Chapter Text
It was a typical day. The sun was shining and a refreshing breeze occasionally brushed my face. I was seated on the edge of a cliff halfway up a mountain gazing down upon a spectacular valley. Where a generous river cut between my mountain and the next, flanked by trees as it flowed out into the world beyond. There was a small town as well, to my right. Distant and blurry to my eyes, but those were definitely buildings.
None of that mattered to me at the moment however. I wasn't perched here for the view or for the fun of it. I had a mission.
Taking a deep breath, I summoned my rock energy to my jaws and tightened my body. Then I roared.
The energy I'd prepared followed the sound, but didn't go nearly as far. Instead, it paused in front of my open mouth and began to condense into a rough sphere. Next, the energy hardened into stone. Finally, I fired the bullet which managed to travel at least a hundred feet before gravity took hold and the rock began free-falling. It wasn't long after that the conjured boulder was lost amongst the sea of other stones and debris strewn about the mountain.
I then spent the next minute considering the effect.
It was interesting. I could turn energy into matter with little effort. The opposite of a nuclear explosion. The science world back home would have gone crazy over something like this. However, my experiment wasn't done.
I took another deep breath and stirred my internal reserves. I roared once more and unleashed a second attack. Yet this time, instead of forming into a stone projectile, the energy became a cloud of dust that was quickly caught by the wind. In a moment you could hardly tell anything had happened. But I wasn't disappointed by the result. I was fascinated again.
Using my rock energy had created stone. Using my ground energy had created dirt. What were those attacks though? Was the first one Rock Blast or Rock Throw? I couldn't remember the difference. What about the second? Sand Attack? More like Sand Breath. I didn't even know what I had done. The attacks were obviously incomplete, but I'd been holding back. I didn't want to unleash everything I had in a single go. Not until I had a better idea what I was doing and what the consequences might be. After all, this was my first real attempt at using my pokemon powers for something other than pure survival.
I was an onix now. How and why? I couldn't guess. All I know is about a month ago I'd woken up as this boulder snake. And my experience during those initial days had been... terrible. Scared and confused, I'd struggled to even move properly. My clumsy learning period more like the wild thrashes of an epileptic worm. I'd suddenly become a quadruple amputee with an overly flexible torso. Figuring out how to control myself had been as much about understanding this body as it had been accepting the loss of my original self. I had to relearn literally everything. And I still wasn't confident in my mobility either. I knew I still needed practice.
Movement was, obviously, the first skill I'd developed. However, onix in this world were bizarre. Day one I'd tried slithering, assuming because of my body-shape that I should mimic the way snakes travel. But the only thing I seemed to accomplish was tenderizing the earth beneath me. Eventually, as the frustration at the persistent failure drove me mad, I mindlessly gave into an alien instinct. A second later I was zooming. The tree I'd been trying to crawl towards for hours suddenly within reach. And it was that event which made me realize onix were not snakes. We didn't slither. We rolled.
My onix body is a series of boulders, each one magically bound to the next yet also able to freely rotate 360 degrees without affecting either neighbor. So the proper way for me to travel was to lay down, then roll. Driving forward like a train, steering by turning my head and allowing my segments to follow. And I can assure you, it feels as strange as it looks.
However, that was just the beginning of my fresh existence. I could see in the dark, had a weird "radar" sense for minerals that I'd eventually figured out were food, and contact with water made my "skin" go numb. It didn't hurt, though when I'd tried to drink from the river my whole bottom jaw was rendered tingly for the rest of the day. I haven't tried that again since. But I don't think I need to anyway. It's not like I get thirsty anymore.
For a month I've been struggling along. Avoiding both humans and pokemon. Not that it was hard. The pokemon around this mountain were much smaller than me and seemed perfectly happy to get out of my way. No one has picked a fight with me yet at least. Or so much as spoken to me. As for humans, I haven't seen one. I knew there was a town nearby, I could see it even now, but I'd never crossed paths with a hiker or a trainer. While I wasn't sure what to make of that, for the time being I considered it a blessing.
At this point I was... well, not comfortable with this body, I deemed myself competent. Like I knew well-enough how to operate it. I could move, dig, and find food. I could survive.
Yet I was scared.
I was a pokemon. Did that mean trainers would try to capture me? The idea of being held prisoner and forced to fight disgusted me.
What about other pokemon? Was someone eventually going to challenge me for this territory? If this mountain was going to be my home, I needed to be strong enough to defend it. This was the wild after all. Anything could happen.
Call it paranoia, but I knew I needed to be ready. Someday, whether it was humans or pokemon, I was going to have to protect myself.
Hence, I was experimenting with my energy. I was trying to develop moves. I was practicing for the fights I knew were in my future.
I just didn't know what I was doing! What moves could onix even learn?!
I knew next to nothing about this species. In the games they were nearly useless. Nobody ever had one on their team. Because they were broken and not in a good way. Video game onix had monstrous physical defense, but they were notorious crap in literally every other stat. As strange as it was, onix had terrible attack and were incredibly vulnerable to special moves. Which many of an onix's weaknesses tended to be. So... I never used one in the games and knew little more about them besides their typing: rock and ground.
I knew I was weak to fighting, ice, grass, and water.
I knew I was resistant to electric, normal, flying, fire, and poison.
I also knew I could evolve into a steelix by consuming metals and my kind even had a mega-evolution.
Yet, I was in the dark about everything else.
What moves could I learn? Was I restricted to the games? How did I learn moves? Did I have levels? Were my stats bad?
Where was I? A pokemon world, sure, but which one? What time period? What region? Which mountain range?
Who or what brought me here? Was there a reason? Was I supposed to do something?
It was infuriating knowing there was so much I was clueless about!
So here I was, standing at the edge of a cliff, practicing with my type energies. Throwing conjured rocks down the mountainside and summoning bursts of sand into the wind. Because they were the only energies I knew how to use. Brought to my attention purely by my instincts when I'd tried to dig my first tunnels. Ground energy loosened the soil so I could brush it out of my way. Rock hardened the walls around me so I could proceed through my own tunnels in peace. Two abilities that made life convenient. Now I was trying to weaponize them.
And I was getting pretty good at roaring too. It was satisfying to simply scream, like I was venting all my pent up anger. Probably wasn't fun for my neighbors though. But again, I wasn't doing it just for my own amusement. I was trying to get a feel for another energy: normal. Roar wasn't a valuable move in the games except in very specific circumstances. In the games, it made wild pokemon flee or forced opposing trainers to switch. Yet I was confident the technique would prove useful more often in this world. For someone like me who wanted to avoid fights entirely. However, all I was doing right now was making noise. Real attacks required energy to back them up. But I was hoping that by going through the motions something might stir in me. That I'd have a revelation.
Using my rock or ground energy was nearly effortless. They felt almost like a pair of cups inside myself and it was no more complicated than picking which straw to draw from. But I didn't seem to have any other "cups". Or I couldn't feel them if I had them at least. So how did I use other energies? Did I have to make additional containers or did I have to convert my natural energies somehow? Maybe that's what gave pokemon types and why they were stronger with their native energy. Because any other kind of attack required them to convert the energy first. Though, either way, I was still stuck. While I could make a pretty intimidating roar, it wasn't the same as the actual move. I needed normal energy for it to work properly. But I didn't know how to get normal energy.
Have I mentioned that I really don't know what I'm doing?
And there was another problem. While my mind was willing to keep trying, my body had limits. Despite my hunger for more experience, it wasn't long before I was out of energy to practice with. It felt as exhausting as you'd imagine too. I'd pushed myself like any athlete should, until it was hard to even move. A choice I was kicking myself for as I turned around to return to my den. A simple hole in the ground I'd dug with my own not-hands. It really was nothing fancy. Merely a short tunnel to an inner chamber I could curl up in.
Which I did.
It was pitch black, but I could see in shades of gray just fine. Part of me still felt claustrophobic down here in the dark though. Because I knew there was a high likely-hood the tunnel would collapse again. I didn't know why yet, but anywhere I dug would fill in again after a few hours. Or a few days at the most. Which bothered me because I could have sworn there was a bunch of pokemon lore that stated onix were responsible for most caves. Which I didn't see how was possible if every tunnel I dug collapsed shortly after.
What was I doing wrong?
Add that to my list of questions.
So there I was. A living string of boulders magically stuck together. A pokemon. An onix. Alone and stranded in the mountains. Coiled in an underground chamber. Tired after a day of training that had been far too short. Ready for a midday nap.
And I was feeling... kind of good?
Until now I'd been drowning in negative emotions. Yet the times were changing. Confusion at how to move my body settled with practice. The despair of starvation satisfied after finding tasty minerals to eat. And now even my fear of pokemon and humans was shrinking as I gained some confidence in my combat abilities.
My situation had been steadily improving since day one. I was beginning to feel like I had a foundation. That there was a floor beneath me to catch me if something happened. Was I being overly optimistic? Maybe. But it was a nice change. My life as a pokemon was finally starting to look up.
But what was I going to do tomorrow? More energy practice? Maybe I should try meeting the neighbors. I could also just go exploring. I didn't want to simply hide in a cave for the rest of my life.
Decisions decisions...