Chapter 20

There was nothing Lane could do. She could feel the power working on them, but had neither the skill nor the strength to stop it. She could only watch, horrified, as both her friends transformed.

She slumped to the dirt, tail wrapping around her as her ears pressed flat. She wanted to vanish, to curl up so small that she'd disappear. For a few seconds, it almost seemed like she would. Her paws faded, becoming completely transparent. She gasped, and the effect faded.

The least she could do was witness the horror she had brought. Elisa squealed once, her voice shifting up in pitch as fur covered her body and she vanished into her clothes. Both of them were getting smaller, fast enough that they might even get as small as Lane if they kept going.

I probably looked a lot like that when it was happening to me. She remembered the horror and confusion, and now she could feel it directly.

"You're not a nice person, Korina. Doing this to me was one thing, but they deserved better."

"They came hunting me too," she said, floating beside Lane. Her friends were still changing, but Korina didn't seem to be watching anymore. Maybe once the change was in place, she didn't have to get involved much.

She did pick something up off the ground near Elisa's clothes. An older pokeball, dented and scratched. She manipulated it skillfully, returning Lopunny to its depths and shrinking it down for storage. You've been around humans before me, haven't you?

Some part of Lane had hoped for a moment that Elisa was at least becoming another mew. She was gaining the right feline features… but her tail was too short, her ears too long. And her fur was a bland gray instead of soft pink.

Dominic had it even worse. His arms and legs had shriveled to black, multijointed insect things, with a pale body covered in yellow fluff. He

collapsed under the strain as a pair of wings sprouted from his back, with interlocking circular patterns all over.

"Change them back," Lane begged. The changes were nearly complete in both of them now. They'd both settled at about Lane's size, though Dominic was a bit smaller and Elisa a bit bigger. That still made them so unbelievably small, they probably could've fit comfortably in Dominic's fallen backpack without even removing the supplies.

"They never tried to do anything to you. They just humored me when I wanted to come looking, that's all."

"Not true." Korina gestured, lifting the two of them up into the air. They hovered over Lane's friends, who had both stopped struggling. Lane remembered that exhaustion too. But she had become a legendary. Her friends… not so much.

Dominic was completely unconscious now, but Elisa wasn't. Her eyes opened wide, bright purple with huge pupils in the middle. She barely blinked.

"They took an interest in my kitten. They fought so hard to stay with you.

I've seen this kind of determination in humans before. The ones who aren't complacent with what they have start pushing so fast towards things they don't understand that they don't notice or care what harm they cause along the way.”

She nuzzled Lane's forehead gently, not seeming to notice Lane's struggles to get away. "You don't know this, kitten, but the world you live in is a… delicate balance between competing forces of nature. They're unbelievably dumb—like, dumber than you. But their power demands respect. More than once, humans have disrupted that balance without understanding it.

Pokémon, by contrast, never do."

She gestured again, and Lane's friends lifted up into the air beside them.

"You've all proven you want to stay together. I'd never ruin your friendship.

Now I've made them so they can't hurt you, see?"

"I… never," Elisa squeaked. Her voice was much softer now. She spoke in the usual Pokémon way, the way Lane did. But there was a power in her voice that hadn't been there before. Was she psychic too? "Never hurt Lane.

You did."

Korina rolled her eyes. "Never said your mate wasn't brave, Lane. The balls on her…" She trailed off. "Anyway, you wanted to be together. She's a psychic too, so you can practice together."

Korina nodded towards Dominic. "The biggest one is the smallest one now—funny, right! Also, you need someone who can practice flying with you when I'm not around. And he'll know when it's gonna rain, so you don't stay out and get pneumonia. Useful, see? Now you say thanks, or I'll make them dumb."

"Thanks!" Lane practically screamed it, tail curling fearfully around herself. Her chest twisted up in anger, but she kept it unexpressed. Pride was far less important than her friends' minds. "I would thank you more if you changed them back."

Korina glowered. "Say something like that again, and your mate forgets she was human."

Lane twitched once, glaring at Korina—but she didn't say it again. "Why didn't you make them mew like me?" she asked. "Don't you want more of us?"

"I was sure about you. You had those great clothes. You've been pretending to be a mew your whole life anyway. But just because we're almost extinct doesn't mean we can't have standards. These two picked others." She circled around them once, and there was a flash of light, so brilliant that Lane was momentarily blinded.

When it faded, they were somewhere familiar—the soft-floored sleeping quarters of Starfall. Korina waved a paw, and both Lane's friends dropped gently to the floor. Dominic didn't move, but Elisa did, tripping and falling over herself a few times to reach Dominic's side.

She was a full head taller, and touched him only gingerly. Lane could only hope Dominic would be okay.

"So they're on evaluation—until they prove they're worth keeping, and I change them—or you can transform into a human on your own. I figure once you can do that, you're strong enough to decide what to do with them yourself."

Lane glanced down at the two of them, drifting towards the floor. "When will you teach me to do that?"

"How about when you copy one of your friends? Pokémon are easy, and you'll have them around all the time. Transform into them, and I'll teach you what I know about humans. Or maybe we'll go practicing with some of the local wildlife one of these days." She shrugged, patting Lane on the head again with a paw. "I'll let you keep them company for the night. I've got some things I was

putting off while I followed you through the jungle. Don't leave Starfall until I say you can."

She nuzzled her again, and Lane went completely stiff at her touch. Her feelings had transformed too—there was spite in Korina that hadn't been there before.

"You were right," Lane squeaked, as Korina reached the doorway. "I don't want to be changed back anymore. I only hated it because it was forced on me, not because it's bad. I want to keep flying with you—don't take it out on my friends. Punish me."

Korina froze in the doorway. She didn't turn around, but some of her emotions slipped through her guard. For a second, Lane felt the dour taste of her pain. "You couldn't help yourself," she whispered. "Humans are cruel. You used to be one of them. You'll recover eventually, now that you're a person."

She floated off, the oversized bob of her tail finally vanishing through the doorway.

Lane hovered above her friends, one paw reaching towards her. Was she supposed to follow?

She's being less mean just because I said something dumb. She's done nothing but threaten since I got here. First me, then my friends.

Lane landed on the cloth beside Elisa. She was taller than Lane too, if only because she seemed determined to keep standing on her hind-legs. Lane floated up onto her back-legs, and that felt a little better, though she still was still shorter than she'd like.

"You just let her do that to you?" Elisa asked. "Nobody in the True-Myth Club ever talked to you like that."

"Nobody in the True-Myth Club was ever a mythical Pokémon before."

Lane watched Elisa for a few seconds, before she realized the cat was embarrassed. She crossed her legs, holding one paw down over herself.

Right, you're not used to being naked. Lane barely even thought about that anymore. She resisted the urge to keep staring, and looked down at Dominic instead. "How do you feel? Can you still… think straight?"

"Kinda." Elisa lifted one paw, and a faint blue glow appeared at her paw for a second. It flashed, then went out almost as quickly as it came. "I feel so…

strange. The smells don't make sense. Dominic smells like a bug, you smell like a girl, and I smell like a child. One of those things makes sense—I think he's a

ribombee. Guess he's lucky he's not a cutiefly. But the rest of that makes no sense."

"It's right," Lane said, curling her tail around herself and floating a little off the cushions again. "I don't understand exactly what Korina meant by it all, but I think biological sex is some kind of… rank, or status symbol. Even she's not male, so I probably won't be for a long time."

"Oh." Elisa stumbled towards her, reaching out with both forelegs. Her paws didn't have much dexterity, they were barely more than stubs. But that was more than enough to reach out and pull Lane into a hug.

Her fur was far softer than human skin. More than that, the instinct to flee from her touch was gone. The hug might not line up exactly right, but it felt basically the way a hug should.

Korina did us one favor. You're not a giant anymore. Lane wouldn't have been rushing to get physical with a Pokémon, even if she'd still been male. But even if they couldn't be intimate, she could still have meaningful physical contact again.

"Thanks, Elisa. I think I needed that. Though I still think you guys should've just run away. There's no reason you had to get tangled in all this."

She let go, sticking her tongue out. "I became a Pokémon trainer so I could have my own adventure. That didn't work out, so I thought maybe going with you would be better. I'm still not convinced it wasn't."

She waddled clumsily across the room, tail twitching for balance. Though she shared much in common with Lane, if anything her build was more human, rather than less. She stopped beside the little pokéball, resting both forelegs against it. "I'll get to talk to Lopunny sometime soon, that will be pretty cool.

Trainers have been dreaming about this since before I was born."

Lane followed, floating horizontally in the air rather than vertically. She couldn't help it, she just wasn't built the same as Elisa.

"Nobody's going to fucking believe it. When we get back… Arceus, guess we just won't be able to tell them. Either that, or we can show off some of the videos, but nothing else."

Then her face fell, and she slumped backward onto her rump. "And… all my stuff is at Cresselia Falls. You'll have to pose for us again when we're human."

She yawned, stretching backward, though she kept one paw up against the ball at every moment.

Lane landed beside her again, cautiously. They'd already slept together a few times—but her desire wasn't driven by any of those emotions this time.

She stretched out beside her, wishing Korina kept any blankets. But no, it was just stuffed mew.

"Wasn't gonna keep waiting forever," Elisa said, pulling Lane up against her chest. Sleeping in Elisa's sleeping bag during the hike was nice, but this was better. "I hope this makes sense when I wake up," she muttered. "I feel like there's an atom bomb in my head."