Pokémon: Changeling

Chapter 2 – Strange Awakening

When I finally woke up again, it took several seconds to open eyes and several more for them to finally focus. But, during these few seconds, I slowly began to notice something was off. My entire body felt sore and stiff, but even though I had not fully regained feeling in it, it felt different, strange, and foreign. Yet, somehow, it felt bizarrely familiar at the same time.

After I could finally see clearly, I saw that I was in what appeared to be a hospital bed of some description and I was lying on my side facing towards a large window only a few inches from my face. The bright warm glow of mid-afternoon sunlight entered through the window and I could see a dirt path several dozen meters away that ran along the edge of what appeared to be a forest. However, that wasn't what concerned me.

I could see a reflection in the window due to how close I was to it. The reflection was that of some vaguely canine or hyena-like creature that seemed to be about the size of very large dog. Two manes of pitch-black fur grew from stripes starting just a little above and behind its eyes ran down the back of its neck, eventually growing closer together at the base of the neck and proceeding to cover almost its entire back. The long black fur also formed a reasonably short tail behind it. A shorter, but similarly colored, layer of fur coated all four of its legs up to its knees. Each of the creature's three digits on each of its four paws had short dark grey claws.

Most of the rest of its body was coated in short layer of very dark grey fur. Several bandage wraps covered most of the creature's torso and its right forepaw. A dull greyish-red nose sat at the end of a canine-like muzzle an its incisors peeking out from under its upper lips, somehow managing to look intimidating and oddly endearing simultaneously. A pair of pointed canine ears were lying flat at the top of its head; meanwhile, the same kind of short pitch-black fur that covered its lower legs formed a slightly rounded triangle directly under each of its eyes.

The rest creature's body already called to mind legends of hellhounds, but the eyes alone were more than enough to give the monster a nightmarish appearance. The red irises almost seemed to glow slightly, despite the mid-afternoon sun, and the yellow sclera only added to the eyes' unnatural appearance. It was, at the time, by far the most frightening thing I had ever seen, even without the realization that would follow a few seconds later; I was looking at my reflection.

I was no longer an 18-year-old human, a young man destined for college; I was a monster.

Panic, confusion, terror, anxiety, and whole host of other emotions quickly enveloped me as my adrenaline spiked and I began to hyperventilate. My ears shot up as I heard the monitors that were plugged into my forelimbs begin to beep rapidly, but I was only barely aware of this. Despite the crazed and distressed state of my mind, I could not shake the idea that this beast I had apparently become was somehow familiar.

However, before I could come to the revelation myself, it was thrust upon me by what I saw out the window. A young kid, who seemed to be about twelve, was happily running alongside a bizarre creature. The creature, which I recognized instantly, was a small rodent-like beast with a short muzzle, yellow fur, long black-tipped tube-like ears, red circles on its cheeks, a pair of brown stripes on its back, and, most distinctively, a lightning bolt-shaped tail.

I realized I was watching a kid run alongside a Pikachu from Pokémon. Then I realized where I had heard the name "Arceus" before, he was the deity of the Pokémon world. And that revelation was shortly followed by me recognizing the creature whose body I now inhabited, a Mightyena, a kind of Dark-Type Pokémon. Somehow, I had ended up as a Mightyena in the Pokémon world.

I liked to think of myself as a rational person and I knew that my conclusion was outright impossible. Pokémon did not exist! They were fiction! Pure fantasy! The confusion and shock I felt earlier now grew to temporarily override all my other emotions.

As much as I wanted to deny it, to dismiss everything around me as a product of fiction and my imagination, I knew this was not a dream. I had always been a lucid dreamer and had full control over them in the past. However, simply wanting to make this situation come to an end did not change anything and I could tell this was far too realistic and detailed to be one of my dreams. Slowly, horror overtook me as I realized the situation that I was in was very real and seemingly uncaring of the fact it was completely impossible.

I tried to stand, to get up, to somehow run away from what had happened to me, but a blinding pain shot through my body when tried to move. I am not ashamed to say that all of this pushed me past the breaking point.

I began hollering in fear and confusion, "This isn't me! This is impossible! This can't be real!" I am sure I shouted just about every stereotypical line imaginable in just a few seconds. As I was lying there shouting, I suddenly realized that what was coming out of my mouth was not English. It seemed my words had been replaced by a much more animalistic collection of sounds; low growls, snarls, and barks now made up my vocabulary. I felt like I was still speaking English and I understood what I was saying like I was still speaking it but, at the same time, I was aware that was not what was coming out of my mouth. At least I was not repeating the name of my new species over and over.

All of this, from me waking up to me realizing what I had become and its implications, must have only been a couple dozen seconds, but it felt like an eternity. While I was consumed by my anxiety, I missed the fact that a young woman, a nurse, entered the apparent hospital room I was in. I nearly jumped out of my fur when she began running one of her hands through the mane on my back in a futile attempt to comfort me.

"It's alright, sweetie. You're safe now. You won't be hurt any more. You're alright. It's okay now." She spoke in cheery upbeat voice, uselessly repeating her short phrases to try to calm me down, but I was hardly paying attention and did not even look at her.

At that point, nothing could help me, I simply closed my eyes and began sobbing. I would only later realize that this answered the question of whether or not my new body was capable of crying because, at the moment, I was incapable of caring about that. Everything I had ever known, even my own body, had suddenly been taken from me; I had suddenly been dropped in a world that was supposed to be pure fiction. I have no idea how long I was lying there crying before I retreated into sleep in order to escape from that insanity.