A/N: This is a story I've meant to write for a long time. Many different versions bounced around in my head as a teen, so I sat down numerous times to try my hand at writing. After many attempts that never saw their Chapter 2, this one that I started recently finally gets past the first upload. Hopefully it sticks the landing and gets to the end too. To twelve year old me: it's done, so buckle in, you scrub
It's not every day people get to experience adventures. The most we high school students usually got was a run against time to get back to class after an extra-long line at the nearby Dairy Queen for lunch. With all the homework, extracurriculars, hormones, and drama, life was complicated, yet repetitive all at the same time. That's why a school bus taking our class to a historical military fort was somehow a huge occasion in my mind.
Our chatter must've been heard by other cars miles off from us. No one could help it: thirty sophomores finally free from schoolwork for a while were as volatile and immature as they could be. We might as well have been kindergarteners fed outrageous amounts of sugar; our brains were just as fried anyway.
The bus rolled along old dirt roads and new pavement alike, the driver (and our substitute history teacher), Mr Henry, working his hardest to get us out of the marshlands our city was built upon. Well, I guessed he just wanted to get us to and back from the fort as fast as he could so we all wouldn't come back after school hours. Roads in November were treacherous enough as is.
"Hey, everyone, you're technically still in class! I'm going to ask you keep it down!"
We were a bit quieter, murmurs traveling through the bus nonetheless. Even from my seat around the middle, I could see Mr Henry heaving a sigh against the steering wheel.
"Hey, Micheal, what's up?"
Kieran, a kid in my class, was right in front of me, leaning on the back of his seat. He was a weird guy with black hair, and always wore a hoodie with some nerdy t-shirt underneath. He was also one of those buddies I wouldn't have made outside of class, what with me being pretty quiet and him the massive gamer... but now that the friendship was set, neither of us were complaining.
"Wanna hang out this weekend? Guardians of the Galaxy went up on Netflix," He said, pushing through my lack of a response.
I thought a bit. "Nah, exam season's coming up. My parents are making me study, and believe me, I need it."
"I'd believe you if you ever had low grades," he smiled.
"Yeah," I chuckled. "But I've got to beat Chloe somehow, right?"
"Did you hear she got 100% on the last spelling test?"
"Did you hear Julia's adopted?" Said Lola, a girl from the seat behind me. She was... an odd person. She had black hair with purple streaks, and her closet seemed to be composed entirely of ripped jeans and edgy band shirts. She also doodled a lot in class and was fairly good, don't get me wrong- but the drawings themselves tended to have a lot of wolves and blood in them. So I kept away.
"What does that have to do with anything?" I asked.
"I don't know, I thought we were sharing rumours." Lola shrugged.
"What's so bad about being adopted?" And that was Chloe popping up at Lola's side. Apparently she shared the same seat as her on this ride. Chloe was the youngest in the class because she'd skipped a grade, but her aforementioned test scores sure didn't show it. She had poofy, curly hair, and had glasses- like me- but she stuck to flashier wardrobe colours.
"You were behind us the whole time?" I blanched.
"Well, yeah," Chloe said, returning a bashful smile. "You guys weren't saying anything bad, and... I did get a 100."
With that, she stuck her tongue out, and I could see Lola and Kieran rolling their eyes. The girl sitting beside me, Gab, was leaning on the bus window. I didn't know if she was spaced out or just didn't want part of the conversation, but either way, she wasn't talking at the moment.
"Show-off," Lola groaned at Chloe's response.
"You know, I could just ask Julia if she's adopted," Kieran said, changing the subject.
We didn't stay on the topic for long, though, because that ended up being the last normal thing I would hear for a while. Someone from the front of the bus let out an exclamation at the perfect moment to interrupt.
"What is that?"
Everyone on the bus suddenly glued themselves to the windows, eyes toward the road. Kieran tried to maneuver his way to his window, but his seat-mate, Valérie, was a lot taller than him and kept him at bay. It didn't help that her baggy plaid shirt blocked additional sight from the side.
"Oh my god..." they both let out, him in annoyance and her with awe.
Through my window, Gab and I saw the area in front of us split and tear itself apart, leaving nothing but eerie white light in its wake. It was as if someone was cutting through air like a knife through fabric. Some flickers of light were falling all around the road, extinguishing themselves with a weird, square-shaped dissolving effect. I thought it was snow at first, but then I realized the squares were very familiar.
"Wait, are those pixels?" I asked to no one in particular.
"What the hell?" Lola gripped her seat, cackling despite the urgency.
Then, the bus braked to a halt, wheels screeching against the pavement. I was grateful for the lack of slippery ice that would've propelled us even a bit closer. The tear was still a couple dozen meters away, but it was catching up, its cracks ripping through the ground as though it were wet tissue.
"Ok, kids, hang on!" Mr Henry yelled, starting to turn the bus around on a thankfully empty road.
Took him long enough! I thought, but even before the light, he'd looked tired and stressed.
We tore through some grass to get back on the pavement, and I felt a grip on my arm. It was Gab, looking pale and embarrassed.
"These things need seatbelts," she mumbled, hand covering her mouth.
Behind me, I heard a piercing shriek as the bus's back was torn to shreds, the gas strangely still working. I stared ahead, hoping somehow that it'd protect me from the light, like a child looking away from the monster in the closet. But the cries from the others were soon drowned out and Gab's arm was wrenched away.
The next thing I knew, I was yanked backwards, thrust into a world of swirling light and deafening wind. It felt like a black hole was sucking me in, yet there was still light everywhere. I couldn't feel or see any form of solid ground, and after a couple yells, I determined this was too long to be vertigo. I resigned to letting it pass, but it was uncomfortable, and I still panicked.
I was twisted and jerked around for what seemed like hours, still blinded and airborne. All of my body felt numb. When I was younger, I'd read in astronomy books that a wormhole stretched you out like spaghetti because of how dense its black hole component was. That's what I assumed was taking place. Well, what else could've been happening? It could've passed as a dream if it didn't last this vividly long. One dark part of my mind favoured the 'you're in a coma' theory. Darker parts had even bleaker thoughts.
Is this what it feels like to die?
Almost as soon as the thought crossed my mind, the roaring of the wind suddenly stopped, and my feet touched the ground again. I immediately gasped and fell down on my side. The sensation came as a jolt, like when you're almost asleep and suddenly realize you're in your bed. Still lying on the ground, I took in deep yet shaky breaths.
It might've been a relief to be free from the pull, but I was sore and disoriented from all the endless tossing and turning. Everything was slowly but surely starting to come back in... and to hurt.
Am I on the bus?
It took a whole minute before I could open my eyes and look around. Was this shock? I didn't know enough about medical stuff to be sure... Ironically, my dad's a doctor. Ugh, where'd the family smarts go?
I finally got my eyes to focus on something, both sight and breathing steadying.
I was in some type of cave, mostly gray in colour and rough to the touch. I couldn't see any direct exit, just bioluminescent mushrooms lighting the way through an eerie corridor. They were on the border of the walls, growing through every available nook and cranny.
"Those things are everywhere," I mumbled to myself, closing my eyes and focusing on sitting up. I was reassured that I could formulate a sentence and see well, but something still felt off. I slid my tongue against the back of my teeth, and found them to be... pointier. Come to think of it, my eyesight was a lot sharper as well! I could see a very detailed picture of the furthest mushrooms in my sight, should I wish to concentrate on them. What was going on here?
Shock?
No, this is something else. Try to think of what else it could be. Hallucinations... they come from what?
Shock?
Oh my god, your dad's a doctor. You should know more. Stop it.
I entertained the idea of a very vivid dream. Everything was so clear... so clear that it might surpass real life. So many confusing messages and input filled my brain. I really didn't know what was going on.
I finally managed to sit up, but I had to use my arms to do it. Even those felt awkward, and they wouldn't go far horizontally. It was like my shoulders were locked. Great, now I could add 'dislocation' to the list of things wrong with me at the moment. With my heart in my throat, I braced myself and looked down to assess the damage.
But what I saw made me jump for a different reason. In my sight, where touch and perspective told me a hand should be, was a beige paw.
I felt a pit in my gut, gaping yet filled with anxiety. I looked to the rest of myself and found black fur covering all of my body except for the beige paws and... tail tip. Yeah, tail tip. This day just did not intend on giving up on its goal of surprising me.
Not to mention, when I took in the size of the mushrooms compared to how tall I was when sitting up, I must've been the size of a house cat.
I tried to deny it, but my brain had done enough of that today. With everything feeling so alien, and looking so strange, there seemed to be one explanation.
That was me, and all logic had gone out the window.
What did this mean? Again, I would've written this off as a dream if every movement didn't make me feel so sore! Had I gone crazy, then? Had I snapped from homework? From the crushing pressure of high school? From... well, I didn't have any actual trauma, what else was there?
I didn't yell or jump around, but I didn't get up calmly either. I started shaking despite myself, terrified in place. The pit in my gut grew bigger than ever, and I spaced out, mumbling to myself.
"I died on the bus. That's it." I croaked, trying to bring my palm to my head but only managing the back of a front paw.
"Oh my god..."
Even though those were my thoughts, that wasn't my voice. I'd heard someone else from a corner of the cave. Hopefully, it was someone who could bring me back to reality.
"An actual Litleo!"
An actual... what? It didn't matter. What mattered was that someone else was here, and that their voice was somehow... familiar to me. That, and it was fairly chipper, which could be a good sign.
I looked for the source of the sound, but was faced with the same scenery as before. That is, before my eyes fell on a weird yellow shell leaning on the wall. It was about my current size (embarrassingly) and the shape of a lazily filed down pine cone. I was going to look away for signs of an actual human instead, but then, the shell's eyes met mine. Yeah, it had eyes. I then decided it was worth looking at.
"What are you?" I blurted out.
The shell scoffed at me. I realized it didn't have a mouth- how could I hear it so clearly?
"I'm a human!" It said.
Then it slid off the wall and fell over.
It struggled, but couldn't do as much as roll over. Luckily enough for it, it was already facing me. And luckily for me, I finally placed the voice.
"Kieran?" I asked.
The shell- Kieran- looked shocked. "How do you know my name?"
"It's me, Micheal."
Kieran gulped, and his eyes darted around the area, seemingly taking in his surroundings as I did. Finally, he asked:
"Micheal... what am I?"
"... You're a cocoon."
He looked really panicked... for a second. "Green? Tell me I'm not green."
"No... you're yellow," I said, arching an eyebrow. Did it make any difference?
"Okay, at least it's not going for Butterfree."
"... What?"
"Small blessing, Micheal," he sighed.
He seemed satisfied with his joke of an answer, but I had grown even more confused. I leaned in, it being the only thing I could do at the moment that could get me closer to him. "Kieran, what the hell is going on?"
"We're Pokémon, and I'll wake up in a few minutes."
I sighed. Pokémon. That's what we were. I suddenly remembered seeing something not unlike Kieran's current form in my old Pokémon Red copy, but the last time I'd played could've been a decade ago. Even if a part of me was glad someone among us knew what we were, the entire rest was devoted to shock and pain. That contrast rendered the sum of me numb.
"Not a dream," I shuddered.
"It might be a nightmare, actually. You know you can feel pain in those, right?"
Ignoring the past statement and Kieran's following dream tirade, I tried to get up again. I managed a makeshift squat, sitting upright on my haunches with my two feet planted on the ground. I had to force my head to keep looking forward when it wanted to spring toward the ceiling. I tried a step in Kieran's direction, only for my heel to very uncomfortably scrape the floor. I winced, and was interrupted by my friend-turned-immobile-cocoon.
"Dude, no, you're doing it wrong," Kieran called from his spot. He was still lying on his side next to the wall.
"What?"
He rolled his eyes at me like I'd just asked him what 1+1 added to. "Your entire foot is on the ground. Cats walk on their toes."
Cats. Oh, joy. Squinting, I lowered myself to all fours and stood up, this time on my toes. The motion, while being alien, did feel a lot more physically comfortable. I slowly (and very awkwardly) started to walk around.
"So is that what I am? A cat thing?" I asked Kieran.
"Actually, you're a Litleo, it's kind of a fire lion?" He answered, his eyes following me around the cave as I made shaky, small steps.
"Ah. One of the newer ones?" A casual tone had just started to take over.
"Came out five years ago, actually. Hey, can you pick me up or something? I... can't do it," he said, his voice trailing off after the last phrase. It was then I realized that whatever I was facing, not even being able to move while finding everything out would be a thousand times worse. I walked over to him, my tail dragging on the ground. I'd have to get a handle on that later. While I managed to prop him up against the wall, I also had him lean on my head and shoulder- just in case. The shell was hard, and even through my fur I could tell it had a texture akin to thick plastic.
"Thanks," he sighed.
"How can you be so calm about this?" I asked, still trying to find a comfortable position myself.
"I'm not- uh," he recomposed himself, "look, this beats dying in that vortex any day. Maybe it beats next Friday's history test too, eh?"
All Kieran got from me was a deadpan look. Had he not been thrown into the portal as violently as I had? I turned my eyes to my surroundings once again.
The cave we were in was nothing but gloomy upon second inspection. The blue-green light, while bright, painted the craggy walls with a cold appearance. Other than our voices and faint subsequent echoes, it was deadly quiet. The far-off sound of a droplet of water caught me off guard.
"Where do you think we are?" I whispered.
"Somewhere in the Pokémon world?"
I shrugged. "That makes some sense, but why?"
I knew Kieran tried to return the shrug, but I just heard a grunt in response. We stayed there for a while, just processing. It was nice to have one other person thrown into this.