Chapter 2:

"No, for the last time, you aren't sinking Australia!" Arceus said in exasperation.

"But-"

"No!"

Kyogre grumbled to herself as she exited the Great Hall, and Arceus groaned in relief. They had only been in this new world for around 24 hours, but as soon as Palkia completed his initial scan of the planet, several of the more… ambitious Legendaries had begun wanting to make their own "adjustments" to the world, much to Arceus' annoyance. This was the fourth time today, and the sun hadn't even risen yet.

Taking a glance around and seeing no one that needed tending to, Arceus snatched a Rubik's cube from the void. After a few moments of failing, He began rearranging the stickers-

There was a burst of light, and Celebi appeared in a shower of sparkles, startling Arceus and causing Him to drop His Rubik's cube into His tea.

Arceus groaned at His misfortune, pocketing the Rubik's cube for later; He'd solve that cursed thing one of these days…

Glancing up at Celebi, He blinked. "Celebi? Why are you pink?" Arceus sighed. "Did you fall for another of Mew's pranks?"

Celebi giggled. "Nope!~"

"...Then why are you pink? Shouldn't you be helping Dialga with..." Arceus trailed off as a perfectly green Celebi flew out from the room Dialga was working from.

"Sorry for the late report, we were looking into someth-"

Celebi locked eyes with Celebi, and after a solid minute of staring, the green one turned to Arceus. "Well, that simplifies things. It looks like the 'something' found you."

Arceus looked down in defeat. "...I need some coffee…"

I awoke with a yawn in my home bed. As I got to my feet, I noticed the Alolan Vulpix curled up not even a foot away from me, causing me to nearly freak out before the memories of the past 24 hours came rushing back to me. I took a glance at myself, and sure enough I'm clearly still a Vulpix.

My body is still sore from all the travelling I did yesterday, and I contemplate just going back to sleep, but it doesn't take long for me to begin feeling hungry. Luckily, it looks like my mother had left a pair of plates for us before we awoke. Each plate had a single piece of toast smeared with apple butter and a small pile of sliced up strawberries and bananas.

I can't help but sigh. While I have no issues with the meal, and am actually quite fond of the fruits, I kind of wished I could still make myself a bowl of cereal. Then again, I suppose I wouldn't have any real way of eating it. Something tells me it wouldn't be easy to hold a spoon like this. My mom probably didn't want to take any risks with our diets, either. We have a trio of English bulldogs that tend to be allergic to basically everything, so I suppose it doesn't hurt to play it safe for now.

Taking the first piece of strawberry in my mouth, I can't help but be surprised by how good it tastes. Like I said, I like strawberries, but I definitely don't recall them tasting this good. Next, I try one of the banana slices, to the same result. 'I guess my taste buds have changed, then. Perhaps it's due to the berries that make up a solid portion of most Pokémon's diets?' It only takes a few seconds and another rumble from my gut for me to decide to ponder the matter later, and I dig into my meal eagerly.

I guess I was being a tad too noisy, as Chloe woke up about halfway through my meal. She had a similar experience of nearly freaking out upon waking up, but her expression grew more depressed once she realized she hadn't been dreaming. To be honest, I can't really blame her there. She went through a lot yesterday, not even including the initial transformation. Luckily, her expression brightens and her eyes widen slightly as she takes the first bite of her breakfast. I have to assume that she had just come to the same realization I had a few minutes prior.

After finishing my breakfast, I glance over at Chloe to see her finishing off the last pieces of fruit on her plate. I can't help but chuckle when I notice that her muzzle is covered in strawberry juice. Mine probably was as well, but my red fur helped hide that compared to her snow-white coloration.

After giving her a moment to lick her muzzle clean, I speak up. "I'm thinking of attempting to learn a move today. Would you like to try as well?"

An intrigued look crosses Chloe's face. After a moment of consideration, she nods. "Could be fun… Sure."

I hop over to my desk and down to the floor, and Chloe follows behind me. Luckily, my mom had the courtesy to leave my door open so we could get out without struggling.

"My family has three English bulldogs that probably won't like us like this. They aren't the nicest towards newcomers," I explain after seeing Chloe's confused expression as we went in the opposite direction from the stairs. "Luckily, there's a side door down here we can use to avoid them entirely. We'll have to open the door though."

Once we reach the door, I run into the bathroom across the hall and grab a stool from beside the sink. I push it over to the door and hop on, standing on my hind legs to just barely reach the doorknob.

It took a few minutes of effort on my part, as my new paws aren't exactly useful when it comes to twisting door knobs. Eventually, though, I was successful, and we were greeted with the rising morning sun. As we headed out the door, I made sure to leave it cracked so we could get back in when we were done.

I stretch out my body like a cat before turning to Chloe. "Alright, first I'm going to test something simple. ...Can Vulpix learn Quick Attack?" I ask no one in particular, before shaking my head. "Eh, doesn't hurt to try. It's not exactly a difficult tactic."

Of course, it didn't take me long to realize the issue with my logic. "...Wait, how the heck do I even use a move? Ugh… Something with aura, I think?"

Chloe gave me an odd look. "What are you asking me for? I have no idea."

"...Right, sorry. Forgot you don't know much about Pokémon." I shook my head to clear my thoughts. "Back on track… If I had to guess, I need to somehow figure out how to manipulate my aura. Specifically, my Normal-Type aura, for this one…"

Letting out a slow breath, I closed my eyes and relaxed, searching myself for anything that could help. Luckily, it didn't take long for me to locate the energy. When I concentrated, I could feel it surging throughout my body, almost as if it was a part of my bloodstream.

...Actually, is it a part of my bloodstream? Eh, that's not important right now. Honing in on the energy, I began searching it for the specific type that I needed for Quick Attack. 'There!'

Singling it out, I began to attempt to redirect it to where it was needed. This is Quick Attack, so I need to run really quickly... Using that logic, I redirected the flow to my legs. Once I was finished, I opened my eyes. "Alright, let's hope this works…"

It didn't.

Alright, to be fair, my feet did give off a brief white glow, but as soon as I attempted to run, I tripped and the energy faded away. I groaned. "I suppose it wouldn't be that easy…"

I turned to explain what I had learned to Chloe as best as I could before the pair of us settled in for training.

It was nearly noon by the time Chloe and I had the basics of Quick Attack down. It wasn't perfect yet, and would likely do much less damage than it will once it's mastered, but it was able to give us a large burst of speed, which I am not afraid to admit I had a lot of fun just zooming around the yard with.

My mother had walked out to check on us after a couple hours, and gave us some water, which was appreciated. I had already begun panting flames, which was still such a bizarre feeling.

After our break, I decided to attempt something more specialized. "Stand back," I warned, turning to Chloe. "I'm going to attempt to use Ember, and you definitely won't want to get hit by that."

"Yeah, that doesn't sound like fun…" Chloe said with a shudder, taking a few steps back.

Once she was in the clear, I repeated my process from earlier. Relax, locate the appropriate aura, and move it to where it was needed. In this case, the Fire-Type aura was significantly easier to find. My body was practically overflowing with the stuff.

I moved it to the back of my throat, and grinned as I felt it latch onto the location. I took a deep breath, readying myself for my first attempt-

I sneezed.

I sneezed flames.

I yelped in surprise as the grass in front of me was lit aflame, and I hurriedly stamped it out with my feet, before turning sheepishly to Chloe, who apparently found my misery absolutely hilarious. She had collapsed onto her side and was laughing hysterically.

"Hey..!" I complained, trying to hide a blush. "It wasn't that funny!"

Chloe snorted as she got back to her feet, still giggling. "It totally was."

"...Whatever," I said, rolling my eyes. "I'm going to give that a few more tries. Do you want to try Powder Snow? It's pretty much the Ice-Type equivalent of Ember."

"Alright," Chloe agreed. "At least I won't accidentally burn the neighbor's house down if I mess up."

"H-hey!" I said. "I'm being careful!"

Chloe managed to use Powder Snow on her first attempt, much to my annoyance. I managed to redeem myself by using a proper ember on my second attempt, which once again lit a small patch of grass on fire. This time, Chloe decided to show off by putting it out with her newly acquired Powder Snow, all while giving me a rather smug look.

We practiced our moves for a couple more hours after that, but soon the sun could be seen setting in the distance, so we decided to call it a day and head inside.

After closing the door behind us, we decided to head back to my room and relax until bed.

"I didn't really notice it this morning, but you have a ton of video games." Chloe commented, eyeing the closet that housed my constantly growing collection.

I chuckled. "Yeah, it's a hobby of mine. Or it was, at least. Something tells me I won't be able to play a lot of these like this. You want to try one?"

"Sure," she agreed.

We decided on something relatively simple, and I booted up Mario Kart 8 Deluxe on my Switch, sliding the joy-cons into the controller adapter so we could actually hold them. What followed was a rather brutal session of Mario Kart, in which no matter how hard we tried, neither of us could beat even a single AI, which would have been super embarrassing if it wasn't for the fact that I had the excuse of my paws making it stupidly difficult to use the controller.

It was around 11 p.m when we finally admitted defeat and climbed into bed. I grabbed one of the pillows and gave the other to Chloe, who quickly got comfortable and dozed off before I could even set up my own makeshift bed.

Yawning, I curled up on the pillow, quickly following Chloe into unconsciousness.

"So you're telling me that you know the cause of all of this, and you won't tell us?" Arceus summarized flatly.

"Yep!~" The Pink Celebi said cheerily.

"Why?!" Arceus exclaimed.

"Can't. I told you once and then Mister Grumpy Gears over there had a hissy fit. Something about screwing with the timeline or something… He's no fun.~"

Dialga grumbled to himself from the other side of the hall.

Arceus groaned. "Celebi, our Celebi, can you please put that in English?"

Both Celebi giggled. The green one spoke up. "She's been taught well. We can't tell you the future or it can have some rather… unfortunate side effects."

The pink Celebi grinned cheekily. "Thanks! I taught myself!"

"I'll never understand time travelers…" Arceus said with a sigh.

"Nope, you won't!~"

Arceus rolled His eyes. "Whatever. What can you tell us then?"

"Well, for starters, I'm not the only Legendary from this world!~"

"...I was afraid of that," Arceus said with a groan.

"I suggest sending your legendaries to meet our legendaries one-on-one. They aren't the best at controlling their abilities yet, and you know what happens when Legendaries can't control their powers.~" Pink Celebi said, causing Arceus to shudder.

"If there's anything I taught myself," she continued, "It's that if a time traveler suggests something, you do it. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go babysit myself. Too-da-loo!~" With that, she vanished just as quickly as she had appeared.

Arceus groaned, rubbing his forehead. "...Why can't today just be normal?"

AN: I have returned! Sorry for the shorter chapter this time around. I found a good ending point and decided to just end it off so I could get this out to you all. You'll be seeing a trend with the legendaries soon enough, so I hope you all enjoy what I have planned with them.

Next chapter will definitely be longer, and more interesting to boot. Stuff will really start kicking off next time around, so I hope you are all looking forward to that!

In the meantime, I'll remind you all that we have a rapidly growing PercentVerse discord server with nearly 50 members, including each and every one of our authors, so if you have questions, or even just want a place to talk about your interests, then feel free to join up!

Invite Code: MFWT7tz

Until next time, have a good one and stay safe!