Once again, it is time....
For the Isekai Exquisite Corpse! This second edition features stunning parts written by six different authors, featuring ranches, comedy, isekai, and of course - an in-depth look into ditto culture!
Here are the six authors, presented in alphabetical order - no spoilers! :)
Part One:
“Hey! Hold that horse!”
Samuel looked over to see two men holding on to the reigns of a horse that was vigorously tossing its head. The horse was new to Three-Foot Ranch and clearly did not like people. Its pale blue eyes were wide open and quivering. The two men spoke calmly and patted the horse gently, trying to keep it from going haywire again.
Glancing over his shoulder, Samuel saw several horses grazing. The sun shone out of a clear blue Nevada sky. The air was dry, but not too dusty. It was a perfect day to be out on the ranch. In the distance, some cattle milled about on the grass.
Samuel looked at the time on his smartphone: it was almost nine o’clock. Pocketing it, he walked over to Lakota, a beautiful American paint horse.
“Come on, girl,” he said as he led her to the stable to brush her down. She was beautiful: her legs were short but powerful, and her coat always had a sleek shine. Samuel loved Lakota; he remembered the day, ten years ago, that she came to his family’s ranch as a young colt. She was the first horse he got to help raise, whom he felt was truly his. He smiled at her, and she gazed at him gently with warm, brown eyes. For as long as Samuel could remember, Lakota was always the nicest horse on the ranch.
“Aggghhh—Samuel, watch out!”
Samuel looked up—the aggressive horse he noticed earlier had wrenched the reigns away from the ranch workers and bolted towards Samuel and Lakota. Lakota whinnied and tore away from Samuel.
“Lakota, no!”
Samuel looked at Lakota and back at the new horse—his mind working a mile a minute, he reached up to grab the horse’s reigns. But the horse reared back on his hind legs and swerved, knocking its hoof into Samuel’s temple. The boy’s world went black and he fell to the floor.
----------------
Samuel’s eyelids fluttered open. He lay on a bed in a dark room. Sitting up, he groaned—his head ached. He reached up a hand and felt bandages wrapped around his skull. Covering his face with his hand, he tried to think back to what had happened…
A horse had hit him—right? And then, he supposed, the ranch workers picked him up and got medical care for him.
As Samuel’s eyes adjusted to the dark, he realized he was in his bedroom. That was good; he had been to the hospital a few times, but it always took way too long for them to discharge him. He reached up to the curtains at his bedside and pulled them back—it was nighttime.
How could it be nighttime? It was only late morning when he was knocked out. And as Samuel looked out his window in confusion, he saw firelight dancing nearby.
His heart sank—was the ranch on fire? That was the worst possible thing that could happen. Especially if the fire reached the barn with the horses still inside…
Jumping out of bed, Samuel tore through his house and went outside, his heart pounding with fear. He sprinted to the fence—
He stopped and gasped. The ranch wasn’t on fire.
The horses were.
The wide variety of horse breeds Three-Foot Ranch had before—Appaloosas, American paints, Arabians—were all gone and replaced by horses that were pure white with flames for their manes and tails. The horses didn’t seem to be in any pain. They bent down, eating the grass plaintively.
Samuel couldn’t stop staring at them. He couldn’t tear his eyes away from one mare with short legs and a sleek neck who twitched her ears often—
“Lakota?”
The horse looked up at him with large, gentle brown eyes. Samuel’s heart clenched—that was Lakota, but with her mane and tail replaced with fire, she no longer looked like the beautiful American paint horse that Samuel grew up with. As she nuzzled Samuel’s hand, and as his head injury throbbed, he couldn’t help but wonder what on earth happened to the ranch he grew up on.
Part Two:
Samuel watched Lakota in a daze as spirit fire licked along the horse's body, casting a pleasant warmth instead of the campfire blaze he'd expected. Tentatively, he extended a hand and found he could scratch between Lakota's ears without burning the limb down to a stump. Her flames tickled, at best. A horse on fire was one thing, but the fact that both she and he weren't suffering from it was a whole 'nother.
Samuel pointedly did not say anything about not being in Kansas anymore, and he took stock of his surroundings: prairie, straight to the horizon, with a smudge of dark fuzz to the east under the bright light. Now how on earth had he ended up here? He tried to slow his breathing and listen for the noise of searchers or a highway, but there was nothing but Lakota's hooves on the ground as she nosed the grass to graze and the wind in the long stalks.
Grasshoppers chittered somewhere. The hiss of Lakota's fires. She couldn't flick away the flies with a tongue of fire for a tail, could she? Would they even land on her? He watched her for a while, mind wandering. His head was pounding, but the pain was disconnected from him, like it was something he couldn't do anything about. But he could, couldn't he?
No. No, he was lost. He looked up at the sky, blindingly blue, with great, fluffy white cumulonimbus massing in the west, preparing for a late afternoon thunderstorm. He should stay put. He was lost. No, he shouldn't; he was on a flat with scarcely a gully to offer shelter, and a storm would leave him soaked to the skin and freezing. And Lakota--
--was made of fire, now? Would she-- fire boiled water, sure, but a bucket of water extinguished fire, and he'd seen it rain buckets, no problem.
Samuel whistled to Lakota and set off toward the dark smudge, hoping it was a stand of trees-- trees meant shelter, and they meant water, and a landmark, if someone was looking for him. He couldn't say how long it took him to reach, but when he did, his head injury was like two spikes in his brain, and the fire horse's flames were pallid in the stormy light.
Part Three:
Unfortunately, the trees hadn’t proven to contain much of interest. Pretty much just an ordinary forest. But by now his feet felt like they were liable to fall off, and he was committed to the idea of not moving again for the rest of the night. So, like it or not, this was where he’d be camping.
Man, why’d he have to get dropped into the middle of nowhere?
Sam settled back against the trunk of a tree, resting his head against the bark, head throbbing. He should’ve set to work building a shelter of some sort, especially with that storm rolling in. Problem was that he didn’t have much experience in that sort of thing. At least he had Lakota for warmth. The Ponyta had settled next to him, flames flickering gently in the darkening clearing.
The novelty of finding himself in the Pokémon world was starting to wear off, and the reality of the situation was starting to dawn on him. He was in the middle of the wilderness, who knows how far from civilization. Would anyone ever find him? Did trainers come this way? Lakota’s flames would probably be easy to spot…
Sam rubbed his temples. He needed a plan. He couldn’t just go wandering through the woods aimlessly. But that could wait until morning. For now, he just desperately wanted rest.
A twig snapped, and Sam jolted.
“Who’s there?” he called out.
No response. Well, it wasn’t like anyone sneaking up on him would just announce themselves, would they?
“Lakota, you wanna… check it out?”
The Ponyta gave him a look like he very much did not.
“Well, I can’t go look for myself, I need your fire to see,” Sam said flatly.
Lakota snorted his disapproval, but he got on his hooves all the same. Sam took a deep breath and stood up, pain flaring up in his head when he did. He gripped Lakota’s shoulder to steady himself and took a few uneasy steps forward. His eyes scanned the surrounding, squinting through the flickering firelight. Then movement caught his eye close to the forest floor, and he realized he was searching too high. Slowly, he looked down to see a small, fluffy figure staring up at him, beady eyes glittering in the semidarkness. Then Lakota stepped forward and the firelight revealed… a very small, very cute bear with a moon on its head.
Sam breathed a sigh of relief. “Oh, it’s just a little guy. What’re you doing wandering around in the dark by yourself, huh?”
The Teddiursa just tilted its head at him. Sam smiled and gestured back toward the clearing where he’d been resting. “Want to join us?”
The Teddiursa gazed at him curiously but then plodded along in that direction. Sam could hardly believe his luck—a second Pokémon! Maybe things wouldn’t go so badly here after all.
Then a heavy crash deeper in the woods and a roar of anger went and shattered Sam’s optimism to pieces. Something glinted menacingly between the trees, and he barely had the good sense to duck just in time for a searing orange beam to shoot over his head, burning clean through the tree trunk behind him with a high-pitched whine. Sam knelt there, hands clasped over his head, eyes screwed shut, listening to the sounds of splintering wood and the groaning of branches as the tree collapsed to the ground with a thud that knocked him into the air for a split second.
When he finally opened his eyes, he saw what had fired the Hyper Beam—an Ursaring, glaring at him through the trees, face contorted with rage. He threw a frantic glance back at the Teddiursa standing innocently behind him, tilting its head quizzically, and he couldn’t help feeling like an idiot.
Mama Ursaring charged. A jolt of icy terror shot through Sam. God, he didn’t have a chance in hell at running away in his condition. And that thing would catch him either way. What on earth was he supposed to do?
And then there was Lakota, giving Sam a look like he was a moron while he jerked his head over his shoulder. Oh. Why hadn’t Sam thought of that? Of course, he immediately realized why—namely the fact that his would-be mount was covered in fire. But then… from what he knew, the flames wouldn’t hurt, right?
Ursaring was bearing down on him, moving way faster than anything that big had any right to. He really didn’t have much of a choice. Sam threw a leg over Lakota’s back, hurled his arms around his neck, and yelled, “Run for it!”
Alright, so maybe clinging onto a Ponyta’s neck for dear life while a raging bear fired laser beams at him wasn’t how Sam imagined he’d be spending his first day in the Pokémon world.
Part Four:
Sam threw a leg over Lakota’s back, hurled his arms around his neck, and yelled, “Run for it!”
Alright, so maybe clinging onto a Ponyta’s neck for dear life while a raging bear fired laser beams at him wasn’t how Sam imagined he’d be spending his first day in the Pokémon world.
His fifth day in the Pokemon world? Absolutely! The fourth or third day, maybe. But the first day was straight- wait, what was that burning smell? Sam looked down and saw that his shirt sleeves had caught on fire from Lakota’s fiery mane!
“Aaaraaagh!” he yelled, and dismounted from Lakota as quickly as he’d gotten onto him, then ineffectually slapped at the fire consuming his shirt for a moment before frantically shucking it off, though not before his forearms had become badly burnt.
“Why did you think that was a good idea!?” Lakota shouted, nervously looking back and forth between Sam and the charging Bewear rapidly approaching their position.
Sam moaned and slowly got to his feet. “In my head-canon, the fire on Ponyta’s back only burns if they want it to!”
The Bewear caught up to them, thrusting her laser pointer towards Sam. “What are you going to do, human? If you don’t look at me, you won’t be able to dodge my savage fists! But if you do look at me, I’ll blind you with this laser pointer!” she declared, clicking it on and off.
“Okay, okay, I surrender! You can hug me!” Sam cried, throwing up his arms in defeat.
“Yaaaaaaaay hug time!” the Bewear said, entirely too cheerfully, then ran forward and wrapped Sam up into a crushing embrace. After several agonizing seconds, she finally loosened her grip and let him collapse to the ground. “There! Now that wasn’t so bad, was it?”
“Ribs… crushed… pain… immense...” Sam gasped.
The Bewear pondered this for a moment. “You know what I bet would make you feel better? Another hug!” she said with glee, and moved to scoop Sam up into her arms again.
Lakota moved to interpose himself between the two, and spat an ember at her. “No! No more hugs!”
After flinching away from the fire, the Bewear growled and spat at Lakota. “You seem really grumpy, mister! Maybe you need a hug as well!”
“Do you really wanna do that after seeing what happened to him when he wrapped his arms around me?”
The Bewear reluctantly had to admit he might’ve had a point there. “...I just remembered some other dear friends in more pressing need of hugs. Bye-bye for now!” she announced, then slunk away, looking for fresh victims.
Lakota watched her with both eyes until she was a safe distance away, then turned back to Sam. “Are your ribs really broken?” he asked.
Sam tried to push himself back up, then groaned and lowered himself back to the ground. “It sure feels that way!”
“Okay. What about your burnt arms? Do they hurt?”
“Extremely!”
The Ponyta nodded. “Good! That means the nerves are still intact!”
But Sam didn’t seem too heartened by this news. “Erghhhh… I think I need to go to a hospital...”
“A hospital? What’s that?” Lakota asked.
“It’s a place where humans go to receive medical treatment,” Sam said.
“Oh, I guess that must be another one of those things that only exist in your weird Pokemon-free world. We only have Pokemon centers here!”
“What!? I mean, Nani!? Where do people- I mean, humans go when they get hurt?”
Lakota looked at Sam solemnly. “To the graveyard, of course!”
“NANI!?”
“Ha ha, just kidding!” Lakota said, snorting small gusts of flame out of her nostrils. “Really got you there, didn’t I?”
“Okay, so where do-”
“Everyone knows that graveyards are only for Pokemon, silly!”
Sam sighed. “Look, just… take me to the nearest Pokecenter. I’ll figure something out...”
After some discussion as to the logistics of travel, the two hit upon a solution of Lakota dragging along a tarp Sam rested on top of, and soon reached the nearest Pokecenter. The doors swooshed open automatically, allowing the pair to enter with little difficulty. “He needs to see a doctor! His ribs are all crushed and his arms are burnt!” Lakota told the receptionist.
The receptionist squinted at Sam through her glasses. “We only treat Pokemon here,” she said, speaking in a bored seen-it-all-before tone.
“I am a Pokemon!” Sam wheezed from the floor. “I’m a Ditto who turned into a human, and can’t turn back because my transform move got disabled by a Drowzee!”
“If you’re really a Ditto, why do your eyes look normal instead of tiny and beady?”
Seriously? That was only a characteristic of one particular Ditto in the anime! That wasn’t even head-canon, that was actual canon! “Uh, that’s because I transformed into a human who had really huge, anime-style eyes. By comparison to him, my eyes are tiny and beady!” he said.
“Okay… well, if you really are a Ditto, then the easiest way to treat you would be to stick you in a pokeball and use the healing machine,” the receptionist said, pulling a plain pokeball out of a cabinet beside her.
“That wouldn’t work. I’ve already been caught by one but the ball’s lost,” Sam said, praying that the mechanics of pokeballs in this world made that a reasonable excuse.
The receptionist sighed. “Very well, then. Drag him into room five down that hallway to your left. I’ll send in a nurse to see him shortly.”
After a tedious fifteen-minute wait Sam spent staring up at the tiled ceiling trying to breathe as little as possible and which Lakota spent idly glancing at posters warning about the five signs of early-stage Pokerus and how winners didn’t use X-items, a nurse stepped into the room. “You look like you’ve got a nice, healthy flame there!” he said. “What seems to be the problem today?”
“It’s not with me; it’s with him,” Lakota said, waving a hoof at Sam. “Transformed Ditto, broken ribs, burned arms,” he added quickly.
“Mmm, I see. Well, we’ll get that fixed up quick! Hang tight!” The nurse opened up some cabinets and slowly searched through them, muttering to himself. “Okay, so we’ll want one burn heal, and we’ll also get, let’s see… sternum heal, clavicle heal, tibia heal, elbow heal, aha! Rib heal!” After promptly spraying the potions onto Sam’s arms and chest, he stood back and grinned as the injuries miraculously disappeared.
Sam tried to hide his amazement, but couldn’t help but stare at his arms in shock as the burns faded away. Catching the nurse looking at his expression, he said, “Wow, modern medicine really is something, huh?”
“Those potions have existed for hundreds of years,” the nurse replied, appearing mildly bemused.
“Uh, right, I mean, it’s amazing how modern medicine’s able to integrate the most effective treatments of the past with today’s technology,” Sam said.
Now the nurse was glaring at him. “We’re right in the middle of the greatest scandal in medical history after the discoveries that most of the treatments we’ve kept from the past have proven to be ineffective, especially when combined with modern technology! Burn-heal and rib-heal are pretty much the only ones unaffected! Don’t you- oh, but I guess a Ditto wouldn’t necessarily keep up with the news,” he said.
“Yeah, that’s me, totally unconcerned with reading the news like any other Ditto!” Sam uttered a forced laugh.
“Oh, about that, I’m assuming you didn’t just transform back because your transform move was disabled. Would you like me to use a disable-heal on you?”
“Uh, no need for that! Really appreciate what you did for me, but we should probably be going now,” Sam said, heading for the exit. “Come on, Lakota!”
The two were just about to step outside the Pokecenter when Sam felt thick fingers wrap around his shoulder. He turned to see a large Machamp frowning at him next to the receptionist. “Excuse me, but you two have a bill to settle,” she said. “That’ll be twenty-thousand pokedollars, please.”
“Twenty thousand! For just those two potions!” Sam had no idea how much that really was.
“Oh, whoops, you’re right. That should actually be two-hundred thousand pokedollars,” the receptionist said.
“Uh, right, let me just, uh, get out my wallet here...” Sam said. He hastily took a one-dollar bill out of his wallet, took out a black sharpie, crossed out the “1” and replaced it with a “200,000”, then added a carrot and the word “POKE” before the “DOLLAR” at the bottom. “Here you go!”
The receptionist frowned. “What’s with the weird floating eyeball pyramid on the back of this?” she asked.
“Ummm… Fnord, fnord, Poke-illuminati, fnord?”
“Well… I suppose it does say it’s legal tender for all debts, public and private, so I’ll accept- Hey, wait a minute! If this is real Ditto money, then why does this ‘Washington’ character’s eyeballs look normal instead of all tiny and beady? And don’t tell me he was also transformed into someone with giant anime-style eyes, because I happen to know for a fact that anime didn’t exist at the time anyone still trusted in Arceus The Great Betrayer!” she said, tapping the “IN GOD WE TRUST” line.
“Ummmm… uhhhhh...” Sam stammered, sweat starting to pour down his face as the Machamp tightened her grip on his shoulder, “Washington was famous among Ditto for being able to make his eyeballs appear normal, which was the whole reason he got to appear on our currency in the first place!”
Part Five:
“That still doesn’t explain why you gave me this crap!” The Machamp shook the conspicuous-looking Pokedollar in Sam’s face. “You seriously think I’m gonna take this money? I have a business to run, y’know, so who in their right mind is gonna take a phoney bill?”
“You did, apparently,” Sam snapped back without meaning to. Crap, no! He had to salvage his faux pas somehow! “U-um, that is to say, you thought you did, but you actually didn’t, and that’s real this time. G-good on you for being cautious.”
Now he’d done it. He really stuck his foot in it this time.
He expected some sort of payback from the Machamp, maybe even a quadruple-layered knuckle sandwich, but to his relief, she released her grip on his shoulder and let out a hearty laugh. It sounded genuine at first. Maybe she remembered some joke about how many Machamp it took to change a lightbulb. Then she kept laughing to the point she sounded like a broken wind up doll. She stopped, only to rummage through the junk in her shop until she found a burning oil lantern, which she held the Pokedollar over.
“U-um,” Sam said, dripping bucket-loads of sweat. “What are you doing?”
“Take a guess,” she said with a grin.
“B-but you’ll be burning your hard earned cash!”
“So what? I have nuthin’ to worry about; I’ve got buttloads more I can sell that can cover the costs. You’ve still got your ruby, so why’d you care? Unless....”
She brought the dollar closer to the burner to the point the tip of it touched the flame. Suddenly, the dollar changed back into its original form, and the Ditto that emerged from it jumped straight into the Machamp’s face, covering her head in purple slime. The Ditto plopped onto the floor and waddled past Sam out of the shop. He didn’t even watch him go. His whole plan just went out the window. Great.
The Machamp stared at Sam like an angry prune.
“Um,” Sam said, deflated, “is there a, er, no returns polic--”
Punch.
Sam left the shop with a broken nose and no ruby to his name. He met the Ditto back in the plaza, who jiggled furiously at him.
“Nice, man, you didn’t even stop her when she was tryin’ to sizzle me! Now look!” Something wiggled at the bottom of the DItto. “She burnt one of my freakin’ toes off!”
“Um, I don’t see the difference?” And did Ditto even have feet anyway?
“Ugh, whatevs. You know what you are, Sam?” The Ditto glanced at something far off and started transforming into something again. He turned purple, then white upon turning into a firm mushroom with a very pronounced, reddened tip.
Part Six:
"Oh, I get it," Sam said. "Yeah, real mature. Hope you're proud of that one."
Turning his back on the ditto, Sam looked out at Viridian Forest, what had seemed like such a magical place, brimming with wonder and adventure, and which had actually turned out to be full of disappointment, hearbreak, and extremely large bees. "It's not fair," he muttered. "The pokémon world was supposed to be cool! I was going to catch all the best pokémon, beat all the gym leaders, and save the region from Team Rocket. Just like I always did in the games!"
"Yup. Well. Turns out Mew's a prankster like that," Pikachu said. He was stil sitting over on the stump, reading Sam's manga. "Did the guy who drew this really think blastoise can fly around with their cannons? Tch. I guess we know why he went into art instead of engineering."
"And you, Pikachu! You were supposed to be my best friend ever! And we were going to be the best there ever was!"
"I'm pretty sure I'm supposed to say something about not being able to buy your friends or be careful what you wish for, but I honestly don't care if you learn anything here," Pikachu said, flipping the page. "Pi-pika pika, or something."
Grinding his teeth, Sam turned around, only to find that the ditto had taken advantage of his distraction and oozed off somewhere. Crawling in the grass near where it had been was yet another weedle, which paused and aimed its stinger at Sam, hissing.
"Argh! Come on!" Sam backed off, hands raised in surrender, and after a second the weedle went back to crawling. "How am I supposed to become a pokémon master if all the pokémon hate me?"
"Pika pikachu. Sorry, kid, but 'Sam' just isn't a protagonist kind of name. This one was never going to go well for you. Have you considered Team Rocket instead? As long as you're okay with everybody calling you 'grunt,' I hear the money's not bad."
"I'm not going to join the bad guys just because all the pokémon here are the worst," Sam said. It was obvious this whole 'pokémon journey' thing wasn't working out, but what now? What else was there in the pokémon world? Sam stared off into the trees. "No... I'm gonna... I'm gonna..."
Pikachu actually looked up from the manga at that. "Pika pi-ka! Find Mew? Demand she return you to your own world? Release me from my contractual obligation to make dumb animal noises so I conform to the cute sidekick image?"
"What? No, of course not. I've been out of work for months now, my roommate's awful, and I have student loans, I'm not going back." Sam scowled, deep in thought.
"Look, kid, if you're unemployable in your world, this one isn't going to be much kinder to you. And like you said, the bees here are way bigger. Kachu."
"No, no, no." It dawned on Sam slowly, and with the realization came a slow, manic smile. "I'm the worst trainer ever! Pokémon hate me!"
"I'd say I'm more indifferent, personally."
"I could be the best pokémon control officer ever. Think about it! Combee infestation? Rampaging tauros? Scorbunny destroying your garden? All I have to do is show up, and they'll stop whatever they're doing and come rushing out to attack me! All I need then is for my trusty partner to subdue them until I can catch them and take them away. What do you say to that, Pikachu? Pretty solid plan, isn't it?"
Pikachu sighed and closed the manga, then held it up in one paw. "Do you have the next one of these?"
"Uh, I think so. It's the one where Team Rocket makes Thu-Fi-Zer and we find out 'Rocket' stands for something really stupid."
"Great." Pikachu heaved himself to his feet with a sigh. "Let's get to Pewter City, at least. Maybe we can grab some ketchup and discuss your options then."
"I like the sound of that," Sam said, still grinning.
"Don't get your hopes up just yet," Pikachu said. A running jump took him to Sam's shoulder, where he could rummage another volume out of Sam's backpack. "You're lucky you decided to bring these with you," Pikachu said, leaning back against Sam's neck with the manga open in front of him, flipping through chapters while the worst trainer ever made his way steadily north.
For the Isekai Exquisite Corpse! This second edition features stunning parts written by six different authors, featuring ranches, comedy, isekai, and of course - an in-depth look into ditto culture!
Here are the six authors, presented in alphabetical order - no spoilers! :)
Chibi Pika
Keleri
NebulaDreams
Negrek
Starlight Aurate
Walrein
Keleri
NebulaDreams
Negrek
Starlight Aurate
Walrein
Part One:
“Hey! Hold that horse!”
Samuel looked over to see two men holding on to the reigns of a horse that was vigorously tossing its head. The horse was new to Three-Foot Ranch and clearly did not like people. Its pale blue eyes were wide open and quivering. The two men spoke calmly and patted the horse gently, trying to keep it from going haywire again.
Glancing over his shoulder, Samuel saw several horses grazing. The sun shone out of a clear blue Nevada sky. The air was dry, but not too dusty. It was a perfect day to be out on the ranch. In the distance, some cattle milled about on the grass.
Samuel looked at the time on his smartphone: it was almost nine o’clock. Pocketing it, he walked over to Lakota, a beautiful American paint horse.
“Come on, girl,” he said as he led her to the stable to brush her down. She was beautiful: her legs were short but powerful, and her coat always had a sleek shine. Samuel loved Lakota; he remembered the day, ten years ago, that she came to his family’s ranch as a young colt. She was the first horse he got to help raise, whom he felt was truly his. He smiled at her, and she gazed at him gently with warm, brown eyes. For as long as Samuel could remember, Lakota was always the nicest horse on the ranch.
“Aggghhh—Samuel, watch out!”
Samuel looked up—the aggressive horse he noticed earlier had wrenched the reigns away from the ranch workers and bolted towards Samuel and Lakota. Lakota whinnied and tore away from Samuel.
“Lakota, no!”
Samuel looked at Lakota and back at the new horse—his mind working a mile a minute, he reached up to grab the horse’s reigns. But the horse reared back on his hind legs and swerved, knocking its hoof into Samuel’s temple. The boy’s world went black and he fell to the floor.
----------------
Samuel’s eyelids fluttered open. He lay on a bed in a dark room. Sitting up, he groaned—his head ached. He reached up a hand and felt bandages wrapped around his skull. Covering his face with his hand, he tried to think back to what had happened…
A horse had hit him—right? And then, he supposed, the ranch workers picked him up and got medical care for him.
As Samuel’s eyes adjusted to the dark, he realized he was in his bedroom. That was good; he had been to the hospital a few times, but it always took way too long for them to discharge him. He reached up to the curtains at his bedside and pulled them back—it was nighttime.
How could it be nighttime? It was only late morning when he was knocked out. And as Samuel looked out his window in confusion, he saw firelight dancing nearby.
His heart sank—was the ranch on fire? That was the worst possible thing that could happen. Especially if the fire reached the barn with the horses still inside…
Jumping out of bed, Samuel tore through his house and went outside, his heart pounding with fear. He sprinted to the fence—
He stopped and gasped. The ranch wasn’t on fire.
The horses were.
The wide variety of horse breeds Three-Foot Ranch had before—Appaloosas, American paints, Arabians—were all gone and replaced by horses that were pure white with flames for their manes and tails. The horses didn’t seem to be in any pain. They bent down, eating the grass plaintively.
Samuel couldn’t stop staring at them. He couldn’t tear his eyes away from one mare with short legs and a sleek neck who twitched her ears often—
“Lakota?”
The horse looked up at him with large, gentle brown eyes. Samuel’s heart clenched—that was Lakota, but with her mane and tail replaced with fire, she no longer looked like the beautiful American paint horse that Samuel grew up with. As she nuzzled Samuel’s hand, and as his head injury throbbed, he couldn’t help but wonder what on earth happened to the ranch he grew up on.
Starlight Aurate
Part Two:
Samuel watched Lakota in a daze as spirit fire licked along the horse's body, casting a pleasant warmth instead of the campfire blaze he'd expected. Tentatively, he extended a hand and found he could scratch between Lakota's ears without burning the limb down to a stump. Her flames tickled, at best. A horse on fire was one thing, but the fact that both she and he weren't suffering from it was a whole 'nother.
Samuel pointedly did not say anything about not being in Kansas anymore, and he took stock of his surroundings: prairie, straight to the horizon, with a smudge of dark fuzz to the east under the bright light. Now how on earth had he ended up here? He tried to slow his breathing and listen for the noise of searchers or a highway, but there was nothing but Lakota's hooves on the ground as she nosed the grass to graze and the wind in the long stalks.
Grasshoppers chittered somewhere. The hiss of Lakota's fires. She couldn't flick away the flies with a tongue of fire for a tail, could she? Would they even land on her? He watched her for a while, mind wandering. His head was pounding, but the pain was disconnected from him, like it was something he couldn't do anything about. But he could, couldn't he?
No. No, he was lost. He looked up at the sky, blindingly blue, with great, fluffy white cumulonimbus massing in the west, preparing for a late afternoon thunderstorm. He should stay put. He was lost. No, he shouldn't; he was on a flat with scarcely a gully to offer shelter, and a storm would leave him soaked to the skin and freezing. And Lakota--
--was made of fire, now? Would she-- fire boiled water, sure, but a bucket of water extinguished fire, and he'd seen it rain buckets, no problem.
Samuel whistled to Lakota and set off toward the dark smudge, hoping it was a stand of trees-- trees meant shelter, and they meant water, and a landmark, if someone was looking for him. He couldn't say how long it took him to reach, but when he did, his head injury was like two spikes in his brain, and the fire horse's flames were pallid in the stormy light.
Keleri
Part Three:
Unfortunately, the trees hadn’t proven to contain much of interest. Pretty much just an ordinary forest. But by now his feet felt like they were liable to fall off, and he was committed to the idea of not moving again for the rest of the night. So, like it or not, this was where he’d be camping.
Man, why’d he have to get dropped into the middle of nowhere?
Sam settled back against the trunk of a tree, resting his head against the bark, head throbbing. He should’ve set to work building a shelter of some sort, especially with that storm rolling in. Problem was that he didn’t have much experience in that sort of thing. At least he had Lakota for warmth. The Ponyta had settled next to him, flames flickering gently in the darkening clearing.
The novelty of finding himself in the Pokémon world was starting to wear off, and the reality of the situation was starting to dawn on him. He was in the middle of the wilderness, who knows how far from civilization. Would anyone ever find him? Did trainers come this way? Lakota’s flames would probably be easy to spot…
Sam rubbed his temples. He needed a plan. He couldn’t just go wandering through the woods aimlessly. But that could wait until morning. For now, he just desperately wanted rest.
A twig snapped, and Sam jolted.
“Who’s there?” he called out.
No response. Well, it wasn’t like anyone sneaking up on him would just announce themselves, would they?
“Lakota, you wanna… check it out?”
The Ponyta gave him a look like he very much did not.
“Well, I can’t go look for myself, I need your fire to see,” Sam said flatly.
Lakota snorted his disapproval, but he got on his hooves all the same. Sam took a deep breath and stood up, pain flaring up in his head when he did. He gripped Lakota’s shoulder to steady himself and took a few uneasy steps forward. His eyes scanned the surrounding, squinting through the flickering firelight. Then movement caught his eye close to the forest floor, and he realized he was searching too high. Slowly, he looked down to see a small, fluffy figure staring up at him, beady eyes glittering in the semidarkness. Then Lakota stepped forward and the firelight revealed… a very small, very cute bear with a moon on its head.
Sam breathed a sigh of relief. “Oh, it’s just a little guy. What’re you doing wandering around in the dark by yourself, huh?”
The Teddiursa just tilted its head at him. Sam smiled and gestured back toward the clearing where he’d been resting. “Want to join us?”
The Teddiursa gazed at him curiously but then plodded along in that direction. Sam could hardly believe his luck—a second Pokémon! Maybe things wouldn’t go so badly here after all.
Then a heavy crash deeper in the woods and a roar of anger went and shattered Sam’s optimism to pieces. Something glinted menacingly between the trees, and he barely had the good sense to duck just in time for a searing orange beam to shoot over his head, burning clean through the tree trunk behind him with a high-pitched whine. Sam knelt there, hands clasped over his head, eyes screwed shut, listening to the sounds of splintering wood and the groaning of branches as the tree collapsed to the ground with a thud that knocked him into the air for a split second.
When he finally opened his eyes, he saw what had fired the Hyper Beam—an Ursaring, glaring at him through the trees, face contorted with rage. He threw a frantic glance back at the Teddiursa standing innocently behind him, tilting its head quizzically, and he couldn’t help feeling like an idiot.
Mama Ursaring charged. A jolt of icy terror shot through Sam. God, he didn’t have a chance in hell at running away in his condition. And that thing would catch him either way. What on earth was he supposed to do?
And then there was Lakota, giving Sam a look like he was a moron while he jerked his head over his shoulder. Oh. Why hadn’t Sam thought of that? Of course, he immediately realized why—namely the fact that his would-be mount was covered in fire. But then… from what he knew, the flames wouldn’t hurt, right?
Ursaring was bearing down on him, moving way faster than anything that big had any right to. He really didn’t have much of a choice. Sam threw a leg over Lakota’s back, hurled his arms around his neck, and yelled, “Run for it!”
Alright, so maybe clinging onto a Ponyta’s neck for dear life while a raging bear fired laser beams at him wasn’t how Sam imagined he’d be spending his first day in the Pokémon world.
Chibi Pika
Part Four:
Sam threw a leg over Lakota’s back, hurled his arms around his neck, and yelled, “Run for it!”
Alright, so maybe clinging onto a Ponyta’s neck for dear life while a raging bear fired laser beams at him wasn’t how Sam imagined he’d be spending his first day in the Pokémon world.
His fifth day in the Pokemon world? Absolutely! The fourth or third day, maybe. But the first day was straight- wait, what was that burning smell? Sam looked down and saw that his shirt sleeves had caught on fire from Lakota’s fiery mane!
“Aaaraaagh!” he yelled, and dismounted from Lakota as quickly as he’d gotten onto him, then ineffectually slapped at the fire consuming his shirt for a moment before frantically shucking it off, though not before his forearms had become badly burnt.
“Why did you think that was a good idea!?” Lakota shouted, nervously looking back and forth between Sam and the charging Bewear rapidly approaching their position.
Sam moaned and slowly got to his feet. “In my head-canon, the fire on Ponyta’s back only burns if they want it to!”
The Bewear caught up to them, thrusting her laser pointer towards Sam. “What are you going to do, human? If you don’t look at me, you won’t be able to dodge my savage fists! But if you do look at me, I’ll blind you with this laser pointer!” she declared, clicking it on and off.
“Okay, okay, I surrender! You can hug me!” Sam cried, throwing up his arms in defeat.
“Yaaaaaaaay hug time!” the Bewear said, entirely too cheerfully, then ran forward and wrapped Sam up into a crushing embrace. After several agonizing seconds, she finally loosened her grip and let him collapse to the ground. “There! Now that wasn’t so bad, was it?”
“Ribs… crushed… pain… immense...” Sam gasped.
The Bewear pondered this for a moment. “You know what I bet would make you feel better? Another hug!” she said with glee, and moved to scoop Sam up into her arms again.
Lakota moved to interpose himself between the two, and spat an ember at her. “No! No more hugs!”
After flinching away from the fire, the Bewear growled and spat at Lakota. “You seem really grumpy, mister! Maybe you need a hug as well!”
“Do you really wanna do that after seeing what happened to him when he wrapped his arms around me?”
The Bewear reluctantly had to admit he might’ve had a point there. “...I just remembered some other dear friends in more pressing need of hugs. Bye-bye for now!” she announced, then slunk away, looking for fresh victims.
Lakota watched her with both eyes until she was a safe distance away, then turned back to Sam. “Are your ribs really broken?” he asked.
Sam tried to push himself back up, then groaned and lowered himself back to the ground. “It sure feels that way!”
“Okay. What about your burnt arms? Do they hurt?”
“Extremely!”
The Ponyta nodded. “Good! That means the nerves are still intact!”
But Sam didn’t seem too heartened by this news. “Erghhhh… I think I need to go to a hospital...”
“A hospital? What’s that?” Lakota asked.
“It’s a place where humans go to receive medical treatment,” Sam said.
“Oh, I guess that must be another one of those things that only exist in your weird Pokemon-free world. We only have Pokemon centers here!”
“What!? I mean, Nani!? Where do people- I mean, humans go when they get hurt?”
Lakota looked at Sam solemnly. “To the graveyard, of course!”
“NANI!?”
“Ha ha, just kidding!” Lakota said, snorting small gusts of flame out of her nostrils. “Really got you there, didn’t I?”
“Okay, so where do-”
“Everyone knows that graveyards are only for Pokemon, silly!”
Sam sighed. “Look, just… take me to the nearest Pokecenter. I’ll figure something out...”
After some discussion as to the logistics of travel, the two hit upon a solution of Lakota dragging along a tarp Sam rested on top of, and soon reached the nearest Pokecenter. The doors swooshed open automatically, allowing the pair to enter with little difficulty. “He needs to see a doctor! His ribs are all crushed and his arms are burnt!” Lakota told the receptionist.
The receptionist squinted at Sam through her glasses. “We only treat Pokemon here,” she said, speaking in a bored seen-it-all-before tone.
“I am a Pokemon!” Sam wheezed from the floor. “I’m a Ditto who turned into a human, and can’t turn back because my transform move got disabled by a Drowzee!”
“If you’re really a Ditto, why do your eyes look normal instead of tiny and beady?”
Seriously? That was only a characteristic of one particular Ditto in the anime! That wasn’t even head-canon, that was actual canon! “Uh, that’s because I transformed into a human who had really huge, anime-style eyes. By comparison to him, my eyes are tiny and beady!” he said.
“Okay… well, if you really are a Ditto, then the easiest way to treat you would be to stick you in a pokeball and use the healing machine,” the receptionist said, pulling a plain pokeball out of a cabinet beside her.
“That wouldn’t work. I’ve already been caught by one but the ball’s lost,” Sam said, praying that the mechanics of pokeballs in this world made that a reasonable excuse.
The receptionist sighed. “Very well, then. Drag him into room five down that hallway to your left. I’ll send in a nurse to see him shortly.”
After a tedious fifteen-minute wait Sam spent staring up at the tiled ceiling trying to breathe as little as possible and which Lakota spent idly glancing at posters warning about the five signs of early-stage Pokerus and how winners didn’t use X-items, a nurse stepped into the room. “You look like you’ve got a nice, healthy flame there!” he said. “What seems to be the problem today?”
“It’s not with me; it’s with him,” Lakota said, waving a hoof at Sam. “Transformed Ditto, broken ribs, burned arms,” he added quickly.
“Mmm, I see. Well, we’ll get that fixed up quick! Hang tight!” The nurse opened up some cabinets and slowly searched through them, muttering to himself. “Okay, so we’ll want one burn heal, and we’ll also get, let’s see… sternum heal, clavicle heal, tibia heal, elbow heal, aha! Rib heal!” After promptly spraying the potions onto Sam’s arms and chest, he stood back and grinned as the injuries miraculously disappeared.
Sam tried to hide his amazement, but couldn’t help but stare at his arms in shock as the burns faded away. Catching the nurse looking at his expression, he said, “Wow, modern medicine really is something, huh?”
“Those potions have existed for hundreds of years,” the nurse replied, appearing mildly bemused.
“Uh, right, I mean, it’s amazing how modern medicine’s able to integrate the most effective treatments of the past with today’s technology,” Sam said.
Now the nurse was glaring at him. “We’re right in the middle of the greatest scandal in medical history after the discoveries that most of the treatments we’ve kept from the past have proven to be ineffective, especially when combined with modern technology! Burn-heal and rib-heal are pretty much the only ones unaffected! Don’t you- oh, but I guess a Ditto wouldn’t necessarily keep up with the news,” he said.
“Yeah, that’s me, totally unconcerned with reading the news like any other Ditto!” Sam uttered a forced laugh.
“Oh, about that, I’m assuming you didn’t just transform back because your transform move was disabled. Would you like me to use a disable-heal on you?”
“Uh, no need for that! Really appreciate what you did for me, but we should probably be going now,” Sam said, heading for the exit. “Come on, Lakota!”
The two were just about to step outside the Pokecenter when Sam felt thick fingers wrap around his shoulder. He turned to see a large Machamp frowning at him next to the receptionist. “Excuse me, but you two have a bill to settle,” she said. “That’ll be twenty-thousand pokedollars, please.”
“Twenty thousand! For just those two potions!” Sam had no idea how much that really was.
“Oh, whoops, you’re right. That should actually be two-hundred thousand pokedollars,” the receptionist said.
“Uh, right, let me just, uh, get out my wallet here...” Sam said. He hastily took a one-dollar bill out of his wallet, took out a black sharpie, crossed out the “1” and replaced it with a “200,000”, then added a carrot and the word “POKE” before the “DOLLAR” at the bottom. “Here you go!”
The receptionist frowned. “What’s with the weird floating eyeball pyramid on the back of this?” she asked.
“Ummm… Fnord, fnord, Poke-illuminati, fnord?”
“Well… I suppose it does say it’s legal tender for all debts, public and private, so I’ll accept- Hey, wait a minute! If this is real Ditto money, then why does this ‘Washington’ character’s eyeballs look normal instead of all tiny and beady? And don’t tell me he was also transformed into someone with giant anime-style eyes, because I happen to know for a fact that anime didn’t exist at the time anyone still trusted in Arceus The Great Betrayer!” she said, tapping the “IN GOD WE TRUST” line.
“Ummmm… uhhhhh...” Sam stammered, sweat starting to pour down his face as the Machamp tightened her grip on his shoulder, “Washington was famous among Ditto for being able to make his eyeballs appear normal, which was the whole reason he got to appear on our currency in the first place!”
Walrein
Part Five:
“That still doesn’t explain why you gave me this crap!” The Machamp shook the conspicuous-looking Pokedollar in Sam’s face. “You seriously think I’m gonna take this money? I have a business to run, y’know, so who in their right mind is gonna take a phoney bill?”
“You did, apparently,” Sam snapped back without meaning to. Crap, no! He had to salvage his faux pas somehow! “U-um, that is to say, you thought you did, but you actually didn’t, and that’s real this time. G-good on you for being cautious.”
Now he’d done it. He really stuck his foot in it this time.
He expected some sort of payback from the Machamp, maybe even a quadruple-layered knuckle sandwich, but to his relief, she released her grip on his shoulder and let out a hearty laugh. It sounded genuine at first. Maybe she remembered some joke about how many Machamp it took to change a lightbulb. Then she kept laughing to the point she sounded like a broken wind up doll. She stopped, only to rummage through the junk in her shop until she found a burning oil lantern, which she held the Pokedollar over.
“U-um,” Sam said, dripping bucket-loads of sweat. “What are you doing?”
“Take a guess,” she said with a grin.
“B-but you’ll be burning your hard earned cash!”
“So what? I have nuthin’ to worry about; I’ve got buttloads more I can sell that can cover the costs. You’ve still got your ruby, so why’d you care? Unless....”
She brought the dollar closer to the burner to the point the tip of it touched the flame. Suddenly, the dollar changed back into its original form, and the Ditto that emerged from it jumped straight into the Machamp’s face, covering her head in purple slime. The Ditto plopped onto the floor and waddled past Sam out of the shop. He didn’t even watch him go. His whole plan just went out the window. Great.
The Machamp stared at Sam like an angry prune.
“Um,” Sam said, deflated, “is there a, er, no returns polic--”
Punch.
***
Sam left the shop with a broken nose and no ruby to his name. He met the Ditto back in the plaza, who jiggled furiously at him.
“Nice, man, you didn’t even stop her when she was tryin’ to sizzle me! Now look!” Something wiggled at the bottom of the DItto. “She burnt one of my freakin’ toes off!”
“Um, I don’t see the difference?” And did Ditto even have feet anyway?
“Ugh, whatevs. You know what you are, Sam?” The Ditto glanced at something far off and started transforming into something again. He turned purple, then white upon turning into a firm mushroom with a very pronounced, reddened tip.
NebulaDreams
Part Six:
"Oh, I get it," Sam said. "Yeah, real mature. Hope you're proud of that one."
Turning his back on the ditto, Sam looked out at Viridian Forest, what had seemed like such a magical place, brimming with wonder and adventure, and which had actually turned out to be full of disappointment, hearbreak, and extremely large bees. "It's not fair," he muttered. "The pokémon world was supposed to be cool! I was going to catch all the best pokémon, beat all the gym leaders, and save the region from Team Rocket. Just like I always did in the games!"
"Yup. Well. Turns out Mew's a prankster like that," Pikachu said. He was stil sitting over on the stump, reading Sam's manga. "Did the guy who drew this really think blastoise can fly around with their cannons? Tch. I guess we know why he went into art instead of engineering."
"And you, Pikachu! You were supposed to be my best friend ever! And we were going to be the best there ever was!"
"I'm pretty sure I'm supposed to say something about not being able to buy your friends or be careful what you wish for, but I honestly don't care if you learn anything here," Pikachu said, flipping the page. "Pi-pika pika, or something."
Grinding his teeth, Sam turned around, only to find that the ditto had taken advantage of his distraction and oozed off somewhere. Crawling in the grass near where it had been was yet another weedle, which paused and aimed its stinger at Sam, hissing.
"Argh! Come on!" Sam backed off, hands raised in surrender, and after a second the weedle went back to crawling. "How am I supposed to become a pokémon master if all the pokémon hate me?"
"Pika pikachu. Sorry, kid, but 'Sam' just isn't a protagonist kind of name. This one was never going to go well for you. Have you considered Team Rocket instead? As long as you're okay with everybody calling you 'grunt,' I hear the money's not bad."
"I'm not going to join the bad guys just because all the pokémon here are the worst," Sam said. It was obvious this whole 'pokémon journey' thing wasn't working out, but what now? What else was there in the pokémon world? Sam stared off into the trees. "No... I'm gonna... I'm gonna..."
Pikachu actually looked up from the manga at that. "Pika pi-ka! Find Mew? Demand she return you to your own world? Release me from my contractual obligation to make dumb animal noises so I conform to the cute sidekick image?"
"What? No, of course not. I've been out of work for months now, my roommate's awful, and I have student loans, I'm not going back." Sam scowled, deep in thought.
"Look, kid, if you're unemployable in your world, this one isn't going to be much kinder to you. And like you said, the bees here are way bigger. Kachu."
"No, no, no." It dawned on Sam slowly, and with the realization came a slow, manic smile. "I'm the worst trainer ever! Pokémon hate me!"
"I'd say I'm more indifferent, personally."
"I could be the best pokémon control officer ever. Think about it! Combee infestation? Rampaging tauros? Scorbunny destroying your garden? All I have to do is show up, and they'll stop whatever they're doing and come rushing out to attack me! All I need then is for my trusty partner to subdue them until I can catch them and take them away. What do you say to that, Pikachu? Pretty solid plan, isn't it?"
Pikachu sighed and closed the manga, then held it up in one paw. "Do you have the next one of these?"
"Uh, I think so. It's the one where Team Rocket makes Thu-Fi-Zer and we find out 'Rocket' stands for something really stupid."
"Great." Pikachu heaved himself to his feet with a sigh. "Let's get to Pewter City, at least. Maybe we can grab some ketchup and discuss your options then."
"I like the sound of that," Sam said, still grinning.
"Don't get your hopes up just yet," Pikachu said. A running jump took him to Sam's shoulder, where he could rummage another volume out of Sam's backpack. "You're lucky you decided to bring these with you," Pikachu said, leaning back against Sam's neck with the manga open in front of him, flipping through chapters while the worst trainer ever made his way steadily north.
Negrek
