Chapter 1 - Arrival

Before me, blackness. Pure blackness.

The void I found myself in was dark.

Everything was... empty. I was alone.

I couldn't see my hands before my eyes. That is, if I could move them.

Moving was impossible for me.

All of my senses, gone, too. They had been removed from me.

I was petrified, like I was made out of cold, hard stone. I felt like a statue, standing somewhere, not aware of its surroundings.

Petrified? Of fear? No, that couldn't be it. The void surrounding me should have been scary for me, but I seemed to not feel the least bit frightened.

Maybe of coldness? No, that wasn't it either. I wasn't freezing; I'm sure I would have felt my body frozen if that would be the case.

It had to be something different. But what? I couldn't wrap my head around it.

It was very strange to not be able to move a single muscle, as if they were nonexistent. I wasn't even sure if my eyes were open or not.

Why can't I move?

I asked myself this question; my own thoughts were still with me. Intact, to my fortune.

Except for my memories.

They were absent. Wiped out of my head. Null.

Something else came into my mind, ignoring the loss of memories.

Am I even breathing?

If yes, I wouldn't know. If no, how was I alive then?

How long had I been here, anyway? Was it minutes? Hours? Days? I didn't know.

My perception of time had been, much like my senses, eliminated.

There I was, floating inside of the emptiness, waiting for something to happen. Waiting for anything to change.

For me it felt like months of hovering inside of nothing. Seeing nothing, hearing nothing, feeling nothing, smelling nothing, everything was just... nothing.

Wait, what was that?

Suddenly I could feel something.

Or more like someone.

But I wasn't sure what it was exactly.

It felt like... someone was there, right next to me.

Saying something.

Being scared.

Attempting to get my attention.

Shaking my body.

Not knowing what it should do.

It felt strange to know someone was right next to me, trying to communicate with me, only to return nothing. Not moving, not speaking, not even reacting the slightest to its actions of trying to grab my focus.

As if I were...

Dead.

A limp body, lying somewhere.

Devoid of life.

Withering.

Wait, am I... really dead?

How? And when? And why?

So many questions arose in my head right then, failing to come up with a plausible explanation for this predicament.

If I really died, is this the afterlife?

Then why is it so empty?

Why is there nothing?

Is this my punishment for something, even?

More questions entered my mind, me fully aware no one could answer them for me.

Meanwhile, the mysterious presence was still present; it was... doing something.

Suddenly, a jolt of pain rushed through my body, catching me off guard.

It hurt. A lot.

It felt like my body was hit by a lightning strike, directly hitting the front of my body.

For the next five seconds, I felt nothing but the immense pain soaring through me, trying to reach every last bit of my body.

It was like I was being tortured by something. I thought I would die again.

But can I die again? I am already dead, as it seems.

And as sudden as it came, it was gone.

I could feel my body again.

I could hear the voice again, breathing heavily, as if it used up all of her energy for something, and was now trying to regain some of it.

A voice belonging to a female.

Still terrified.

I could feel her shaking me again, saying something to me.

Slowly, I felt the rest of my senses returning to me.

I felt myself breathing again.

Breathing in the fresh air around me. Trying to calm me after the shock.

I heard the voice again; this time, clear as day.

"Come on, come on... There has to be something that'll work if that didn't!" she thought aloud, sounding like she was in a state of panic.

I tried to move my arms, my legs, anything, to not let her electrocute me again.

She seemed to notice me trying to budge. She gasped in surprise not long after my attempts.

"Oh my Arceus, it worked! It worked!"

I thought I heard her wrong. What did she say again?

It looked like my hearing was back; I could hear the wind whistling past me and the leaves of a nearby tree. But it seemed to still be a bit numb.

"Hey, are you alright?"

Ok. I heard that clearly. It was definitely coming from a female person.

It seemed like my hearing was now back again. For real this time.

I slowly opened my eyes and was greeted by a green and blurry image.

I instantly closed them shut again. It felt like my eyes were burning, so they were starting to wet.

The identity of my "rescuer" was still unknown to me; she blended in so well with her surroundings. It seemed like we were in a meadow, which had, for my taste, too tall grass. Next to me was a tree large enough for me not to see the leaves of it. I had the strangest feeling that I had shrunk, or everything had gotten five times bigger than normal.

"Oh, no... Don't cry now, you'll be fine."

Wow. She thought I was crying. How funny. Not.

Now, she assumed I was a crybaby.

I failed to reason with her, as my voice had still not recovered yet.

For now I had to explain it to her from my mind, not caring about the fact she couldn't hear them. Even if she basically revived me from the dead and I had to make it up for her.

I'm not crying!

My eyes are burning! These are two completely different things.

"Oh, I have an idea."

She suddenly jumped over me and tried to lift me up, successfully.

I laid limp over what felt like her back, surprisingly, carrying me to wherever she wanted to bring me. My body still protested from moving; it seemed I still couldn't move without help.

I hoped that this wouldn't be permanent. I still couldn't feel everything, just my rescuer lifting me up came to my mind as something physical happening to me.

"I'll bring you with me to Muji Village."

Muji...? Ok, now I knew I was anywhere but my home. Never had I ever heard anything about a place called "Muji Village". And I knew she was worrying for me, but we had never met before. She had no reason to bring me with her; she didn't know me. At least, I didn't know her.

Oh yeah, memory loss. That's a thing that happened to me, for some reason.

At least she was helpful and didn't abandon me while I was "playing dead."

After a while, just laying on her back felt boring, so I tried to open my eyes again to at least look at the person who found me.

It took a bit to gain a sharp picture of everything around me, but eventually I realized something.

I could see far better than normally. I was sure I could've easily identified the text of a page from something small as a book from a hundred meters away. Which was strange, because I didn't know how good my vision had been before that incident. It could have been better or worse for all I knew. Weird.

The next things in my point of view were my hands. Well, the lack of those, actually.

Instead of what I used to see when I looked at my hands, was something else. At first I told myself that I was hallucinating from the shock earlier, but after blinking a few times and trying to move them, something was made clear to me.

Those weren't hands.

They were paws.

Blue ones, to be precise, with some sort of yellow band around the wrist of said body part. And these were mine. At the same time, my nerves registered the texture of the skin which I laid upon. The scaly body which I was on top of.

I was so shocked to realize these events after testing to see if my vision would still fool me, because my body literally flew off my carrier and landed on the gravel-like ground.

She noticed me falling off, but was too slow. She tried to catch me with her... two green tentacles... growing out of two green dots, the size of a pea, growing out all around her neck.

Before I could process what I had witnessed, I already crashed to the ground. Unfortunately, my landing wasn't as graceful as I would've liked; the center of my back fell directly on a mildly bigger and sharper stone in the gravel pavement, resulting in me yelping, more in surprise than in pain.

My back was pounding as it hit the hard ground, and I was aware that my nerves had been reactivated to full functionality. Ironically, I wouldn't have minded the numbness I had felt before, but at least my senses had fully returned to me at last.

Rolling to the side, I managed to open my eyes again, and finally saw my rescuer from the edge of my vision.

What I saw took my breath away.

The big, dark reddish eyes, the big leaf growing out of the top of its head, waving into the direction of the light breeze blowing around us. Its scales shining in the morning sun, its quadrupedal stand, and its single, wide claw on each foot told me enough. I didn't know what was going on here, but this had to be a dream. There wasn't any other explanation.

Standing before me was an animal which I had never seen before. A creature which had a giant leaf growing out of its head. Still having its two long, green tentacles outside.

Which had talked to me.

Which I could understand perfectly.

I still wasn't able to process everything that happened thus far, but these were without any doubt the most strange events I had witnessed in my life.

"Oh my gosh, are you alright?" the creature before me asked me with a shocked expression, making its way to me while apologizing. "I'm so sorry! I didn't notice you falling off..."

I ignored it, my only intention now to get out of here. I didn't know where I wanted to go, but the most important thing for me right now was to just get away from this monster before worse things happened.

Completely forgetting what she wanted to do with me, my fear took over after that, bringing me to my feet. My hind feet. That was what my instinct told me, to get on my feet and just flee.

To my misfortune I couldn't seem to get a good stand on them. Because of the whole thing of me being a quadrupedal creature now, apparently. I lost my balance and tumbled to the ground again.

"Hey, hey... what are you doing?"

It spoke again. I could hear it and understand it. This had to be some sort of dream. A lucid dream, yes, that had to be it. There was no other logical reason as to why I suddenly could understand animals.

But at the same time, everything looked so real to me; much too real to be just a dream. The clouds above, all having different designs and shapes as others, drifting through the sky. The occasional bird figure, one more different than the other, flying at the same level as them. The leaves and branches on the various trees all next to the pavement shaking with the wind, making the well known rustling noises. The blades of grass also next to the pavement, as well as the gravel which I laid upon right now, every single bit of these things looked way too realistic.

I was basically searching for something, anything, to make sure this was just my imagination taking over while I was at home, in my room, in my bed, peacefully sleeping.

Did... I even have a home?

"What's up with you...? Calm down, jeez." Now it started to look annoyed by my actions. I couldn't blame it. It was pretty stupid and really embarrassing to look at, I presumed. "It's not like I will eat you or something..."

Slowly but surely, my panic subsided and my rational thinking got a turn to make. I looked at its eyes. It was not happy, though it didn't appear angry. It was more on the line of a 'what the actual fuck are you doing?' stare.

I had to do something. Hopefully, my voice was back. After that yelp I gave from me, I should be able to talk again.

"... What are you?" I bluntly managed to say to the creature, hoping it could understand me. The result of having shrunk made my voice sound higher than I thought it should have been. The higher, but still belonging to a male, pitch of my voice made me jump back a little.

At that point it looked rather confused to say the least, not really expecting any of those sorts of questions.

"Did you hit your head after crashing to the ground?" it asked me. It raised one eyebrow and just looked at me funny.

"... No."

"Are you sure?"

"Look. I know what I did just then, ok? That was just my panic taking over me for a second. I couldn't really counter-react to that. I'm sorry for overreacting." I hoped apologizing to it would ease the tension between us.

"Ok, I know what my instincts tell me to do when I'm in a phase of fear and panic. But to get on my hind legs and make a run for it isn't one of-"

"Just stop mentioning it and answer my question already!" I started to stand up, taking care to get on all four of my feet simultaneously and not look like a complete idiot. My facial expression told it I wanted a real explanation to what was going on here.

It seemed to work, as the plant lizard sighed.

"Alright, to me it seems you got yourself a case of severe brain damage." It teased anyway, just trying to be funny and lighten the mood, obviously not working on me. "But I think you haven't seen one of my species yet, because we normally aren't common in this particular area of Ferom."

Ha. You and me both, apparently. Wait, Ferom?

"But," she continued, ripping me out of my thoughts and holding one of her legs in front of her, "my name is Kori. I'm a Chikorita. You know, a Pokémon. Nice to meet you."

"Um…" almost immediately noticing the familiar way of greeting another, I naturally returned the gesture, setting my paw on top of hers - I didn't know any other way of doing said gesture, I had to think quickly - trying to recover from the horrible first impression I gave her. "Nice to meet you... too?" I quickly lost my balance again, but set my leg back on the ground just in time. "No, I have never heard of a Pokémon before. I mean where I came from, animals normally don't speak to each other; like this, I mean. They don't have-"

"Wait wait wait, hold on." She held her other paw up to kindly signalize I should stop talking and listen to her for a moment. "You're confusing me again. More than ever now. What do you mean by... never heard of Pokémon before?"

I didn't want to go full out on her too quickly, telling her I was some other creature, turned into one of theirs. But I couldn't find any other way of telling her why I was not familiar with what seemed like the most trivial thing in this world.

"I should have said this earlier, but I'm a human."

She started to open her mouth to respond to my illogical nonsense again, but I stopped her before she could say anything with the same gesture she did.

"Before you tell me that I'm not making any sense, I know that. But hear me out first," I told her, while she still had her mouth partially open, slowly closing it and putting her paw back on the ground again. "Yes, you heard me right. I really am a human. Well, I was one, as you can see. Now I'm some sort of blue feline creature talking to you. Like, we are doing a real conversation together, which I thought was impossible with animals back where I came from. You see, back where I was from, animals like you, no offense, couldn't talk. They just make these incomprehensible noises, but don't speak like we do right now. They don't have their own language to communicate with each other, for the most part.

"When they feel threatened, for example, they growl at their threat. They don't talk it out like we do. That's what fascinated me a couple minutes ago. Communication doesn't exist there. Only humans are able to communicate with each other, because we are able to understand one another, and could come up with various languages which we can use to speak."

It seemed like that explanation didn't seem to work on her, but at least the confused look on her face was gone.

"Also," I added, ignoring her stares, "sorry for asking this, but do you know what species I am? I... can't figure it out, hehe."

I looked at my body again, surprised I could turn my head almost 180 degrees to the left and to the right. While doing so, I noticed my fifth limb: a tail. At the end of it there was some sort of star-shaped appendage. I really was one of those Pokémon she mentioned before, wasn't I?

"So, you are saying you are a human turned Pokémon?" she asked me, ignoring my question and making my head turn back to her again. "That's a lot to take in at once. It's not everyday that you see someone saying that they were a human once. Especially when they don't exist anymore."

What, what? What did she mean by they don't exist anymore? Were they wiped out? And if that was true, how did that happen?

"Can you elaborate on that, please? I don't think I understand..."

"Sorry, I don't know any more. Just that they are ancient beings that once roamed the world several millennia ago. The reason they are gone? Unknown. At least that's what I had been told." I guessed she shrugged her shoulders, because it looked a bit strange since she didn't really have shoulders like I used to have. "But enough of that, let's get going. I heard there is a village nearby, just a few miles from here. That's where I wanted to go before I found you."

I really had nowhere to go, so I just nodded and tried to make my way to walk next to her. It was strange to be mobile on four legs; it was a completely different method of walking than on two legs. It took me a bit to figure out how not to slander like an idiot, but it worked out in just a few minutes.

"Hey," I turned my head to the Chikorita while walking on the gravel path beneath me, "can you now tell me what exactly I am? You know, because I don't really know anything about Pokémon in general, so you have to be my guide for now."

"Of course." She inspected me a bit, walking around me while I made sure I stopped, so I wouldn't interrupt her. "Looks like you're a Shinx."

"Shinx, you say?"

"Yeah, a Shinx," came the answer from her. After a bit, she added, "Do you have a name? I don't want to call you by your species' name. Nobody does that nowadays."

Yeah, my name. That was easy. I should be able to say that. No problem.

Telling her… my name.

Well, crap.