Chapter 42: A Review of Coolness

'So just to review all of the absolutely Zubat shit stuff that's going on in my life, everything started out a year and some change ago when I was turned into a Tentacool by mysterious pokemon, Unown. I spent a month living in some pond out by the ruins where I met best fish ever Aurum (Male Magikarp) and lesser known but still appreciated Spring (Male Goldeen).'

'A lucky break allowed us to hop from pond to pond and make our way to the nearby river, but we had to deal with an irate Krabby first. We escaped that mess by the skin of our... fins? No, I don't have those either. Damn.'

'When we arrived at the ocean we met a few new friends! Emperor (Male Seaking) was leading a school of fish pokemon. Diver (Male Goldeen) and his mate Fallen (Female Goldeen) were among those who decided to stay and join up with my rapidly growing group. We also met chill guy Loafy (Male Remoraid) living next to the docks.'

'Eventually some nasty piece of work Tentacruel invaded and brought with him a huge number of Tentacool! They were threatening to overwhelm the local pokemon and eat as much as they could get away with! So naturally me and my crew decided to fight back! Loafy evolved in time to help with the fight, but the town got destroyed by accident, oops! Thankfully we were able to drive off the boss Tentacruel and begin rebuilding the area... *sigh* And local nonstop gossip Chatty (? Tentacool) decided to join us. Yay...'

'Soon after, we earned friends from all over! Dexter (Female Pidgey), my personal messenger and local courier, joined up and really helped us to get organized! I also picked up a cracked little egg that contained Roma (Female Lapras) who recently picked out a name for herself. I'm so proud of my little girl!'

'Ranger boy Riley (Male Human) and his partner Pichu (Female... take a wild guess, Sherlock) showed up one day and started asking for me. Turns out, this odd pair could communicate with me! In a limited way, but hell, I'll take anything! They even had a way of turning me back into a human. Not that that worked out so good, but I'll get to that soon.'

'Things escalated from there. We weren't just battling with wild pokemon threats anymore, we were fighting full on wars! Some terrible human turned pokemon showed up with his literal child army and caused us no end of trouble! And caused me some legal trouble while he was at it, the bastard. But Aurum evolved in a timely way, so we got that matter settled to.'

'But then, just when things were looking up, in struts Professor Holly (Female Human) who says she can turn us both back into humans. I'm fine if she wants to put that Wartortle into a human body, he'll cause way less trouble that way! But it turns out she was just some hyped up scam artist, so instead our prisoner nearly escapes!'

'In the confusion, a bunch of shadowy Phantom Pokemon get created as some sort of junk data left behind as a result of failed teleportations. But it turns out that was influenced by some outside force? According to Unown "?" this guy, whomever they may be, is using the Phantoms to infect people and fuse them with whichever pokemon they resonate with the most, creating a Chimera.'

'And now to save the world, we need to beat the Chimeras and free the people and pokemon that got fused...'

As Jessie toils over a slightly wet journal, he wonders how exactly Riley will make use of all this information. It sounds completely outlandish, and they don't even have a witness to corroborate the story! And what's with making him put everyone's species and gender next to their names? He's met most of these guys! Bah, stupid ranger report guidelines. Never understood them.

"Damn, if only Unown stuck around long enough to explain things personally. 'Can't interact directly with humans' my bulbous head! Who even made up that dumb rule? And more importantly, why didn't they follow it when they decided to make me half the cool guy I was meant to be? ...Actually now that I'm thinking about it, I'm way cooler as a pokemon than I ever was as a human."

-"Pid-gey~"

"You say something Dex?"

-"Pid! Pidgey pid!"

"Oh, alright."

'As a side note, I also met a displaced pokemon named Cyan (Female Primarina) who got teleported by a fault in the pokemon center's storage system. So that's probably happening all over the place. Which given the problems I mentioned above, will probably mean we'll have to deal with pokemon from other regions getting turned into Chimeras, not just those from Johto.'

"Jeez, how did tings get to this point? Well ranger boy, we've got our work cut out for us!" Tearing out a page, Jessie offers up the letter to Dexter.

"Make sure this gets to him fast, will you? Things are only gonna get crazier from here on out."