how much I enjoy soaring through the air or burrowing myself in sand.” “Right… so what does that mean for me?” I asked, he looked at me in a slightly apologetic look. “Look man, I think it’s best if you just didn’t think about it, there will be stuff you can’t help but I’ve learned it’s best if you don’t just get carried away completely by what “feels right.” I merely nodded, we spent the rest of the day talking, up until Demian and Dylan returned, where the atmosphere immediately became thick, Demian almost tried to start a fight but with both Gael and I standing to challenge him Dylan ended up pulling him away, that didn’t me we were peaceful though as for what we couldn’t achieve physically we made up for it verbally, we practically argued with each other over the most minute things throughout the day, up until we were all too tired and dealing with massive headaches and we bitterly decided to call it a night. It took me a while to even feel a little restless, especially after being high on adrenaline and stress due to the arguments we had with our roommates, I found myself going back to Gael’s hybrid traits as a distraction, and then I slowly found myself going back to noticing several traits like these in other pokemon, Itzel I noticed seemed to have tiny little horns and blue and green spots all over, I wasn’t certain but they reminded me of a gastrodon? Raúl was a bit different, mainly sporting a greenish tint and slightly more translucent appearance to his skin, if I had to guess like of the reuniclus line but I wasn’t too sure, Litleo didn’t seem to sport any of this but, then again he was a base form pokemon, Rodri meanwhile had upside down fangs, and when I combined it with his general build, which wasn’t quite the one of a chesnaught, I realised he might have some emboar in him? I think I even noticed a red feather on his back, which was odd, eventually though, my eyes started feeling heavy and I drifted off. I was back in the cold northern-looking shore of the dream dimension, I was sitting holding my knees in my arms, waiting until I noticed him. “Young pokéuman?” Came from Kalleq’s voice, I turned over to look at the shiny toxtricity, I noticed however a new aspect about him, he was displaying a colourful necklace, lashes of several colours are hanging from his neck holding a large claw/tooth like figure. “I’m glad you appreciate this fine piece of jewlery, it was very important to the culture of my people when I lived among the living pokemon in your world.” “I… see, Kalleq.” Kalleq smiled. “I can sense you’re lamenting Lex, do not worry, I’m sure my culture still survives in the world in a certain way, the reason I’m showing you this is because I was able to feel your experiences in the woken world, it seems you’ve had a lot to think about?” I nodded. “Y-yeah um, you’re my ancestor, right? Do you happen to know anything about uh, that whole nature thing? What does that mean for us, f-for toxtricities?” “Don’t you remember what we talked about yesterday? It’s up to you to be your own self, and to be completely honest with you, you and I are very different people, you come from a culture much more developed in a way, millions of years past my time, there’s still a lot about you I’m still barely close to understanding, I have to rely on the connection I share with you to fully process it, but not only that, you’re way more than a pokemon, you’re a pokeuman, there’s a part of you that’s still human and still kicking as much as the part of you that is a toxtricity, and I even sense other parts too.” “Other parts? You mean I could potentially develop hybrid traits as well?” I asked. “Only time will tell, but what I’m getting at is that is that you aren’t just a pokemon, and you have greater potential that I or anyone from my time has, I can sense that you aren’t interested in battle but I still suggest you train your abilities, it will definitely help you in the future.” “But aren’t you supposed to help me with that?? I haven’t even gotten close at all to unlocking my ability?” I complained “And how are you so sure of that young pokeuman? I think you’ll find your ability will come more naturally to you than you think, it’s more like a great sense of determination that allows one to reach your goals easier.” The toxtricity put his hand on my shoulder. “But we’ll get there, I promise.” And with that, the space started glowing brightly white Once I got done with my default routine, which now included almost constantly getting into argument with Demian and Dylan whenever all 4 of us were in the room together, Eventually though time came for me too meet up with Rodri in the cafeteria, I grabbed the letter in case I needed anything from it and I walked on nervously not sure what to expect, encountering the green-shelled giant waving excitedly at me from a table. “Hey Lex!!! Glad you could make it.” I took a seat in front of the table. “What did you need me for?” I asked. “Well, first of all I’d like to say that I’m truly sorry about what happened in the tournament, still, looking over the footage of your matches I honestly feel like you’ve still shown a decent enough of initiative in your matches! Are you sure you really don’t want to become battler?” I groaned. “Ok, what’s this about? I really wasn’t that good in that tournament!! I had like, what, one good performance against a furret? Even I know that’s not impressive! if this is about the prt, I already told you I don’t want to be involved, look-“ “I get that! I get that!” Rodri interrupted. “I don’t want to suggest you do any of those things, you’ve made it clear to me before, but still, most pokeumans would not even come close to putting as well of a fight as you did this new into the base, I just need you to know that you can be a battler if you ever so chose to, you’ve got potential, heck, you’ve even got a dimensional messenger!! Surely that’s got to mean something for you! Lex… look, we’re all pokemon here, most of us tend to have an aspect of our lives we gravitate towards naturally, and I need you to understand something about me; even before I became a quilladin, I always wanted to be someone strong that could help protect others, but I never found the opportunity, because I struggled fitting in and I was alone, but then, when I became a quilladin, this need, this desire to help others who need to be protected, it became impossible to contain, it was then when I discovered who I really was, I found myself much more active, much more social, and I enjoyed it! It wasn’t like when I was a human at all, and then I evolved, I evolved and I realised more than anything I wanted to help the prt rescue other pokeumans so that they could be able to find their place in the world just like I did right in this base! Because despite all our problems, I still think there’s something special about being a pokeuman, and I know you have it in you as well, toxtricity or not.” We stood quietly for a moment. “Speaking of, anything new from that dream messenger of yours?” I thought for a moment. “Well… he did say I could use training more.” “Then I don’t see why it’s a bad idea after all!” Rodri excitedly spoke. “Look, this was nice and all but… maybe it’s just too early to tell? I-I really don’t want to have to think about any of this nature stuff I just… I just want to be myself.” “I never doubted that for one moment Lex, just think about it ok? It was hard enough getting some free time to talk to you about this, but I’ll try to make this a regular appearance, mainly because I am obliged to keep in touch in regards to your dream messenger.” The chesnaught explained before he stood up and left, not before smiling brightly. “I wish you good luck Lex, see ya!” “Wait, what about the headmaster?!” The chesnaught stopped in their tracks. “Huh?” “Y-you said you’d try to tell Nacho about getting signed up to the tournament unwillingly, h-how did that go?” “Oh I knew I had forgotten something! Look Lex, I’m gonna have to be direct with you here it… didn’t really go well he er, said it “was a claim that was hard to prove.” And that “it was a trivial matter.” I looked down in disappointment. “Right, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.” “And see… between you and me… I don’t respect Nacho at all, he’s full of prejudgements that cloud his ability to run the base competently, arceus knows how he got selected as headmaster, but the important thing is that he won’t be kind to people like you, and I won’t lie, I’ve come to not trust him to keep a pokeuman like you safe so… take care, Lex.” And with that warning out of the way, Rodri finally left the cafeteria I took on that information quietly for a moment, this had been possibly the most open Rodri had ever been with me, and I knew understood his thought process more, still, something about everyone’s suggestions to keep training rubbed him the wrong way… didn’t Kalleq suggest he had used his ability in the tournament? Maybe he didn’t realise it? He hoped it would keep developing naturally, otherwise… he’d really hate to be proven wrong after so much defiance. From then on, life at the base would become pretty routinary, I would head to school in the week, luckily after the next two tournaments it seemed like most of my reputation vanished, including that of the new kid, and most people simply chose to keep to themselves as I once again became the quiet kid, only with a record, my situation with my roommates… didn’t improve, our arguments would only get more heated to the point we’d occasionally get kicked out of our dorms, Gael and I tried to find things to do but it became difficult so we’d often just wait by, I tried to stick alongside him as much as possible and he’d do the same, but I do have to admit that I on occasion took my neighbour’s offer to crash at their dorm, Raúl mostly stopped bothering me in electric class, but we’d occasionally partner up quietly, I even got to know Litleo somewhat, occasionally partnering up with assignments, he was very shy, but we surprisingly got along, I think of the three I understood him the most, I didn’t get to know Itzel as well, but I’d regular meet up with them during lunch, where they would chat and I would unwittingly eavesdrop on them learning some of their personal details, Raúl came from ecatepec (no surprises there), Itzel’s parents both came from mainland china, but she was born and lived her whole life in Mexico, she’s also really into anime it seems, and Litleo meanwhile mainly kept to himself, he did fully decide to change his name to Litleo, he didn’t seem too sold on it but he mentioned he was very uncomfortable with his original name, so well decided to respect it, in general he didn’t seem to be much comfortable with his past life as a human as he was expected to be the man of the house in his family. With Rodri, I would continue “bumping” into him (very quickly though we’d both realise he was doing this on purpose and dropped the act.) and he’d continue to inquire as to what I was doing, it was a bit annoying but, I can’t say that I didn’t miss his presence, he was the person who rescued me into the base and there was something so genuinely honest and caring about his smile, he stopped pressuring me about tournaments which was appreciated and when I brought up arguing with my roommates, he became concerned immediately and later I’d find out he had tried to get me to transfer out of my dorm and had an argument with the headmaster, but I decided against it, I didn’t want to abandon Gael after all, which he eventually, albeit a little reluctantly agreed to, he’d also continue to hand me those weird flavoured but delicious water bottles from time to time. I’d continue meeting up with Kalleq, at first he was a little disappointed I didn’t seem to manifest my powers again, but he’d continue showing me around the dream dimension, he started showing me various different landscapes from what he claimed was the pokemon world, preserved in the dream dimension, some reminded me a lot of real world locations, I got to see the northern lights at some point and it was magical. Days would pass and I would grow accustomed to how life worked at the base, I got to see how festivities and special events worked around the base as the months passed, Halloween wasn’t very eventful, it isn’t exactly much of a big tradition here especially now that the whole point of dressing up as something you aren’t loses some weight when you aren’t a boring human, however day of the dead was different, the whole base the days prior was decked to the brim with paper decorations, cempasúchil covered the edges of the floors and walls, there was a vendor that walked through the halls giving out “pan de Muerto” for several days (which was delicious) and most importantly of all there was one giant altar in the main hall of the base, people came all over to pay their respects to all the various people they lost, it wasn’t just dead pokeumans though, a space on the altar was reserved to those pokéumans taken and brainwashed by pokextinction whom we couldn’t save in time, I couldn’t help but remember Alan, Lázaro and Yulian, the pokemon that accompanied me when I transformed, I realised the day was for them too, only their spirits weren’t able to accompany us as opposed to those that had died, so if anyone ever were to argue that lack of free will is preferable to death, I’d slap them in the face. Still, it was a bittersweet celebration, despite the negative context I couldn’t help myself but be taken in by the music and the gorgeous atmosphere, Aldo Ledesma, the announcer from the tournament also performed a gorgeous ballad in the middle of a kiosk located at the centre of the big plaza, all while the ceiling lit up in a way I couldn’t figure out simulating a beautiful, clear, starry night, I sat on the floor alongside Gael and we both took in our experiences as a Pokéuman, at the end of it all day of the dead was a big party and just because we were in the middle of a war, constantly experiencing casualties and loss, didn’t mean that we didn’t get to be happy, to be alive, plus the food that day was amazing, Gael even commented that I was starting to put on pounds. “Dude, I’m not making fun of you, but pokemon tend to have stronger metabolisms than humans, putting on pounds is significantly harder unless your species is already of a larger weight.” “A-ah shut up.” I called out in embarrassing. “I mean you don’t look… bad, just it’s a bit admirable in a curious way.” The next holiday I would get to discover as a pokéuman would be the Mexican revolution, only I would come to find out that the celebration had a different meaning to the pokéuman base: Gael and I had been discussing what to do with our holiday, Demian and Dylan seemed to have plans that probably involved going to the common floor to harass people and so we stood there figuring out how to make use of our miraculous time entirely for ourselves, that was then when an announcement rang throughout the base. “Attention pokéumans, for those who wish to attend the official celebrations for revolution and foundation day, the events will start soon at the auditorium, please enter at 2:30pm” “What’s that all about? Why is revolution day treated as a big deal like it was independence day?” I turned to Gael, who had become much more comfortable in his hybrid-like appearance and even chose to keep the piercings (though he got ones that looked less like tags). “Well because in a way this is our independence day, pokéumans came to be around the same time as the mexican revolution started since both were in 1910, but this base formed shortly after the revolution and is actually one of the oldest bases in the world! There’s a whole legend about one specific figure, you recall that hawlucha that was in the headmaster’s door?” I nodded, Gael grinned excitedly, clearly talking about something that properly interested him for once. “Well, he’s sort of seen as the main founder of the base, he’s known as “El noble de milpa alta.” (The noble of milpa alta) it was said that he was one of the many pokéumans to transform during the first wave, although some historians debate that and claim he came from some of the later ways, but regardless, his human name has been lost to time, but he chose to go by his species and by a wrestler-like alias, it is believed that he was the first person to round up other pokeumans and directly fought back against the growing pokextinction organization in Mexico, in fact.” Gael suddenly hopped from his bed, gliding briefly across the floor before grabbing a book hidden that was hastily left under the bed, on the cover was an artistic rendition of presumably the same hawlucha we are talking about, only he didn’t look like a normal hawlucha, he was slightly bigger and bulkier, had more feathers, but most of all wore an impressive, shimmering, black and gold mask that covered even his shoulders and chest, it was a majestic sight and I was awestruck. Gael looked over my shoulder with a big grin. “I know, right? Well, as I was saying, according to this and several other writings we have of the events that lead to the foundation of our base, it is said that he eventually headed to Japan and worked closely with the pokeuman organization headquarters, which definitely means he had to have gotten in contact with mew, although we don’t know much about his personal life, we owe everything here to him.” “Woah…” I exclaimed, amazed and with a large smile of my own. “that’s so cool!!! Hawlucha is actually my third favourite pokemon.” “Yeah, hawlucha is a great pokemon, I’d say I would’ve love to be one but I’m happy as a gliscor.” “You’d rather burrow yourself in sand than be a big cool luchador?” I stated jokingly “Hey I’m not the one drinking stagnated water!” Gael rebutted, I was confused, however. “What?! Ew!!! I’ve never done that?!!!” “Oh really? Then what were in all those water bottles you keep drinking?” “That was… that… oh… oh arceus no…” “Wait you didn’t know?!!” “I…” I was startled, speechless, unable to speak, wait those are the same thing. “…They do taste pretty good.” Gael just laughed. “Well, it’s normal and even healthy for you according to the pokedex.” “Really?” I asked slightly incredulously, he merely nodded. The next major holiday I got to experience was Christmas, which was a bit more mixed, not because of the experience itself, it just wasn’t a holiday that was that important to me and Gael, before the day actually came the base did something interesting by having it snow through most of December using the help of the base’s ice types, this was amazing for those of us who were new as we never really got to experience snow in our lives at all! It was… alright, I mean it never got too difficult to deal with anyway, there was also a giant tree covered with pokemon themed decorations and several gifts, in the last day of the school year we had a gift exchange, both for our regular class and our battle class, I was unfortunate enough to get Raúl for the battle class exchange so I had to ask Itzel and Litleo what I should get for the slightly translucent eel, it turned out to not be as complicated as I originally thought as I really just needed to find him some trading cards for a game I didn’t recognize, as for what I asked for the exchange, I just asked for replacement school supplies as I was never good at keeping them for more than a few months without losing them. During December, I had tried to sneak away from my other roommates, who seemed to be particularly insistent that very day, to watch the junior Eurovision song contest of 2022 live, since I didn’t have the privacy to do it at my dorm I tried to head to one of the computers at the library, borrowing some headphones so I wouldn’t distract anyone who was actually there to study, especially since I knew I would be there for a few hours, I had gotten into the event earlier in the year and had been following most of the season, but then a little something called turning into a pokéuman and ending up living in a hidden underground civilization with crappy roommates ended up kinda taking my attention away from the event, but I was still determined to finally watch it live, I had followed most of the songs already with my money being on Portugal and the UK though I was saddened by the fact I was likely unable to vote given our circumstances as- “Lex? What are you doing here?” Came from the voice of the only one of my roommates who didn’t make my life hell, Gael, who startled me and, had it not been for the fact I was in a library I would’ve let out a scream. “U-uh I was just watching stuff, there was this one thing I was planning on watching today a-and I needed to get away from Demian for a few hours.” “Really? What are you watching?” He asked in curiosity as he turned to look at my monitor, which was currently in the middle of Portugal’s performance. “Cool, is that a kid?” “O-oh yeah it’s the junior version of the Eurovision thing I talk to you about, it’s p-pretty cool they’ve got unique songs even if definitely for kids though I guess I am technically on the age range for it still but u-uh well it’s very niche and all-“ “Can I watch?” Gael asked, taking me by surprise. “O-o-oh, w-well sure I-I don’t know if it’s y-your thing b-b-b-but sure” Since I was wearing string headphones I merely gave the one in my other ear (don’t ask how it works for my horns I barely know myself, at the very least I can’t produce ear wax anymore) for him to put on his ear.” “So what country is next?” “Serbia, actually, they’re one of my favourites, it’s a slower song but I do like the melody and her voice i-it’s very sweet, unfortunately she got sick so this is a rehearsal but I hope it’s still going to sound good. I didn’t notice it myself as the song began, mainly because I was likewise captivated, but Gael had been taken in by the performance immediately, when I looked over at him he has sparks in his eyes like it was magic, from the beginning with the slow music-box style tune, to the first instrumental break with the strings speeding up the pace of the song and featuring a ballet dancer, then through the second instrumental with the trombone, and then through the end of the song, we both connected to the singer’s sweet vocals for the three minutes she got to sing, we didn’t know a lick of Serbian, but we were pretty sure we understood the message of the song after that, Armenia and Ukraine came later, and though we had an appreciation for the Ukrainian message of hope and strength during a war, something we could relate to very as pokéumans, none of the songs, even in the recap resonated with us as much as the melancholic Serbian ballet did. By the end of the year Gael and I were looking forward to the next editions of the adult and junior contest, together. The day before Christmas, or “Nochebuena” As it’s known over here had a lot of events prepared, a tv speech, some festivities and events, but the only truly important part for me was the main dinner, a HUGE, delicious meal where every pokéuman that was currently at the base, because of course, nurses and those stationed outside the base were unable to join in, were all in the cafeteria, from civilians to the PRT, I sat in a corner with Gael and the more reluctant Demian and Dylan, but I was able to spot and wave towards our neighbours and Rodri, separately, mouthing merry Christmas at them, a gesture they shared back and I was able to understand now that I got used to all the bodily quirks of pokéumans after all this time, the cooks were cooking frantically constantly adding new dishes, complements and desserts to the table, almost all of it was too delicious for anyone to leave unfinished, pretty much no food ended up wasted that day, my favourite of them all? Definitely the flan. New year’s had probably been the most surreal holiday of the bunch, with 2023 on the loom, there wasn’t much to for most of the day however they did announce that curfew would be extended all the way till 2am to celebrate the passing of the year, some people went to the main hall to celebrate, but most of us stayed in our dorms and watched the countdown on tv, which included me, Gael, and weirdly enough Demian and Dylan, and that’s what made it surreal, all four of us were hanging out in the couch, telling jokes and laughing along like we actually got along with each other, though I think it was mainly due to the fact that the dark types were absolutely HAMMERED with alcohol they definitely didn’t have legal access to, but there really wasn’t much we could do about it. I yawned as I sat alongside Gael, since his species was more nocturnal he was nowhere near as tired as I was so by the time the countdown ended I was leaning on his shoulder pretty much about to faint like I had lost another tournament, my final thoughts of 2022 were that, things may have changed a lot, and though at first I thought I would’ve just had to deal with high school and a post pandemic world and not a secret war between creatures of myth I was suddenly a part of, I was glad I at the very least had someone like the gliscor to live this wild adventure alongside with. I woke up the next year with little energy, though I wasn’t as bad as the pair of hungover dark types, Gael had been resting though clearly more due to his nocturnal tendencies than anything, I walked over to the bathroom to freshen up and check myself on the mirror, Gael was right, I was definitely putting up pounds yet something about it felt natural, as I splashed some water on my face I was greeted by a new sight on my amphibian chin. A small tuft of fur, half black and half white, seemingly grew overnight.Pokéumans: re-lived part 1 "From parallel worlds" Chapter 2 "Everything changes"My hands. My human hands. They did not look like it at the moment. “What happened? What the hell’s going on?” Those were the thoughts I had to myself when I stared at my significantly shorter and now three fingered, purple on the back and blue on the front coloured hands, I jumped out of bed and immediately went to the bathroom to try and hopelessly wash my hands back to normal, but it was then when I had to face the truth of the situation, they’ve been changed, and it didn’t take a genius to figure out what they’ve changed into. “…Toxtricity hands? No way, but… how is this even possible? Oh god…”. Obviously having your hands turned into the ones of your favourite pokémon isn’t normal, nor is it probably a good thing; my mind was racing for answers and yet… none of this should even be possible, there was no way of knowing how to do anything about this situation. I was starting to get really worried about it but decided to calm down and try to find a solution… somehow. I served myself some cereal for breakfast, being very hesitant about it worried that I might intoxicate or corrode anything I touched, but as I grabbed a ceramic bowl, filled it with cereal from its cardboard box, then poured milk out of a plastic bottle and finally grabbed a spoonful (from a steel spoon) of cereal and swallowed it and I continued to repeat this until i finished my cereal and drank the bowl everything stood intact and I didn’t get sick. “Well, so far so good, but why did only the hands chang-aaaargghh!!!”. A sudden ache coming from my wrists forced me to drop the spoon and let out a scream, As I looked at my palms to try and catch what was happening I noticed the purple was spreading to the top of my arms very slightly, if you weren’t paying attention you wouldn’t notice it, and in another jolt of pain a sudden growth ripped out of my skin, followed suit by other identical growths in the rest of my wrists, which I quickly identified as toxtricity’s characteristic spikes, that change was much more noticeable. “Oh god i-it’s spreading?!?! What the hell is happening to me?!!?”. After the pain and the adrenaline rush that came with it both faded, I was able to collect my thoughts once again, but now I realized that the situation was a lot more urgent than I thought. “Ok… at least I know now that it’s not just my hands… oh god this most likely means I’m gonna turn into a full toxtricity! that wouldn’t be too bad if it wasn’t real life but... I need to find a way to stop this somehow!”. I immediately opened my computer (which thank god also didn’t corrode at touch) opened Microsoft edge because I’m weird and I don’t like using google and began to type before hesitating… the situation was pretty weird as is, “Am I even going to find anything?”. I thought out loud. Still, I decided that this situation was very real and very urgent and looked up “Pokémon transformations” and was both disappointed and un-surprised when all that came up were the typical drawings and youtube compilations from the internet that I was decently familiar with, I knew I had to be more specific, but a feeling of embarrassment came to me when I tried, as if tons of people were able to read the stuff I was searching and judged me for it, in the end I fell victim to my own cowardice and decided to give up entirely, I sighed in defeat when a sudden loud ringing bell noise appeared. “Ring ding ding ding ding!!!.” “Ah crap, the garbage truck”. I checked my phone’s notifications and yup, it was a message from my mum reminding me that I have to take out the trash. However, I really did not want to get out of the house at the moment apart for the reasons that should be obvious, I had just woken up and was still on my pajamas and i was not ready to get out at all, did i really wake up this late? Although I also didn’t want to get chewed out by my parents, so begrudgingly I decided to try and disguise myself, I got fully dressed on old dirty clothes, putting on a long sleeved hoodie which immediately made me uncomfortable because of the morning sun’s heat, and hoped that no one could see my arms behind the many trash bags. I went down the stairs where I was quickly seen by my grandmother who said hi to me, my brother was watching TV on the living room of the first floor and didn’t notice me, which was fine by me, i didn’t want him to bother me and i was too occupied to bother him. I said hi back to my grandma and I immediately went downstairs hoping to not get her attention for anything else, as I opened the front door I immediately felt a wave of relief and also anger at seeing that it was a false alarm and the bell was something else, I put the bags inside near the entrance and was about to close the door when I suddenly heard someone aggressively shout: “You’re one of them!!!” I looked at the noise and saw a random old man pointing at me, the moment I laid eyes on him he started sprinting at my direction and I immediately shut the door before he could get close, luckily our door needs a key to be opened so I was safe from whatever that crazy guy was about to do to me, maybe it wasn’t something bad but I really did not want to take any chances especially with the way he shouted and approached so I ran upstairs with my hands on my pockets. After dealing with grandma for a bit while doing a surprisingly good job of hiding my transformation I immediately went to my room and took some time to reflect on my situation. “Ok... my parents aren’t here, I’m not sure my grandma, my brother, any other family member or Fer would be much help and I have no other friends or anyone to talk to... I guess I’ll just have to wait till my parents get back, I really hope this isn’t anything serious.” As much as the idea of transforming into my favourite Pokémon entices me stuff like that is almost never exclusively a good thing, made more apparent by the other thing I had in my mind. “You’re one of them? What the hell does that even mean? What was up with that guy?” That should’ve been the least of my worries yet it was the main thing on my mind as I showered, put on clean clothes and tidied up the room a little, it was the samw feeling of dread I felt when I thought i was being watched the few weeks prior, I kept wondering why I was about to be attacked by a random stranger and what did he mean when he said that, it almost felt as if he was possessed or controlled in some way, could it have something to do with my transformation? Needles to say I couldn’t focus on anything else for the next few hours until I was suddenly called downstairs by my grandma. “LEX, I NEED YOU TO DO ME A FAVOUR!!!” Sigh “For god’s sake what does she want now?”. “I left you some money on the table, okay? I’ll be back in a bit.” “Fine...” “Don’t give me that attitude, I am simply asking you a favour, to go get some tortillas and nothing else, if your brother were old enough I would send him instead.” I wasn’t able to do more than just show my annoyance through my expression, even though this time I had a reason to not want to go out beyond being lazy, I knew I wouldn’t be able to convince her, so instead I waited until she left and decided to get done with this as quickly as possible so I grabbed the money, kept my hands in my pockets and prayed that the crazy guy from last time isn’t here anymore. It was still fairly early as I left, my parents were most likely going to get back about an hour from now, as I went to the store, I managed to avoid anyone, but I couldn’t shake the feeling yet again that I was being watched, I arrived to the tortilleria trying to put the money in the counter without my hands being seen, luckily the store clerk was distracted having a conversation with someone else. “A kilo, please.” “Huh? Oh! Of course.” I got my tortillas and the clerk went back to her conversation with the other guy so I was able to grab what I had bought and get out quickly, it seemed like my worries were unnecessary and I was already about to open the door of my house until I suddenly heard the one thing I was hoping I wouldn’t hear. “YOU’RE ONE OF THEM!!” “Shit!” I looked over and noticed another guy running full sprint towards me, I panicked and stood frozen trying to look for anyone else to help yet no one was there, as he got closer he pulled out a strange canister at my direction which caused me to flinch and try to shield myself with my hands and the tortillas before my attacker suddenly got tackled by another man that arrived almost from mowhere. “JESUS- Phew, thank you sir, I thought I was going to be-“ “You need to start running kid.” “Wait what do yo-“ “NOW!!” I got cut off before I could ask any questions or get a good look at the man who saved me, only noticing that he was wearing a curious silver ring, but instead of focusing on that I immediately started running in the opposite direction towards the usual route i take to school, in the meantime, the man with the canister was seemingly ganging up on the other one, until the other man managed to get a hold of the silver ring, and with a spin, suddenly his arm went from a human one to a thick, scaley and filled-with-spikes druddigon arm, and with a simple slash he knocked out the other man, before he could celebrate his victory he noticed several bystanders approaching him with similar canisters, turning his hand back to human he grabbed a hidden communixation device sorta similar to a walkie talkie and activated it. “I found the transformee before they could take him, unfortunately he will most likely get captured soon and I won’t be able to reach him in time, it’s better to get a rescue team ready.” “Understood, we’ll get some of our agents prepared.” Came from the other end, the druddigon-human then readied himself into a fighting stance against the approaching bystanders. Running aimlessly until I ran out of breath still carrying the tortillas I stopped in the middle of the large pedestrian bridge in the route towards my high school somewhat slowed down by my fear of heights, I was processing all of the events that had just played out, by this point I was fairly sure that the attacks were related to my transformation, like in the setup of some weird movie or tv show, I wasn’t entirely sure about my theory but it seemed to make the most sense. Pant pant “Ok, I’m transforming into a pokémon and a bunch of people are after me most likely because of it, but why is this happening here of all places? Stories like this usually don’t happen here in Mexico, and more importantly why is this happening to me???” I kept rambling to myself in a quiet tone so as to not be heard, trying to remember anything that could’ve been the cause of a pokémon transformation but drawing a blank. It wasn’t long until I noticed another person with a canister running towards me from the back, in fact not just one person, but a few other ones too, immediately I regretted comparing this to a movie as I knew I was going to start running for hopefully not my life. “God dammit.” Before I even fully recovered from the earlier run I was already running again in a bunch of random directions while trying to avoid them, I never had a good stamina so I quickly started getting tired again and to make matters worse every time I manage to lose someone a new person with a canister would show up, and when I say random directions I’m not being truly honest, I don’t wanna end up getting lost so I’m really just walking in circles back and forth on different routes I’m familiar with, but in every new one there are still people waiting for me that i have to run away from. Eventually I ended up having to stop running in circles and shift directions into places that i only vaguely recognized, I was managing to lose all of them however looking at my surroundings I realized it was very unlikely that I’d be able to find my way back, I’ve only been in this area like once and i was only somewhat familiar with the various old abandoned factories devoid of people, I knew I must not have been far away from home but I was getting pretty close to the less “suburban” parts of the city rather than the residential area I was more familiar with, I tried reaching for my phone for help but had to mentally scold myself when I realized that I didn’t bring it to me give I simply thought I would be buying tortillas, said tortillas had already by this point gotten cold and dry, hmph, waste of money. With limited options left I walked across the area trying to remember where I came from while trying to not draw a lot of attention to myself. It took a while but I was able to figure out the way back, I let out a long drawn out sigh of relief but also of my tiredness (by this point you can’t even begin to imagine how much I was covered in sweat) but before I was allowed even a second of rest I yet again heard another of those people after me. “You’re one of them!!” I tried to run from them but by this point I was getting too exhausted to continue and the person chasing me was able to catch up to me pretty quickly, he grabbed my arm, forcing me to finally let go of the bag of tortillas and even through I tried to struggle away it was all in vain as I was too tired and before I could scream for help they grabbed the canister and sprayed a massive cloud of purple gas towards my face, obscuring my view and making me cough before I started feeling dizzy and even more exhausted to the point where my consciousness blacked out… “Ughhh... Huh?” I awoke with a headache, unable to recall what had just happened, that is until I realized I was in a small empty room, feeling the ground moving beneath me I quickly realized where I was. “Hey!!! Where am I? Where are you taking me?!” I tried to get up but I was unable to move and I quickly realized I was chained up with my arms tied behind my back. “Let me go!!! Why are you kidnapping me?!!” No response. “Help!!! Anyone!!! Help!!!” Suddenly I felt the ground shake violently, sending me falling face first into the floor, if I wasn’t convinced I was kidnapped and trapped in a moving van, this definitely sealed the deal, and I could hear a small chuckle coming from the outside, I kept screaming for help and to be let out but every time I did the van would shake and I would be jostled around violently, almost as if it they did it on purpose, eventually I just couldn’t take it anymore, with a combination of my exhaustion, my panic and the realization of the situation I started silently crying on the floor of the van. I’m not sure how much time passed, the dark van obscured my view of the outside and for all intents and purposes days could’ve happened in there (although realistically i would say a few hours) but eventually all the water from my tears had been drained away and I had already given up any form of escape, to add insult to injury I received a jolt of pain spreading from the middle of my arms to right below my elbows, it was obvious to me that this was the transformation spreading, I wanted to scream in agony but I didn’t want to get violently thrown around like a ragdoll by the people driving the van, but in the end the pain was too much. “AAAAAAARGH!!!!” As I expected the van shook around violently leaving me in even more pain, however I suddenly heard a very loud “CRASH” and the van went from just shaking to spinning violently leaving me to fall on the ceiling, the walls, the floor then back to the walls as the van finally stopped moving, dizzy, I managed to hear someone shout something outside the wall before suddenly “BOOOM” in a small explosion a giant hole popped up where the other wall was, and despite all the craziness that had happened I could not believe what was behind that hole. “Good job with the explosion.” I heard directed at someone else, the conversation then turned to me. “Now quick, we don’t have much time!” “Impossible...” Extending his arm(?) towards me was a Gallade, a pokémon, something that wasn’t even supposed to exist. “Hurry up, we’ll explain later.” The gallade immediately grabbed my arm and started pulling me off the van, immediately I noticed he wasn’t alone, he was together with a Talonflame and a Druddigon, Looking at the van i could see it was pretty large and completely windowless on the back, it wss disguised with the logo of a company i couldn’t care enough to remember but I knew immediately it was bull. Suddenly we heard a shout coming from a human carrying a strange pistol who seemingly came out of the front van. “Don’t move!!” “We need to get to the base, Angel take care of the kid.” The gallade motioned over to the talonflame who immediately grabbed me with his wing and put me on his back, he was about to say something before suddenly a barrage of green lasers came at our direction. “Dammit, won’t even let me quip.” Immediately the talonflame started flying away with me on his back from the man who was firing lasers at us, I was of course screaming and holding onto him for dear life as the entire group of pokemon fled the assault, when the lasers stopped for a brief moment I could see more people with guns arriving on the scene seemingly called as backup from the first man and they started firing and chasing after us. “Don’t worry, the lasers won’t hurt you, just hold on tight to my back and my back only, don’t hold on to my wings, got it?” I was still too confused as to what was going on to respond and as the barrage of lasers got more intense so did his flying, we started flying at god knows what speed and I was very much struggling to not fall off causing me to feel nauseous and even more dizzy, despite this one of the lasers eventually hit the talonflame and both of us fell to the floor with a loud “THUD.” The fall while not as painful as I thought still hurt a lot which made me let out a lot of “ow”s when I noticed the unconscious body of the talonflame, it wasn’t dead but it seemed to have fainted, I wasn’t able to tell if it was from the fall or from the lasers but as the other Pokémon started getting close to us I suddenly got my answer as I got hit with a laser too, the burning sensation quickly making me fall unconscious with the last thing I felt was getting dragged away and the last thing I heard being the druddigon and the gallade screaming “Let him go you pokextinctionist scum!!” Before I passed out. The trio of pokemon were able to escape from the kidnappers, the talonflame remaining unconscious being carried by the druddigon, however they would not feel happy about it given what went on, they were on a mission, what that had already had weeks of preparation as they analyzed the signs, unfortunately it seemed they were ahead, and now, the rescue had become another of many failed attempts. The druddigon and gallade looked at each other with sour expressions, mad at each other and themselves, they said nothing up until they felt their talonflame teammate stirring and regaining consciousness. “Ughh... We... We lost, didnt we?” The other two nodded. I woke up in another van, smaller this time, but still empty and chained up, at this point I didn’t even try to escape, I was completely defeated, I just started crying again, and cried even harder as I could feel my kidnappers laughing in the front like maniacs. I stayed like this for a long while, possibly hours while I secretly prayed that i would get rescued again like i did before, but it never happened, whoever my rescuers were, they failed, and it was so weird, they were Pokémon! Like I was about to become! Maybe I could’ve gotten an answer to why I’m turning into a toxtricity, instead these humans, whoever they are, seem to be taking me to god knows where to do god knows what, is god even real at this point? It didn’t matter but I was pretty interested in the question given how I wasn’t even sure I’d be alive for much longer... I stopped crying, I had stopped crying a good while ago and I was simply exhausted from everything, today was about as bad as all the previous weeks, now I simply needed to rest, and my body agreed, I was about to lose consciousness again when suddenly the van stopped, and a person opened the back doors, I wasn’t able to see where I was or who it was, but the atmosphere was cold and ominous, especially as soon as the man smiled, and spoke a full sentence for the first time since I entered the van. “We’re here.”