Chapter 4: Disappointed Perception

A/N: Come on people! I've been busting my buns all week to get more of this story out! And last night… a whole chapter in six hours… I think I've set some sort of record. But this is getting to sound a bit like a rant, isn't it? So if you want, skip to the end and finish it. Then again, I take it you clicked on that link for the story, not for my ranting.

This is the place I would respond to reviews, which I shall do in a moment. Only problem is, at the time of this writing, I only have one more than last time! GET ON IT! I'm going to need at least three more before I write another chapter, so if you want to keep reading, pop me a comment. Even if it is to tell me I'm a failure as a human being, I would love to hear it!

Kazundo's Advocate: I don't know if there is any way for me to properly thank you for your service! Not only did you review twice, but you gave suggestion and technical criticism, which is what I want more than anything (although I don't complain to hear anything from those who read, even if it is only a line or to of compliment or complaint). At first, I didn't intend for Alvin's parents to figure out what had happened to him, thinking, as you originally pointed out, that such seems to be somewhat overused and cliché. But since you mentioned it, I realized that not having his parents' reassurance, even if it was for but a small moment would tear him to pieces. That isn't to say it will be easy… AHH! I've already said too much. Shutting up now!

Biffiea: Sorry I didn't pop a comment into the last chapter for your review… I was going to, but then, as you saw, my responses tended to build up. I was already nearing the end of two pages and didn't want to push it into three. I like the mental aspect of this story almost more than the physical one. I find it fascinating to write about something like this… to thrust poor Alvin into situations and turn around to have him act as I do. It's quite entertaining. I wish I had made him smarter, though.

Ri2: I must thank you as I did Kazundo's Advocate, and apologize as with Biffiea for not getting in some kind of response in my third chapter. I almost wrote more response to reviews than story, and would've had I kept going. Thank you for your compliments! As I said before, it's reviews like that, which keep me going. Keep 'em coming! I've tried to focus on the aspects you pointed out, as you may notice in chapter three, and in the chapter which will follow this.

Foxyjosh: I have to thank you for reviewing yet again. I will try to stress things a bit more from Des's POV in the upcoming chapter, but I may not get a chance until the chapter to follow. Thank you, regardless.

Reeds89: I can't remember if I replied or not to your review, so I'll plop one in here just to be sure. I thank you, that you could possibly consider this puny work to be comparable to its inspiration, (and yes, I've stopped calling it the same universe, as much as its basis of creation. The apple on Newton's head…) but I thank you all the same!

That's all on the area of reviews, which has left me with quite a desire to rant. That's been saved for the end… in the mean-time, the time has come for me to start writing. Bear with me, this chapter might be a bit messy.

This chapter has been edited in the hopes of cutting down on some of the error as of 1/15/07 7:15 PM.

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The plan was a brilliant one, or at least, Alvin thought so. It was so simple, so blatantly obvious that, in his opinion, one would have to be a fool to not make instant grasp of the concept he was trying to relay.

What Alvin did not think about, what did not click within his brain, was that people didn't go around turning into animals. Until a few days ago, when he had himself, the possibility would've never occurred to him, not even in his wildest dreams. But then, fate was rarely forgiving: It had forced him to see the error in his judgment in the cruelest of ways.

During the plan's implementation, Alvin had hit only one major setback: He could no longer write… and only the simplest of written words were legible to him. It seems only those words with pichu equivalents in written English could be understood. Though he could think the sounds of the other words in his head, they no longer meant anything. Or at least, nothing real. His mind seemed to connect random nonsense to the other words, making for some very… interesting reads.

This was no minor setback, considering his first plan had been to dump flour all over the wood floor, and use one paw to write "AlvinPichu". When one of his parents walked in, no doubt upset by the mess and thinking it had been written by someone else, he would scurry away and write it again in an undisturbed patch of flour. That would do the trick… it might've, too, had he been able to implement it. Unfortunately, it was not until he had already spread a sizeable patch of flour across one corner of the kitchen floor did he discover that his mind had already linked pichu words with English written ones. He was writing, all right, but he doubted his parents would make much sense of "Pi pichu p-pi!" written in the flour. Perhaps they would've assumed him a new mental breakthrough in Pokémon intelligence. That he was, but it was a far cry from being human.

He left the few nonsensical scribblings in the flour, however, hoping they might aid in his argument, and might perhaps point his parents a bit closer to the truth about him, and set upon other goals. It had taken some time, but he had figured out another alternative.

As it turned out, Alvin's parents had been out all of the previous night retracing the steps of their son, sick with worry as to his fate. They knew not weather he had ran or had fallen to some ill circumstance, but would not return for some time. Alvin's older sister had an open first, and would not awaken for a good hour, still. Even when she did, with Alvin's parents away, it was unlikely she would even enter the kitchen. The pichu was counting on it.

With Des's help, he had thoroughly rearranged the kitchen and living room areas, with as many clues as he could possibly conceive that might indicate to his parents what fate had befallen him.

First, he had taken several of the lighter potatoes out of the bag from the pantry and made several piles arranged in circular formation around a small framed picture of himself (taken several years ago, during the trip to one of the coastal islands where he learned to Scuba dive). One pile had two potatoes, the next three, then five, then seven, eleven, and finally thirteen (he wanted to do more, but there weren't any more potatoes light enough, and Des was tiring of assisting in the transportation of produce. It would have to do. First glance at the piles would've told one little, other than the two electrical rodents were fond of creating large messes. Anyone with an even slightly mathematical mind who looked closer, would see a bit more; prime numbers in every pile, as well as a prime number of piles. Such mathematical understanding was basic for any human being, but completely beyond any animal (Alvin had once tried to teach Des of numbers, with little success).

In case that was not enough, he had taken the couch pillows and piles them in three equal stacks, arrayed in a triangular formation, with three pillows in each stack. (This had been most difficult for Alvin, as the pillows were beyond his capacity to drag, let alone lift). The green plush pillows were all placed in a stack, and the red, and the brown. Also, it seemed to Alvin, far beyond the ability of an animal.

The pichu had also conceived one final plan, one last, surefire shot at communicating to whoever next entered the room what had become of him. His sister was long gone to school before the two "Mice" had reached that point. It had taken some doing, and quite some digging in the back of the closet (which, fortunately, his sister had left open in the usual teenage way. Though Alvin remembered how to use doorknobs, they were much too high, and he was yet to practice jumping with precision), and required the two to make quite a mess to locate, but he had do it. Alvin's old alphabet blocks, the ones he formerly loved as a baby (oh the irony), shelved in the back (the downstairs closet was somewhat of a passage, with a good portion of floor space with a progressively sloping ceiling). It had taken both Alvin and Des all of their strength to tug the open-topped plastic crate out from the closet, pushed it over to the kitchen floor beside Alvin's other three attempts, and Alvin was just beginning to arrange the blocks when he heard a key slide into the front door, and the lock click open.

Such was not loud, but ears nearly as big as your head had their advantages. "They're coming! I… don't know what to do!" Assembling the blocks into words, however small, was a tedious task to say the least. It had taken him a good five minutes to write his name, followed by the word "is."

It was a lucky thing he had even retained the ability to puzzle letters into words. He couldn't write, but fortunately, when the letters were already there, his now much-smaller mind switched over to whatever capacity for understanding English he had retained, as well as its written forms. It felt like the most difficult of brain-teasers, and but so much stress on his head he thought it was to explode, but he did it. He would've finished, too, had his parents not come walking in on him at that exact moment.

Apparently the disappearance of Alvin had granted his father a bit of leave from work, which was why he walked in beside his wife. The pair were walking slowly, deliberately, a mournful and determined gate. They walked past the closet, not even noticing its contents, which had been carefully organized when they left, had been ripped to pieces. Though the two were paying little attention to their surroundings, when they turned the corner into the kitchen/living room, both of which had been thoroughly ripped apart, they would've had to be complete fools to fail to notice what had happened inside. Alvin's mother, already weakened by the disappearance of their only son, and very, very disturbed by mess, actually screamed at the sight, a high, shrill sound, which echoed for a moment around the spacious kitchen before dying away.

Their son, who had turned around to face the entry to the kitchen, standing on two legs atop a pile of blocks just before his parents had entered, was so intimidated by the pitch and volume of his mother's scream that he fell back to that human-like sitting position. So loud, and so close! It had to be a predator, or something else that wished him harm! Run! Flee! His instincts echoed again and again inside his head, raising more fear with every passing second. After only three, he became so overwhelmed by it all that the small body could hold so much human emotion no longer: He began to cry. buried his face in his hands, a distinctly human expression.

His crying was so faint, and the combined area taken by himself, and the pile of blocks so insignificant in comparison to the gigantic messes the two rodents had created in the process of creating the messages that Alvin was not even noticed, at least not at first. Des, who had got bored of Alvin's struggle with the symbol-wood, had taken to playing in his little fort instead.

"And on top of what we've already got on our plate… this mess!" Alvin's father had said, taking the broom from behind the fridge and sweeping up the flour, not even noticing what was written inside it. Alvin was still crying, so failed to notice this. Had he, he probably would've cried more anyway.

"Rick… stop…" Alvin's mother said, her voice drifting and distant. She almost never used a voice like that, and her husband knew it. She was quite a bit more mathematically minded than he, and was hence first to detect any pattern in the kitchen's corner. While Rick had just stepped around them, the two strange formation were what she had her eyes fixed on, before turning them to the area directly in front of her, the transition between carpet and wood, and found Alvin, sitting atop the pile of blocks in a very human way, and crying.

"Why?" All these concepts had slipped his mind, at least for the moment. He would understand, in time, but left to his own devices, those patterns Alvin had left would've been destroyed. It was a good thing he had not come before Alvin's mother. "Des and his new friend had a bit too much fun, it would seem. I want this cleaned up before Melissa returns home and gets things messy all over again…" He stopped, however, turning to his wife with questioning eyes.

"No… don't you see? Look at the potatoes! Notice anything?"

Rick turned his eyes down, looking at the potatoes intensely for a moment. He didn't get it. "They knocked Alvin's picture down and moved it over-"

"What would make them do that?" Alvin's mother's voice was tight and strict, now, all airiness gone. The voice she used when she was frustrated with Rick.

She used it almost as rarely as that airy tone… so much so that Alvin stopped crying, looking up at her with a twinge of hope in his eyes. Had she understood?

"I don't know! They're animals. Animals do things for no reason! It's what makes them animals!"

She sighed, looking away from him for a good few moments. When she began speaking again, the exasperated tone in her voice was amplified. "Look there. Count the potatoes." This time, she did not wait for him to make some half-brained retort. "The numbers: three, five, seven, eleven, thirteen, then Alvin's picture in the center positioned so that all four corners of its frame line up with a pile of potatoes. Doesn't it seem the least bit strange to you? Those are prime numbers…" For a moment, her voice again possessed that airy, disconcerted tone, but it quickly evaporated. "And look… a triangle… nine… three stacks of three… do playing Pokémon just happen to create messes like this? Two of them? Maybe three… did you look at the flour before you swept it up? I doubt it…"

Rick stood speechless, mouth hanging open, listening as his wife explained what should've been obvious to him. He watched as she strode slowly over to the pichu she had demanded they take in two days before.

Alvin unwittingly scooted back further into the pile of blocks as his mother walked over to him. He tried to ignore his instinct, but could not do so completely. "Mom… it's me!" He said in as steady a tone as he could, unable to keep eye contact with her without feeling a sense of fear to some degree. "Alvin!"

Sadly, his words were as lost to her as numbers were to Des. But the words he had written with blocks were not…

"Look at this!" She practically shouted, pointing to the blocks Alvin had managed to arrange before their arrival. "A-L-V-I-N is-" Her excitement seemed to be growing. "I think this pichu knows something about what happened to Alvin!"

Alvin nearly screamed with exasperation, and would've, had he not known it would have done little for his argument. He had been so close, so close! How had his parents been so stupid? For pitty's sake, he had written it! "No! I don't know what happened to Alvin, I AM ALVIN!"

His parents, being no better at understanding the Pokémon language than the average human, completely misunderstood the sounds Alvin made. "See!" Alvin's mother exclaimed, dropping down to her knees and looking directly down at him. "What happened to Alvin?"

The youth (( :) )) (though not so much anymore) in question leapt out from his half-buried position in the blocks, pawing his way over to his name. He pointed repeatedly to himself, then to the name, and back again. His parents didn't get the message.

"Yes… we know you know about Alvin, where is he? Where is my son?" Rick had dropped down to his knees beside his wife, the broom falling limp and ignored behind him. His wife had convinced him.

At least Alvin had their attention. He needed to think… he dad always said it, and it had been true, that he had a talent for using his head to get out of sticky situations. Here's one now, Alvin… you can do it! He told himself, looking up at his parents with unsure eyes. At the same time, however, something else popped into his head. It was a strange, unsure thought, nothing he would've put there willingly. When he was a child, adults would often run a playful hand through his head. He had hated it! It had made him feel so much more like a child. And now, he imagined them doing the same thing, running a hand through that spot of fur on his back he couldn't quite reach… NO! I'm not an animal! I don't want them to… do that!

His parents watched him expectantly, waiting, hoping he would signal them with the information they desired. They were not disappointed, but the result could hardly be what they had expected. Alvin had taken to try and assemble the final word of his message. Alvin in… he had added the first letter, the letter "P" of the final word, when he discovered that, to his horror, he could not properly transcribe the word "Pichu."

He stood motionless for some time, the letter "E" in his mouth, "P" already in place. There were only two "I"s, and he had already used both. Of all the restrictions that could've possibly prevented him from sending the message, this seemed by far the least dignified… stopped by a practical lack of the letter "I".

Nearly driven to insanity by the sudden burst of anger, Alvin screamed in frustration, spitting out the "E" as he did so. "Why? Why me! And why this?" He sat down limply, avoid eye contact with his parents, who were leaning progressively closer and closer in order to try and ascertain what message he could possibly be trying to convey.

The answer came to him like most other great ideas throughout the ages have come, seemingly from nowhere, out of the depths of the void between conscious and semiconscious, floating before his eyes like a cloud before the noonday sun. It was so simple, so plain… how had he not seen it before now?

The pichu sat up quickly, roughly pushing the "P" out of the way with one paw and sliding the "E" into its place. Then, with one smooth forward thrust of his left forepaw, Alvin pushed the final letter into the large gap between the "S" and the "E". The letter "M".

Alvin's parents stared shamelessly down at him, both of their jaws dropping at exactly the same moment; Almost like they were synchronized.

"Impossible…" His father stuttered for a moment, not even forming complete words. It was impossible, had to be. But then, pichu didn't make geometric patterns with produce, or have any idea what a prime number was.

"You're… you… Alvin, is that you?" Alvin's mother's voice was shocked, but with a soothing tone to it. Unlike Rick, who thought (at least at first) only for the negative that this situation had just thrust upon the whole family, Alvin's mother thought of the hardships her son had been through before thinking of the future for them all.

The pichu nodded solemnly, darting right up to her and standing on two legs. Despite her being on her knees, Alvin was still a good few feet away from eye level. "You have no idea what I've been through!"

And in some, inexplicable way, she understood. "It's alright… everything will be ok now…"

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A/N: Can you belive it? Two chapters in two days? I must've blown a fuse! Or more accurate, I want more reviews! Hey, look, it rhymes! Now just try to stay in time…

That's enough of that. Nearly three hundred hits… that's almost a hundred hits a chapter! Perhaps that's an insignificant amount, but it does not seem so to me, a first time author.

Alright, it's time for the final reason for this particular rant: I need help. Let me outline my dilemma…

Despite reviews to the contrary, the fact stands that I know very, very little about the Pokémon world. The time will soon come that Alvin shall be required to leave the safety of his home in search of a cure to what has happened to him. That will require knowledge of Pokémon I do not have to write. If anyone would be willing to help me out with information on this regard, by answering questions and listening to my ideas before I publish them, I would be most grateful! Let me know in a review.

All right, I can't write any more. I'm so nauseated right now… If I try, I'll throw up. Peace out!