Chapter 11: Special Episode 1

Out of the darkness, a tall, brooding figure staggered forward, licking a magenta ooze off their tongue and huffing as it drooped to the concrete floor. The mon turned around to the entrance way it had just exited, catching sight of the Mr. Mime trailing it, tapdancing as it walked and crumbing its path with small flakes of ice.

The psychic giggled, looking up into the Drapion’s irritated glare and smiling back. “Hey now! What’s with the look, boss?”

“This is serious business!” he snarled. “Quit it with the tapdancing.”

“Force of habit, heh!”

Letting out another grumble, the poison type moved toward a nearby switch and flicked it on. Light burst through the ceiling panels, illuminating the room like Volbeat on a night sky.

“One more word out of you is another step towards drivin’ me insane.”

“Insane seems a little overkill, don’t it?”

“Oh, shut up, boy.”

“It’s Herbert” the mime stated matter-of-factly.

“Whatever. Just because it’s overkill don’t mean it ain’t possible, especially when it involves you” the Drapion hissed, looking over his shoulder. His eyes wandered around the room, from the stacks of paper in the corners, to the poorly hidden glass containers with colorful fluids in them along the walls. “Unorganized as always. Always hav’ta make a shitshow out of my money.”

Herbert danced in his spot. “Always trying to play hard-to-get, huh.”

“Shut it. I don’t need any more out of you.”

The mime imitated a zipper movement over his mouth as the Drapion motioned farther away, concentrating his focus in an effort to get further distracted from him.

Eventually he spotted it: a cracked jar on one of the tables in the back, containing a green, glowing blade of grass, of which had no effort put into being kept hidden. He grinned avidly, snatching the jar into his pincers.

“Here. Look at this.”

Herbert took a few steps forward, keeping his mouth shut.

“A Celebi’s antenna!” the Drapion cackled. “This took ages to collect. Bought it off some rich shareholders while doin’ research near Trawl Coast, for about a hundred-fifty thousand or so. Took nearly half my pocket, but boy, this is more just an investment.”

The mime’s eyebrows rose in surprise.

“The other workers here in this dump will tell ya about the wonders it can do, ‘bout how it can manipulate space-time to that rivaling the goddess Dialga, for being just a dumb antenna an’ all” he continued. “But it’s more than just time travel. It c’n pull creatures from other dimensions and warp reality.” His grin widened.

“Imagine that! Capturin’ aliens and sellin’ em off for millions.”

Herbert made a pointing movement towards the door, to which the Drapion turned around and came into eye contact with a Beheeyem, levitating through the door with a paper in their hands. Red-and-yellow goggles were worn over their eyes, strapped tightly to their head, as with the white jacket drooping below their feet and over their arm’s length. The psychic snorted as they floated forward, ignoring Herbert and turning straight towards the Drapion boss.

“Talos sir, the machine is ready.” The Beheeyem coughed into their left arm, head held high. “Once we have the antenna, we can begin the space-time distortion.”

A nod of approval was received. “Thanks Trist, I’ll be out there in a bit.”

“Shall I take you, sir?”

Talos sighed. “Augh… whatever. We can do this early, that’s fine.”

He held up a pincer as a signal for Herbert to stay, and at once the Drapion was led out of the room and into a much larger lab. A pillared glass chamber stood in the center against the wall, connected to various colorful wires and tubes that reached across different areas of the room. A few pokémon stood at stations monitoring the chamber, scribbling on paper with black ink or whispering amongst each other.

It smelled like damp metal, and Talos despised it.

“Ehem.” Trist looked up to Talos with mild dissatisfaction. “We’ve been working on this machine for the past few months. We hope that this should go smoothly at your will to keep funding this project, and this hope for a future in innovative technologies undermining what was previously defined in stone about this world.”

The Drapion snorted, spitting a bit of poison that made Trist wince. “Yeah yeah yeah, I give you the money, you do the work. No need to go all nerd on me.”

“Hah, you simply don’t know what you’re about to witness.”

“Nor do you.”

Trist huffed, rather irritated. “Only time may tell. Now, onto the machine itself.” He floated forward, wavering the dark type to follow. “Last-minute inspections have been done; no fluid leakage, no loose wires.”

Talos followed with the jar held tightly in his arm, examining the large chamber. “Seems a bit big.”

“Good observation” the Beheeyem mocked, rolling his eyes. “We don’t know what’s being sent through the rift, or how large it will be. Must be prepared otherwise we will all lose our heads, which includes myself, the overseer.”

“Rift?”

“Space-time anomalies, similar to those that’ve been sending humans into this world. I talked with the priest down the road, he said Arceus doesn’t seem to give a damn with the way things have been going this past century or so, judging by the lack of any change. Nor have the other gods obscured into dormancy. It’s only right to believe this was intentional.”

Talos squinted. “Whatever. So what’s this antenna even do that makes it so powerful?”

“Warps space-time, nearly a fraction to the power of Celebi itself, and Dialga” Trist answered. “As far as we know anyway. If we had the full mon we could perform much more destruction, but for now we will work with what we have.”

“Yeahh well, we’ll get it eventually.”

“When will you learn that throwing money at problems doesn’t fix them?”

Talos stretched a little. “We just need to hire the right mons to go out and find Celebi’s resting place, and then get a few more of ‘em explorers to capture it and sell it off to the resource team, or whatever shmucks are so obsessed with harnessing its time-travel powers. Celebi will look more like a toy than a fairytale by that time.”

“If that does happen, you owe me a part of the reward. My lawyers won’t let you take all the credit.”

The Drapion rolled his eyes, picking up on the Beheeyem’s sarcasm from earlier and making use of it himself. “Like you have the audacity to go out and get lawyers ahead of time. I’ve known you for a long few years Trist, you don’t fool me.”

“Ehem. Back to prior discussion.”

“Right.” Talos looked around the room, coming into eye contact with a few mons and throwing annoyed glares at each and every one of them. Most of them were either unnerved or caught off guard. “So about this machine… how does it work, and how do we know whatever is coming through here is… unconscious? That could really put a dent our work if it manages to break free.”

Trist laughed softly, averting his gaze. “The feralization will be easy, and without a doubt, unlikely to be needed. We have special signal beams that will be released if any of our team detects a hint of consciousness just in case, which will fully render the mon feral, with a power close enough to that of a mystery dungeon. But alas we do not know what we are facing. We could get an amalgamation, a monster as small as a Cutiefly, or a beast only thought of in dreams.” He snickered. “Or maybe an actual, physical, flesh-rotten human. It’s not impossible. If we can get only a fraction, who knows when or if we might be able to get the full piece too.”

The dark type sneered in response. “But how does it work?”

“You’ll just have to wait and see.”

“Enough talk.” Talos handed Trist the jar with the antenna, glowing softly in a luminescent green as it rested at the bottom. “I want to see what if your nerd shit is more than just words on a page. Let’s see the real thing.”

“Ambitious” Trist muttered under his breath. Letting out a sigh, he tore off his goggles and dropped them to the floor, squinting at the lights around him. “Fine then, I’ll do it. I do all the work and you sit around doing nothing, leaving all the hard tasks for me, especially when you are more suited for the tasks thereof.”

“Who’s to say I have the easier job!” Talos barked. “You think you’re all that just because you’re a damn psychic.”

“And you think you can beat me just because you’re a dark?”

The two of them glowered at each other, until Trist finally decided to go back to his original activity. A few mons peered away from their papers to watch him as he floated towards the machine, unlocking a small metal box attached to the front of it and placing Celebi’s antenna inside. With one final snicker, he shut it closed and flicked a few switches directly next to it.

At once, the chamber and everything around it roared to life, firing electricity through the exiting pipes and tubes, and bursting small puffs of smoke out of the sides. Several mons ran out of the room, meanwhile Talos, Trist and the remaining few watched as it prepared to initialize.

“Truly beautiful” the Beheeyem remarked. Though it could not be seen, his smile curved into a smirk. “You know old Tal, your donations won’t be gone to waste. This is a warning to never underestimate science, I’ll have you know, especially when it can do such things as this.”

Talos rolled his eyes. He really couldn’t give a damn about science if he wanted to.

Blue light started to rapidly form out of thin air within the chamber, followed by light greens and violets. In the center, a small black dot grew rapidly, emitting pulses that grew the wormhole with each shockwave.

Trist almost felt like reaching for it. The aura emanating from the glass felt like home, and, at a moment, like it was calling for him.

Wind howled like thunder as glass shattered in all areas of the room, feeling the reach of the pulse.

Talos shrieked, jumping back and clearly frightened.

“What the-“ the Drapion looked around. As the space-time distortion started to form larger, Trist floated in front of him undisturbed, lost in both thought and stance as the wind, electricity and screams flew past him.

The light started to grow brighter, pushing outward, and squeezing against the glass like a trapped child.

Talos blinked once. He looked up, and almost thought he was dreaming when he saw Trist extending his hand, two steps ahead of his previous placing.

“This supposed to happen!?” he yelled, trying to catch the psychic’s attention.

Trist made no response.

The final other mon in the room, a Trumbeak, smacked into Talos’s shell on her way out and flew off before he could get her attention. He mustered out a sigh, turning back to the chamber and watching anxiously as the distortion started to grow too large for its container.

He could have run.

But at this point, it was his money, and he wasn’t just going to bolt before he could see the end product.

The Drapion spit out a bit of poison. He was staying. His decision was held firm.

Whatever was coming out of that distortion wouldn’t be that difficult to deal with if worse came to worse. After all, his armor was tough, and his father had taught him a few battle tactics in his teen years. So, what was the issue here?

Right?

 

~

 

In the darkness, he awoke, eyes closed and only hearing the sound of faint breathing.

His own. Cold, not whiffing of alcohol and… not… his?

In a matter of seconds, he could already feel it, something was off.

And so, he snapped his eyes open.

Only to be greeted by a sight unfamiliar to anything before- cracked, glass walls around him and a distorted, blurry view of two strange animals across the room, watching with horror.

Their voices were muffled.

“The discharger broke!”

“What is that thing!? G…Goddamn it Trist!”

Thing?

His head hurt, taking it all in.

Everything around him, distorted, swirling in purples and blues as the sound of shattered glass and howling wind bounced around him like marbles in a jar. The overstimulation bit into him like a vampire’s fangs, and it hurt beyond belief.

Without a single thought, he swiped forward and smashed apart the glass in front of him in a single blow, only to shrink back at the sight of blue claws, clearly his.

No. Not his.

He was… glued to a VR headset of sorts and forgot to take it off before resting, wasn’t he?

Yeah.

Sounded reasonable enough of an answer.

He… had a VR headset, didn’t he?

Or maybe he got too drunk last night and… got captured by freaky aliens who turned him into a furry-like abomination? Didn’t seem too out of place from what he was used to.

He shifted back to the sight ahead of him, taking it all in.

The first creature, seemingly floating via some sort of magic power, shuffled back a bit, clearly disturbed. There was fear in its alien eyes, blinking like a stoplight failing to make him react accordingly.

The one behind it, resembling an enlarged scorpion with honed claws, snarled. “We summoned a beast!” Its movement was perturbed, hinting anger but also fear. “Pray to Lunala it ain’t able to understand us!”

The former scoffed at this remark. “The signal beam discharging tech broke as the distortion summoned this… this… thing. Doesn’t seem like Stun Seeds won’t work, nor Petrify Orbs, especially with the distortion. But it doesn’t seem to be moving yet, let’s get out!”

His thoughts were quite empty at the moment, but one word stuck out as he struggled to understand it all, firing at him like bullets out of a machine gun.

Beast.

Every nerve, every train of focus, every cell in his god-forsaken body was shot with a burst of adrenaline, and like a pit-bull running towards an unsuspecting pedestrian, he charged, he flew, he rocketed, he stormed, he swooped, he smashed into the first thing ahead of him with his barred jaws, biting down with a relentless force.

The scorpion-looking creature shrieked as that first thing happened to be Trist.

A weak Dragon Rush from the monster pounding the Beheeyem knocked the mon down with a small yelp. The creature prepared a Crunch next as Trist realized that he was pinned down, whiffing the nasty breath from its jaw, which was spiked by teeth akin to sharpened daggers.

Talos blocked his eyes as the beast bit right into Trist’s arm, becoming alarming as the Beheeyem let out a shriek in response. Talos’ eyes opened to blood below him, and the sight of the draconic beast continuing its biting.

“Get it off!” Trist screamed.

For once, the Drapion felt frozen in place.

No fight, no flight, just freeze.

Snarling, it attacked the Beheeyem more, biting and smacking through his sobs and cries and screaming.

Eventually, after Trist’s noises became quieted, its wings fluttered upward and left the psychic on the ground scarred and horrified, barely breathing as Talos shook awake from his stupor.

The creature looked around it, at the lab, at the remnants of the distortion, at the shattered glass along the floor, and at the chamber, at which it had awoken.

No thought was put into its next action as it leaned its head up at an angle towards the roof.

And howled.

Roaring, bellowing with such a wavelength that Talos almost felt himself losing a grip on reality.

With one final snarl afterwards, the creature smacked his tail against the roof and watched emotionlessly as debris fell to the floor, revealing the starry sky and the moon. Feeling drawn towards it like a magnet, it flew out of the building and into the night.

Gone.

More than thousands of dollars torn to waste.

A mon-killing creature out there, on the loose to go out and cause more damage elsewhere.

All because he was a coward.

So much had happened.

Talos looked down and reconnected with reality as Trist lay below him motionless, covered in scratch marks and bite marks, with a small bit of blood leaking out of a few of the wounds. He inspected him a little more and found that he was no doubt out of breath.

Like that.

Trist dying in front of him in just a few bites, right as he did nothing to help his associate, even though he could have done something to stop it, like he could have prevented the monster from escaping further from the lab and attacking more innocent pokémon… like… like this was all his fault, like this was his problem for messing with the powers of the gods above him, like he was so.. so stupid for letting this happen, for paying for this dumb and foolish dream, for… for letting Trist die.

His fault.

It was his fault.

Without a hesitation, Talos sprung to the floor next to the Beheeyem’s body, shaking.

And he cried.

That… draconic, alien monster was out there.

And he had done nothing to stop it.

 

~

 

He flew out of the lab and into the night, quickly caught off guard at the city around him.

Now that he was free, he had to think of somewhere to hide.

Mid-air, he looked down at his claws and snarled as they were still that stupid shade of cyan from before. He squinted at them under the moonlight and found that they were also enveloped in fur, reaching from his arm to his three-fingered palm.

Three. No thumb, no ring finger. Whatever fur suit he was wearing had sure as hell ripped him from the feeling in his other two, apparently.

He looked behind him, swishing his tail lightly.

The two weird looking neopets were right. He was a monster.

As he flew farther across the sky, he tried to remember something that hadn’t quite come to his mind earlier. His name.

…Right.

Ari.

He definitely hoped that whatever weird dream he might be in didn’t have any knowledge of him before he had woken up. He had seen things that were too imaginary for the real world, and too out-of-place for his own dreams. And yet, everything felt too real and scary to be virtual reality like he had initially thought. He could feel the numbness in his claws, the chilliness of the wind as it stroked through his fur, and smell of blood as he had attacked the traffic-light looking neopet.

Blood.

He had seen blood, hadn’t he?

Nononono… it was way too surreal for this to have happened.

He killed it. The creature was speaking his same language too… somehow, and he went out and killed it without thinking.

Ari looked around him. The city seemed to stretch on for miles, and there was a tingling sense of tiredness in him, as much as the night sky made him feel alive.

He needed to fly down somewhere and rest. If he didn’t, the chance of survival in this form would be unlikely, and he could…

Die. Everything was alive at this moment, and he wasn’t dreaming anymore.

This body was real.

He was no longer human. He had shape-shifted into a monster like the ones in those fake horror movies his uncle would use to scare his younger cousins. There was no doubting it.

He was alive, he was a monster, and he was in a world unlike his own.

Without a second thought, he swooped downwards towards the city to perch anywhere he could find. Not like he was opposed to the idea of sleeping in the streets, anyways. He had done it before, it wasn’t a big issue.

The rooftops were either not large enough or didn’t look comfortable, so Ari snarled in frustration and fluttered downwards to the streets, which were barren and lacking any sign of people or those funky-looking animals.

He’d just have to snooze for a little bit and fly away when something approached, he figured. At this point, he was too tired and didn’t consider the fact that it might be a bad idea to sleep in the middle of the road.

Immediately he went, and immediately he regretted.

His new body didn’t seem so akin to the idea, as Ari tried to rest naturally in a side-facing position against the concrete, only to realize he was sleeping on part of his wings and felt the small jolt of discomfort as he sat back up.

Right. Old habits wouldn’t be able to work anymore.

Ari was in a state of frustration. He couldn’t sleep like this, but he had no idea how to sleep in his body anyways. He was broken, in the wrong body, and tired, with no sight of normalcy anywhere nearby, except the city he had found himself in the middle of.

Because of course capitalism has to exist in nightmares too.

Ari made a loud groan as he surveyed the empty streets around him, only to be disturbed as he spotted a strange-looking creature from behind, only a few feet away.

It was just as peculiar as the two he had seen before. Bipedal, skinny, and fashioning a golden coin on its forehead, with some sort of red crown behind its face and a collar with the same design and hue. It seemed undisturbed by Ari’s presence, stopping its walk to study him.

The creature raised an eyebrow but seemed somewhat concerned. “You okay, mon? Your left eye is glowing red.”

Ari hissed, unable to think of any logical reaction. “I’m… fine. Can’t find a place to sleep in this damn place.”

“No kidding. You got mons you can visit, or are you just here alone?”

‘Mon’? Where had he… heard that word before?

“Alone.”

“Ah, well, I’d be willing to give you a place to stay for the night if you need it, as long as you don’t tell anyone. You definitely look like you need it more than I do. Anyways, my name’s Mallku, and I’m a Weavile.”

It reached forward with an empty palm, either oblivious or careless to Ari’s size and menacing appearance.

Clearly something was wrong.

Why wasn’t it… afraid like the other two? So quick to offer hospitality anyways?

Desperate and too tired to argue against, Ari reached forward with his own hand and clumsily shook, feeling the warmth of Mallku’s claws. Firm, but delicate and not at all exposing the roughness and anxiety in his own.

“So… what are you doing out here?” Ari grumbled. “Just taking a walk in the middle of the night like some weirdo?”

“Yep. Sometimes it just calms the nerves, especially since I’ve been having trouble in the recent few years sleeping.”

“Must be shit. The insomnia, I mean.”

“It is” Mallku sighed. “So what’s your name? You look like a Salamence, but I’ve never seen one like your species…”

“…Ari. I… don’t know what a Salamence is. Or a Weavile. You keep fucking throwing terms at me like I know what they mean.”

“Sorry ‘bout that. Are you new around here?”

“Sure am” Ari snorted, rolling his eyes. “Recently moved to the states from Europe until jackshit happened and I woke up in this dumb fursuit. At least I can fly I guess.”

“Europe?” Mallku repeated. “Like the human continent?”

What was this guy talking about?

“Human continent?”

“I guess that explains your lack of species knowledge then. You’re a former human, right?”

“Yeah? And what do you mean former!?” Ari snarled. “I just woke up in some stupid lab some hours ago. You’re telling me I’m stuck like this!?”

Mallku sighed, frowning nervously. “It’s always been happening to humans, especially in the last few centuries or so. You’re not the only one who’s been cursed this way. A lot of pokémon have tried to figure a way out and failed countlessly ever since. But that doesn’t mean I can’t help you with other things. If you need a place to hide, I can assist with that.”

“I’m an abomination. When others see me, they’ll kill me, or get someone else to do it for them.”

“Why?”

Ari squinted at the stars, avoiding the Weavile’s eyes. “Shortly after I woke up I think I killed some alien-looking weirdo who called me a ‘thing’. I don’t know what happened, I just… I just… snapped. Like I had no control over it, and everything just turned off. Like someone else took over and did the murder for me.”

Mallku’s expression relaxed. “Sounds like you went feral mode without realizing it. Pretty familiar tale, especially with that left eye.”

“What’s so special about a damn eye?”

“It’s a sign of consciousness” Mallku answered. “The brighter the red, the more insane a pokémon has been turned. Seems like you have some sort of disorder that flips on and off between the two.”

“How do I prevent it?”

“I’ve… heard alcohol helps. A drink a day should keep you from going mad, at least from what I’ve heard.”

Ari snorted. “Looks like some things don’t fucking change.”

Mallku yawned a little, ignoring his response and stretching. As he shuffled past Ari, his eyes caught sight of something. “What’s this?” He plucked a shiny blade of grass that seemed to have clung to the mon’s feathers. “This yours?”

Ari took a quick glance. “Nah. Don’t know how it got there.”

Mallku crouched, dropping it to the ground for the wind to carry it elsewhere. “Weird. Never seen grass like that.”

Of course, as he got up, he spotted another thing clinging to Ari’s back. Mallku almost mistook it for a miniature time capsule, but relaxed as he got a closer look. A strange, rainbow-colored juice was stored in an orange-and-gray container taped to his wings, with faint writing on the plastic.

“Oh? Looks like there’s something else here.”

“Goddamn it.”

“Unown script… that’s rare.” Mallku squinted, reading the writing. “Booster Energy, Ari. Species, Roaring Moon. Only use when… necessary?”

“What does that mean?”

“Was this weird juice-box thing always here?”

“I don’t fucking know” Ari replied. “How was I supposed to see that?”

“Well, it says it’s a… Booster Energy.” Mallku sighed, ripping the container off Ari’s back to show him. “Says you do have a species. Roaring Moon.”

“Huh.” The dragon snarled, looking away. “Whatever, I’m getting tired. Let’s go.”