Chapter 2: Dragons at the Door
Q: How was I assigned my species?
A: The results of your personality quiz and your choice of favorite Pokémon factored in, as well as our own behavioral analysis and a helping of randomness, biased to ensure that the Hawai Region's population will be healthily diverse. If your personality is particularly unique, or if you opted for family-level species assignment and your kin are quite different from one another, you might instead be assigned a "fallback" species which you'll find to be highly adaptable and versatile. Make sure to read about your new body's needs!
Your Guide to the Harmony Project, Chapter 1: Quick Questions and Answers
"I am a spider. I am literally a spider."
A few minutes had passed, and things were not going well. Dad and I were both watching Mom, worried. Her eyes were clenched shut and she was cowering to the floor, starting to shiver. The southern accent she otherwise tried to keep hidden was sneaking into her voice. Dad was the first to try and speak up.
"Well, technically, dear, the species is known as Spina—"
"I KNOW WHAT IT IS!" She wailed, a hiss rising from her carapace. The sound made her cringe as much as it startled the rest of us; she scuttled backward, body pressed into the floor. "Everything… everything's wrong, I didn't want this, I didn't want this, this isn't right—"
"Breathe, Mom," I tried. Philomena had drifted over toward us too, and looked like she was on the verge of tears. Her whole body was… rippling, the outer membrane shimmering in the lamplight, save for the lace collar and bow around her neck.
"I – I –" Mom did try, before breaking down, her voice strained. "Through what, spiracles?! This – this – this –"
I'd not seen Mom in the midst of a panic attack before; she wasn't even the type of person to have them. She tried to cover her eyes with her forelegs, but feeling them just made it worse; she recoiled and fell onto her back, all of her legs twitching.
"ATHENA."
The voice was my stepdad's, and it was louder this time – that, and the sound sent a chill through me; it seemed to echo off my bones. Philomena felt it too; she started backwards and bit her lip. My stepmom went still.
"Flip back over, face me, and look at me," Dad commanded. My stepmom complied, her two eyes – two? Non-compound? – fixed right to him. She shivered, but it wasn't fear; it was something else. It was shame.
Dad took a step forward, awkward on his newly taloned feet, his eyes not leaving hers. "Do you remember who I am, Athena?" He asked, his voice soft, steady, but deeply serious.
Mom started at that, both pairs of forelegs twitching, but her head gave a nod.
"Good. Because I remember who you are," he said softly.
It didn't work. Her gaze wavered and she looked away. "Who I am? I thought we weren't supposed to be—"
Dad took a strong step forward – a sure step this time – and slipped a wing around the side of her head, bringing her eyes back to his. "You're afraid of spiders, and I understand that. A deep, physiological fear response to spiders is not at all uncommon. That fear is a perfectly normal feeling for a human to have."
That did work. My stepmom's eyes swam for a moment, then snapped open wide, and I think she actually blushed in her carapace. She shivered and looked down at the wood floor.
"But that's not going to hold you back, is it, Athena."
There were a couple soft knocks on the front door, but they went unanswered; everyone was focused on my stepmom. "No," she replied at length, her voice quiet and choked, her accent creeping in again. "It's not."
"Good." Dad extended his wing and rested it across her head. Philomena drifted in silently with a red length of ribbon draped across her tendrils and lowered to the floor, tying it in a bow at the root of Mom's right second foreleg. After she pulled it tight she started backward, holding her tendrils up and staring at one, then the other. They quivered, and she bit her lip and focused, grunting.
That was enough to distract both my step-parents. "What are you doing?" Mom asked.
"I-I don't know…" Philomena muttered. "They were just fine a minute ago!" She gave her tendrils a shake, then when she looked around at the roots of them they fell limp. She growled, rippling, starting to twist to and fro.
"You'll lose control of the rest of yourself that day," Dad cautioned calmly. "Think about what you want to do, not about how to make your body do it. Your conscious mind will figure out the details in time, just don't force it. Let yourself relax."
Philomena nodded as best as she could and shut her eyes. She tried taking a deep breath, though that just inflated her head to triple its normal size; I turned away and covered my mouth – well, jaws – to hide a chuckle.
"By the way, Philomena," Dad continued. "How was your room?"
Philomena made a questioning sound and her eyes opened, then she startled enough that her head deflated with an audible whoosh. "Oh! It's… I didn't look at much there, I just went to get something for Mom, there were ribbons in my drawer. It, er… are those…" She looked suddenly at both her parents, questioning. "Are those mine?"
"Everything in your room is," Dad nodded. "Well, except the ribbon you gave to your mother. That was very thoughtful of you." Mom played along, approaching to reach a foreleg to Philomena's head – only to yelp and shrink away when she saw it. Philomena recoiled too, spinning away and cowering, eyes shut.
That was too much. Mom stared at her and started to back away, her eyes wet. "Mom?" I tried, reaching for her, but she flailed two forelegs at the air and twisted back, lowering to the floor, starting to mutter – "No, no, no, no, no…"
There was another knocking on the front door, louder this time. I tried to step in, but Dad got in my way with his tail to me and a wing outstretched across my path. "No, Seb. Just go check the door and tell them to come back another time."
"Were we expecting visi—"
"The door, Sebastian," Dad snapped, clearly frustrated – though not with me. "Now."
I got the door. It was made of thick wood planks, with a doorknob at what was for me waist height and a round, polished metal button several inches above the floor, I guessed for the rest of the family. There were two door viewers, as well. I slid open the one that was at my height, looked through, closed it, and called to my dad: "Uh, are you sure about this—"
"Just open it already and tell them we're busy!"
I winced, then took a deep breath and opened the door to the horde of Charmanders waiting outside.
There were ten of them – plump, bipedal orange lizard-people, each with a flame dancing on his or her tail. They were in varying sizes, with the tallest two in the front, and a trail of progressively shorter followers. Their tail-flames were in a rainbow of colors, and each Charmander – except for one of the pair in front, the largest of them – had a sort of bracelet on his or her wrist, a simple cord with a colored stone set in the top that matched the color of their tail-flame.
Upon seeing me their tails stiffened and they gasped, their beady eyes trailing up my body to my face. I suddenly became aware that I was wearing only a pair of black briefs and some sort of belt, and I was more than twice the height of even the tallest of the visitors. Already the wider-set Charmander of the leading pair getting past the initial shock, stepping forward and extending a four-fingered paw toward my hand. It – she – was speaking, too, her voice that of an excited middle-aged woman:
"Hi, I'm Lucinda Angelo, we're your new neighbors! We thought we'd come by and say hi! Are you the head of the household? Wow, but your house is so big!"
Her face was split open in a sharp-toothed smile as she took my much-larger hand – I had reached it down to her without thinking – and she shook it vigorously as I spoke. "I – I – I – no, I'm Seb, you're thinking of my parents, and, um…" I looked away awkwardly. "Can you… maybe come back a bit later? We're kind of in the middle of—"
"—Getting to know yourselves?" Mrs. Angelo finished for me. "Aww, but that's so much more fun together! Tell me, are your parents Machokes too? Oh, but I think I can see – Oh no…"
She had looked through my legs into the living room. I didn't bother looking around; the way her face had suddenly fallen and filled with concern said enough. "It's alright, Mrs. Angelo, she's just a bit—"
"Nope!" The Charmander held up a stern paw and I shut up. "This is NOT how you are going to spend the first minutes of your new life. COMING THROUGH!"
She charged forward in a waddle and I stepped quickly aside, again without thinking. She was good at that. She headed right for my stepmom, followed by a train of waddling, giggling Charmanders, each smaller than the last. No one was ready for this; both Philomena and my dad retreated in opposite directions from the onslaught. My mom looked up in shock and froze, started to shake her head, eyes wincing shut in terror –
And then she was picked up and caught in a tight hug. "There, there, sweetie," Mrs. Angelo sang, squeezing the Spinarak to her flat, smooth chest and patting her back. Mom struggled briefly and whined, but soon fell still and even let two forelegs rest on her captor's shoulders. Mrs. Angelo bounced her like an infant and purred. "Oh, but your family is just amazing! I'm Lucinda by the way – is that your husband, missus…?" She looked over at my stepdad, who was watching frozen and dumfounded.
"Adam… Adam Cypress," he managed. "You're holding my wife, Athena. It's a, er…"
"Oh, it's such a pleasure to meet you too, Adam!" Mrs. Angelo filled in for him and leaned in, gripping him in an equally tight one-armed hug before putting them both down. She crouched to look my stepmom in the eye, smiling as bright as ever even as the Spinarak looked away. "Athena is a wonderful name, and you're a spider now! Oh, but I hear the goddess Athena loved spiders!" Seemingly sensing reluctance, the Charmander reached down and patted my stepmom on the head. "She loved them so much that when her friend Arachne made a beautiful tapestry, she turned Arachne into a spider so she would always have silk to weave more tapestries with! Is – isn't that how that one goes, Vincent dear?" She looked at the largest of the other Charmanders who had entered the house with her, then over at my stepmom again. "Oh, yes, Vincent's my husband."
"Er…" Mr. Angelo started. His body was a bit narrower than his wife's, and his tail-flame glowed a paler yellow-orange than hers as well, matching the gem on his wrist. "That's… well… it's…"
"That's exactly how it goes," Dad finished for him. "Yes. You are one hundred percent correct, Lucinda. That is the story of Arachne. She and the goddess Athena were best friends." He gave Mr. Angelo a look and the Charmander gulped, but nodded silently. I started to say something but Dad spotted me from the corner of his eye and whipped his head around to glare a warning.
"I did it!" Mrs. Angelo cheered. "Vincent always thinks he knows those ancient Greek things better than I do, teehee. I'm catching up! Oh, and Athena, that ribbon is just adorable! Were you already wearing it when your new body appeared or did you put it on?"
"Oh—" My stepmom blushed. "Actually, my daughter Philomena put it on, I think she—"
"She has an eye for fashion," trilled the Charmander, clapping. "It looks so perfect! See, Vincent and my dad and all the kids got little wristbands that change the color of their tail-flames, but I don't know, I think we'll be able to tell each other apart without any help very soon. Oh, and look at Philomena!" Mrs. Angelo turned, her paws suddenly coming to her cheeks. Philomena was surrounded by six smaller Charmanders staring at her in innocent awe, giving little 'oohs' as she undulated and twirled proudly in front of them. All of them leaned in and she blushed, realizing that she was on the spot – then her head straightened and her eyes set with sudden inspiration. Spreading her flipper-tendrils wide, she focused herself, her body tensed, and there was a faint hissing in the air around her as a tiny globe of clear water appeared and grew above each flipper's tip, rippling in the air. Even Mom and Dad joined in the chorus of cheers.
I almost did, too, without thinking; my hands were raising up to clap when a male teenage voice spoke, a few feet in front of and below me. "You don't have to keep holding the door open, ya big lunk. Gramps isn't coming in."
I looked down and there was yet another Charmander grinning up at me – he was a somewhat different color than the others, a gentle yellow rather than fiery orange, and his tail-flame was a brilliant, royal purple, matching the charm on his wrist. "Or are you just playing statue to avoid the festivities?" He jabbed, but his demeanor remained friendly and relaxed.
"It's… not really my thing," I replied, looking to one side. "Happy to see the others getting along so well already, though."
"Yeah, welcome to my mom," the Charmander chuckled. "Comes in like a tornado, huh? Wanna go outside?"
"Are there more Angelos waiting?" I asked.
"Just the one," an elderly voice responded from just beyond the door. "And he ain't nothin' to look at."
The young Charmander with me grinned and rolled his eyes. "That's grandpa Frederick. C'mon, it's awesome out. Oh, yeah, I'm Leon."
"Seb," I answered, following along. "Nice to meet you. You the oldest?" He answered yes as I stepped across the threshold, into the Hawai Region.
It was a perfect morning, with only a few clouds in the sky and a sun that drenched me with warmth. The sensation awoke something in me, my heart suddenly feeling weightless. There was an odd sensation in the back of my head, too, like I was just about to have some sort of revelation – but it was too big for me to want to focus on. I was busy.
I reached in to take the doorknob, but "Gramps" shook his head at me. "Nah, the fresh air will do your house some good." Gramps was between Leon and Mr. Angelo in size, with a silver flame capping his tail, though he didn't otherwise look much different. I left the door open as I headed down the path leading from our house, following Leon. Gramps stayed where he was, reclined against the wall and taking in the rays. "Have fun bondin', boys." Leon sighed and rolled his eyes.
We didn't go far from the house; we circled around to the side, then to the back. It was a somewhat primitive-looking place, built out of thick wood panels with a wood-shingled roof, though a sturdy-looking one. As I considered whether the house was safe in case of fire, I realized that not one of the Charmanders' tails had seemed to burn anything nor even release any heat.
We had a front porch and a yard which extended alongside the house, where an unpainted picket fence separated us from a stretch of tropical forest. The yard also had a canopy swing, but we could hear waves rolling in not far from the house, so we headed in that direction until we found ourselves atop a storm wall overlooking a beach. Beyond that lay the Pacific Ocean, clear and blue, unmarred by any runoff. Seeing it, Leon let out a whoop, jumped off the storm wall, and started running – well, waddling quickly – across the sand toward the water. I hurried after him, and we both came crashing into the waves together, laughing. I wasn't even accustomed to this sort of thing; the Charmander's excitement was just that infectious.
A couple moments later he was howling in pain and scrambling to get back out of the water, only to get knocked over from behind by a wave that was dangerously tall for his tiny body. I ended up having to sling an arm under and around him and carry him out, while he shivered and groaned. The tip of his tail was still sizzling, the purple flame sputtering and struggling to regain its hold.
"You alright there, man?" I asked.
"Geeze, Seb, that stung!" Leon whined. "Cold as anything, too. Like a polar plunge, but it didn't feel that way anywhere else, just on the tail. Like, dude. They said that story about a Charmander dying when its tail-flame got put out was a fake!"
"It is," I replied. "Guess we found out why Charmanders keep their tails out of the rain anyway." We returned to the storm wall and sat there, while he wrapped his tail around himself and clutched it to his chest, breathing on the tip. After a few huffs, he surprised himself with a jet of purple flame that engulfed the end of his tail and steamed away the rest of the water, the first flame his body had produced that actually seemed to have any heat to it. With his tail dry, Leon seemed to relax, though he still shivered slightly. Silence settled around us, and began to feel awkward, before the Charmander sighed.
"Bummer. Always did want to go out to the ocean and have a swim."
"I mean, you can maybe improvise," I replied, trying to console him. "Can check with my dad as to how your tail-flames work. I mean, it doesn't seem to burn anything or even feel hot unless you will it to."
Leon let go of his tail and folded his arms, grunting. "Hm. Like wearing a wrapper over my tail? I mean… maybe." He shrugged. "Your dad… he said his name is Adam Cypress? Is that true?"
"Yeah," I nodded.
"THE Adam Cypress?" Leon pressed after a moment's pause, looking over at me. "The celebrity superscientist? The guy who was on the news all the time about the Pokémon studies and legislation and the founding of the Harmony Project?"
"Yep. He's not my dad, though," I answered. "I'm just kind of around."
Leon nodded appreciatively, looking across the ocean again. "Man. I couldn't ever do that, like, be famous. Not even just as a celebrity's kid, have people jumping all over me like bees trying to get a whiff of the queen. I think I'd want to just crawl into a hole."
"I kinda was there already," I nodded. "I feel ya. Was kind of having some health issues, didn't get out much. Even if I did, our house was just another single-family in a suburb, and my dad… well, stepdad, he liked it that way. He's not much of a socialite, except when his work forces him to put on that act, and even then it just drains him."
"Heh," Leon chuckled. "My dad's a bit like that too. Mom, though, the bigger the party, the bigger the beast she becomes. Were you adopted or something?"
I turned to look at him. "That's your first guess? Yeah."
"Didn't mean to offend," Leon shrugged. "Percy's adopted too. He's the one with the golden tail-flame." The Charmander scooted forward a bit on the stone wall, looking down at the sand below, eyes distant.
"Rough circumstances?" I asked.
Leon nodded. "Percy joined us the day after Eight-Seven; actually a Chansey brought him right up to our front door when we were still sheltering, afraid of more aftershocks. This Pokémon knocks and she's holding this stunned little toddler who wants to do nothing but sit still as a board, staring into nothing, not making a sound. We thought he was lost and afraid; we started calling around as best as we could for how wrecked everything was. Then night comes and Mom tries to tuck him into bed, and out of nowhere he just starts wailing and wailing for his mommy and daddy. My mom managed to get a name out of him, and it was Percy. The son of our two ranch-hands." Leon's eyes and voice had grown somber.
"Their house was made of brick instead of wood like ours was; an earthquake had brought the whole place down around them. A bunch of Pokémon had shown up and dug Percy out but it was too late for his folks. We've done our best to fill Nate and Sarah's shoes for him, ever since then. And hey, I've seen Eight-Seven orphans who did a much worse job of getting back on their feet. Mom made him a personal project, after she decided the group therapy was making Percy worse and stopped taking him."
"The rescue teams always did focus all their effort on the children first," I nodded, looking down too. "And yeah. The orphan support groups never failed to suck. One adoptive parent always tried to make their new kid the winner of some sort of victimhood contest and everyone else just fell into step."
"Yeah, I heard about that too, you know? It's like they always –" Leon stopped and looked at me suddenly, eyes widening; I gave a single nod. "Oh. Dude, I'm sorry. I didn't—"
I held up a hand slightly. "Nothing to be done about it now. I'm still alive, anyway, and I'll not have you getting mopey for my sake." I patted Leon's little back, looking over to him. "Sounds like things were pretty bad where you were, too, when Eight-Seven happened. Did your whole family make it through?"
Leon nodded. "Everyone in our family made it except the animals. Our ranch was in a valley in Wyoming and the earthquakes began right after a couple days of rain, so our fields were hit by mass movement from both directions. It was like two walls of mud just slammed together on our poor sheep, close to a thousand and a half of them. Lost almost the entire flock, not to mention our two sheepdogs. The only ones that survived… well, Sandshrews came out of the ground everywhere and dug them free. Things were really bad after that; the markets went crazy and we had almost no income from what was left of our livestock. We lost the ranch just a few months ago, after the insurance got around to looking at our loss claim long enough to finally deny it and demand back all their advance payments."
"Wasn't that always the story," I nodded. "Is that why your parents applied to the Harmony Project?"
To my surprise, Leon let out a chuckle. "Nah, man, they weren't the ones who applied." His eyes went distant as he chuckled more, a huge smile spreading across his face. I started to ask something, but he looked at his paws, laughing louder.
"Dude. Are you alright?" I asked, straightening up as he hopped off the storm wall and waddled forward on the beach. This time, instead of heading for the water, he tipped forward and fell face-first into the clean, fine sand, then rolled onto his back and looked up into the clear sky, his expression one of stunned bliss. He just lay there, his body sparkling from the grit, and he let out a bark of laughter.
"Seriously, Leon. You feeling okay after that stuff with the water?" I asked again, worried.
"Nah, man. It's… just, like what the heck." He breathed in deep and let out a long sigh, a happy one this time. "Woke up this morning and Mom put together breakfast for all of us, then right in the middle of it my dad's old bookkeeping laptop comes on with some kind of announcement about a project we'd been rejected from."
"We'd all just been waiting for the moment the foreclosure would be served, and we thought it was happening in some new techy way. We all huddled around the computer in Dad's little office, Mom's shaking in her slippers," Leon continued, quiet amusement in his voice. "Then we get this video instead with Professor Mangrove, and next thing we know our old home is gone, our debts are gone, our old bodies are gone, the land we were about to lose is gone, everything's gone. Just… like that." He held up a paw and tried to snap his fingers, then laughed again when it didn't work.
"And I didn't even notice!" He all but squealed the words, eyes shining. I realized that at some point, I had lain down to look up at the sky next to him. "I mean, I was sorta dazed for a minute. I was wandering around, went to my room to check on my phone because I thought I'd heard it vibrate while the video was running, but I didn't find it and then my mom grabs me and she tells me we're going outside to meet the neighbors right now." He snickered and rolled his eyes. "Like, geeze, Mom! We all just got turned into Pokémon and that's the first thing you wanna do?! And I lost my smartphone!"
"I'm glad she came over, anyway," I smiled, my head eased back into the sand, the sunshine making me feel drowsy. "My stepmom was in a bad way. Glad you joined the Project, for that matter."
"Oh, and get this. Get this," repeated Leon until I opened my eyes and looked over at him. "It happened because of Dio," Leon said slowly, excited drama in his voice.
"Dio?"
"My six-year-old brother," Leon went on. "He was playing with my phone awhile ago and downloaded this app, he thought it was some kind of game about being a Pokémon and started tapping around with it, and he uploaded the entire household's contact cards that Mom had made and shared to me. Then, I guess the project accepted us! Us, out of seven million people who applied!"
"Seven million households who applied," I corrected.
"Yeah!" Leon's voice was manic, brimming with joy. "And I thought I was just gonna have some French toast this morning!"
My stomach suddenly growled.
"And I missed breakfast! How crazy is that, Seb!" He was still chuckling as he got up, offering a paw to help me, though there wasn't much point given the size difference. "Come on, man, let's go inside and get some food."
That same feeling from before, that sudden levity, hit me again for a moment – only to be interrupted by another growl from my stomach. "We… eat food?" I asked.
"I mean, I guess!" Leon laughed again. "Someone in there is hungry, meathead," He jabbed my stomach with a clawed finger. After that we were heading back around to the front of the house, only to find a trail of Charmanders waddling out, led as before by Mrs. Angelo and her husband. She looked around at us in surprise, then smiled brightly. "Oh, there you are, Leon! Come on, we're heading back to the house! Oh my, did you go swimming?"
"Already?" Leon protested. "Yeah, there's a beach right there, but…"
"Oh, that's just wonderful! Don't worry, Leon, we're coming right back," Mrs. Angelo assured. "We're just going to fill some baskets from the pantry. Mr. Cypress suggested we do that since we've got so much more food stored than they do, but we're still all going to brunch together!"
"Whoa, uh, do we—" I started.
"Oh my goodness, you're Sebastian, right?" She turned to me, her face shining, sparkling eyes locking to mine. "Will you be a dear and get our picnic benches from the yard? They're set with stone slabs but they're Charmander-sized, you'll do just fine. It's a beautiful day and we're all going to eat in the sun. Come on now!"
Once again, I acquiesced before I had a chance to think about it.
Q: What do I eat now?
A: All Pokémon are omnivorous, and you can eat anything that you would have eaten as a human. You might have nutritional requirements that vary greatly in proportion from your fellow Pokémon, however. For instance, Pokémon who can emit energy such as fire or electricity have much higher caloric intake such as for carbohydrates and fat, and Grass Pokémon who are capable of photosynthesis need far less nutrient intake if they're getting enough sunlight.
Refer to your species' guide for more information about your nutritional requirements. Cravings will start to set in if you're not getting enough of any one nutrient, vitamin, or mineral, so listen to your body! There are no processed or "junk" foods in the Hawai Region that could deceive your taste buds; what your body says it wants is what you should give it.
Your Guide to the Harmony Project, Chapter 1: Quick Questions and Answers
Brunch was a whirlwind, which seemed to be expected of anything that Mrs. Angelo got involved with. The food was decent, mostly canned stuff and some fresh fruit. The pantry was huge and there was a floor door leading down into a cellar, so we weren't at all limited for food supplies, even though we hadn't had a chance to figure out how to cook anything in the new kitchen facilities, nor even what we had available or how it worked. In any event, I was famished for what we had and managed to eat three times as much as even Mrs. Angelo. That, too, gave me a sort of sensation of weightlessness when I thought about it, but I was too hungry to dwell on that, and being able to eat normal food at all was just too much of a treat.
Once we got everything cleaned up and I hauled the benches back to the Angelos' place – a domed, rust-red stone abode that actually seemed similar in size to ours – we said our goodbyes. Mrs. Angelo hugged everyone one last time, whispering into my ear a "thank you" for "being so good to Leon" before she scurried away.
Then, we headed back into the house. Well, Mom and Philomena did, anyway. I stopped suddenly when I realized something, a hand coming to my "ear." My new body didn't have ears; the spot Mrs. Angelo had whispered into was a horizontal slit directly behind my eye. I touched the outside of it, wondering how she had found it or if that was just part of her way with people.
Before I could think about that, though, I heard a whisper by the house. It was Dad.
"Hold on a moment, Lily. I'll be right with you," he was muttering. Then I heard him take flight, if clumsily; there was a brief beating of wings when he tried to land on the picket fence and struggled to balance.
Curious, I followed quietly. I hadn't heard of Professor Mangrove stopping by, and I was curious to meet her. I kept my distance as I crept after him, while he hopped from one length of fence to the next, and finally gave up, fluttering to the ground and walking unsteadily to the edge of the storm wall. I followed quietly, my bare feet quiet in the grass, and crouched behind the fence, looking around.
Dad was still alone, speaking louder. "Yes, Lily. Sorry I wasn't more responsive. We were tied up with the new neighbors." He paused. "Yes, I told them who I am. They didn't seem to care. I don't think they'll tell anyone else." Another pause. "They seem to be taking it very well. Phase Two started and they ran right over to socialize with their new neighbors; you'd think they were born as talking Charmanders for how naturally they comported themselves. How's the rest of the island? No crises, I hope?"
I crept forward and found Dad still standing alone, speaking seemingly to nothing. "Good… good. How are the avians? The Murkrows, Pidgeys, Pelippers, and the rest. Did you sense any distress?" He paused again, and I saw his head retract into his body, embarrassed. "Y… yes. Yes, that would have been me. Swallowing liquid seems to be learned rather than purely instinctual—Sebastian!"
His head whipped around and fixed right on me, having heard me trying to hide a chuckle. I winced when his glare seized me, his eyes almost glowing red.
"Who… are you talking to?" I asked, though I had already guessed. Dad himself didn't respond; instead, I heard a familiar female voice. For how natural it sounded, I would have thought the words had actually been spoken, that they weren't all in my head save for the faint tingling I felt deep in my head, just beyond the ear canals.
"We're having a conversation," Professor Mangrove told me sweetly. "How are you feeling, Sebastian? I was worried about you during Phase One."
I thought my answer at her, only to not receive anything back. I tried thinking it louder, before she added to her question: "Please respond by speaking aloud. My abilities at this time do not work quite as I expected."
"I'm fine," I spoke. "Thank you for checking, Professor. What about you?"
"Oh, you know…" She replied, once again in my head, Dad watching but hearing nothing. "Things are a little bit new for me. It's taking a bit of time to figure out how to reach my full potential as a Psychic Pokémon. But I'm happy to hear from you, sweetie!"
I blushed. "Thank you, Professor. What's going on with the island? You're looking for crises?"
"Yes, near as I can figure, anyway," she sighed. "Still working on detecting emotions, but I can at least sense if someone thinks their life is in danger. Like your stepdad, when he was…" I started to chuckle again and Dad cut in.
"Yes, yes, that's enough. Like I was saying, swallowing liquid is not an obvious muscle movement as it was when I was a mammal, Lily," Dad said quickly. "And filling your beak and rearing back so gravity does the rest feels a little bit… strange, the first few times. I'm fine, really—"
"Good," I heard Professor Mangrove say, and from how Dad fell silent I knew he'd heard it too. "If you do have more trouble, I can send Pandora Angelo to your house to walk you through the process again—"
"Lily! Please, just go check with Cassius and Quincy and make sure their domains are in order."
"Oh, alright…" the Mew sighed into our minds. "I'll check back in twenty. Go be a dad, sweetheart," She purred, and that was the last I heard from her. Dad and I stood silent for a moment, before I sat down on the stormwall next to him.
The sun was behind us and to our left, the sky orange; I hadn't realized how much time had passed during the Angelos' visit. I didn't even know how to keep time around here yet.
"Well, that just happened," Dad said.
"Yeah," I replied, then smiled after a moment's silence. "The Angelos are pretty nice."
"I mean to say, all of today just happened."
I nodded. "Heck of a party, huh?"
"Yes, it was," Dad muttered, something annoyed in his voice. "Do you have any other thoughts about today's many occurrences?"
"Yeah, you know, you don't meet people like that every day? Well, I don't, anyway," I went on. "Mrs. Angelo told you about the ranch, right? Where they—"
"You're a Pokémon now," Dad interrupted firmly.
"Oh… yeah. That." I went quiet, looking out across the ocean, at the waves rolling toward us.
"Do you have anything to say about that, Seb?" He asked, his tone pressing.
"Yeah, I… I guess…" I stammered, automatically. "I mean… well…" I looked over at him. My head swam as I registered that I was looking at a Murkrow, not at a human, and I looked away. "It's… it's… just… it's… a lot, I guess. Like… like how am I gonna brush my teeth now?" I breathed a chuckle.
Dad sighed and spoke, his words slow and serious. "Sebastian, your old body rejected transplants twice and your health had declined too far to survive a third such operation. You had ten miserable, languishing years left at most, even with the best available medical care being provided to you full time. Even Phase One almost killed you; for the latter six weeks of gene therapy you were on life support."
"That's over now, Sebastian," Dad continued. "It's gone forever. You no longer need to spend several hours hooked up to multiple machines every other day anymore. You no longer require a diet that's more medicines than food. You'll no longer be looked down on by anyone – anyone in the world – as a weak, sickly, dying teenager. For that matter, you're several times stronger than the strongest human being in the entire world, and what we know of Pokémon biology says you'll likely live to a hundred and fifty at least. And you're sitting here, in a new house on a new island with a new body and preternatural abilities and everything that you could ever want, wondering how you're going to brush your teeth?" He stretched his head toward me, eyes ablaze again. I stared back at him for a couple long moments.
"Yeah," my gaze broke and I looked away. "I guess I am. It's just… there's so much going on that if I try to let it in all at once, my head's gonna explode. Sorry, Dad. Did you…"
"No." He shook his head, turning away too. "I've been worried about that."
"What?" I looked back to him, my hands on my thighs. Dad didn't normally talk about emotional stuff to me, if he could help it.
He shut his eyes for a moment. "I and the other Professors are the only ones that kept our memories of Phase One – of the transportation, construction, gene therapy, transmutation, and insertion process. It was… arduous, to say the least. Still, Lily was certain we'd click instantly with our new lives and everything would get off the ground within minutes of us discovering our new bodies, but, well. You saw how your aunt took it."
"Yeah… I did." I tensed. "How's she doing?"
"A lot better. And the Angelos really did help out a lot, Lucinda especially. I hope they stay good friends. But…" He shook his head. "Well, Sebastian, I see responses like Athena, and I worry what could be happening elsewhere. Maybe not for the same reason; I imagine someone with spider issues who gets assigned Spinarak for their species could be rare. But a transition like this is going to be different for everyone, and I don't know if… really in the Hawai Region has spent today like we were expecting they would."
"And how did you expect that to go?"
"Reading, we had hoped. Everyone does have books and we encouraged everyone to get to know their new forms, their new world. Everyone's got a map of the region in their house, too, and every settlement's in range of a library – really the only active public buildings we put on this island, and certainly the only places with much for modern technology."
"Reading," I answered.
"Yes. If you ever looked much in your room, you saw that book on the shelf, the one numbered sixty-seven and titled How To Be A Ma—"
"Reading, Dad. Really."
My eyes found his and he stiffened, then sighed, his wings drooping. "Yes. Reading. Shows what I know."
I groaned, chuckling though. "Not everyone's as much of a nerd as you, Dad. Though hey, I'm going to have to read that thing eventually. I… definitely need to do that," my voice trailed, my eyes returning to the waves. "Like, all of it."
"Why do you figure, Sebastian?"
"Because, Dad," I replied, the thoughts having assembled themselves, "I really want to take care of myself. Now that I can. Having other people trying to manage my life for me… well, it was pretty awful. Especially when they were just trying to save what was left. Now, I've got a body that… well, I haven't really tested it or pushed it, but it seems pretty cool. And I want it to stay that way," I held up my arms, surveying the musculature. My new body looked as though it brimmed with power, and I knew that it was far, far stronger than it looked.
"Even if I never wind up actually needing to actually crush boulders with my bare hands or whatever all this can do, it's like… something my mom – well, the one who passed on – said. That if someone gives you a once-in-a-lifetime gift, then even if you weren't expecting it and didn't ask for it, you've gotta take care of it. You've gotta show them how much it means to them, show them that they were right to give it to you."
Dad was silent for a moment before answering. "I never did talk much to Bermuda, before… well, before the accident." At the mention of that he shuddered.
"Hey, you never talked much to anyone except at podiums and talk shows, Dad," I grinned, extending a hand with my fingers curled to flick him. At the sight he jumped backward, squawking and flapping at the air.
"Hey now, careful with that!" He cried, before he regained himself, puffing himself out from a safe distance. "Hollow bones, and I told you, you could probably shatter a block of this seawall by kicking it. Don't squish the professor, Sebastian!"
I smirked, but lowered my hand, and he cautiously resumed his place at my side, the sky having dropped to a dim purple. That pressure inside me, that feeling that I could fly, had returned, stronger than ever. Dad was right. Everything was gone, and I wasn't doomed to spend most of my waking life with tubes in my arms and nose and a video game controller in my hand until my remaining vital organs gave out.
I had been one of the first to hear of the Harmony Project, and since my stepdad had founded it I had been automatically accepted as part of his household. But I had never much thought about what Pokémon I actually wanted to be. Now that the transmutation had actually happened, I realized that even a Magikarp would have been an acceptable future life, compared to that drooling wreck in the living room chair.
I was free.
