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Just for fun i made a girl version of my sona, i quite like how it came out
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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 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.”Pokéumans re-lived part 1 "From parallel worlds" Chapter 1: "Waking up from a dream"I am not happy. I suppose you’ll want me to elaborate on why, well, first things first, introductions: I am Lex, that’s what everyone calls me (or at least what I try to get people to call me) Physically wise I have tan skin and dark very unkept hair, notable eye bags on my face, unusually long limbs and I’m slightly chubby. I’m 14 years old and I currently live in Mexico City. It is the year 2022 and the month of September, Today is Monday of my first week of high school which I absolutely wasn’t looking forward to, I was barely able to graduate from middle school pretty much because of the pandemic and although i had high hopes to be able to recover myself in high school, the fact i basically chose my school at the last minute and i still have no idea what i want to study really doesn’t make me feel assured. Anyhow, I was woken up by my little brother’s alarm at 6 o’something while my mum was making breakfast, dad was preparing for work and my brother was... Not waking up, I felt a little disoriented as I’m used to having to be ready by this point but since high school is at the afternoon instead of the morning I didn’t need to yet, anyway, i waited until everyone was gone and the sky changed from night to day to eat my breakfast my mother left me and shower, I put on regular clothes, an interesting deparute from the uniforms I’ve had to wear all my life, though my wardrobe isn’t exactly the most... Flattering, I only wear what makes me comfortable in my weird autistic sensibilities, and spent the morning trying to prepare myself mentally for 3 years of hell, and that’s if all goes well and I don’t end up repeating a year, anyway, nothing really interesting happens in this point so I’ll just talk about myself more. I’m into a lot of things and not many things at the same time, it’s hard to explain but basically I don’t get into any kind of media beyond small hyper-fixations, however there are a few exceptions though, if I have to give an example of one then I’ll probably go with pokemon, I love Pokémon, although I’ve never been able to afford a single game, still I’ve enjoyed it since I was 8 right when pokemon go came out and just before sun and moon were announced, with my favourite Pokémon being toxtricity, a recent addition from a frankly mixed generation but still ended up quickly rising the ranks on my list of favourites and I honestly don’t even know what’s about him that appeals to me so much, maybe its design? Its ability? It’s connection with music (I always have a song stuck in my head after all) Or maybe it’s just the general vibe? Even though I’m not punk even in the slightest I still find myself connecting to him for some strange reason. Like he speaks to me somehow. Anyway. Back to home, My mum came back in time to cook lunch so that afterwards I would head to school, my high school is a decent 30 minute walk away from my home, and I can go there by myself however I only walked the route once and it involves a lot of pedestrian bridges which absolutely terrify me as I have a fear of heights. Still there weren’t any major issues as I went there and I arrived in good time despite not knowing where a single thing was on this new building. Classes went about as well as I expected. It was the first day so it was only introductions but I still struggled having to join each teacher’s Google class, writing down the names of the books i had to buy and organising my notes since we didn’t have the time and money to buy notebooks for each subject yet so I had to use an old folder. Classes ended (at 9 pm I might add Jesus Christ) and right as I left I encountered with an old friend from my old school that also decided to be in this high school. “Alex!” “Lex, you know I hate having to remind people about it right?” She corrected herself. “Oh right, Lex, so how are you doing?” “Eh. Weird dreams I suppose.” “Really? How so?” “Hard to describe, nothing special anyway.” “The usual huh?” I nodded. “You shouldn’t come to expect more from me, Fer.” From then onwards the conversation faded into simple noise as we left towards home, she with her parents, I by myself. Now I’ve been friends with this person since the beginning of middle school and even though she’s nice and energetic and really my only option for socializing I still don’t feel close to her like other people would wrongly (and overconfidently) assume. Especially now that we’re not in the same group and in general our friendship has gotten a bit distant since the pandemic, and I’m just not a fan of being social anyway, I keep to myself and generally dislike others, i did not learn a single name of my clasmates and teachers and i have a feeling i won’t learn any till I’m gonna guess next month, Anyway I came back from school, had dinner, went to bed and ignored my parents when they asked me how it went and the rest of the week went flying by both astonishingly quickly and irritatingly slowly, that is normal for me though as i’ve never really led an interesting life, I really just stay on my room on my computer and never leave the house unless I’m forced to or become desperate, and usually when I do it’s to the same places every time, if it ain’t school which I’m forced to go it’s either the nearby park/market or the centre of Mexico city and it’s usually because my parents want to eat outside and if I don’t go I don’t eat, otherwise I would just stay, I’m not the adventurous type and I usually don’t like to get out of my comfort zone because honestly? Why should I? It’s called a comfort zone for a reason, oh well, I’ll move on to the weekend that went as uneventfully as the week did and eventually it became night time of sunday, where I just jumped into my bed, sighed after a long 7 days that weren’t awful but I knew was just the beginning, i mean I didn’t even have homework but I knew things were going to chane as I doze off... Unfortunately I never knew how much things would really change in the next few weeks. The sound of the crowd screaming barely registers to me as I walked into the side of the battlefield, with a massive gyarados as my opponent. I don’t even need to hear my trainer shout a command for me to start attacking, not that I could with all the noise granted, although the details of the battle escape me since I was never really invested in that stuff, I was able to decimate my opponent and bask in the glory of my victory, granted it wasn’t the cleanest and quickest fight in the whole world but I was still the decisive winner none the less, I felt the people in the stadium cheer me on and I instinctually played a short bass riff using the protrusions while letting out a loud cry“TOOOOXXX!!!”. After that small celebration solo, I was quickly recalled into my pokeball to rest as I grinned to myself in uncharacteristic confidence… I woke up yet again to my alarm as my first conscious thoughts of the day were: “Huh, that was a weird dream.” Not weird in the sense that it was strange, far from it actually as my dreams often don’t have any cohesion and are meaningless bizarre images conjured up by my mess of a brain, honestly to have a simple and, quite frankly generic dream like that is unusual on my part but oh well, that’s irrelevant for now, I thought to myself as I washed my body with soap and other cleaning products while showering, expecting the dream to fade with time though it never happened. As the second week went by not much actually changed yet aside from the homework and getting more used to the route and the layout of the school like i predicted and, I dunno, breathing differently, I guess? In any case I went through all my classes of every day and met up with Fer once or twice on recess where we didn’t really talk about much and it was very clear we didn’t have much to talk about. “Hey Alex- sorry, lex!” Sigh “Hey...” “Just wanted to check up on you, homework is only just beginning and it’s already hell.” “Tell me about it.” From then on we just stood in silence, ate lunch and sometimes one of us would draw, I have to admit I don’t mind doing stuff in silence, but it’s clear I’m alone in that and I guess i would appreciate a deeper connection with someone but it’s just not gonna happen, I’ll difficultly find someome to be more friends rather than just barely not acquaintances. As the week passed and I suffered through stuff I didn’t enjoy, aka school, I thought back to my dream, honestly the fact I remembered the dream for more than a day shows how special it is, I was showing off impressive battling skills for everyone to see, I remembered the confidence I had during that dream, like I was used to the battle, like it was my calling, what I was meant to do with my life, and i was good at it! ... Of course, these feelings are not here in the present, I’m not a confident person in the slightest, nor am I talented or skilled in any way, even though most people i knew like my friend Fer or even my dad were not that much different from me I knew they have a lot of hobbies and pastimes and interest that they were fairly good at (enviously so sometimes) like for example, me and Fer liked to draw but she clearly has more talent and experience than me, she already has a developed style while mine only just graduated from stick figures, my mum and dad are grown adults who already have careers and jobs and stuff to do with their life, while I’m just here going through the motions. And I think it’s starting to get to me. The week ended, in the weekend mum and I decided to buy some of the stuff I still needed, i had barely been able to finish my homework and i was only able to get a few books and notebooks but not all of them so that’s gonna screw me over, but in the meantime I’ll just learn to deal with it, I went to bed on Sunday night, not looking forward to the future. Being a solo explorer was a though job, even for a medium-ranked one like me. Although I would often partner up with other teams I still preferred to go on adventures solo as I’m not the best at working with other people, especially at the guild, I won’t lie however that sometimes I would struggle with a mission and end up needing rescue myself, but I managed, I was keeping up and that’s what matters. While I looking for a special artifact deep in the dungeon I found myself battling a rampant Aggron standing in front of the artifact, possibly protecting it? now even though the aggron was a lot larger physically and seemingly stronger I was still beating him rather easily, dodging most of his attacks and giving a good punch here and there, I did still struggled with a few of his attacks, including an earthquake that almost wiped me out (darn ground type moves), but apart from that the aggron was putting up way less of a fight than I expected, once the aggron fainted I smirked to myself and I grabbed the artifact, which was an orb of unknown effect. I was about to leave the dungeon to inspect when suddenly: “Shock wave!!!” A wave of thunder suddenly hit my entire body, luckily since I was an electric type it wasn’t very effective against me but I was unable to look at my attacker until it stopped, and when I did I found myself with another toxtricity, who immediately charged at me before I could react and I blacked out. I woke up like last Monday, same hour, same way, but with yet another dream that wouldn’t escape my waking mind, however unlike the last one this had me a lot less intrigued, guess I was getting used to it, still, I found myself thinking back to it throughout the day, and the next, and the next, and most of the week until in the middle of it where i had a repeat of the previous dream... only I was a little less confident than I remembered, i ended up going back to the versions of myself from that dream, an explorer similar to the ones from the pokemon mystery dungeon games, and a pokemon more akin to the base games, I never found it weird that i was a pokemon in either dream, honestly I wouldn’t mind it if I was a pokemon in real life, it’s a weird fascination of mine that probably came thanks to the pmd games, like I said before I never got to buy them but i heard their premise and so I saw a lot of gameplays of them and I enjoyed their plot a lot, and I would often imagine myself as a protagonist of those games (though I would never be able to choose a pokemon form, probably because the toxtricity line didn’t exist yet), however I don’t actually have any aspirations of becoming an explorer in real life, with my allergies and my sedentary habits? Hell no. It’s a little weird to me how I can know things I don’t want to be when I’m older but not things I do want to be, I sometimes feel like i don’t know anything about myself and not knowing what to do with your life feels like a problem since it seems everyone should have this figured out and everyone else around my age already has. Except for me. Well, in any case, school started to get a lot more settled in and routinary, assignments started to become hell and the days faded into the same of always that I’ve experienced all my life, aside from the minor changes from this new school, I could not tell you how many times I’ve had the same breakfasts of cereal or eggs, or the same meals of badly cooked rice, or just the constant over and over mundanity of everything, I know I’m not adventurous, but I’m also tired of this repetition, it feels like i live in the background sometimes. And as for how I’m doing, well? Unfortunately I’m starting to fail to keep up with the many assignments and constantly having to get new materials and things, I’ve already forgotten to do several homeworks and it’s awful, not only that but I’m already starting to hear about the coming exams, oh well, at least the month’s over. Weekend passed and I was avoiding answering my parents about how I’m doing constantly, I’ve not talked about them much or my close family but while I love them and all I’ve slowly started to feel disconnected from them, on top of our current living spsces being so tight I’m just too used to having to tune them out constantly, I much preferred living back in Guadalajara in our own house, not in a single room of my grandmother’s house, having to share a two-floor bed with my little brother who i never got along with, luckily with my new schedule he and my parents are mostly not at home in the morning and I’m not at home at the evening, which helps in giving us space, but not in connection. Oh well, not much i can do about it. Sunday night came and I fell asleep but not before pondering if I would have another one of those dreams, they’ve definitely taken my attention as i feel something different from them, something from deep within me rising, am i going insane? Eh, who cares right now, although apart from that intrigue, another feeling washed over me that I’ve been feeling a little bit throughout the week when i was outside my home, I don’t know where this came from, I have no reason to suspect it and yet... Was I being watched? This time my dreams strayed further from anything I recognized from any of the pokemon games, I was still a toxtricity however I appeared to be in a hollywood looking high school, filled to the brim with locker rooms, and like me the students seemed to be pokemon too. As I was heading to class, waking aimlessly across endless halls, I was harshly stopped in my tracks by a massive paw slammed in front of me crushing the locker it landed on into scrap. “Well, well, well, look what we have here.” I looked towards the person talking to me and I quickly recognized him as a VERY imposing pangoro, who looked at me with a cocky yet hateful smirk. “Ughh, listen, can you just let me go to my class for once dude?” I responded annoyed, not wanting to deal with dumb artificial drama like this. “Woah, woah, woah, don’t you dare dude me, you know you’re an embarrassment to all of your species? instead of a proud and tough rebel you’re a weak and wimpy loser that everyone laughs at, you should be ashamed of yourself.” Where is he even going with this? “I don’t care?” The pangoro smirks “Well, since I couldn’t very well stand and watch your pathetic ass walk around freely, I decided it was about time to teach you a lesson.” As soon as he says that I notice him charging an attack, I immediately jump to dodge it, turning this encounter into a full-blown battle, unlike the previous dreams I was struggling much more to dodge and resist his punches, beams and other attacks but eventually I was able to paralyze him and using one of my moves I eventually made him faint, I looked to the hallway assuming the other classmates had watched this but the whole area was strangely devoid of anyone, the hall’s lights suddenly deemed and I could no longer see anything beyond a certain point making it look infinite, save for one toxtricity, the same one from the other dream, he immediately tried to attack me only I was able to move away from it just in time, he kept charging at me and I wasn’t able to keep dodging and resisting his attacks like with the pangoro bully so I wasn’t able to stop myself from blacking out. I had woken up slightly earlier than normally, sweating, this dream was FAR from enjoyable as the previous ones, and it got me worried, taking my attention the whole week. And it was so weird too, I’m not an idiot, I could clearly tell my previous dreams had some unexplainable symbolism involving some of my struggles, yet this dream was different, because being a toxtricity was the center of it, and how despite toxtricity being a punk I’m far from it, I mean, I have a resting bitch face and eye bags similar to toxtricity and that clashes with my reserved personality but it’s not something that I focus on much, and yet that dream and those emotions still managed to get my attention for this week. Why? And what a bad week to be distracted in. Schoolwork was absolutely infernal, with exams right around the corner suddenly every class was demanding homeworks, projects, guides, etc. And I completely failed to keep up I had nothing and I got nothing done. And to think that there was a time where I did average at school and never missed an assignment, heh, what happened to me? My parents got fairly angry with me but I really just ignored them and tuned them out extra hard. On top of that the dreams repeated again and more often, and this time I wasn’t as succesfull in them, I struggled in the battle and failed the exploration, I didn’t see the other toxtricity however. I was so stressed that I ended up doing something I very rarely do and directly looked for my friend to talk to, unfortunately she came with... Mixed news. “Fer?” “Oh! Hey Lex!” she ran over and hugged me, she’s touchy like that and I don’t mind, aside from the fact it makes people think we had a thing, frankly I’m not interested. “How have you been?” she asks. “Oh awful, this week has been so bloody stressful.” “I can agree, I’m not doing too well either, I talked about it with my parents and, well, I actually was looking for yoy to tell you about something.” “Hm?” This intrigued me somewhat. “So... My parents found this new private high school that focuses on the career I’m interested in, remember those tourism classes in middle school? It specialises in that, well I ended up getting in which means I’m gonna leave this school next semester.” “Oh...” I felt... Complicated, on one hand, it sucked that the only person I was somewhat comfortable with is no longer going to be in the same school and talking to them will get harder, on the other, we were already growing distant, plus this is a really good opportunity for her and I’m excited! Maybe this was simply meant to happen. “I’m happy to hear that, it’s a bit of a shame that we won’t be in the same school anymore but it’s good for you, I’m probably gonna stay here, don’t plan on going anywhere since there doesn’t seem to be a better option for me.” “Yeah... I’ll still miss you though.” She hugged me again and then the bell for next class rang so she started leaving. “Well, see ya!” “Bye.” I responded. The week eventually ended, the weekend was even more stressful as a bunch of extended family was over and I don’t even want to get into the drama of it all, I fell asleep on Sunday tired and not looking forward to... Anything. …Various gunshots could be heard throughout the night as various groups of pokemon could be seen attacking each other through the city, I was in one of those groups, an army that was currently on a battle against an enemy group where we used a brutal combination of firearms and moves, and when I say brutal I do mean it, whatever was left of the city we were in was quickly replaced with more and more rubble as everything was blown up by the crossfire, there were several casualties, I could notice each time a pokemon, whether from our side or the enemy’s, fell to the ground in defeat, I don’t even have to look at them to know that they didn’t just faint and would never recover. We moved through the ruined city trying to avoid as many enemies as we could, the recent fights had left us worn out and tired, but we could not give up yet, the war between pokemon has been going on for many years, more and more is the world losing any sense of order now that the legendary pokemon have abandoned us and any kind of hierarchy or the like has fallen into anarchy, none of us knew what we were fighting for anymore and even though we’ve been here since the beginning of the war all of the other soldiers were little more than faceless people that I was each unfamiliar with. We kept walking until we were able to set up camp for the night, tired and drained as I was it wasn’t easy to fall asleep and no matter how much I tried I was unable to get any rest, the outside of my tent got quieter and quieter until suddenly I heard a bunch of screams, I left my tent only to be blinded by a flash of light, the moment I was able to recover from the sudden burst I noticed that all of the soldiers were on the ground, in the same condition as the fallen soldiers from the previous battle. In a state of shock I unintentionally lowered my defences, which caused me to find myself attacked by the same toxtricity who’s been showing up in all of my dreams and who seemed to have been the one to attack and defeat my teammates, I was able to resist him a lot more this time and put up a fight however I was starting to lose stability due to exhaustion, I kept charging and kicking but I eventually fell to the ground like everyone else and as my vision blurred I was starting to black out, or rather, wake up… I was panting and sweating, I had woken up way early in the morning, and no matter how hard I tried to go back to sleep I stayed wide awake, out of all the dreams this is the one that stuck with me the most, then again it seemed to be a pattern as each dream got more and more intense throughout the weeks, which is the worst thing I needed for this particular one during my morning routine and before the exam I kept thinking on said patterns, what did they mean? They’ve got to lead to something, my body was feeling a little weird that day, the whole day i felt like i was having a constant allergic reaction, ugh, I went back to the dreams to distract myself, how I was never really myself in any of them, even the ones that weren’t about Pokémon had me as a toxtricity which admittedly never felt wrong, sometimes it felt natural, just not like my current self, and how I was in situations that I just never see myself getting into, like the exploration, the battle, the fight, and in the last one I was part of some sort of military, something that I would just never do. Even though I came from a noticeable military background with my dad and both my grandfathers from each side having worked in the army I always vowed to myself I would never join one, it’s just simply a life that even as a toddler i knew was too far removed from who I was and i always saw it as pointless, war was pointless, everything was stupid and I very much don’t look forward to military service and all of this I’ve made very clear to everyone since day one, luckily my dad, compared to most military types is very undestanding about as he’s really just there for the job, and he really can’t blame me for my beliefs (instead he blames having watched the ender’s game movie as a kid, could not tell you a single thing about the film though). As much as I would’ve liked to spend the rest of the week trying to figure out these dreams, what they meant, why did they exist, Where they symptoms of stress, etc. And even though it bothered me throughout the whole 5 days, especially since they now happened every day to the point where my eye bags looked even worse, I simply couldn’t focus on it as I had to pretend to pay attention to the exams, which drove me insane and I don’t think I did good in any of them... except English, there’s a reason you’re able to read this after all. I couldn’t even talk to Fer, and My parents definitely noticed my lack of paying attention, they chewed me out for it several times since they knew it was exam week, but i simply lied and told them I was doing well, I’m not proud of it but I’m simply not strong enough to deal with the consequences, I’m weak. And on top of all of that my sick feelings from Monday stayed and intensified throughout, it was horrible, and like before I started feeling like i was being watched every time I walked outside and I really didn’t understand why. I returned home on Friday night, everyone else was already asleep, so I quickly ate what was on the table for me, sighed loudly and dropped into bed, this time looking forward to the two coming off days, I was going to need it. I did not have a dream that night, Not just a new dream, which was expected since those usually come in Sunday, but any dream in general, which was bizarre after this past week of nonstop pokemon related dreams. And yet it still felt like I was dreaming, but it was all sensatiIons, sensations that I could not describe, it felt like I was changing somehow, like a part of me was escaping some kind of constraint, and it was oddly painful, like it wasn’t supposed to happen, like it should’ve been there from the beginning, the feeling kept getting worse throughout the night, it started as a tingle, but then it changed to an ache directed at my hands, i looked at them but I couldn’t see them, they were mere blurs of colours, and I saw another blur, was that... The toxtricity? Yet... it felt like something else... Then the ache slowly grew into a burning sensation, rising in intensity, burning more and more without me being able to do anything about it until… I woke up dizzy, Saturday morning, rather late, feeling unusually refreshed, maybe it’s now that I’m done with exams at school, at least for the moment, but still, it kinda feels like all of the feelings that have been building up since i came back to school are... gone, released, the stress, the feelings that came from those dreams. Gone. I noticed that my parents weren’t here, I panicked a little but then I remembered a tuned out memory from Thursday that they weren’t gonna be here for most of the day, my brother wasn’t there either, though I was able to notice a half-eaten bowl of cereal on the table near our tiny kitchen so it was safe to assume that he went downstairs with my grandma and whoever other family member was staying in our house at the moment. Although I’ve interacted with them fairly little and so this shouldn’t be much of a change I couldn’t help but feel calm in this peaceful solitude, I didn’t even have those allergic reactions anymore, I smiled against myself. I was feeling oddly happy, I wasn’t even tuning out the day anymore and I was perfectly happy to do stuff like walk around a bit before serving myself cereal as breakfast now being able to forget all about those strange dreams and simply relax on this weekend which feels like it’s the first true weekend since I came back from school, excited, I moved the covers away from my body, hopped out of bed… And then I saw my hands.