38Update: 15/01/02 - What was originally designed to be a 10-11 chapter work has spiralled off into much more. I apologise for not working on this recently, as I wished to see what direction the chain was taking first.
The fic will be split into three parts, for good reason - a twist in the plotline and the introduction of a new teller into the chain led to the second part being R-rated. Later on, the chain's originator banned the more adult references and returned the fic to its original PG-13 comparitive goodness.
The first section is here. One note must be made - a certain confusion (and the lack of pokemon G/S games) led me to believe at the time that Houou was a psychic pokemon at the time of the chain. I had originally changed it so that the Houou and Lugia were swapped, but future complications in the storyline mean that this cannot be - they have been swapped back. So, just pretend that Houou is a psychic-type - or perhaps that it brought out some latent psychic powers in Holly.
Also, this may mean that one may be written where the other should be - if you see any evidence of this, please tell me so I may fix it.
A solitary figure stood atop of a cliff, overlooking a human city. His tail waved slowly back and forth as he considered the best approach. The wind ruffled his short grey fur, but he didn't even notice.
He was a tall Pokémon, almost seven feet in height, vaguely humanoid, with two strong, muscular legs and a pair of powerful arms. He had piercing, cool purple eyes and a long, thick tail.
Apparently coming to a decision, he lifted his arms up into the air, mumbling a few short words, calling the sky. The magic-like psychic power flowed through his fingertips and into the air above his head. Energy crackled, the air seemed to be sucked in, out, inside out and around as the power gathered... until a blue, swirling hole appeared.
He was Mewtwo, one of the most powerful Pokémon the world had ever known. He had once attempted to take over the world, but was driven back by none other than a human child, a trainer named Ash Ketchum. Though not very bright, the trainer had shamed him and forced him into hiding in a secret valley.
Summoning all the power he could muster, he concentrated, making the blue swirl bigger and bigger. Purple lightning played around the edges of the hole, crackling into the very center.
The human trainer was gone now. He had been for years. A human would usually only live for about a hundred years, but this trainer had met up with an unfortunate accident while flying on his Charizard and was killed. The only living creature capable of opposing Mewtwo... gone, never to be seen again.
Now, Mewtwo was set on world domination yet again. With the pathetic little human trainer out of the way, nothing would stand between Mewtwo and the creation of a new world... one ruled by him. Not humans.
His plan? To open a portal to another dimension, bringing the Mewtwo from that reality into his. With double the power... the human world would fall before the Mew clone... and all would be his.
The blue swirl of energy widened, throwing sheets of purple electricity to the ground. Mewtwo focused his powers hard into the center of the portal, willing for his alternate self to come through to this side.
This time, the world will be mine,> Mewtwo said to himself, then laughed and shouted to any in range. No human will dare oppose me or my counterpart!>
It was about then that his carefully created plan fell completely apart.
A cold line of blue fire streaked across the sky, widening into a huge rift in the clouds. A flock of Pidgeottos flying overhead sqwawked in surprise and veered off, away from the wave of blue power that came rolling through the rift.
Mewtwo froze in astonishment at what he had done. The rift... the portal... He'd created an inter-dimensional tear, and the other universe was overflowing into this one!
Mewtwo braced himself as the line of blue fire rushed at him, but it passed over him without doing anything. It seemed to be searching for something. What it was looking for, Mewtwo didn't know. All he wanted to do was escape.
Mewtwo Teleported out of the mountains, away from the city, away from the blue shockwave that seemed to be raging, searching desperately for something that it could not find.
And as the psychic Pokémon disappeared in a blue flash, the shockwave continued towards the human city below...
Derek got up early that morning, and got into the shower. He was planning on having a very busy day, even though it was summer and therefore vacation from school. He wanted to go visit his friend Ray and go into the big city for a concert.
As soon as he stepped in the shower, Derek knew there was something very wrong. Everything looked more blue than usual. He thought about that for a minute, then dismissed it and turned on the water.
"Yeeeeooooowwwww!" he howled, and shut off the water flow. That had hurt!
The back of his head itched, and he reached back to scratch it. That's when he got his second surprise of the morning. What felt like three knives slashing across the back of his head followed the movement of his hand.
"Aaaaahhhhh!" he yelled in pain, and then looked at his hands.
They were a reddish color, with a claw growing from each fingertip. Of which he had a total of six now. The claws were long and sharp, almost like daggers.
He got out of the shower, got dressed, and went out to the living room. He was greeted by the sight of a half-human half-Rhydon that might have been his dad. He was basically a human with a drill-like horn coming out of his nose and a strong, thick tail.
The father and his son stared at each other for a minute, not saying anything at all. Derek's mom chose that point in time to come in.
Derek jumped away in shock at the sight of a humanoid Persian leaping into the center of the room. She was about four feet tall, with a long curled tail and whiskers on her face. A small red gem was slowly appearing in the center of her forehead.
Derek's mother immediately began screaming at the two half-Pokémon creatures standing in front of her. Anyone would, after seeing something like that.
"This is impossible," Derek thought. And at that moment a long red tail ripped out of his shorts.Over at Ray's house, things were less extreme. Ray had awakened that morning to a burning sensation in his back, but he ignored it. It went away within a few minutes, leaving a strange numbness behind.
Abruptly, he heard a scream downstairs. It sounded like his mom, but it sounded like something else... a pokemon... was screaming along with her.
Ray's eyes snapped open. He rushed down the stairs...or tried to. He tripped instantly and went tumbling down the steps. Funny how there was thirteen of them.
But he finally came to a stop at the base of the stairs, staring up at his mom. She was almost normal, except for the bone helmet completely covering her head and the long muzzle on her face.
Ray backed away in fear, and instantly felt a slight warmth from his back. He caught sight of a flash of red and yellow over his shoulder, then realized that his shirt was on fire. No, his entire back was on fire!
But it didn't hurt, strangely enough. Ray calmed down, and after a moment the fire disappeared. He then noticed the reason he had tripped and fallen. His legs were shorter than they should have been, with blunt claws on the end of his toes.
"What the hell is going on?" Ray asked in shock.
Laura was awake early, even before the sun came up. She was practicing her singing for the music group she was in, singing along with a CD.
She had her eyes shut as she sang, so she didn't notice the changes right away. All she knew was that her voice was suddenly higher, from an alto to a soprano. It had an odd, misty quality to it as well.
She stopped singing an opened her eyes. She gave a musical-sounding gasp of shock as she saw that she had changed.
A rounded beak filled most of her vision, and her eyes had moved to the sides of her head. Two long, black spikes swept back from her eyes. She was covered from head to toe in pure white feathers, with the only exception being a patch of blue-purple feathers on her midsection.
"Holy crap, I'm turning into a Lugia!" she exclaimed.
Holly, another member of Laura's band, was warming up her keyboard when she began to change. Her skilled playing degenerated into a confused cacaphony as a crest of golden feathers erupted on her forehead, replacing her long brown hair. At the same time, about fifty gold tail feathers fanned out behind her.
"What the heck?" she demanded, just as her face pushed out in a long grayish-gold beak.
She heard a scream from the next house over. Running over to the window, she realised it was Aria, who was just waking up to find her arms had become silvery-blue wings and a tall crest of blue feathers on her forehead. She was most obviously on her way to becoming an Articuno.
Unnoticed by the transforming humans below, the blue wave kept rolling through the sky to the next town...
Back at Derek's house, things were getting tense. Derek's half-Persian mother was transforming faster than anyone else. She was already nearly completely Pokémon.
Derek's father, on the other hand, had stopped changing at about the halfway point. No one was sure that he wouldn't change any further, but it seemed that he would stay half-Rhydon for the time being.
Derek hadn't figured out what he was becoming yet, except that he was a fire type. That explained the entire water/shower thing, he thought, but not the actual transformation itself.
"What is happening to us?" Derek's father demanded through his steel-like muzzle.
"I don't know," Derek started to say, and was cut off as his face exploded outward in a long red snout. A short red horn popped out of the back of his head and his eyes got wider and changed to dark green-purple. He shrank a little, until he was only about four and a half feet tall.
"Aw, man!" he exclaimed. "I'm a Charmeleon!"
Over at Ray's house, things were more calm. Until the six-foot-tall Zapdos girl ran by, shrieking in a metallic-sounding voice.
Startled, Ray instinctively lit up the flame ridge on his back. It took him fifteen seconds to realize what he was doing and calm down, but then another surge of transformation decided to plow into him.
His face pushed out in a long snout that was mostly tan except for the black stripe running from the tip across the top of his head, broadening as it reached his back. A short tail appeared behind him and his arms got shorter. He suddenly found himself struggling to keep his eyes open any more than a slit.
That's when Ray knew exactly what he was becoming, in great detail. "I'm turning into a Cyndaquil!" he screamed.
His flame ridge lit up again, burning away what was left of his shirt before he could calm himself once again. And then, he suddenly realized that he was done changing. He didn't know how he knew, he just...did. He wasn't human anymore, but he clearly wasn't a complete Cyndaquil either.
He was about four feet tall, with the basic shape of a Cyndaquil on its hind legs. His eyes were a bit more open than a real Cyndaquil's would have been, and his muzzle was a bit shorter to make it easier to speak in English. He had only four fingers on each hand now, which would make it a lot harder to type on the computer.
Ray was confused. Was he only changing halfway, a strange freak in the world? Not fully Pokémon, not fully human, but somewhere in between. Logically he should have changed completely one way or the other...but, it seemed, that was not to be...
Holly, Laura, and Aria met up in Holly's backyard after a few minutes of frantic running around in circles. Laura already knew she was becoming a Lugia, Aria was halfway to Articuno, and Holly turned out to be a Ho-oh.
Zelda, the fourth member of the band, finally found the other musicians after yet another few minutes of frantic running in circles. She, much like the others, was partially changed into a legendary bird - predictably, she was a Zapdos.
Maura, the fifth and final member of the band, finally came around about a half an hour later. Following the pattern, she was also a legendary bird, the one called Moltres. And she didn't walk either. She decided to fly on her near-wings. They, like the others' arms, were like wings except for the dexterious feather-fingers at the ends of the wings.
"It figures we would all become similar Pokémon," Laura said in her new, higher voice. "But we're all legendary birds. I don't know how we managed THAT."
"I don't want to be a Zapdos," Zelda complained, apparently not as grateful. "Why couldn't I have been the Articuno?"
"You think I chose to be like this?" Aria the Articuno shot back. "You're a real zapper, you know that?"
Zelda perked up at that. "Hey, I think I just got a new nickname! It fits me all over, doesn't it? 'Zapper.'"
"I'm 'Artic,' then," Aria called out quickly.
"I'm 'Firebird,'" Maura said, grinning mischeviously.
"'Gold,'" Holly said, although she couldn't smile around her beak the others knew she was grinning on the inside.
"And going by the pattern, that makes me 'Silver,'" Laura trilled. "Good. All famous rockbands have weird nicknames of some sort."
They all laughed, and got to practising, although mostly they were just admiring and adapting to their new forms...
Over the other side of the city, unknown to the legendary birds, their main rival rock band was meeting in the back yard of Eric, their drummer.
Eric himself was obviously the first one there, and closely resembled an Entei. Richie came next, looking very much like a Raikou.
Sammy arrived after a minute, not surprising the other two a bit when he turned out to be a Suicune. Chadran followed close behind him, looking extremely close to a Dragonair from the waist down.
Josh was the last one to arrive, though. The other four boys fell silent as he strode into the yard on his massively powerful legs, a full foot taller than he had been the day before. His violet eyes glittered with amusement, and his thick tail waved back and forth as he walked up to the other band members.
"It seems there has been a change in plans," he said in a deeper voice.
"Jeez Josh," Richie stammered. "You're a-"
"Just call me 'Blue,'" Josh interrupted. No on contradicted him.
The legendary creatures picked out their own nicknames after a few minutes of staring at their lead singer, wondering what was up. Sammy chose the name "BubbleJet" for reasons unknown to the others. Richie wanted the name "Thunder," Eric got the name "Firedog," and Chadran the Dragonair decided on the name "Drago" for obvious reasons.
"Good," Josh said after the matter of nicknames had been settled. "Now, let's get to work. We're giving a concert in two weeks, transformations or no transformations. There is no way those girls are going to beat us, no matter what they have become!"
"Ready?" Laura called musically to Zelda, who was fiddling around with her electric guitar.
"I think so, Silver!" she called back. "What about you, FireBird?"
The usual drumroll came from the Moltres on the other side of the garage. She grinned around her beak and gave the thumbs-up, which was really hard to do considering none of them had true thumbs to speak of anymore.
For some strange reason, at that exact instant Holly chose to pound out Beethoven's Third on the keyboard, causing the other four bird morphs to glare at her. She just grinned and switched to one of the band's own written songs, "The Birds."
"Aar-ahh-aah-aah!" Aria sang, warming up. She was the backup singer, but she would never even come close to matching the perfection the Day of the Morph had given Laura. The Lugia's musical voice was perfect for ANYTHING she chose to sing. "We are the Birds, and we never surrender..." she continued singing. Then she stopped and sighed. "The Birds. Whoever thought up that name for our band anyway?" she complained.
Everyone looked at Zelda. She looked up from her guitar playing and said, "What?" Then she ignored them.
"How about 'The Trio'?" Holly suggested as she played another song she had composed.
"Nah, too weird," Maura said.
Laura's Lugia eyes lit up. "How about the 'Legends Alive'?"
For some strange reason, that struck everyone as being so damn cool. Smiles spread across their faces, or as much as they could do so around the various stages of beaks the girls had, and thus the name of the band was official changed to the Legends Alive.
"You nitwits!" Josh bellowed at the four legendary morphs who, whatever their leader's opinion, were trying to play their best. "You can't do anything right!"
"We're trying the best we can here, Blue!" Richie shot back.
Josh glared at him. His eyes began to glow an electric blue. "What did you say?' he demanded coldly.
"Nothing," Richie said quickly, shrinking back from the evil look in Josh's eyes.
The lead singer glared at him for a few more seconds, then his eyes changed back to purple and he smiled. "Now all you lot, let's get going. We only have less than two weeks before the Battle of the Bands, and Endangered is going to win it! Right?"
"Right!" the others chorused.