Disclaimer: I do not own Pokémon, other than various copies of games spanning several generations of handheld consoles. The Rights are owned by the Pokémon Company.
Long time reader, first time writer.
I decided to give writing a go.
Why not contribute to the site and community that has been there for me and seen me through the ups and downs of my life for several years now?
The start is slow going and any proper action is still chapters away.
The idea came from the question: If you woke up as a hobbit, dwarf or elf, in a caved-in part of a tunnel deep in the Mines of Moria, how would you know you were in Tolkien's Middle-Earth?
Instincts, nature over nurture; they should seemingly be easier to control and manage when one is born with an already disciplined adult mind in the driver seat. Where does the metaphysical concept of consciousness meet the tangible physical body with its biological functions?
The confirmation of the much debated existence of there being such a thing as a soul is a soft blow to the ego of an agnostic ex-human.
Eating should at some point make me start to feel full, where does it all go?
I think therefore I am… what the hell am I?
Is that rumble coming from my stomach or am I no longer alone in here?
You'd think being deprived of the open sky, the sun and the moon, actual bloody daylight, would drive someone insane. Might be too late...am I even sane?
Hum-hum-hum... Is this the real life, is this just fantasy, caught in a landslide, no escape from reality..
These are some of the things I ruminate and muse on in the quiet lucid times in between sleeping and stuffing my face with various substances of what I can only deduce is different forms of earth. Rocks, sediment, sand, clay, organic matter and several different kinds of minerals I couldn't even begin to name. The sheer volume and mass I consume in a "sitting" is staggering. Every differing mouthful compels me onward to the next, prodding me toward ingesting those which I instinctively know I need more of to grow and survive.
There is always a subconscious focus on growing; growth in size, growth in capability and growth directed toward an ethereal concept that thrums to the tune of the geological and tectonic shifts of POWER that I feel all around me.
Instincts relay my orientation and elevation in the earth, knowing that I am currently buried under what I can only surmise to be a highly elevated mountainous area. Up at an angle of 72 degrees leads up to the surface, down to the left is where I'll find bedrock and the right wall is firmer and easier to eat from than the one behind me.
Apropos bedrock, I have found the tools nature blessed me with are easily able to turn solid bedrock into a fine mix of gravely chunks and rock dust. They also allow my senses to lead me to the soil that provides me with relatively minuscule, but vital, amounts of moisture. Underground levels of water was never a thing I had put much thought into before, yet with this new life an awareness of water came programmed into my very being.
This kind of instinct is also what stops me from eating my way into the caverns, my mental map might as well have a big red sign proclaiming 'here be dragons'. No going there, yet. This primal existence might be excruciatingly monotonous, but I do not yet feel willing or ready to risk my new life for the sake of alleviating boredom.
My old life ended at the natural conclusion of a series of events that combine poor decision-making, a turn of bad luck and global climate change.
27 years old and in the prime of my life; my last accomplishment was running a winter marathon on a lake in Finland in nothing but my shorts and cleated running shoes.
That may sound absurd and impossible, which is exactly what I thought before my job as a freelance journalist led me to meet and interview an interesting Dutchman that claimed he could consciously influence and regulate his autonomic nervous system and immune response through simple breathing exercises, what amounted to a form of meditation with an element of the classic 'mind over matter' philosophy.
Following our first interview the idea of a second story documenting 'My week as a student of The Iceman and what his method can do for everyone' was already being arranged. So after a one-week seminar/retreat of coaching and training, I accompanied him on a days run up a chilly mountain in Poland, braving the nippy windchill added to sub-zero temps only clad in shorts and shoes, a sort of graduation in the school of 'I have no fear or concern for hypothermia or frostbite.'
This experience basically changed my life.
Before then, I always had a tendency to find the next new exciting thing and focus all my time and attention on that singular subject, eventually lose interest and go off to find something else. This more or less permeated through most aspects of my young adult life; school, relationships, jobs, hobbies... I suppose I was a bit flighty.
This was my 'born again' moment, I looked at the world with new eyes. I felt confident enough to continue on my own personal journey in defying conventional wisdom.
While I never stopped playing the occasional weekend football or going to the climbing gym, after my first time conquering a mountain while suffering at the hands of the elements, my focus shifted towards whichever new feat of endurance would test my fortitude.
The next four years were an ever escalating self-imposed quest to master myself and pit myself against the elements. The exercises, moving meditation and conscious regulatory control of my breathing and blood flow, became something innate in my day to day life.
Taking a cold shower, just because. Getting a thrill out of taking short swims in freezing seawater to shock and impress strangers on the shore, 'cause why not?
Competing against others was boring, but triumphing against nature? That's Epic.
No other opponents than myself and the environment.
Yes, evidently I was developing a bit of an ego and becoming increasingly arrogant, admittedly not without reason.
I gradually started increasing the frequency and severity of my feats of endurance; long distance swims and dives in cold seawater, running and mountain climbing in winter. Ironically it wasn't running a winter marathon (in Finland, in the arctic, in February, by myself, wearing only shorts...) that directly brought about my shuffle off this mortal coil.
It happened four days later as I was driving southwards through northern Finland, I was a bit delayed and had to do a 18 hour drive in one go to make it to my flight home to London out of the airport in Helsinki.
I had been staying nearly two weeks at a camping spot where I rented a small rustic cabin that could just about fit one person comfortably. There was a sooty old wood stove that easily held the temperature at an uncomfortable sweaty 30 degrees. This naturally meant no electricity or running water and doing my business at an outhouse. No electricity meant that my phone battery died after a week and thus I had no access to the news, or more critically the weather forecast.
My car was a rental that was affordable, on the ride north the radio died but there were no other signs of the electrical systems being in bad condition. It foreshadowed the situation I'd find myself in two weeks later.
It wasn't until the return trip that the heater went the way of the dodo, the radio was on-again/off-again (and in Finnish, which I sadly was not a speaker of), the headlights were stuck on low and the blinkers and tail lights stopped functioning at all.
An inconvenient sum of bad fortune (or bad planning) resulted in my near total lack of concern for, or knowledge of, the forecasted change in the arctic jet stream which would bring a snowstorm and temperatures down into the low forties (Celsius). The polar vortex was about to put an end to my flaunting of the natural order; where one man on his own conquers winter and doesn't end up as a man-cicle.
Long story short, I drove straight into and got stuck in a blizzard.
It was a conceited show of vanity to not be more concerned about driving a metal box, poorly insulated and with no heating, right into the heart of a blizzard. 'Surely my mind mojo is strong enough and has prepared me for sitting trapped in a tiny freezer...'
Instead of stopping to knock on a stranger's door to beg for shelter, I drove until my car got stuck on a snowed down road, that plus a faulty heater brought about a somewhat ironic end to my life.
Funny thing about freezing to death; first you get cold and go through unrelenting shivering and chattering teeth all the while you slowly become increasingly delirious as your body temperature goes down into the stages of hypothermia and finally before the end... there's warmth. Warmth that had me taking off my last protections against the cold; my hideously expensive down jacket, a thick woolly scarf, a tacky beaver-fur hat and a brand-new pair of mittens.
Moral lesson learned; know the limits of any method or teachings you devote your life to, if you lose an inch nature will take a mile, and finally, don't cheap out on vital equipment when venturing into known hazardous conditions.
Thus endeth the life of Hadrian Bertram Reunen.
I have amusedly taken to consider the event of bashing my horn through the top of my egg as my self assisted moment of birth. Well, technically the term would be "hatching".
My time in the egg was at best a muddled confusing transition from losing consciousness in the warmth of winter to my mind grasping and taking hold of the sensory awareness present in a newfangled body, cramped and trapped in a too small space and instinctively tensing to bust out to freedom with a level of violence no newborn should be capable of.
Interestingly, I was not immediately cognizant of the fact that my body was no longer identifiably human.
I do remember waking up in the dark, trapped in a small cavity in the earth, probably a part of a collapsed tunnel or cave, all alone and soooo hungry.
Finding myself trapped in an entirely new small space didn't bother me, a part of me resonated with the concept that I was the sole occupant and owner of a marvellous pitch dark hole I could call my nest. It took a while for me to notice that I was living in pitch darkness and not actually blind.
During the first days smell, taste and hunger dominated my sensory input and ensuing activity. I suppose those are instrumental to encourage a hatchling/newborn, whichever species they may be, in obtaining the required sustenance to further develop and survive. Quite similar to the reflexes and instinct of a newborn human, reflexes like rooting, sucking, grasping and so on.
The big difference in this second life is that instead of being caringly held and breastfed, I was alone and in no need of assistance concerning feeding myself. I completely skipped teething and proceeded right on to solid foods only minutes after escaping the egg, the eggshell was perhaps the first thing ingested in the post-hatching feeding frenzy.
The days and weeks that followed had me generally so devoted to filling the void inside me that no energy was left over for anything remotely cerebral. Why waste energy on thinking more than is needed, higher thought is a luxury when the energy returned on energy invested is too low.
After a couple of weeks I grew and developed past the newly hatched stage and became big enough that at that point my rate of consumption supported some free time for simple rest and reflection.
During my more cognizant moments I found time to puzzle over the body I have found myself inhabiting.
There is a current of pulsing energy in this form unlike anything I previously experienced as a human. A well of energy that is most likely the reason I am subconsciously aware of the state of the surrounding earth and stone, as if it's an integral part of my senses.
The body itself is unlike any regular animal I can remember learning about. I know I'm not mammalian, there are features that could be considered reptilian traits, and my feeding habits are reminiscent of an insect larva if you replace plant matter or flesh with soil and rocks. It is more along the lines of some mythological creatures found in folklore, fiction and film.
A short-snouted head sitting on top of a compact torso with four powerful stubby limbs. The arms seemingly have no claws and then there are the two unfamiliarly shaped bipedal legs with a single claw on each foot. A short spiky conical plated tail and a relatively hefty horn on the top of my head.
My hide is covered with rocky scales which are strong enough to grind away at the surrounding rocks, if I am so inclined.
The most unfamiliar and exotic part of my anatomy are several pairs of holes along my torso, as far as I can figure they serve as the primary alternative for taking in air or what little there is of other gases deep under the surface. Am I actually breathing any substantial amount of oxygen or does my new biology make breathing, in the usual sense, optional? I'm edging towards 'Dunno, magic?'.
I'm not sure how the holes are connected to my lungs, if I even have lungs or any other human-like internal organs. I seriously doubt my digestive system in any way functions like a human one, nutrients seem to go directly to physical growth while most of the mass goes on to be converted and stored in my internal energy storage, instead of being added as fat to my body. Very little is wasted considering the sizes of my droppings.
Considering my massive food intake, it is especially useful being able to breathe and eat at the same time.
Underlying all of these observations is the certainty that this little body is too strong, it is unnaturally hardy and capable of feats of strength that would've terrified me if not for the mental changes that came along with the package.
I am noticeably duller, not that I am mindless or dopey, but long term planning is far out of reach in my current capacity. To make up for these deficiencies my teeny widdle baby brain came included with a metaphorical fortress, with unshakeable foundations, equipping me with an adamant resolve and self-confidence that is the mental equivalent of my supernatural hardy physique.
Included in that package were all the instincts my species are naturally equipped with, which along with my unbending willpower mostly make up for any reduced smarts or previous fear of the dark.
What I have come to realize is that the old memories of my past life are slowly being buried under new memories that are filled with the influx of increased sensory information flagged as 'currently more important'. I suspect my infant mind prioritizes and puts more import in the 'here and now' rather than 'a past that practically never was'.
My past-life memories are buried by the urges of a developing brain working to expand and grow in metaphysical directions that are distinctly non-human. I am transforming from mentally being an adult human to being a precocious young mind in the rapidly maturing body of some sort of fantasy dinosaur creature.
- Many years later -
Time passes strangely in this primal new existence.
To a young mind, hours seem like days, months like years. With no outside social stimulation my mind was left to introspection, self reflection, bouts of childish fantasies and occasional tantrums.
I have become quite familiar with the mysterious energy I was so puzzled by. Playing with it has become my main pastime and has as a result become something I use regularly in my day to day activities to reinforce my body and, when pushed outside my body, to solidify and stabilize the walls and ceiling in my nest and the tunnels close-by. It has increased steadily as I've grown older and exerted myself in my daily play sessions.
Yes, that's right, play sessions.
I've unquestionably become more childish, with everything that implies...
When my appetite is sated and my energy levels are high, I do what most kids do when hyper and left to their own devices; dig for imagined 'treasure', collect rocks for my 'hoard', having races through my tunnels, talking to Mr. Bauta (my pet boulder and imaginary best friend), building 'secret' bases, pretend-battling 'bad guys' - alternatively fighting the 'good guys', sing to myself (read screeching and cute mini-roars), throwing rocks, blowing jets of air out of my torso-holes and sometimes having fits of rage that ends up thrashing my surroundings... often causing the tunnel to collapse on top of me.
The time I don't spend sleeping in my nest or playing/training is used steadily expanding my network of tunnels and rooms, which are hollowed out as a consequence of my massive appetite. The structural integrity is on the whole quite poor, but periodically allowing older tunnels to collapse is a nice way of keeping a partially refilling 'larder' closer to my nest.
I've largely been unable to notice any minute changes my body has gone through as I've grown, except the most obvious one; my size has probably increased threefold since hatching.
This is, of course, guesswork. I have no real way to measure and quantify neither height nor weight and evaluating my increase in physical abilities can be summed up as 'I can do more - longer'.
I have seemingly passed a threshold; my appetite has noticeably diminished over the span of the last week, I have become increasingly lethargic and my body appears to be anticipating and preparing for something to happen…. wait, do I hibernate? *Snore*
Looking back on my early life; no parental authority, no form of social contact to ingrain such things as empathy... it might be the root of my impudent nature as an adult.
I am partial to always having it my way, no matter the circumstance or conflict required to make it so.
"You are in my territory, this mountain is mine… when was it ever YOUR mountain? You own it? Well, it's ideal for the new nest that I'm building, so now it's mine. And your riches as well… they're going into my hoard now. Now would you kindly GET THE HELL OFF MY MOUNTAIN! *STONE EDGE* "
If mild savagery doesn't solve the problem, there are always ways to make the stick bigger. I unfailingly manage to find a bigger stick. *GIGA IMPACT*
Violence isn't always the answer, unless the question is stupid or I'm feeling disagreeable.
Don't get me wrong, I do have a sense of empathy... I just seldomly choose to use it, so it has understandably withered a bit.
If that makes me a monster, then I'll gladly take that title as my own.
I'm the Monster under the Mountain.