Eevee's Secrets in Shadows

Akiko

"You're doing great, Akiko, now try twisting in midair!"

Biting my lip in concentration, I leaped up while twirling and tried continuing the twirl up to the pole Kyerrsha and Troy were holding while balanced on a branch. I wanted to try out for an agility contest, since I knew I was very flexible, but the agility contest was tonight – whatever counts as "night" on the Sun Side – and I still needed to get used to actually doing what half of the hybrids here do without thinking: bounding.

I almost made it, but I fell short and landed breathing heavily.

The two, Eevee and Pikachu alike, came jumping down to me. "You okay?"

"Yeah…I think I'm just having a tiny bit of trouble getting used to being short again." I thought back to when Kyerrsha brought me to his place and marked a height line on the wall for me. It had surprised me when he showed me my hybrid height, what he said was now my "true" height: three feet ten-and-a-half inches. That was a good two feet shorter than I was as a human!

"You'll get used to it." Ky helped me back to my feet. "I had to once I evolved, and whenever I get a Thunder Stone, I'll have to get used to it all over again."

I cocked my head. "Same for me with a Moon Stone, I guess."

Troy nodded with that. "All hybrids that evolve have to get used to a brand-new height, something halfway between their Pokemon form and their human form."

I gave a wry smirk. "Jomei would get a kick out of watching me, his perfect older sister, failing at something." My brother was still running the Festival, trying to get as much fun as he could among these amazing, unusual people before he had to leave.

The Eevee-hybrid looked up and gave a brief sigh. "Too bad he has to leave after the Festival's over. My sibs were having a lot of fun playing with him."

"Yeah…but he doesn't really fit in here, not exactly. Not one of my Pokemon is the same age, as you put it, as he is, so we can't turn him into a hybrid like we did with me, and even if there were, my conscience can't live with the death of another young Pokemon. Besides, my parents would either start worrying about the fact that both of us disappeared or freak if Jomei comes home with his hair dyed purple or something. It would make sense if I suddenly came home with pink hair, but Jomei's the serious one! We'd have to pick something that had the same hair color as he does."

Kyerrsha laughed. "Well, that's true. I never met your parents, but they probably would worry. Besides, if he doesn't really fit in, his new Pokemon really don't fit in: either bigger or smaller than the population, and definitely not as powerful! Charmeleon and Machoke don't like losing, and they'd freak if they stayed here, because anyone they face could beat them!"

Troy glanced at his wrist – he did have a watch, or at least something that told him the time even if he didn't call it a watch – and added, "Oh, I have an appointment with Genetics."

"Huh?"

Kyerrsha looked at me. "Do you want to go with him? I know about this, but not many outside of Eeveelutions know."

"Um…okay."

He grinned. "Besides, I want to spend some time with Jomei before he leaves!" Then he bounded off in the direction of the bright banners.

I walked off with Troy. "So…why are you going to…wherever it is you're going?"

"A genetics lab on the Twilight Border." The Twilight Border was practically a line of mountains where both Sides met, an interesting location. There was a clear-cut line that showed where the Dark Side ended and the Sun Side began. "I want to evolve, but I have to find out if there's anything that I'm not supposed to evolve into."

"Something you're not supposed to evolve into?"

"It's complicated. I'll let Trick explain it."

Trick, apparently, was a female Audino. "Sure, I'll explain it. The test takes some time anyway." While she worked, she talked and explained.

"Now, you know that hybrids lay eggs, right?" At my nod, she went on, "There are actually very few hybrids that have the ability or the patience to incubate their own eggs. Avian-hybrids and certain mothers are the exceptions. Everyone else has their eggs sent to an incubator here on the Sun Side – with a special place on the Dark Side for eggs that actually require cold to hatch – for the length of time required. When a mother wants a child, she can actually choose what species of child she wants, write a letter to the incubator, and they send a child. And once a year, at the beginning of spring on the Sun Side and the beginning of fall on the Dark, every mother gets children of her species, whether she asks for them or not."

"Okay…I think I follow."

"There's an odd balance of Eevees, along with certain other hybrid species. They have a great number, but some years there are very few females. But Eevees have a certain genetic quirk that's fairly well hidden."

"A quirk?"

Trick looked sad. "It usually doesn't happen because of the sheer amount of variety among the Eeveelutions. Most hybrids can pure-breed without worrying, but if the father and the mother of an Eevee are both, say, Umbreons, something…happens."

"The quirk, right?"

"We call it shia'liin."

I thought about that for a second. It was a hybrid word, but it almost felt made-up. At any rate, I didn't understand it. "Does it have a translation?"

"Bloodring." She reached over to her computer and tapped a key. "You know how an Umbreon has two color patterns, right? Yellow rings and blue rings?" Two different Umbreon-hybrids appeared on the monitor: one with yellow rings, and one with blue rings and yellow eyes.

"Yellow is the standard, and blue belongs to a shiny Umbreon," I answered, pointing at each.

"Very good. Well, when an Eevee has Dark shia'liin, and then evolves into an Umbreon himself…" Figures she'd say 'him,' since she just said that there is generally more boy Eevees than girls… Trick tapped another key. "…This happens."

A third Umbreon-hybrid appeared. This one had rings that were, sure enough, crimson-red.

"It's not just a color change, unfortunately." That was Troy. "They're mentally, emotionally, and elementally unstable."

"Elementally? That means…"

"Darkness is something that a hybrid can bend, too, Akiko. And a shia'liin-afflicted hybrid can't control their element nearly as well as a normal hybrid."

I walked over to the computer. "What do the other shia'liins look like?"

"Push the right arrow to scroll through them all. Umbreon is first because it spells out the translation of the disease's name."

So I flipped through them. It was interesting to see the pictures changing either drastically or subtly:

Vaporeon, two shades of blue normally and two shades of purple when shiny, was a slimy-looking murky swamp-green.

Jolteon, yellow and white normally and green and white when shiny, had gone neon-blue with a black spiky collar.

Flareon, red and yellow normally and nearly golden when shiny, had darkened to coal-black.

Leafeon, where the only true difference between normal and shiny was that the shiny version was brighter, had autumn brown leaves.

Glaceon, shades of blue when normal and the lightest blue turning white when shiny, had gotten a gray overcast - shadow on snow.

And Espeon was probably the most unnerving; pale purple when normal and green when shiny, it had turned a bloody red and looked like he really hated the world in general and the camera-guy in specific.

It was the Espeon that drove the point home to me: these particular hybrids…the ones in the pictures…they're not sane.

"Shiny Eevees evolve into shiny Eeveelutions, and they don't get shia'liin," Trick added around the time I was done flipping. "I'm not sure why. Maybe they get lucky and their parents don't match species, maybe the shiny gene dominates over the shia'liin one. Anyway, Troy," she included him in the conversation, "it looks like you're good to become whatever you want. You don't have it."

With a sigh of relief, Troy hopped down, took a piece of paper from her, and started walking off.

I hurried to catch up with him. "What's the paper?"

"Certificate of Evolution Clearance."

I grinned at him. "I'll pretend to know what that means."

Finally, he grinned back. "It means what she said. I can show this paper to whomever's in charge of handing out Fire Stones, Thunder Stones, or Water Stones, and if I succeed in qualifying for one, they'll give it to me, and if I want to spend my birthday at one of the Poles, this is my free pass."

"The…Poles?"

"Center of the Sun Side for Leafeon, center of the Dark Side for Glaceon."

"Oh…cool!"

A/N: Here's the sequel everyone wants! Now, I need my readers to help me with two things:

1) What should the villain be? Shia'liin-afflicted Umbreon is just a tiny bit too obvious, not extroardinarily dramatic in difference from the rest of society, and there's one in my Pokemon League fic; and I already said no psycho Ninetales. Other than that, free rein!

2) Is there any specific Pokemon that you readers want to read about hybridized? I need some more characters.