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Pokémon Morphic Shorts

Morphic Bingo
  • Dragonfree

    Moderator
    Staff
    Location
    Iceland
    Pronouns
    she/her/hers
    Partners
    1. butterfree
    2. mightyena
    3. charizard
    4. scyther-mia
    5. vulpix
    6. slugma
    Back when the anniversary event was going on, Negrek gave me a bingo card. I went on to fall asleep as I was going to start work on the last bingo fill, resulting in me missing the deadline. From there, the snippets I had written kind of languished. Tonight, I finally went and finished the final one, so I can finally post them, just for fun.

    These are spun off from my 2007 fanfic Morphic, not currently on TR (but soon, a rewrite is coming), and feature its characters. The main character in all of these is Dave, who you may also recognize from the Blacklight RP. I don't know how much sense they make or how much you'd get out of them without the context of the fic, but by all means try it for kicks if you feel like it.

    Although I wrote these in a different order (3-1-2), I'm going to put them in chronological order here because narratively they probably work better read in that order.



    The Biggest Headline​

    ‘THEY’RE ALIVE’: DESTRUCTION OF HYBRID FETUSES RULED ILLEGAL

    Dave shouldn’t have even picked up the newspaper. On the front page, beneath the headline, his own face stared towards the off-screen judge in silent, disbelieving outrage. Brian looked like he was about to burst into fucking tears. Of course he did.

    He tossed the paper aside and sat down at the kitchen table, cracking open a beer. He sipped it while staring out the window, knuckles white on the edge of the table.

    “It’s eight in the goddamn morning, Dave.”

    He looked up. Jane was not looking at him, preparing her elaborately healthy breakfast with stiff, angry motions.

    “Well, apparently soon it’ll be six in the goddamn morning, if we’re lucky and the thing acts like a normal baby. Enjoy it while it lasts.”

    Her bowl clattered on the counter. “I swear to God, if you’re going to sit there drinking it off while I keep this thing you created alive—”

    “I’m—” Fuck. He squeezed his eyes shut, massaged his eyelids. “Look, we’ll figure it out. I don’t fucking like this any more than you do.”

    She stood there, rigid, lips pressed together. “Dave. I want you to swear to me that you won’t dump this all on me. Or you can do it alone.”

    He took a deep breath through his nose. What was ‘this’ even going to be? Changing diapers? Putting out literal fucking fires?

    He didn’t want any of it, but he was about one goddamn fight away from being stuck with all of it.

    “Yeah, of course,” he said, without looking at her, and hoped to every nonexistent god that it’d be enough.



    Studies Done on the Morphs​

    Dave peered at the X-rays of Mia’s arms. There it was – the unmistakable bright metal edge along her ulna, brighter towards the elbow. Fuck yes.

    “You know what this means?” he said, grinning at her. “Your scythes are growing.”

    Mia wasn’t often anything that could be described as excited, but she did seem kind of excited about getting scythes. Or at least interested. Looking intensely focused, eyes open and unblinking, full attention devoted to learning more. She reached up for the X-ray and he handed it to her.

    “Metal’s dense and absorbs the radiation, so it shows up brighter in the picture than the bone, which is brighter than the soft tissue. Grant can probably tell you more if you want.” In his chair, Grant raised a skeptical eyebrow. He’d agreed to do the imaging, never complained per se, but he’d always seemed kind of creeped out by Mia. Not like Dave couldn’t get why, but still. Fuck Grant.

    Mia was examining the X-ray closely, looking between it and her arm as she rotated it slowly. “Those two bones cross over each other when you twist it,” he said. “That’s how your arm works.”

    She nodded without looking up. “What next?”

    “For the study? Well, we’ll be continuing to image your arm regularly, and comparing the X-rays to the scythe growth in actual Scyther, and the timeline of how it plays out. If the genes we put in you work like we think, we should see them growing out through your skin eventually. Probably a pretty straight edge in your case.”

    “Why?”

    “Well, Scyther are pretty weird, but they’re fundamentally tetrapods. Common ancestor. You know the green bit on the scythe? That’s basically just a weird forearm. The scythe grows out of their ulna, too, same way as yours. Only because they’ve been evolving into this specialized niche for millions of years, over time the other bone, the radius, just fused with the ulna.” He pointed it out on the X-ray. “Whole hand shrank and disappeared. And the fused bone grew into that narrow curved shape because it makes for a stronger blade. Sometimes you get mutant Scyther hatching with little hands at the end of scythe, the way sometimes you get people with tails, because all the genes for that are technically still there.”

    Mia seemed fascinated, by which he meant she cocked her head, looking intently at the hand bones on the X-ray.

    “What if you’re wrong about the genes?”

    “Then you get something like Peter’s wings. The hypothesis was he’d grow full-fledged extra limbs, but obviously that didn’t work out. We’ve been studying him too, how and why they grew that way. Made some progress understanding what we were missing, too. Published a paper on it last year.”

    “Are there going to be papers on me?”

    “There are already papers about you. The growth of the exoskeleton on your legs was one, back when you were tiny. Fascinating stuff.”

    Mia frowned, looking down at her feet below the hospital gown. “It’s stupid that all this science is only happening with us, because you weren’t allowed to abort us.”

    “Yeah, well.” Dave winced. “People aren’t exactly going to create more of you just for research purposes.”

    “Why not?”

    Talking to Mia was still reliably an adventure. “Well, I mean, some of you already have a pretty hard time just living your lives. Look at Gabriel, or Katherine. And all things considered they’re lucky. I mean, you saw what happened with Peter’s wings. Imagine that’s not little extra limbs he doesn’t need anyway, it’s his actual hands. Hell, you could’ve turned out not to have any fucking hands. Good luck going through life with just scythe-arms. Deliberately creating a kid with significant odds of just constantly suffering, for research? Not great, by the standards of most people and ethics committees.”

    Mia contemplated that. For all he knew she did think scythe-arms with no hands sounded great.

    “What if you created them to not have any higher brain functions? Then it’s just like regular animal experimentation.”

    Jesus, Mia. “Well, one, what the fuck, two, it’s not that easy, and three, at that point why are you using humans to begin with.”

    Over in his chair, Grant was staring at them. Yeah, okay, maybe this was more than he’d signed on for. “Hey, uh, you want some hotdogs? We can stop by the stand on the way home.”

    “That would be nice,” Mia said.

    Dave threw Grant an utterly unapologetic goodbye salute as they left.



    Morphic-Verse Media​

    Jean leaned over Dave’s shoulder from behind the sofa, draping her arms over him. “Dad? Can I watch Pokémon Colosseum? My classmates say it’s so cool!”

    He glanced up from his laptop at the muted TV. It was still on the news channel from earlier, discussing some inane political scandal invented for clicks. “I guess. What channel is it on?”

    “OBS! It’s starting now.”

    Sure, why not. He picked up the remote and switched over.

    “It’s still on mute!” Jean complained, climbing over the back of the sofa and trying to grab the remote off him.

    “Yeah, because it’s still on the fucking commercials. I’ll turn it on when the show starts.”

    Jean pouted, glancing longingly at the remote as he held it out of her reach, but was quickly distracted by the screen and whatever action movie it was advertising. Some CG legendary Pokémon (Rayquaza?) fired a Hyper Beam into a building, shattering windows, sending it collapsing in an artfully-rendered physics simulation, before it cut to a flying superhero shooting lightning from his hands as his cape fluttered behind him.

    “I wanna see that movie! It looks cool.”

    Dave sighed. “Are you sure this isn’t literally the exact same movie as the one we saw, what, a month ago?”

    She crossed her arms. “That one was about Auric Arrow. And it was two months ago. We haven’t gone to the movies in ages.”

    “What’s the difference?”

    Jean made a frustrated noise of discontent, butting his shoulder with her head. “Auric Arrow is a Lucario who was experimented on to make him super smart! You weren’t watching!”

    Dave smirked. “What, and this one isn’t?”

    No, it was a human!” He grinned at her frustration, and she scowled as she caught on. “Daaaaad, stop pretending you don’t know! That’s mean!” He got a faceful of fluffy tails as she turned her back on him.

    “Fine, we can go see your stupid superhero movie. Later. Not now.” At least it’d be a good excuse to turn his brain off and eat some popcorn.

    Of course we’re not seeing it now, I want to watch Colosseum,” she mumbled, without turning around.

    Dave glanced back up at the TV. The commercial was fading to black at last. He pointed the remote and unmuted it. The rating badge in the corner said 14-LV. Was that stretching it? Eh, well, if her classmates could handle it, whatever. “Hey, show’s starting.”

    Jean reluctantly turned back to the TV. The recap showed an edgy young hero in a blue duster triumphantly speeding away from an exploding building on a hovercycle, an Espeon and Umbreon sitting in the sidecar beside him. Jean was already mesmerized.

    By the time of the first commercial break, the protagonist was making his way around an impressively seedy desert town with his inevitable love interest and their predictable sexual tension. Jean was so engrossed by the gritty aesthetic and occasional ‘shit’ and slightly bloodier fights than in her usual fare that he entertained the thought she’d entirely forgotten about earlier already, but when he muted the TV again she glared at him and edged further away on the sofa.

    Dave took a deep breath. “Hey. Sweetie.”

    She looked warily back at him.

    “We’ll go see your movie. Maybe next weekend.”

    “It’s not stupid,” she said firmly.

    It really was, though. “Look, just because a grown-up thinks a movie is stupid doesn’t mean you have to think so. I’m sure you think half the shit I watch is pretty dumb.”

    “Like when you watch old guys talk about politics for ages. That’s dumb.” She actually smiled a little.

    “See? You’re a kid, you’re allowed to want to just watch some fucking superheroes blow shit up.” He hadn’t been allowed to read superhero comics when he was little – his parents had disapproved of anything where humans had supernatural powers because something something witchcraft playing God – but he’d sure fucking wanted to.

    “But you have to come with me to the movies.”

    He sighed. “Yeah, I’ll come with you.”

    Jean nodded, grinning. “If you want to go see a movie with old guys talking about politics I’ll come with you too! So long as I get popcorn.”

    Dave chuckled. “Sounds like a plan.”

    The show was starting again. He unmuted the TV, and Jean moved back closer to him on the sofa, laying her head on his shoulder, and he ruffled her hair absent-mindedly.

    The show got pretty dark towards the end. A Pokémon went berserk and skewered another, and Jean jumped, clutching his arm. He considered turning it off, but she was still watching, wide-eyed, and by this point he kind of wanted to know where they were going with it. She’d just say if she didn’t want to watch anymore, right? It had to be fine.

    -------

    He woke up to hands shaking him awake. Sleepily, he squinted into the darkness to find Jean standing by his bed in her pajamas, clutching her Teddiursa plush. Dave glanced at the alarm clock on the bedside table; it was 2:43 AM.

    “What?” he mumbled.

    “I had a bad dream,” she sniffled.

    Oh. Shit. “Because of the show?” She nodded guiltily. He rubbed at his face. Fuck. How was he supposed to know? Apparently her classmates had been fine. Why was being a parent so difficult?

    “Look, it’s okay. They can’t do any of that in real life.”

    “Can I sleep in your bed?”

    She hadn’t asked that in ages. At what age were they supposed to stop that? Not about to fucking tell her to wait while he Googled it. “Sure, Jean, just get on the other side.”

    He closed his eyes and massaged his eyelids while she climbed over him and got under the covers.

    “Does this mean I can’t watch the show anymore?” she said in a small voice.

    He made a tired noise. “I mean. Do you want to?” He waited a second while she didn’t answer. “And then I mean, do you want to because you want to, not because your fucking classmates think you should.”

    “I don’t know,” she said, sniffling again.

    “Look, if it’s giving you nightmares now, maybe you can just watch it a few years from now, if you’re still interested.” Who knew if she would be. Jean’s interests shifted so fast he couldn’t keep up.

    There was a pause. “But they’re watching it.”

    “Yeah, well, they’re not you. If they give you shit, just tell them your dad said it’s a really fucking stupid show.”

    She sniffled again. “Okay. Thanks, Dad.”

    He heard the comforter rustling again as she turned around. Did that go okay? No real way to tell. Definitely not at three in the fucking morning.

    “Good night,” he mumbled.

    “Good night, Dad.” Well, she sounded a bit better.

    With a sigh, Dave buried his face back in his pillow and tried to sleep.
     
    Dave and Jean Discuss Swearing
  • Dragonfree

    Moderator
    Staff
    Location
    Iceland
    Pronouns
    she/her/hers
    Partners
    1. butterfree
    2. mightyena
    3. charizard
    4. scyther-mia
    5. vulpix
    6. slugma
    Time for a new Morphic short! With that, I figured I'd repurpose this thread to contain Morphic shorts generally, rather than create a new thread for each one; it seems to make more sense to me.

    It must have been like… four or five years since I picked up and read Morphic? I know it was a while ago at least, near the start of my ill-fated life-crippling pokemon addiction. I don’t remember too much of the actual events, but a lot of the characters still stick out in my mind; particularly Mia, Dave, and Jean. Which I guess works out, since the three snippets here focus primarily on those three characters.
    Awww, I'm touched to hear that! So glad you enjoyed it and the progression between the shorts :veelove:

    Okay so I really enjoyed this. The snippets format has always been a personal favorite. They're easy to read and offer a great challenge for the writer and a great glimpse for the reader. Now I want to read Morphic lol.
    <3 Thank you, glad you enjoyed!

    Also quick question semi related but are the Gym Leaders canon to the Morphicverse? I should read Morphic to find out lol
    Unfortunately, no Pokémon canon is canon to the Morphicverse, other than the existence of Pokémon; characters from the games and anime are also fictional characters in that universe (their in-universe media isn't exactly like ours, but has some kind of analogue to pretty much any Pokémon canon, as here with the Pokémon Colosseum TV show). So in RPs, Dave will see gym leaders and mayyybe recognize them as characters from some show.

    Content notes: This short contains some strong language and loosely discusses bullying and discrimination.


    Dave and Jean Discuss Swearing

    It wasn’t exactly a surprise when Dave got a call from the principal’s office about Jean using inappropriate language at school. He’d generally tried to watch his language around the kids while they were small, but you couldn’t exactly just keep that up 24/7 forever, at least not with a few beers in you. He would have hoped she’d have the sense not to break out four-letter words in class, but who was he kidding; Jean had many great qualities but sensitivity to context and appropriate tone was not among them.

    The lecture was the usual sort but mercifully brief. Jean looked sheepish and embarrassed the whole time they were there. Back in the car, she put on her seatbelt with her tails curled around herself, ears drooping, and stared at the dashboard.

    He raised an eyebrow at her. “So what exactly was it you said?”

    She stuck her tongue out, folding her arms. “Marie said her parents told her I was a lab-grown freak so I said to… to eff them.”

    He let out a brief snort. Marie, Marie… Pritchett? He’d seen them around a couple times, he was pretty sure. All polite smiles until they were behind closed doors, of course. Pricks.

    She looked at him, uncertain. “They all acted like it was really bad. But you say that all the time.”

    He opened his mouth. What he wanted to tell her was that society had arbitrary rotating taboos on what words would have grandmas clutching their pearls at any given time, and sometimes you just fucking played along, no matter how asinine, because breaking taboos had social consequences, and sometimes that was well worth it and sometimes it wasn’t.

    On the other hand, he had a suspicion that telling Jean that would be a disaster. Free license to offend whomever she felt like, according to her judgment of the situation, when half the population would be looking for any excuse to punish or marginalize her, and he’d so far tried his best not to force her to understand all the thoroughly depressing ways in which the world was out to get her? Again, she had many qualities but sensitivity to context was not among them.

    “It’s a grown-up word,” he said instead. “So you can only say it when you’re grown up. I’m allowed, but you can’t until you get older. That’s the rules.”

    She blinked, brow furrowing. “So you couldn’t say it either when you were a kid?”

    He snorted. “Definitely not. Your grandparents would’ve killed me.”

    She considered that. “When can you say it?”

    “Uh, when you’re… sixteen.”

    “Real sixteen or when it’s like I’m sixteen?”

    “Let’s say real sixteen for safety, all right?” He imagined her never swearing ever again until her sixteenth birthday and then immediately releasing the floodgates. Surely she would figure out what was really going on here before that point. Surely. (If not, at least, zero swearing was probably a good idea.)

    Jean loosely kicked the underside of the dashboard as she thought about it, still looking dissatisfied.

    “Tell you what,” he said. “If you promise not to say grown-up words until you’re older, we can go get ice cream. How does that sound?”

    She perked up, ears twitching. “Ooh. Yeah! Can we go to the place with all the candy?”

    Instant eager, hopeful grin. Bless her and her easily shifted moods. He smiled back at her. “Yeah. Let’s do that. I’ll get you an extra spoon of candy.”

    He started the car. Jean was a little more at ease now, ears perked, tails lashing curiously.

    “Is… can I say it if I’m asking you about the word?” she asked after a minute.

    “Sure.”

    “Is ‘shit’ a grown-up word?”

    “Yeah, better stay clear of that one for now.”

    “What about ‘poop’?”

    He snort-laughed. “No, that one’s kind of the opposite.”

    “But they mean the same thing, right?”

    “Welcome to language. Sometimes you’ve got two words and they mean the same thing but people think one is rude and the other one isn’t.”

    Jean nodded sagely. For a little while she was silent, tilting her head as she looked out the windshield, tails idly curling and uncurling. “What should I say if the kids call me names?” she asked at last.

    Dave took a long breath. “You know what, anyone who calls you names isn’t worth your time. Just roll your eyes and ignore them. If they’re choosing to be pricks, that’s their problem.”

    Jean curled her tails tighter, looking out the side window. “But they’re being mean. It’s not fair if they just get to keep being as mean as they want.”

    He exhaled through his nose. Of course it fucking wasn’t. The world was never going to be fair to them. If she talked back they’d just find an excuse to punish her instead of them, because of who she was, and there was basically fuck-all to be done about that.

    “Well, Jean,” he said, “one day you’re going to be able to breathe fire and they aren’t, so joke’s on them.”

    The corner of her mouth tugged upward, then turned into a little giggle. “Maybe when I can do that I can just torch anyone who’s mean. Like Sarah Hooter with the Rockets! Whoosh!”

    She swept her hand for emphasis. He raised his eyebrows. “Sure. Why not.”

    For the rest of the ride she eagerly speculated on powers she might have in the future and exactly how she would use them to fight crime as a hero of justice. He didn’t have the heart to tell her she would definitely not have the ability to curse anyone for a thousand years.

    Ice cream now, and later he could call and give the school a hard time about the fucking Pritchetts.
     
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