Chapter 9

I needed to find an animal to morph. I had to try the process for myself, now that I'd accepted everything was real. Seeing Green become Dude had been interesting, but now it was my turn. The only problem: I didn't have a pet.

So that's how Green and I found ourselves poking around the bushes in my backyard, looking for a Zigzagoon.

Zigzagoon are pretty common in my neighborhood. I live in the suburbs of our town, so it's a regular thing to see a Zigzagoon come dashing out of the bushes, darting left and right compulsively, and steal something from a trash bin, before zigzagging back into the foliage with its prize.

I figured it wouldn't be too hard to catch a Zigzagoon, since they were just about everywhere, and reasonably harmless. The key to it was to block the two directions it could move and pounce while it was trapped. However, today the neighborhood seemed to be having a shortage of the critters, because we waited, crouching like idiots, for half an hour with no luck.

"You know," Green broke the silence. "I could just morph Dude and go searching for one."

It was a sensible suggestion, but for I still found myself opposed to it. "Yeah, you could, but I think we should keep this whole morphing thing to a minimum."

"Why's that?"

I shrugged. "I mean, we know about the whole two hour thing because Elfangor told us, but he also mentioned there were other dangers to it. What if you... I don't know, overload it or something? Like, you morph too much too quickly and it stops working."

He tilted his head, a gesture he seemed to have picked up from his time as Dude. "Yeah, I guess I see your point, but what's the harm in one more morph?"

I saw another danger as he finished his question. We'd been talking about morphing and Andalites and Yeerks in our outside voices this entire time. With a sick feeling in my stomach, I realized that if a Controller was listening in, we were worse than dead. I lowered my voice. "Can we not use the m-word when we don't know who's listening in?"

Thankfully he understood. His eyes widened. "Ohhh, yeah. Got it."

As if to prove my point, my mom's voice came from dangerously close behind us. "Red? Are you two okay?"

We whipped around to see her standing on the back porch with her hands on her hips, and tried to not look suspicious, which is surprisingly hard to do when you're squatting on the ground and facing a huge tangle of bushes. "Yeah, we're fine, mom. We're just looking for..." I hesitated, unable to think of an excuse.

"My frisbee!" Green supplied, giving her a convincingly goofy smile. "We lost it in the bushes."

My mom raised an eyebrow, still skeptical. "Really? You didn't have a frisbee when I let you in."

"Uh..." Green looked panicked. "It was... uh... under my shirt?"

A couple of seconds passed, and I considered a horrifying possibility. What if my mom was a Controller? How long had she been standing there? Had she already heard something incriminating? Even if she hadn't, our behavior was enough to make the potential slug in her head very suspicious.

Finally, she let out a very slow, very unconvinced, "Uh huh," and shrugged. "Well, I hope you find it, then. Do you two want me to make you some snacks?"

I shook my head. "No, we're not very hungry. Thanks, though."

Another shrug. "Okay. Well if you need me, I'll be inside, working on my book." My mom is an amateur writer. This was one of the rare days she was home from her office job and had time to work on her passion project. She cast a glance over towards another section of the bushes, and then her expression turned curious. "What's that?"

I whipped around to face where she was looking, half-expecting to see a Hork-Bajir commando crawling out from underneath the underbrush, or a Taxxon slithering into the open. Instead, my face broke out into a grin as I saw exactly what we were looking for. Just yards away, a Zigzagoon had burst out of the bushes and was making a mad dash toward our open trash bin.

My mom reacted like I expected she would, which said absolutely nothing about whether she was a Controller or not. If she was, she'd react the exact same as normal anyway. She took a half step backward in fright and shrieked. My mom isn't the best with animals, especially rodent-types. "Oh, oh, oh!" she yelled. "Get it Red! Get it out of here before it steals our trash again!"

I was more than happy to obey, and sprinted towards the Pokemon, shouting something to Green about cutting off its escape route. The Zigzagoon caught sight of me and began to run away, but my human skills of being able to run in a straight line proved useful, because I easily gained ground on it and leaped, pinning it.

It growled and struggled and fought to get free. I had to jerk my face away when it snapped at my nose, and then it began to gnaw at my hands with its tiny little teeth. It didn't hurt very much, but it was still annoying.

"Red, what are you doing?" my mom demanded, sounding almost hysterical.

"Stopping it from getting the trash!" I replied, gripping the Pokemon a little tighter to stop it from kicking its claws into my stomach.

"You didn't have to grab it!"

Fair point. "Uh... it seemed like the easiest option?" I offered lamely.

"Just get rid of it!"

I slowly got to my feet, making sure that the Zigzagoon didn't struggle free in the process. The brown and tan creature, which until today I'd thought of as gentle, and almost cute, even, hissed and spat and wriggled in my arms. It bared its fangs in a way that was not cute, and most definitely not gentle. I had to remind myself that it was scared, not naturally vicious, to resist thumping it in the head a couple of times.

As I walked back towards the bushes, deliberately slow to give myself time, I focused on the Pokemon. I took note of every single detail about it. Its triangularly spiked fur, its dark brown mask around its beady black eyes, its stubby little legs and bushy tail, the tiny, sharp teeth with which it was still trying to eat my hands... I pictured all those things becoming a part of me, being absorbed into my own being.

While I focused, I noticed that the Zigzagoon became very calm, almost like it had been hit with a tranquilizer dart. It stopped resisting as much, and the jaw that it had clamped on my wrist with intent to sever slackened and fell away.

When I reached the bushes, I had to stop concentrating. Almost immediately, the Zigzagoon started up its resistance again, and for fear that it would actually break my skin this time, I set it on the ground and watched it zigzag back into the bushes like the Devil himself was at its heels.

My mom sighed in relief when she saw it was gone. "I'm so sorry for freaking out on you like that," she apologized, more for Green's sake than mine. I was used to it. "I just can't stand those things."

"Don't worry about it Mrs. ," he said (using my mom's last name, which I have to redact for identity protection). "My uncle doesn't like small Pokemon too much either."

She smiled sympathetically. "Well, that's a shame. How does he feel about your Meowth, then?"

He hesitated before replying, "He... tolerates Dude." I knew he was lying by the tone of his voice, and guessed that his uncle would likely throw the Pokemon out on the street if Green wasn't around.

My mom remained oblivious and smiled again. "That's good to hear. Good luck finding your frisbee!"

When she was gone, Green turned to me, looking excited once again. The discussion of his uncle hadn't soured his mood for long. "Did you do it?" he demanded. "Did you acquire it?" I shot him a harsh look, warning him to quiet down, and he repeated the question, but this time in a softer voice. "Did you acquire the Zigzagoon?"

I nodded slowly. "Yeah, I think so." I cast a look around the yard, trying to spot potential spies, and found nobody. I then locked eyes on the porch, which had a short space underneath it, big enough to hide from view under. "I'm going to try morphing it under the deck," I whispered. "Can you cover me?"

He nodded, face glowing with excitement, and he followed me like a bodyguard until I ducked underneath the wooden structure, which he remained outside of, watching carefully for threats.

Crouched underneath the deck, I once again realized just how insane my life had become. Here I was, hiding like some sort of secret agent in my own backyard, getting ready to become a Pokemon that I'd just pinned down and released half a minute ago. I had just held it, and now I was going to become it. It was the kind of situation that sounded like it came from a bad joke ("a kid and a Zigzagoon walk into a bar..."), but it was deadly serious. I wondered, darkly, how long it would take before I completely lost it and woke up in the loony bin.

I shoved my worries and misgivings aside, though. Right now, I had a date with the body of a Zigzagoon, and I needed complete concentration.

I closed my eyes, just like Green had before he'd started to become his Meowth. Focusing my every thought on the Zigzagoon I'd just wrestled, I gritted my teeth and screwed up my face in concentration. After a few seconds, I realized I'd accidentally started holding my breath, and I let it out, releasing the tension in my body and mind. I ran a mental check through my body. Nothing felt any different.

"Green," I called towards the light filtering in from outside. "I don't think it's working."

"Hang on," came his voice. A moment later, his shadow moved and he ducked his head under the porch. He squinted in the near darkness, trying to see me, and after a few seconds of scrutiny, he grinned. "Red, do you normally have fur?"

I opened my mouth to answer that no, I didn't, but then I realized what he meant. I looked down at my arms and realized that they'd sprouted the jagged yet surprisingly soft fur of a Zigzagoon. I then felt my face, and nearly cried out in shock when my hands hit my nose far quicker than I expected. Crossing my eyes, I found that my nose had protruded outward along with my mouth into a hideous, half-formed snout.

I tried to exclaim, "What happened to me," but my vocal cords had already started to change, and it came out as, "Whr hpen hoo ee?!"

"Calm down, Red," Green soothed, like he was talking to a child. "You're fine. You just have to keep going."

"Br ss eered!" I protested, a substitute for, "But it's weird."

"Just keep going and you'll be fine," he repeated, a little more firmly. "You definitely don't want someone seeing you like this."

He had a point. As he turned to stand guard again, I breathed out and, with far less tension than I had the first time, focused my mind on the Zigzagoon. I imagined every last part of it. Its claws, its fur, its weird fuzzy ears... I pictured myself becoming that Zigzagoon, and the changes began.

Weirdly enough, the first thing that happened after I refocused was shrinking. I'd subconsciously expected shrinking to be gradual as the rest of me changed, but instead, it happened all at once, while I was still humanoid. The world grew larger around me. I looked down, and the ground rushed up at me like I was skydiving. It was a strange feeling, like falling but without emptiness under my feet. Soon, I was only about a foot or so tall. My clothes pooled around me, and I wiggled free of them in time to keep from getting trapped.

Then the rest of me started changing. My toes lost their roundness, pinching until they formed rough, stubby triangles with tiny claws at the ends, good for little more than scrabbling at something's eyes. My feet elongated and my knees bowed, forming the leg structure of a quadrupedal, until it was hard to stand up straight. I fell forward and caught myself with my hands, but they weren't hands anymore. My fingers had shortened and sharpened as well, becoming the same sort of paws as my feet.

I felt, in a far-off, dulled way, my ears sliding up towards the top of my head where they changed shape in ways I couldn't see. The fur that had begun on my arms traced its way up my body, sprouting like a cornfield on fast-forward until it covered my entire body. My muzzle finished forming, and my teeth rearranged and sharpened, and my canines lengthened proportionally to the rest.

I could 'feel' a tail shoot out of my back, and I looked back to see the fur begin to tuft up on that as well. Finally, my vision changed, and I saw the world as a Zigzagoon did, with muted, brownish colors, bad distance vision, and an excellent perception of movement.

The changes stopped. I was no longer human. I was a perfect copy of a Zigzagoon.

I began to think to myself that this was pretty cool. It hadn't hurt, and, unlike what Green had said, it didn't seem all too hard to control the natural impulses of the Pokemon. Then the Zigzagoon brain struck.

RUN! RUN! RUN! SCARY SMELLS!

I jumped to the side, my fur fluffing up to make me look larger to any potential threats. Where was the smell?! What was the source of the smell?! I swung my head back and forth, trying to find the scent.

There! That pile of soft things! Was it a threat? I edged toward it cautiously, ready for it to stir and attack. I got closer and closer, eventually right on top of it. I sniffed at it, my fear at the scary smells temporarily superseded by my curiosity.

Hmm... scary smells, but no scary thing. This was odd. And a familiar taste to the scent, triggering a memory deep in my mind that I couldn't place. Was this something I knew? No... no, my nose had never smelled that particular flavor before.

With the danger evaporated, I looked around a little more before coming to the conclusion that there was nothing of interest in the dark place. There was light. I headed toward it. Light usually meant open spaces, and there were lots of things in open spaces–things I could find and dig up and take back to my... nest? Did I have a nest? If I didn't, I would have to make one.

I zigzagged out from the dark space and immediately jumped in fright, bristling again. To my left there were strange oval things that smelled similar to the scary smells from the pile of soft things. But these oval things connected to tall cylinder things, and those went upwards even further, towering into the sky like a tree.

MOVEMENT! MOVEMENT AND SOUND! SCARY SMELLS MOVING AND MAKING SOUND!

"Red? Is that you?" The tower was making sounds. I didn't understand the sounds. The sounds weren't important. Not as much as the MOVEMENT! I leaped away from the tower, drawing back my lips in a snarl. Could I fight? Scary smells usually meant I couldn't. If I couldn't, I would run.

"Red, what are you doing?" The tower MOVED MORE, folding upon itself and descending. DESCENDING ON ME!

RUN!

I was off like a rocket, darting back and forth across the grass. Not even the bugs on the grass blades could stop me. They were food, but food could come later. Food was for when there wasn't any MOVEMENT!

"Red, slow down!" The tower had started MOVING after me, faster than me. This time I realized that I sort of understood the sounds it made. Something was familiar about them. I knew one of those sounds. I knew what it meant, though my ears had never heard it before.

HIDE! HIDEHIDEHIDEHIDEHIDE! But where? Where was a good hiding place to escape the MOVING tower?

There! Another tower, but filled with friendly smells, not MOVING and with an opening. I'd hide in there!

I zigzagged over to the friendly tower and fired my hind legs. I flew through the air and landed on the opening of the tower, falling a short ways inside. The friendly smells surrounded me, things I could eat and collect. But now wasn't time to eat, now was time to hide. I started scrabbling at the contents of the tower, trying to burrow, but nothing would budge!

"Red, what are you–? Oh, no, don't do that! Get out of the garbage, your mom won't like that!"

The unfriendly tower had caught up with me! I whirled to face it and hissed, pressing myself as flat as I could against the far wall of the friendly tower's insides. I considered making another run for it–maybe if I could jump past the unfriendly tower I could get away... But something about the sounds it made stopped me, made me think about things my brain wasn't used to thinking about.

'Red.' I knew that sound. 'Mom.' I knew that sound too. 'Your.' What did 'your' mean? Right, possession. Someone else possessing something. And the unfriendly tower said 'your mom' to me. That meant... my mother? But my mother was a Zigzagoon like me. Why would she care if I messed with the trash? Only humans cared if I messed with their trash. Was my mother... a human? But that would mean that I was...

"Red, are you okay? You look like you're having a midlife crisis."

«Hold on, I'm thinking!» I thought, and then realized that I was thinking in the same language as the tower–no, the human. I was thinking the human language. I was understanding the human language. My mother was human. I was...

«Human!» I exclaimed, reclaiming my identity.

Green jerked back in surprise at my outburst. "Uh... yeah. That's right. I'm human."

«Yes!» I agreed. «I'm human too!» I sat back on my haunches, looking up at him. «My name is Red, and I'm a human, not a Zigzagoon!» I shook my head, an unnatural motion for a Zigzagoon. «Sorry, that took me way too long to remember.»

"That's... uh..." He still looked slightly disconcerted. "It's fine, I guess I took a while the first time too. Are you sure you're in control?"

I considered. I still had the absurd urge to burrow in the garbage underneath me until I found the leftover meat I could smell in the pungent aroma, because three-day-old, rotten hamburgers sounded surprisingly good to my Zigzagoon brain, but other than that, the Pokemon's instincts seemed sufficiently muted. «Yeah, I think so.»

"Good, because I thought I was going to have to chase you down." Green peered at me, lowering himself until we were close to eye level. He grinned. "So what's it like?"

I tried to shrug before realizing my joints didn't work that way anymore. «It's okay. I'm a little jumpy–well, a lot jumpy, actually. The Zigzagoon wants to get away from movement, dig, find things, and eat garbage.»

He frowned. "Eat garbage? Like, metal and plastic?"

I laughed. «No, no, like banana peels and old cereal and stuff.» I chose not to tell him about the rotten burgers. I was already disgusted by that, and my brain was still telling me to eat them. I could only imagine how an uncompromised human brain would react to that idea.

Suddenly, Green's head jerked to the left, away from me and back toward the porch. He started to look panicked. "Get down!" he hissed at me, speaking hurriedly. "Get down and stay put!"

Surprised by his sudden movement, the Zigzagoon in me needed no encouragement, and I pressed myself as flat as I could against the near-solid layer of garbage, holding perfectly still.

"Green?" I heard a voice say from a distance, muted by my less-than-optimal Zigzagoon hearing. "Why are you looking in the trash can? More importantly, why are you talking to the trash?" It was my mom. She must have come back out onto the back porch.

"Oh, hi, Mrs. ," Green said, his nervousness audible in his voice. I prayed my mom would dismiss it as his natural timbre. "I was just... uh... We thought we might have thrown the frisbee in the trash, so I was looking for it in there. And I was talking... to myself... about... where it might be..." He was struggling. I prayed my mom wouldn't investigate further.

A long pause. Then, "I assume it's not in the trash can?"

"No ma'am," Green confirmed.

"Then can you please stop digging through our garbage? I know it's for a good reason, but the neighbors might start to wonder."

"Of course. Sorry for the trouble."

"It's okay, Green." I mentally sighed when she said that, figuring the situation was over and I could escape and demorph. Of course, I had no such luck, because she then asked the question I'd dreaded. "Where's Red?"

This finally stumped Green. The panic in his eyes made it obvious that he hadn't prepared to answer this question, and the fake grin (which looked more like a grimace) that he plastered on his face wasn't fooling anyone. "Uh... he... well, he..."

This was going south fast. I thought frantically, trying to come up with some way to help him without alerting my mom to my presence. I seized on a memory from the night before, when the Andalite had mentioned public and private thought-speech. It had to be worth a shot.

I focused on sending my thoughts to only Green, and advised, «Tell her I'm searching farther into the bushes, towards the woods.»

He gave a worried glance at me that I hoped my mom didn't notice, tipping me off that he'd gotten the message. "He's, uh, searching in the bushes. Farther out, towards the woods."

"The woods?" I couldn't tell for certain, but I thought my mom sounded a bit worried. "Well... just make sure he doesn't go too far. The woods can be dangerous."

I mentally laughed, making sure that she wouldn't be able to hear it. If she only knew how dangerous my life had gotten since yesterday. Put bluntly, the woods were now the least of my worries.

"Yes ma'am," Green agreed. "I'll do that."

A few more moments passed where I became acutely aware that my breathing was rustling a plastic bag and making noise. I desperately hoped my mom hadn't heard that. The last thing we needed was for a potential Controller (as much as I hoped it wasn't the case) to witness Green talking with a Zigzagoon. If that happened... well, it was at least close to game over, if not already there.

Finally, after several seconds of waiting, Green turned back to me, breathing a sigh of relief. "She's gone. Sorry for waiting. I just wanted to make sure she wasn't going to come back out."

«That's a good idea,» I agreed. «Better safe than sorry.»

Firing my back leg muscles once again, I jumped deftly out of the garbage can and landed hard on the ground a few feet below, my legs failing to support my mass completely and my belly hitting the ground hard enough to knock the wind out of me. Obviously Zigzagoon weren't as nimble as Meowth.

«I'm going to change back,» I announced, already heading back toward the porch. «It's way too risky to do this in my backyard.»

"You're right," he said with a nod. "We should meet up later somewhere a bit safer. All of us, I mean."

«Okay.» I made my way under the porch, into the reassuring darkness my Zigzagoon brain liked so much. «Yellow's place is really near the Viridian Forest. Lots of open space and not a lot of people around. I could call her and see if we could do it there.»

His voice came from close to the opening. He must have resumed guard duty. "Yeah, that sounds like a good place."

«Cool,» I said, beginning to morph back to human. «I'll call around later. In the meantime, keep quiet about all this. We can't have anyone finding out about our powers, or that we know anything we shouldn't. That could get us killed.»

"Or worse," he added darkly. "Will do, Red. Will do."