Swapped - 2

“Ugh… What happened?”

Ivan groaned as he slowly opened his eyes. The last thing he remembered was him and Emil having a Double Battle with two newly-made Junior Elites – Caleb the Clefairy and Delia the Chandelure, if memory served him right. And memory did serve him right. Usually.

“Oh good, he’s awake!” An Audino wearing a nurse’s hat said as she and a Leavanny made their way towards Ivan. Tulia? Mike? Ivan wondered. Tulia sometimes worked in the infirmary when she was on “vacation” or when the PRT had a slow day. But as the two got closer, Ivan could see that the Audino wasn’t Tulia, but rather Jessica, Tulia’s sister, who worked in the infirmary full-time. The Leavanny was definitely Mike, though.

“Feeling okay, bud?” Mike asked as he leaned against the bed’s railing. “Tulia managed to catch you two with Psychic right before you guys hit the ground. But you guys weren’t moving, so we rushed straight to the infirmary. You had us all worried there for a sec.”

“Thank Tulia for me. And I’m fine,” Ivan insisted. His voice sounded different to him somehow. Was his voice different? It was probably just the effects of Caleb’s and Delia’s attack from the last battle. He could still remember the tingly feeling from when it entered his body…

“Aside from the usual battle wounds, our doctors found nothing wrong,” Jessica said cheerfully as she checked something off of a clipboard. “We were able to patch you up with just a couple of Heal Pulses and Potions! You and Ivan were really lucky this time, Emil. Judging from what Sis and Mike told me, it could have been much worse.”

“Sure.” Ivan replied automatically. “Wait – Emil? I’m Ivan,” he corrected her, mentally rolling his eyes. You’d think that after all these years she’d have remembered her sister’s best friends’ names by now.

Both Mike and Jessica looked at each other with an odd look in their eyes. “You sure you’re okay Emil?” Mike asked. “I know you didn’t hit your head on the ground, unless…” The Leavanny trailed off before turning to the Audino next to him. “Do you think the whiplash from the sudden deceleration caused by Tulia stopping their fall with Psychic produced enough G-force to cause a concussion?” Jessica just stared at him blankly.

Ivan rolled his eyes. “In English please?” he asked, saying the words he knew Jessica was too polite to voice aloud. Jessica bit her lip and scribbled something on her clipboard. “You know Emil better than I do. Does…does he always act this way?” Mike shook his head.

“Hellllllooooo! I’m right here,” Ivan said as he tried sitting up. Tried being the key word. Instead of lying flat on his back like he normally was in the infirmary, he had been placed on his belly, with his wings and legs folded underneath him. What the… Who puts a Staraptor in a position like this? Ivan tripped over the metal railing as he hopped out of bed and onto the floor – and promptly did a face-plant. “I meant to do that,” he grumbled as he picked himself off the floor, his hooves clicking against the linoleum. Wait, hooves? Staraptor didn’t have hooves. And Ivan was a Staraptor. Except that Ivan had hooves. Something was wrong with his logic here.

“You okay Emil? You’re not acting like yourself,” Mike said as he and Jessica helped him up. “That’s because I’m not Emil!” Ivan insisted. “I’m IVAN!” Jessica scribbled furiously on her clipboard. “Maybe something did happen to his head,” she mumbled. “I should probably get a Psychic-type to check…”

“I’m IVAN!” Said Pokéuman repeated. He tried standing up as tall as he could, chest out, feathers fluffed, Intimidate Ability at its strongest. Pokéumans typically listened to him then. Except the moment he stood up, Ivan immediately toppled backwards and banged his head against the bed. “I meant to do that,” he grumbled as he rubbed his beak with his wingtip – wait a second. That wasn’t a wingtip, that was a hoof – and the beak he was rubbing was actually a horse’s snout. What the – Ivan took a look of his reflection in the metal bed railing. Instead of his usual (and very handsome) Staraptor mug, the face of a yellow horse with a flaming mane – a Rapidash’s face, Emil’s face – looked back at him. It took a few seconds for it to sink in. Then Ivan snapped.

“WHAT IN ARCEUS’ NAME HAPPENED TO ME?” Ivan screamed as he wheeled around to face Mike and Jessica. Unfortunately he wasn’t used to having four legs, so he ended up stumbling and knocking over the bed. “Stupid bed!” Ivan snapped as he fell on top of the bed and got tangled in the bedsheets. He hastily stood up, shredding them and accidently setting them on fire with the flames on “his” legs in the process. Jessica muttered, “Oh dear,” as she grabbed a fire extinguisher that had been placed next to the bed for that very purpose (it was very common for sick or transforming Fire-type Pokéumans to lose control of their fire powers) while Mike grabbed his friend’s neck, trying to get Ivan to calm down. “Emil – Ivan – whatever – breathe. You need to get yourself under control. You can’t just go crazy like this –” “How would YOU feel if you suddenly woke up in someone else’s body?!” Ivan shouted back, the flames on “his” back and head flaring along with his temper. Mike staggered backwards with a cry of pain as he clutched his now severely-burned left arm.

Ivan’s temper died down instantly. “You…you’re not hurt…too badly, are you Mike?” Mike put on a brave smile. “Nah, I’m fine. You know I’ve taken worse damage than this.” The Leavanny winced as his burn flared up. “I’m fine.”

“Mike! Emil – I mean Ivan!” An Audino, their friend Tulia, ran up to them, followed by – You have got to be kidding me. Right behind Tulia (actually a few feet behind her) was a Staraptor that was alternating between waddling on its legs and galloping on all fours. It looked just like Ivan – it was Ivan. He’d recognize his own body anywhere. Tulia stopped right in front of her sister and Mike. “Thank goodness you guys are all here. We need to talk. Mike! What happened to your arm?”

Tulia used Psychic to grab a Burn Heal while Mike and Jessica explained. “So it sounds like Ivan’s in Emil’s body and Emil’s in Ivan’s body. How did that even happen in the first place?” Tulia asked as she applied the medicine to Mike’s burn.

Ivan – Ivan the Rapidash – tried to shrug, but found that shrugging while on all fours was pretty much impossible. “How should I know? Wait…did you say that Emil’s in my body?” He and Mike turned to look at the Staraptor in a new light. Said Pokéuman was sitting on his tail, panting and wiping sweat away with a wing. “Arceus, amigo, how do you run in this thing? I couldn’t even get up to a decent trot!” Ivan snorted and rolled his eyes. “Staraptor don’t run, they fly. You should know that by now.”

“Well, excuse me, por favor, for not flying because Rapidash don’t know how to fly!” Emil the Staraptor retorted. Normally the usually-a-Rapidash would have made a joke about this, like how Ivan had bird lice in his feathers or how his friend was all fluff and no muscle, but Emil had had a trying day. First he had woken up to people calling him Ivan, then he had found out he was Ivan, and then Emil had struggled to keep up while Tulia ran ahead to tell the others what was happening. (Riddle: How do you run, let alone gallop, with two spindly sticks and wings for legs? Answer: You can’t.) So naturally Emil was more than a little irate.

“All right, so why are me and Ivan in each other’s bodies? And how are we supposed to get back into our own bodies?” Emil demanded.

“Hmm…” Mike tapped his chin in thought, his arm now fully healed. “Well, during your battle you guys passed out after getting hit by Caleb’s and Delia’s combo move…whatever that was… And then when you two wake up you’re somehow in each other’s bodies.” Eyes closed in thought, Mike stood still for quite some time. The others didn’t interrupt. Mike was an expert in battle tactics and Pokémon moves; if anyone could figure out what went awry in their last battle, it would be him. 

It was three whole minutes before the Leavanny opened his eyes. “Got it!” Mike declared as he snapped his fingers – or Emil imagined he would have, if Leavanny had fingers. “We know that what happened to Emil and Ivan must have been because of the combo move Caleb and Delia used. That’s the only recent anomaly, and otherwise there’s no real reason why other Pokéumans weren’t affected.”

The rest of them nodded. “Go on,” Tulia prompted.

“Since we know it had to be the combo move, we need to analyze just what was in the combo move. We know half of it was Confuse Ray. The other half came from whatever Caleb used via Metronome – and I’m 98.79% sure that the move used was Heart Swap.”

“Heart Swap?” Emil repeated. The name felt vaguely familiar to him, as if he’d heard of it before, but he didn’t know how or why.

“Ooh! I know that one!” Jessica squealed. “Remember Sis? We saw that move in the movie we watched last month! You know, with Manaphy and the underwater temple and that cute ranger Jackie?” “You mean Pokémon Ranger and the Temple of the Sea?” Tulia offered. Jessica nodded. “Uh huh! That’s the one!”

“And what does this have to do with the fact that Emil and I somehow switched bodies?” Ivan asked impatiently. He couldn’t recall watching that movie; in fact, he distinctly remembered saying he was “too busy training to watch some dumb movie” when Tulia and Jessica made the offer for him to join them.

“Hold on, didn’t Manaphy use that move to switch two guys’ bodies – Ash and Jackie, right?” Emil said. Unlike Ivan, he had watched the movie.

“Right,” Mike confirmed. “In the games, Heart Swap simply switches any stat changes with the target. But we all know that moves don’t work the same way in the games as they do in real life.” The others nodded. Since they had all transformed before the first Pokémon games came out, they held little respect for them. “But theoretically – I’ve only read this in books, so I could be wrong – Heart Swap can switch people’s souls and place them into other bodies. So when Caleb’s Metronome selected Heart Swap and it combined with Delia’s Confuse Ray, it created –”

“A Confused Heart Swap?” Ivan finished dubiously.

Mike shrugged. “You can call it that, I guess. The explanation is a little farfetched, I will admit, but right now it’s the only explanation we have.”

“Excuse me?” A brown duck-like nurse paused while pushing a cart of medicine, wings flapping to keep herself in the air. “Sorry ‘bout that. Just a figure of speech, señorita.” Emil explained. The Farfetch’d looked at him strangely before flying off, feet pushing the cart. “Wonder what that was about?” Emil questioned, partly to the others, partly to himself.

“Emil may speak Spanish often, but Ivan certainly doesn’t,” Tulia pointed out. Mike nodded. “She’s right. No one else seems to know that you two have switched bodies besides us, and until we get more information, it’s probably best to keep it that way. This means staying in character.”

Emil snickered. “Oh, sure thing, amigo.” He drew himself to his full height, which was a good foot and eight inches shorter than usual. “My name is Ivan, and I’m a big grouchypants who’s always grumpy and too busy training to have any fun!” Emil mocked. “Of course, no matter how much I train, I know I will never beat my buddy Emil in a race, because he’s so much faster and awesomer than I am!”

“Oh really?” Ivan snorted through his new nostrils, and pawed the ground with one hoof. “Well two can play at that game.” Raising his voice, he brayed, “I’m Emil, the Dumb Flaming Unicorn Pokémon! Even though I call myself the fastest, if it wasn’t for my stupid Run Away Ability, I would be the slowest Pokéuman on Earth, and certainly nowhere fast enough to beat the great Ivan in a fair race, because Ivan is that amazing! Oh, and I speak in this crazy Spanish-English mix! Amigo, come and golpear my sorry culo into space, would ya’?”

“Why you –! I’ll kick your sorry culo into space alright!” Mike and Tulia had to restrain the two Pokéumans before they could kill each other. Several Pokéumans had paused in their daily routines to watch the absurd scene. “What are you all staring at? Go on, get!” Jessica shooed the spectators away, but not before they started muttering to each other.

“Oh great,” Tulia sighed, knowing how quickly news spread in a base where few exciting events happened. “This is going to be all over the base by tomorrow morning.”

“Guys, settle down,” grunted Mike from where he was restraining Emil’s wings. “Do you realize that if you do get into a fight – which I hardly recommend – not only will you guys be beating up your own bodies, you’ll probably get suspended from the PRT?” That had the desired effect of calming them down. “Guess you’re right,” Emil said sheepishly. “Speaking of the PRT, what happens if we get sent on a mission while me and Ivan are still switched?” None of the others had an answer to that.

“Why not just tell your Commander?” Jessica said as she uprighted the overturned bed frame. “I’m sure he’ll understand.”

“Jessica, you’re a genius!” Mike announced. “We’ll just talk to Commander Fujimoto. He’s a reasonable Accelgor. He’ll do everything in his power to get Ivan and Emil back in their right bodies.”

“And both Caleb and Delia are Junior Elites, so they’ll definitely help if Commander Fujimoto asks them to,” Tulia said. “Thanks Sis!”

Jessica giggled. “No problem. You guys go on down to the PRT Level. I’ll stay behind and repair some of the damage. Let me know how things work out later!”