Chapter 17

Monday morning at school, I turned into a Treecko. Around first period, I hung back in the hallway until the coast was clear, and then I stepped into my locker and shut it behind me.

The space was more cramped, but that wasn't surprising. I'm a little taller than most kids my age, so I figured it would be a tight squeeze.

I was afraid to turn into the Treecko. I'd been a Zigzagoon, but at least that was a mammal. Aside from the different body structure and the fur, I'd still felt at least somewhat human while in morph.

But a Treecko was different. When I morphed, I'd be a reptile. I'd have scaly skin and cold blood, and I'd be able to do all sorts of crazy, inhuman things, like walk on walls. People think that being able to crawl on walls would be a cool thing, but imagine seeing your average, everyday human do that. That wouldn't be cool. That would just be frightening.

"Oh boy," I muttered to myself. The more I thought about it, the more I would freak myself out. The best thing I could do was just do it.

So I took a deep breath, and I started the morph.

The first thing that happened was the shrinking. I'd shrunk when I morphed before, so it wasn't too surprising. It was a good thing I got smaller before any other changes happened, though, because the very next change was a fully formed Treecko tail shooting out from the base of my spine. I was sure that if I'd been normal size, it would have broken, smashed into the side of the locker.

In the darkness, the changes seemed to happen faster than they had when I'd morphed the Zigzagoon. One moment, I had normal, human skin. The next, it was rough to the touch. My hands were five-fingered with opposable thumbs, and then suddenly they were stubby and covered with dozens of tiny barbs that could stick to just about anything.

Fabric that looked as big as a circus tent pooled around me, and I realized that as I'd shrunk, my clothes had quite literally fallen off of me.

And just like that, I was completely a Treecko. It rattled me how quickly I'd shed my human body.

All at once, the Treecko brain smashed into my own in a head-on collision. It was afraid. Terrified, actually. But I'd expected fear. The Zigzagoon had been afraid too. Fear, I could handle.

Hunger, I could not.

The locker was dark, but the frightened Pokemon knew how to get out. It looked for light, and found it at the locker ventilation slits, all the way up the wall. With barely a second thought, my body launched itself at the wall and began to scramble up as quickly as if it was running across the floor. It was like being strapped on my stomach on a skateboard hurtling along at NASCAR speeds, but knowing that backwards meant down.

Motivated only by hunger, the Treecko forced its way through the opening and into the hallway outside. Then I noticed how different the eyes were. They weren't in front like human eyes, instead separated far more. My human brain couldn't decipher the images it was receiving. It was built to process streams of data far more similar. I was lost.

But the Treecko brain understood what it was seeing. It could process both images simultaneously, and figure out the positioning of itself and everything else. So, reluctantly, I surrendered a bit of control to the Pokemon's mind, and things cleared up.

The Treecko didn't care about how it processed data. It was only concerned with satiating the empty feeling in its stomach.

Food? Where was food?

Left, I suggested. That was the way to Chapman's office.

Before I could even tell what was happening, my body shot down the wall toward the floor. I was on the world's steepest roller coaster going at the speed of sound. In half a second, I was on the ground and zooming down the hallway toward my destination.

It wasn't so bad being a Treecko, I thought to myself. Besides being hungry, the brain wasn't putting up much of a fight. I was getting the hang of controlling it.

But I wasn't.

A little ways down the hall, I spotted movement out of the corner of one of my eyes. I stopped cold, and my head snapped towards its source. Then, all at once, my senses converged on it. An Ariados.

In the same way I'd started moving towards the floor before my human brain could figure out what was going on, my body accelerated to maximum velocity straight towards the spider before I could even think to avoid it.

It must have been a small Ariados from a human's point of view, but it looked like as big as a toddler to me. I could see every detail of it, from the stripes on its body to the snapping white mandibles to the spike on its forehead.

It realized what was happening and ran, but I was faster. I sped after it until I was right next to it.

And then with one quick snap of my jaw, I ate it.

I screamed inside my head, horrified at what I'd just done, but I couldn't stop the Treecko. It ate the Ariados, and I could feel it fighting every centimeter of the way to my stomach, because you see, Treecko don't chew their food. They swallow it whole. The Ariados would still be alive and kicking until it hit my stomach acid. And then it would finally die.

But until then...

I couldn't take it anymore. This morph had been a mistake. Getting involved in this fight at all had been a mistake. I was done. I was out. I was going to morph back into human and never morph again.

But then I felt the ground shake like a miniature earthquake, and I realized I wasn't out of danger yet.

A meteor hit the ground right beside me. A shoe! I darted away from it.

But then another meteor slammed down right on top of me. I dodged at the last second, but not quick enough.

The shoe smashed down to the ground, right on top of my tail!