Bayleef's Reward
by K.M.
7-19-2006

Pokémon created by Satoshi Tajiri
Copyright Nintendo/Creatures Inc./Game Freak Inc. 1995
Copyright 4 Kids Productions Inc. 2002
Trademarked by Nintendo

This story was originally written for nonprofit entertainment only, please don't sue me.

Italics - Pokémon Speech

To say that things was busy at the Pokécenter would be putting it mildly. For Nurse Joy, it had just been one of those busy weeks that happened every now and then, and today was one of busier days of the week.

Due to this, several trainers were waiting outside, as the Pokécenter's lobby had become so crowded that it was just preferable for those trainers who didn't have seriously injured Pokémon to wait outside.

Fortunately for Ash, Misty, and Brock, none of their Pokémon were injured during this visit to a Pokécenter, and they were simply waiting to see if there would be any room at the center to spend the night. They'd been traveling for a bit now, and could use a night's rest in a Pokécenter. They just hoped that the large part of the trainers there were only there get their Pokémon looked at before moving on, otherwise it would be unlikely that there would be any room at the Pokécenter tonight.

As such, Ash and his friends had released their Pokémon to play amongst themselves for the time being.

Bayleef soon found herself by a small garden of flowers beneath a window in the Pokécenter.

She bent her head down and smiled as she took in their pleasing aroma.

"help"

"Hmm?" Bayleef muttered as she rose her head up and looked around her.

"someone... please, help" cried the mysterious voice again.

Bayleef poked her head into the Pokécenter window, believing the voice to have originated from there. Looking through the window, she saw what appeared to be a small office, but she could not see anyone currently inside of it.

"Hello?" she asked in a concerned voice.

"Please," the mysterious voice said as Bayleef noticed a computer monitor flickering in the room. "Help me." the voice finished as a Porygon's image finally appeared on the screen.

"W-What's wrong?" Bayleef cried, as her eyes widened in concern at the odd looking Pokémon on the screen.

"V-Virus." Porygon weakly replied.

Of all the weeks for him to choose to visit this Pokécenter's computer, it WOULD have to end up being the week where the resident Nurse Joy had apparently been too busy to have gotten around to installing the latest anti-viral software.

He had read the 'to do' notes that Joy had left on her desktop indicating that she did indeed have a CD with the most up to date anti-viral software, and while installing it was on the 'to do' list, she apparently hadn't gotten around to actually doing so yet, and now both her system, and he himself, were falling prey to a particularly nasty virus that had infected the system.

"W-What can I do?" Bayleef asked.

"Find... this, and place... in tray" Porygon said as he pulled up an image of a CD with special a symbol on it. He also caused the computer's CD tray to open so that Bayleef would know where the CD would go.

"Disc... is probably here in... office... Likely near... computer." Porygon answered with great difficulty, while hoping this to be true.

"Please, hurry! Irreparable corruption... estimated in... 10 minutes!"

Bayleef looked desperately though the window at the desk that the computer was sitting on. Realizing that there was no way that she could climb up through the tiny window in time, she reached her vines into the room and over to the desk.

The desk was very big, and VERY cluttered, with mail, files, boxes and several other items. She only hoped that the drawers weren't equally cluttered if she had to end up going through those as well.

She began pushing all of the papers and such on the desk around, trying to see if she could find this 'disc' that the odd Pokémon spoke of. After passing it a couple of times, she finally took note of an envelope with a symbol on it that seemed to match the one in the picture that the Pokémon had shown her.

Holding the envelope flat against the desk with one vine, she ran her other vine over the surface of the envelope, and felt what appeared to be a circular item inside of it.

"Is this it? Is it in here!" she cried as she tilted the envelop to face towards the monitor.

"Yes!" Porygon exclaimed, "You must open... the envelope quickly and... insert the disc into the tray."

Bayleef fought with envelope, but her vines just couldn't get a decent enough hold to rip it open.

Suddenly, she got an idea, and retracted one of her vines. Touching her vine to her own body, she pulled a razor leaf from herself and had her vine carry it back to the envelope.

Thankfully, her idea worked, as the envelope tore and the disc slid out.

She was rather annoyed that disc seemed to be in yet another sort of wrapper inside of the envelope, but she made short work of that obstacle as well.

Finally, she placed the disc in the tray using her vines.

Porygon was thankful that he didn't need to give her further instruction, and that she had put the disc in correctly, and not upside down, but given that it was a 50/50 chance that she would put the disc in correctly, the two of them had just gotten lucky.

Bayleef watched the tray close and a light below the tray begin to flash, coinciding with a very low hum.

"Did it work? Are you okay now?" she asked after a few seconds of looking between the CD drive and the Pokémon on the monitor.

"Not... yet. This will take... several minutes." Porygon explained to her.

Unable to do little else, she simply waited to see whether or not her help had actually paid off.

Each passing minute felt like and eternity to her, as her fears began to grow that she had not been in time to save the Pokémon.

Finally, after several minutes had passed, she watched in surprise as the Pokémon that she had tried to help came right out of the screen and floated over to her.

"Thank you. You saved me from deletion." Porygon gratefully said to her.

"Your welcome!" Bayleef said back to him while smiling, "But, if you could get out of there, than why didn't you just put that disc in the tray yourself?" she asked.

Porygon shook his head slightly.

"Under normal circumstances I could have, but the virus had weakened me too severely, I was just lucky that I was still able to work the monitor and the speakers when you arrived." he replied.

"Oh." Bayleef said, not fully understanding, as computers weren't exactly something that she knew much about.

Porygon smiled back at her, "Is there anything that I can do to repay you for saving me?"

Bayleef's eyes scrunched in thought for a moment, "No, I don't think so, but thank you." she replied.

"Please," Porygon continued, "there must be something that you want. Anything."

Bayleef thought for a moment more. What did she want? She really didn't have to think for too long to figure out the answer to this. There was really only one thing that she truly wanted, but it wasn't anything that this Pokémon could give her.

"I'm afraid that you wouldn't be able to give me what I want." Bayleef sighed.

"Please, humor me." Porygon urged her, while smiling.

After pausing for a moment to consider whether or not to tell him, she finally replied.

"Ash." she whispered softly.

"Ash?" Porygon asked, not certain that he understood her answer.

"My trainer," Bayleef continued softly, "I-I love him. I would give almost anything to be his mate!" she finished with a more determined look on her face.

Her face quickly fell sad again, however. "But I'm not human, so I'll never have that chance." she said sorrowfully.

Porygon looked at her, seeing just how much this meant to her.

"Don't give up," he said trying to comfort her, "there's always a chance. If I had given up I wouldn't be here right now. It just goes to show that some unexpected help can always turn things around." he finished while smiling at her.

Bayleef returned the smile, albeit with a weaker one. "Thanks." she said.

"Bayleef!" a voice called out a short distance away.

Turning her head, she saw Ash calling to her from across the grounds. Her mood picked up slightly at her beloved calling to her.

"I have to go now," she said turning to Porygon one last time, "I'm glad that you're alright now."

"Thank you. Again." he said once more.

Nodding her head, Bayleef ran off towards her beloved as Porygon was left to watch through the window from inside the small office.

- - -

Later that night.

It had been a long wait, but Ash and company had finally managed to get some beds for the night at the Pokécenter.

Unbeknownst to any of them, a few hours after falling asleep, Porygon entered the room.

Porygon entered using silent mode, a mode so quiet that any organic being would be hard pressed to hear him. It was also a mode that they would hard pressed to duplicate as well.

He made his way over to a red haired girl whom he had learned earlier was named Misty. Stopping in front of her for a moment, twin crimson beams of light emitted from his eyes.

The beams squarely hit Misty and her sleeping form was quickly engulfed in the red light for a moment, followed shortly thereafter by her disappearing as the beams pulled back into Porygon's eyes.

Porygon then turned and headed over to a corner on the floor where Bayleef was sound asleep.

Once again, the twin beams exited his eyes, this time hitting Bayleef, before she too disappeared.

With everyone still sound asleep, Porygon made his way back to the Pokécenter's computer.

Once there, Porygon reentered the dark corner of the Pokécenter computer's cyberspace that he had been using today.

For the moment, nothing could be seen inside cyberspace other than Porygon, who seemed completely visible despite his being surrounded by complete darkness.

Porygon's eyes then began to glow as he called forth the 'data' that he had transfered into cyberspace with him.

In a flash of light, Misty and Bayleef appeared before him, also clearly visible in the surrounding darkness.

Misty and Bayleef, both still completely unconscious, floated in front of Porygon with their arms and legs splayed outward in a similar manner to Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man.

Misty floated on the left in front of Porygon, while Bayleef floated on the right.

Normally, Porygon could not manipulate others who were in cyberspace with him, or at least not to very large extents.

While a human or Pokémon existed in cyberspace, they essentially existed as programs that were running until they exited back into the material world. Porygon could interact with their running programs, but he couldn't exactly rewrite them. But it was another matter altogether when a program was in standby mode, or 'sleep', as the organics seemed to refer to it.

Porygon stared at the two, and by all outward appearances, seemed to do nothing else. After a moment however, Misty's and Bayleef's images became grainy, as if they were made of colored sand.

The visual changes intensified, with each form losing more and more detail, until finally all that remained in the spots that the two were floating in were two glowing forms of energy.

In the spot where Misty had been floating, there now was a red glow of energy, while in Bayleef's spot, there was a green glow of energy. Each had the minor appearance of having limbs, but both were lacking any definite details indicating either form to be that of a human or a Pokémon.

Porygon began studying the data of the templates that he had removed from the two, focusing largely on the physical templates, and began to make the necessary minor changes.

Having finished after a few moments, the forms of energy began to take on detail again. Slowly, the red energy on the left where Misty had been began to take on detail once more. Instead of a human girl though, the form clearly became more and more that of a Bayleef.

On the right, the reverse was happening to the energy where Bayleef had been.

It wasn't long before the image of a Bayleef now floated where Misty's image had once been, while Misty's image floated in Bayleef's former spot.

After rechecking the reconfigured data several times, Porygon was finally satisfied and shunted the data back into temporary storage as he exited the Pokécenter's computer once more.

Heading back to the bed that Misty had been sleeping on, Porygon released one of the two visitors back into the material world. In beams of red light, like a Pokéball releasing it's passenger, the form of Misty reappeared on the bed, still sleeping soundly.

Going to the spot where Bayleef had been before he took her into cyberspace, Porygon released Bayleef's still sleeping form back onto a spot on the floor where Bayleef had been sleeping earlier.

His task completed, Porygon reentered Cyberspace.

Porygon smiled as he thought of what a good job he had done today. After he had learned of Bayleef's desire for a chance to be Ash's mate, he decided to secretly watch her and her friends for the rest of the day and see if there was any way that he could help her.

He noted that the red haired human girl, Misty, tended to stay close to Ash much of the time. He also saw the girl lose her temper a few times, and even become a bit violent as well.

The girl had a very combative nature!

It was a bit of a curious contrast to Bayleef, who largely seemed to only want to be affectionate with Ash, rather than to battle.

But now that Bayleef and Ash were physically compatible, Bayleef could seriously pursue Ash as a mate, while the formerly human girl could do all the battling that she wanted to, as well as receive some training from Ash (she certainly seemed to need it with keeping that temper of hers in check).

"...and everyone will be happy!" Porygon said to himself, as he continued smiling.

Yes, he did some very good deeds today :)

To be continued?

Comments and Suggestions VERY welcomed

Author Notes:

I wanted to include a couple of links for "Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man", and "The Mightyena Project" (which I mention below), but the site wouldn't seem to let me do so :(

Anyways, yes, Porygon seriously thinks that he's doing Misty a favor as well as Bayleef, but his main objective was to reward Bayleef :)

Many fics that I've read tend to portray Porygon as rather unemotional, but he seemed pretty emotional in the anime, so I decided to go in that direction with him in this fic as well.

Oh, and no, this isn't the exact same Porygon that Misty met in the anime.

Yes, I'm all for continuing this fic, and I do have more ideas for other chapters, but at the same time I have some continuity concerns which are getting in the way.

The continuity issues are largely because I wanted this fic to take place while Misty and Bayleef were still a regular part of the team, but this leads to one particular continuity issue that is aggravating me:

Togepi :)

Togepi didn't leave Misty until after Ash started traveling with May and Max.

I've seen other fics suggest that Togepi would be able to recognize Misty no matter what form she was in, and I'm inclined to agree with this theory.

I'd like to keep Ash in the dark (for a while, at the very least) as to what has happened, and Pikachu not spilling the beans would be tough enough, but Togepi would be even tougher :)

One option would be for Togepi to have left even earlier in this fic, but I believe that Team Rocket's plan that eventually resulted in Togepi leaving, took place in the Hoen Region, where Ash had started with a clean slate of Pokémon (with the exception of Pikachu), meaning that Bayleef wasn't around.

-Sigh- Quite the conundrum :(

I had actually planned on finishing a different Pokémon transformation fic before this, but when this one came to mind I was able to picture the chapter much more clearly.

I've toyed with fic ideas of Misty switching with a Pokémon before, but I didn't think of using Bayleef until I read an amusing scene with Bayleef in "The Mightyena Project", which is the 3rd story in the "Pokémon Transformation Chronicles" collection.

On a final note to anyone who's read my fics before. The reason that it's been so long since I've written anything is that my work schedule changed drastically some years back after I started my first fic. I have since had next to no time for writing, and it is no small miracle that I found time to complete this chapter, as the problem still exists as of this chapter.

I am still working on the problem, and I hope to one day get to other fics that I've been wanting to start and continue.

-Whew- These notes wound up being longer than I had originally planned :)