“….aaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-”
CRASH!
I landed in a face-down belly flop. It hurt, but somehow I don’t think I was injured. Still took a minute to get up.
“Where…?”
I must have slept through the deadline… I was back in the warehouse, which seemed a lot bigger… because I was still half my human height. I was still a Sandslash.
“Terra?” I called out to the industrial void. “Terra, where are you?!”
“….aaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-”
CRASH!
I didn’t even feel a shake as the Torterra landed right behind me, but I did feel the gust of wind.
“Terra, are you OK?!” I asked, rushing to her side.
“I-I’m fine…” she muttered. “J-Just give me a minute…”
“Alright, but if you need anything, that medbay should- oof!”
Something had fallen and bounced off my head. It was the notebook. It landed open to a page with new text. Grumbling and rumbling my head, I read it.
Alternate forms:
- A jumper may switch between any form they took on a jump at will.
- A companion that possesses alt-forms may also switch them at will. It does not receive an alt-form unless explicitly imported into the world.
- Pets with alt-forms can only be changed by a jumper or companion with line of sight.
- Your partner has been given a human alt-form.
- You jump on in a week.
Alternate forms…? Was it saying I wasn’t stuck as a Sandslash? Hmm, it said “at will,” so…
A poof of white smoke that dissipated a moment later, and I was me again, as human as I was ten years ago in that damn cylinder.
“Whoa, Robert! How’d you do that?” Terra asked. Good, I could still understand Pokémon as a human.
“Apparently now I can switch between being human and Pokémon,” I said. I tested a few more times, poofing between back and forth between them. The smoke was tan when I turned into a Sandslash, but otherwise it was effortless. “The notebook says that you can turn into a human now too. You just have to will it so.”
“Me, a human?” Terra said. “I’ve never considered that before…”
“C’mon, it’s harmless,” I said, ending my flipping on human. “Besides, hugs are a lot easier when we’re both bipedal.”
Maybe that was enough, but there was a huge cloud of white smoke before my eyes, and what came out was… amazing.
She was not a small woman, easily having at least three-quarters of a foot on six-foot me, with earthy brown skin, and short dark brown hair with the tips died green. Her shoulders were wide, and her arms and legs had the toning you’d expected of someone that explored and fought the wild nearly every day for ten years. I assumed her torso was equally defined, as she was wearing a green T-shirt and knee-length tan dress, along with a gray sturdy jacket that I would later see had a tree logo on the back. Her green Aura ribbon, which she almost never took off, hung loosely around her neck.
“Holy shit, you’re beautiful,” I spurted out.
“You think so, Robert?” It was a little surprising exactly the same voice of Mother Earth came out, but I guess it probably shouldn’t have been. She tried out her limbs out a little. “I’m surprisingly comfortable like this. I think I can try out that hug now.” And then she hugged me; her grip was a bit tight, but my human body was pretty tough so it could take it.
I hugged her back. I love this woman so much.
“Master?”
We broke the hug and turned to see running towards us…
“Bolt! Cody! Anita!” I cried out. I crouched a big to hug Bolt as they came up. “I missed you guys!”
“Missed? We saw you just yesterday,” Bolt replied. “Or… I think it was yesterday, I had a bit of a heavy nap…”
“Oh, Bolt, we’ve got a lot to catch you up on.”
To say they were shocked when I turned into a Sandslash and showed that the human woman with me was Terra would be an understatement. Though they were delighted to learn that I could talk to them. It was weird the personalities you could learn when you understood their speech. Bolt was a bit of a goofball, Cody was a worrywort, and Anita was… well, she was still a little aloof even back then, but it was even clearer now when she spent more time perched on the high shelves than coming down and talking to everyone else.
The three Poké Balls we used turned out to be in a new bin labeled “2”. It also had the Treasure Bag, Wonder Map, and the 25 Reviver Seeds we had brought and everything else the Bag contained, along with the stuff we left behind in the warehouse before leaving. On the shelf next to it where seven uniquely-decorated instrument cases, each with a particular elemental motif to them; I checked later and they indeed contained the seven Treasures (which were not the Seven Treasures, funnily enough) we had managed to save. We brought out Shadow, Bitbit, and Maria, and released Manaphy from the stasis pod.
The entire day was spent telling tales and showing the Treasures to the others, as well as getting everyone used to both of my and Terra’s forms. Bolt was a bit disappointed he couldn’t become a human too. At some point, I put the Treasures and their new cases in the secure location I had set up before.
The next six days, though, were quite busy.
First order of business: food. The warehouse’s regenerating supply could barely keep up with just five of us. Now there were nine. Manaphy still got by on Blue Gummis, of which we packed plenty and he had discipline enough not to gorge, though we’d have to start weaning him off those at some point before the supply inevitably ran out. Bitbit also seemed to do just find snacking on electricity. Thankfully for the other six Pokémon, Oran Berries last Pokémon most of the day when they’re not used for emergency healing, especially since these were PMD-brand Oran Berries that could heal ten times as much as in the original Pokémon setting. And of course, Apples were fine belly-stuffers. We disassembled a bit of the spare shelving to make a frame to hold a small garden, watered with the warehouse’s plumbing and lit with the sunlamp and some fiddling with the “selective region” functions of the heat/AC unit. As for the dirt, Earth Power to the rescue! Fun fact: we could still use our Pokémon moves as humans, though the power is far weaker doing so. Anyways, when Terra managed to make the ground of the warehouse erupt, we got soil out of it, and her presence – when she’s a Pokémon at least – seems to make it fertile enough for plants. Granted, most of my gardening knowledge is from Minecraft, but I took some of the berries and sowed them. They seem to be sprouting quickly, and will hopefully produce a crop before the end of the week. The apples are staying in the refrigerator until we have space enough for an apple tree.
…It’s only just now that I remembered that later Pokémon games had the berry-growing mechanic, which I usually ignored because there were better hold items than berries most of the time.
Getting Terra’s human education up to date was going to be uphill and definitely take longer than the week I had. First was learning to read English. Thankfully, the house’s DVD collection included lots of Sesame Street season boxsets and other PBS shows. God, I forgot how much I missed Between the Lions. Zaboomafoo also gave everyone a basic rundown of Earth animals, which were bound to be more likely going forward. Bitbit learned the fastest when he managed to get into my laptop and could just transfer the videos directly into his memory, though it was limited by the time it took to swap the discs out.
We ran a test with the Terran Cymbals. They don’t affect me or Terra while we’re human. It kind of sucks that of the seven Treasures we got, the only ones we got affect Terra, Manaphy, Maria, and Anita – and I can’t even play the lattermost one yet.
There was also some new installment. Attached to the wall next to the pole and plates was a roster board with two columns of eight slots each, with a small light next to each one. On the top was the word “TEAM ROSTER” flanked by two images of the orange almost-asterisk on my warehouse keychain. The left column was full of names, while the right was completely empty. Reading it over, it listed the names of my team members. I think I can guess what would happen if it was full.
Though this week, I established goals for the future:
- Get a proper garden set up in here, with a good variety of crops. As a side goal of this, learn how to garden.
- Learn how to play the violin. The other instruments too, that couldn’t hurt, but mostly the violin.
- Finish Terra’s human education.
- Get some way to connect to time that I could bring here so I could Dimensional Scream as I pleased.
- Get strong enough to punch the asshole voice’s theoretically-existing face to pieces.
I mean, with the ability to use Pokémon moves as a human – even though you’ll never catch me using my bare hands to Dig – not to mention shifting between a pretty dang fit human and a monster, I basically had superpowers. And if the voice was going to keep giving me powers, maybe if I’m lucky I’ll find a way to use them to kick his ass. Though the fact he keeps picking them for me means he definitely has the house advantage.
But he has to drop his guard eventually.
“….aaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-”
CRASH!
I landed in a face-down belly flop. It hurt, but somehow I don’t think I was injured. Still took a minute to get up.
“Where…?”
The cylinder again… Was the week already over…?
But wait… something felt different. I shifted to my Sandslash form. Being a burrowing species, we were more sensitive to vibrations as a form of sensory input. There was a sense of momentum here that was likely here all along but I never noticed it before.
“…This chamber is… going up…” I realized. “Like an elevator…”
“Ah, you finally noticed.”
I was on guard immediately. “You…!” I shouted, brandishing my claws.
“Look at you all posturing. It’s adorable, really. You did a decent job entertaining me last time. I mean, whoda thought you would spur the interconnected continents? And the whole bit with the improv garden right now was inspired.”
He didn’t even sound remotely threatened. Of course not. I wasn’t strong enough yet. So I lowered my arms and turned back to a human. “Fine, whatever. Look, I have some questions.”
“I guess you’ve earned them. Ask and I’ll see what I can answer.”
“First off, I assume you put that pole thing in my warehouse.”
“That is correct. A little something off the record. I thought your companions that didn’t have your built-in counter would appreciate a visual representation of the time left.”
“I see… Second, does that roster board imply what I think it does?”
“If you mean you can only have sixteen companions, yes. Pets, however, are unlimited. And before you ask, pets must be non-sentient unless stated otherwise.”
“Ah… Third, if this is an elevator, where is it going?”
“Up.”
“…Care to be more specific?”
“Up, through the layers of the multiverse. Remember that pole? It’s more accurate a model than you might think.”
“…So, you dumping me in other worlds is… throwing me out of a moving elevator car.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I have to stop it to make choices.”
“Yeah, great job on those so far,” I snarked.
“Thank you,” it replied earnestly. “It wasn’t easy. You have that Persim Band because of the seriously lack of 50-point items to compensate.”
“Yeah yeah, whatever,” I said, wanting to speak about any topic but this. “So why was the 52-mark on the scale next to it so large? What’s so important about the fifty-second world?”
“The fifty-third is what’s important, actually. You’ll know if you get there. Speaking of, enough questions. It’s time for new choices.”
“Now wait a moment!” I protested. “You said last time that I get to pick the jumps from here on out!”
“That I did,” said the voice. “So here’s your choice. I’m going to present icons for three places this elevator can reach in the next like five minutes. Pick the one you’ll spend the next ten years in.”
“And you’ll build my persona in that world like you did the others, I imagine?”
“Now you’re catching on. Here’s the icons.”
The three panels that circled the elevator walls spun around and lined themselves up in a vertical row in front of me. They glowed a moment and when it faded each one was showing a black and white image.
“…”
“Well?”
“These are Rorschach inkblot tests.”
“Imitations using the style, actually. With the icons as the base.”
“I fucking hate you.”
“Duly noted. Now choose. The multiverse is a little twisted and ones we don’t stop at may eventually pass by again, so don’t worry about missing out.”
Grumbling, I looked over my options carefully…
- The top one looked vaguely like an angry circle.
- The middle one reminded me of two-headed monsters.
- The bottom one just made me think of constant numbers.
I pondered my choice for a few minutes before pointing at the middle one. A few more years among monsters couldn’t hurt that much. “There. That one.”
The other panels blanked out and drifted away.
“World selected,” said the voice. “Now making choices.”
I covered my eyes until the reflections on the floor stopped. I noticed the elevator slowed down and stopped once the lights dimmed. I looked up at the light pattern, quickly memorizing it too. Who knows what advantages I’d need against Willy Wonka and his Great Electromagical Lift?
“Your selections have been made. Have a good decade!”
I just sighed as the bottom fell open and I dropped into the void.
Jumpchain: A Man Chooses 