Groggily I open my eyes, fighting against the crustiness that sometimes develops when you dry out overnight.
It takes a few moments and a gentle rub with my fists but now I can see, above me is a canopy of swaying branches and leaves and some glimpses of bright blue sky dotted with wispy clouds.
Why am I outside? I remember…
I don't remember! Where did I go to sleep? When did I go to sleep?
Panic starts to grip me as I sit up and glance at my surroundings. I can see massive tree trunks all around me and the ground around me is littered in sticks and dried out dead leaves.
I don't recognise anything around me, none of the trees feel familiar, in fact the entire forest seems strange and unsettling!
Deciding to get up and look around, I put my hands down on the ground, the leaves crunching softly under the pressure, it's then that I notice my hands are green and the fingers are comically large… that I only have three digits!
Crying out in shock, I throw myself up and fall back onto the hard trunk of the tree I had apparently fallen asleep under with a dull thunk.
"M-man that smarts," I utter, reaching up with one of the freaky hands to rub the back of my head.
I stop when I feel that my head doesn't seem quite right, I can feel a groove beginning part way down.
Dropping my hand, I draw in a deep breath, then exhale it. I need to calm down, panicking won't do me any good at all in a strange place, in a body I don't recognise as mine.
"Keep calm… figure out what I am, where I am and what I need to do to fix it and go home."
As I slowly look around, I spot a puddle that has formed where the canopy overhead is broken just enough for rainfall to be uninterrupted. So it must have rained recently for it to have not evaporated.
Taking a step forward, I glance down, seeing that even my feet look as strange as my hands, yet walking on two legs seems to suit whatever this body is just fine.
I trudge over to the puddle and lean over, using my hands to support my weight so I don't fall face first into the water while I begin looking into it.
Staring back are two enormous yellow eyes set in the sides of a comically large and tall head, so comical in fact that the ridges themselves seem to rise slightly above the top of my head, which forms that groove I felt earlier. A bulbous snout rests below and between the eyes, coated in what looks like scales you'd find on a lizard or maybe a snake?
With a shake of my head, I look more closely, opening my mouth, I can see I have what looks like an ordinary tongue… well close to what a human might have, and inside my mouth are some sharp teeth, sharper than I'd expect… I remember most lizards not having teeth at all.
The light green, almost pear coloured scales are accompanied by a rusty red 'underside' that starts on my lower jaw and runs down my neck, these scales cover my chest and belly, so I suppose that's my underbelly?
Looking back up into the water, I look closely at my eyes. No matter how I glance left or right or even up and down I can't see whites, only yellow, and around the tall dark irises is a subtle ring of brown that seems familiar to me.
Sitting back roughly, I huff out and feel frustration welling up.
The familiarity with those irises makes me think very hard, what did I look like before this? The colour of those irises… I must have had brown eyes before… I remember being a human but I can't remember if I was a big human or a small human… Was I fat? Or thin? I can't even recall the colour of my hair… how it was styled.
I can't remember anything other than my eye colour… that I was human…
I can't even remember my name!
Suddenly I realise that I'm clenching my jaw tightly and that my vision is blurry around the edges. I lift an arm and rub my right eye first, then my left before clenching my fists and breathing out hard through my slitted nostrils.
I do remember something though. I remember that I played a lot of Pokemon. That the creature I am now, is a Treecko. A wood gecko. Grass type, one of the starter pokemon given to trainers at the start of their journey.
Despite the aggravation that I can recall seemingly useless information if I weren't in the situation I am in now, I force myself to breathe in deeply through my nose and exhale slowly through my mouth a few times trying to calm myself.
Okay, try to think positively here. I'm a treecko now, presumably I'll meet other pokemon so at least I'm not alien, hopefully, and I should be able to defend myself if I get into trouble… I think.
So far while I've been floundering around, no one has approached… I haven't heard anyone anyway… Maybe I'll be able to find someone and ask them for help… if they can't understand me, I can always write, English is pretty universal anyway!
On top of that, the weather is good, temperate and in my favor for now.
If there are wild pokemon and they are dangerous… I should be okay since this is a forest, or maybe woodlands is a better term. I'll mostly run into other grass types like me… but there may be bug types, or worse, poison types.
Standing up, I look around to double check my surroundings, I can't really see any landmarks so I can't even really pick a direction to go in just yet and more importantly I don't know how to defend myself other than punching, kicking, biting and tackling. I can remember that treecko starts off with the move Pound and Leer, a weak physical attack and a status type attack that lowers defense.
While looking around, I become aware of a strange thing in the corner of my vision that moves with me, squinting a little, I focus on it and suddenly the world beyond that blurs out and I'm assaulted by what looks like a game menu!
Looking up and down, I can see various information, and it seems all to pertain to myself. I can see my level, a measly 1, which makes me feel uncomfortable knowing that in the games I remember, pokemon who hatch from eggs are the only pokemon encountered at level 1.
"Is this thing insinuating that I'm a baby? A hatchling?"
Below that is my type, a familiar green icon with a white leaf etched into it, yet below that are my stats. Attack, defense and so on. They're all rather low… and beside each number are two more numbers separated by divider bars, the first of these numbers are zero.
The second though… those might be what gamers call IVs, genetic traits of a pokemon that help determine its speciality in fighting, I seem to have really poor special attack and defense then… both are under 10, however my attack and defense are 29 and 31 respectively, my speed is also a solid 22. Hitpoints, one of the less useful stats is at a moderately over average 19.
Not bad all in all.
Below the familiar six stat types are bars, a green bar that is prefixed with "HP", an orange bar prefixed with "PP" and a blue bar prefixed with "XP" all fairly self explanatory, though concerning. I have a fixed amount of total PP? I remember that pokemon moves, their powers consume PP, but the games always had each move with its own pool of PP, if I had a total PP pool that would mean I can reach a point of not being able to use pokemon powers far quicker than I'm used to.
To the right seems to be another 'card' so I glance over a little and the cards slide to the left, giving me a new card to look at. This card shows me what I already assumed, I have the move Pound and Leer, focusing on each gives me a vague description of the move and under each seems to be the cost in PP the move consumes when used.
I also notice that there doesn't seem to be only four slots for moves… below the two I apparently have are greyed out lines filling in where I assume more moves are… there are many of them and they even extend below the bottom of the card as well.
Scrolling back to the main card, I glance left this time and a new card appears, it shows my species, which is obviously "Treecko" and below that it lists off some other less useful information like age and gender, place of birth and a few more things that don't interest me. The place of birth entry is filled with jargon I can't understand, it looks like corrupted text almost with random ASCI thrown together.
Below that though is my ability pool. Yes, a pool.
My intrinsic ability is Overgrow, no surprise there. "When the HP reaches a critical point, the power of grass-type moves grows!"
I apparently have two hidden abilities, though what they are I can't tell as the entries are obfuscated with some sort of visual dithering. I recall treecko having the Unburden hidden ability… I could assume that's one of them but… what could the other one be?
That's all I can get from the heads up display, so on a hunch I look down and blink, the display disappears and my surroundings come back into a sharp focus.
Well, despite the very game-like status screen… I don't want to risk treating this like a game without consequences… first I need to figure out what direction I want to go in, treecko are excellent climbers, and there are plenty of trees to do just that.
I guess my first task is to climb up above the canopy and look for where I should go as well as for landmarks if any if I want to have any hope of getting my proper body back and going home.