Hacked? 1 - Alien.

~April 22, 2012: 10:05 A.M.~

A new user made an account on the Serebii.net forums. He called himself Br0nygon.

"Sorry," he said. "My old account got hacked. I'm using a public computer for now. Don't worry - I'll still be able to trade Pokes with you all."

Posts along the lines of "Really? That's great!" and "How can you prove you're really Bronygon?" popped up in the intro thread. There were others, like "welcome back," and a warning to report him to the admins, but most of the posts fell into the former two categories.

"I'm the real deal," he said. "If you ever wanted to be a Pokemon, I can help you with that."

Soon, a thread called "Who Wants To Be A Pokemon?"  popped up. The first post said to send Br0nygon a private message including which Pokemon they wanted to be, what game they had, and when they could meet for the trade. He also included a strange tip: "Try to film yourself transforming. Start filming immediately after checking the stat screen of your Pokemon." It got thirteen replies within five minutes, mostly with the word "me" and the name of a Pokemon. Br0nygon's response was usually "private message me," or, "please read the first post again."  People got the idea after the first few posts.

There were, of course, skeptics. The creator's glasses shone in the near-darkness as he typed in response to a post by LugiaLuvr that said, "Fake. Don't give this guy anything."

"I assure you that this is all very real," he typed back. "You'll see in a matter of days."

~April 23, 2012- 1:13 P.M.~

It was still slightly chilly around Lake Wobegon, Minnesota. It was, as one writer had put it, "a little town that time forgot, and decades could not improve." The titular lake rested just outside of the relatively isolated town in the Land of a Thousand Lakes. The area around it twitted, scurried, and clicked with forest creatures, all sheltered by the pine trees that cut Lake Wobegon off from the majority of the world. Nobody would ever suspect that, in such a picturesque environment, one writer was suffering from the worst disease in the world: Writer's block.

John Perez put a hand to his head. He could hear Caroline doing dishes in the background; the clattering of plates and silverware distracted him rather than inspiring him. His gaze wandered out the window; unfortunately, the normally serene view was obscured by ominous gray clouds.

John had a fine figure from spending hours at the gym. It was a miracle that, aside from trips to the gym, he spent most of his time staring at the flickering bar on Microsoft Word. Most people would have said that he should be in movies instead of behind a desk. He was not the type; the last thing he wanted was millions of people staring at him and never having a single moment to himself.

"Better get the juices flowing," John told himself. It was time for his occasional dose of Vigilant Citizen, David Icke, and Conspiracyplanet.com.

When he was not writing personal interest stories, John often looked at what the conspiracy theorists were talking about. He did not necessarily buy into their ideas about the rapture, or that all politicians were really green-scaled humanoids (although given the nature of politics, it made him chuckle).  If nothing else, they offered a different, surreal perspective on his quiet, peaceful life. At worst, he could dismiss them as creative and observant.

Through clicking around on ConspiracyPlanet.com, he entered the rabbit hole of YouTube. Nothing else inspired him quite like looking up conspiracy videos; if anything, by watching them, he felt a little bit saner. The video of Bigfoot had been confirmed as a porcupine ages ago; frilled sharks and oarfish were nothing new; that "dragon" in the sky was probably a trick of the light.

He was about to click back to the classic "surprised kitty" video when he found something that did not look fake. It looked so real that it sent chills down his spine. He clicked replay. Then again. And again.

No way...

"Caroline, come look at this!" John called.

"It's not another alien, is it?" his wife called from the living room. The last alien she had seen had been a puppet.

"No...this is really weird," John said.

He heard Caroline's shoes upon the carpet as she came to look at what John had found. He looked at the video description briefly before his wife peeked at the screen from over his shoulder.

"What is it?" Caroline asked. John clicked the "replay" button.

The video started with an average-looking, mousey-haired, probably nerdy guy in his late teens setting up a camera. Shortly after pushing a few buttons on a system that John recognized as a Nintendo DS Lite, he shivered as if having a small seizure. His shirt became ripped with bulk and long-haired, yellow fur with stripes of black. Two strange tails like long, thick wires tore his jeans off. Soon, even his face was covered with fur save for two beady, red eyes and a pair of ball-like antennae. The best thing John could use to describe it was "Satsquatch."

"I've seen that thing before," Caroline said.

"Huh?"

"That yellow and black tiger-y thing. I think it was at a toy store or something," his wife elaborated.

"A toy store...I'll look into it," John said. Caroline asked if he wanted some tea; John stated that he did, and so she left him to examine the video in finer detail.

There was a comment beneath it: "Thumbs up if Br0nygon led you here." Fifty people had already clicked the "thumbs up" icon. John, meanwhile, was wondering who "Br0nygon" was, and why the offspring of Bigfoot and a bumblebee looked familiar.

He started with a word from one of the comments: Electivire. He quickly learned that Electivire was a "Pokemon," a creature from a multi-million dollar franchise of the same name. He had heard of Pokemon, but his knowledge more or less stopped at "Pikachu." All he really needed to know was that Electivire was a creature designed by whoever made those strange beasties.

That video could not have been real. If Electivire was just a figment of somebody's imagination, there was no way to make it into a real, flesh and blood creature.  

Still, John thought, I've got to hand it to the editor. Those were some really good special effects.

The thread was easy to find. Started by one "Br0nygon," it advertised the first ever physical transformation into a real Pokemon.  Google was a life-saver; John began browsing the thread as a lurker within minutes of its discovery.

John soon learned that the Electrivire was not the only transformation vid out there. There were no less than five posted in that thread. Each one of them had a normal-looking person transforming ("TFing") into a multicolored creature. Thanks to Bulbapedia, a site that John immediately found useful, John was able to pinpoint every creature that they had turned into: Arcanine, Suicune, Lugia, Salamence, Haxorus, Charizard, Zoroark, and a few more. He began to wonder what exactly Bronygon was sending them to inflict such a change.

John scanned the thread. He began clicking on people's user profiles. It was full of people who had attractions to Pokemon, of all things. Their attraction was not merely simple admiration for the characters; no, they wished to get their freak on with Arcanine and Lugia. Yes, John thought, these would be the right type of people to take Br0nygon up on such wild offers.

Bullshit. John had to keep reminding himself that none of this was real. He kept clicking on those videos; one led to another, and another, and another. Each one featured some individual growing, fur, scales, wings, a tail, or some combination of the above, all in eye-bleeding technicolor. After seeing a busty teenage girl transform into a golden, nine-tailed fox, John had enough and went back to the work the Sun was paying him for.

He went back to writing the article about an old mill in the suburbs. It had been in business since 1913. With the economy how it was, the owner, a man named Ted Barnes, had finally decided to shut it down. He had been outpaced by industrial sources of energy. The article covered the history of the mill, its boom in the 1950's, and a slow decline when the owner refused to switch to factory farming.

After finishing the third draft of that article, John took up his second piece of work. He looked up "real pokemon transformation" in the David Icke forum's search bar. For all he knew, someone on the forums might have picked up on it. They had no such thread, so he made his own. He had his own account, but rarely used it; he was what board-goers called a "lurker."

"Hey," he said. "Have any of you seen this?" He then linked to the Serebii.net thread that he had found earlier. He would let the real conspiracy theorists decide whether that Electivire was real or not. For now, he had an article to write. His usual strategy had worked like a charm; the juices began flowing smoothly as he edited his article for the Wobegon Sun.

After about an hour of polishing his old mill article, John checked the thread he had posted. It had already gotten several responses.

"I'd have to see proof that it works firsthand," one person, called "Awakened1," replied. Another, by "Killuminati," said,"This could be real, but I'd like to see results. The videos are fishy - they could have been CGI'd. If anyone sees a real Snivy, post it here."

"yeah right," another, "G0d1sG00d," said. "Pokemon r made by illuminati, stop thinkin their real."

Most of the replies felt more like the second than the first. Those that sided with the first mentioned a certain incident involving a "Raikou" that set the tabloids on fire for exactly two days. Then a third voice, under the username "Fata Morgana," made the most rational response of the entire thread:

"Guys, there is no way we can prove or disprove this until someone on this forum actually checks it out. If turning people into living, breathing Pokemon is possible, we have ourselves some just cause for suspecting all sorts of government conspiracies. The only way we can find out is if someone from this board actually goes there and tries it.

Who volunteers?"

John logged in again with his own account, "MagnumOpus." He then typed, "I'll check it out. If you don't hear back from me in five days, it's real."

He went back to the article on the old mill. What was there to say? Small businesses were getting hit the hardest by the recession. Old mill, old story. Regardless, he spent a good half hour touching it up before finally sending it to the Sun for next week's personal interest column. Then, it was time for more research of quite a different sort.

"I'm going out for a bit," he said. Caroline was, as per the usual, nestled in a comfy chair reading The Life of Pi. He was going to investigate this first-hand.

"Sure, dear," Caroline answered. "While you're out, do you think you could pick up some milk? The stuff in the fridge has gone sour."

John smiled. "Yeah, sure, you betcha." He headed out into the cloudy outdoors with a black raincoat on, just in case. He also picked up an item that he rarely took out unless he knew that he was in for a wait: a black Nintendo 3DS.

On a whim, he had gotten a Nintendo 3DS. It had a lot of games that were not too terribly nerdy: Puzzle games, art lessons, and various others. He had a soft spot for a few of the classic Nintendo titles from when he had been a teenager, and would sometimes play Mario when his brain needed a little bit of shaking up. Pokemon had since become another classic Nintendo property, but John had never given it a shot.

He had not grown up with Pokemon. Aside from snippets he had seen from channel surfing, he had no idea what it was about. From what he could gather, it involved brightly-colored monsters attacking each other with lightning, leaves, and various other magical spells. It seemed like an okay premise for a game. Now was as good a time as any to look into it.

His first stop was a video store that also happened to rent out video games. After the brief thought that the video store would not be around much longer, he decided to rent Pokemon Platinum. The lady behind the counter told him that they were selling the game on clearance, so he managed to buy it for ten bucks. He gave it a try after a short trip to the grocery store.

Let's see what you're all about, John thought. This was research.

He turned on the system and clicked the icon for Pokemon Platinum. The opening screen featured a serpent with clawed tentacles and red energy running through its body- impressive, to say the least. The game itself was fairly easy to handle -or even master- within minutes. He had to look up a Pokemon type chart just to see what made things "not very effective" or "super-effective." Once he got over a few peculiarities ("why are Bugs good against Psychics?" he wondered), he figured it was about time to see what Br0nygon was all about.

That night, he made an account on the Serebii.net forums. He found the thread again; the three or so people who had volunteered to be transformed had not responded. New videos featuring the Pokemon they had requested (Gengar, another Lugia, and Lucario) had found themselves on the thread.

John clicked them before sending Br0nygon a note. The new Lugia one was the most convincing - the camera had been knocked over when the transformee sprouted a long, white tail. Real drywall clouded the camera's lens before it stopped working.

Relax, John thought. It had only been a day- less for some of them.  Maybe they were just busy. All of the people that had agreed to be turned into Pokemon, busy at once. It was improbable, but definitely not impossible.

He quickly learned how to send private messages. He had been on forums before; Serebii's organization system was not foreign to him. It was easy for him to send Br0nygon a simple private message.

"Hello," he wrote. "I am interested in becoming a-"

He scanned through the Platinum game's PokeDex. It had been saved at someplace called the "Battle Frontier." The last person who had played that game had acquired over 200 Pokemon and seen quite a lot more. John scrolled through the PokeDex, looking for something he had seen, but that the last person had not caught.

His cursor stopped on a bipedal red insect. "Scizor," as the game called it, had claws like a lobster, four translucent wings, and posture like a trained warrior. Even if the transformation did work, John thought, he would be keeping all of his limbs. If the trade did not turn him into a Pokemon, he would at least get a cool-looking bug.

"-Scizor," he finally typed.  "How are we going to do this? Is there anything I should know? I have Platinum, if that means anything."

He waited. It took Br0nygon 30 minutes to reply.

"A Scizor from Gen IV, huh? Don't worry, I have a spare. You sound like you might be new at this; need some help?"

"If you don't mind," John responded. He was briefly tutored in how to hook his game up to the internet, get his Friend Code, and start a trade. They eventually arranged to trade the Scizor in question for a Pikachu.

"Hello," a voice said from the other end of the DS. John chuckled.

"Hey," he said back.

He's an older man like me, John thought. It made him wonder. He thought, for the longest time, that only kids played Pokemon. Judging by how deep this guy's voice was, he had to be in at least his twenties, if not thirties.

"Nice Pikachu," the other guy said. "My girlfriend's gonna love this."

"You have a girlfriend?" John asked.

"Sort of. There's this girl I met in high school. I just re-encountered her online recently," Br0nygon said. The two Poke Balls went through a gap in the game world's 'sky' that reminded John from something out of Looney Tunes. The conversation continued as the Pokemon were switched.

"Huh?" John had spaced out briefly.

"I found my old high school crush on Facebook," Br0nygon said.

"Ah.Hoping to get back together?" John asked.

"Sort of," Br0nygon said. "We haven't chatted in years. I just feel like it's time that we got back in touch."

The Scizor moved about on John's screen, fluttering its transparent wings and thrusting its lobster-like claws. "I hope it goes well for you. Oh, and thanks."

"Any time," Br0nygon said. "Check out the stats on that Scizor, by the way."

John pushed the Scizor that was now in his team with his stylus. After hearing the Pokemon's metallic cry, John quit the trade. He did not need any help figuring out how to leave.

"Fake," John said to himself. He turned off the 3DS - or, well, he tried to.

For whatever reason, he was having trouble moving his fingers. It was as if they had been swathed in glue, and that glue was slowly gelling. The more he fidgeted, the thicker the stickiness got. It felt like he was fiddling in a bucket of caramel.

"What the hell..." John gasped. His fingernails were melting together into a keratinous mess. Soon, his fingers molded themselved into a red shell with his nails. He looked like something out of that old-ish cartoon, Futurama. The only difference was that is lobster pincers were marked with "eyes."

As if the loss of his thumbs was not distracting enough, John felt something grab him around the waist. An invisible hand was crushing him like an empty soda can. He howled in pain as his insides billowed out of his midriff and into a fleshy bag at the base of his spine. He wondered how he was still breathing after that, only to see the bag of organs rising and falling in place of his lungs.

One of his hands touched the twitching tumor. It flinched beneath his touch while crimson segments creased themselves out of his skin. His innards were soon wrapped in a chitinous, red and black abdomen that hung down between his thinning legs.

"Holy..." he breathed. His pelvis was the next thing to become covered in a coat of red armor. The spikes that formed at his hips shredded his already hole-ridden jeans with a frightful rip.

"Scchiz...that hacker has some real magic going on..." John muttered.

Red chitin began to spread like leprosy up his back. Patches of crimson hardened into a shield that removed all the flexibility of his flesh and spine. The only compensations were made for Scizor's glassy wings, which felt like wet handkerchiefs poking out of his armor. He could feel the blood already coursing through them; they would not be useless for long.

Just when his new wings ruptured his plaid shirt, John remembered what Br0nygon had wanted. Alas, it was too late for him to turn anything on or off - his claws, sharp though they were, were not very dextrous. He still had to tell someone. If this was real, then the reptilian humanoids of David Icke might also be valid entities.

John fumbled with the door. His claws were so useless for turning the doorknob that they broke it off instead. The shards of wood and metal did nothing to him as the chitin spread up his claws and onto his arms, but he would need to buy a new door if he ever became human again. He managed to nudge the door open with his new appendages, then yelled down the hall to his wife.

"Caroline!" he called. "Wherre arre you-zor?"

"Yes?" Luckily, Caroline had not noticed her husband's changing speech. "I'm in the kitchen," she added.

John tripped as he walked towards her. His feet had just gone from being the ten toes he had known from birth to boneless, shifting masses. When he was finally able to right himself, his feet were plated in red with a single, pearly claw of support on each foot. Much to his amazement, he was able to walk on such narrow nails.

"I'm....I think you schould sccee this..." John noticed his short brown hair drifting to the hardwood floor. His head gained a set of three red, tough spikes. His brown eyes turned yellow; suddenly, he found himself seeing blaring reds, deep purples, and other colors that humans had not yet found names for.

He knew that he was now more or less a complete Scizor. He had to tell Caroline what was going on while he could still talk. He slowly managed to right himself, but still hobbled into the kitchen while adjusting to his new limbs. His four glossy wings, now fully-functional, helped him balance.

"Honey? What's wro-" John saw Caroline right in front of him in a swirling rainbow of reds, oranges, blacks, and tiny points and lines of the rest of the rainbow. He was glad that she was not carrying any sort of plate or glass, otherwise it probably would have shattered on the linoleum.

"It'sssor reeal," he tried to say. "Caroliizzor...Scizor."

His yellow eyes made contact with Caroline's hazel. He could only watch as she backed herself beneath an old-fashioned analog clock in fear.

Caroline's first reaction was completely natural: She let out a scream that made dogs down the street bark.

"Caroline, wait!" John said. It made perfect sense to him; to Caroline, however, it came out more like "Sciz, scizor!" He extended a lobster-like pincer as she fled. He heard her muttering nothings of denial and confusion, and eventually broke down into sobs in their bedroom. John waited for her to come out. The clocked ticked as John waited. She did not come out after what had to be twenty minutes, but with how a Scizor saw the world, numbers showed up as slightly-hot lines on the clock.

Great, he thought. He tried to think about what was keeping Caroline. She had screamed right-out; that was not a good sign. Maybe she was just shocked. Maybe she would call Animal Control. She knew as much about aliens as he did; the tabloids might be coming over any time now, trying to get the latest scoop on the bug that a housewife had suddenly found in her house. He was sure that she had their numbers and would be telling them...what, exactly?

John felt his mind start to race. Those people in the YouTube videos...what had happened to them? The government owned the internet. Insofar as John knew, nothing like this had ever happened before. If Pokemon really were as magical and powerful as the video games made them out to be, they would be prime targets for military experimentation.

Then it clicked. It all made sense, now: The government had sent him some sort of program in that Scizor that invoked the powers of Satan to alter his body into that of a Pokemon. The transformees must have been taken away somewhere for further experimentation, or, worse, made into Psychic-, Flying-, and Electric-Type supersoldiers. Project Talent no longer needed to exist if they had created a program like that.

Shoot, John remembered. My 3DS was connected to the internet, wasn't it? Someone had his whole conversation with Br0nygon in an MP3 file somewhere. He wasn't safe here - not if the government was behind this whole incident. Br0nygon was probably sending them the coordinates of his house right now. The FBI was probably already on their way. His only shot at freedom was the woods.

With his eyes closed, he punched one of the kitchen windows. It did not hurt, but left behind a mess of shattered glass. Caroline would have to clean it up later; John used the opportunity to leap out of the window and take flight for the first time.

Scizor could not fly fast, but the drifting flight it was capable of was more than sufficient. John's glossy wings fluttered behind him as he launched himself through the hole in the window. It took him some tome to get used to maneuvering in the air; he was glad that he had thick armor when he rammed into the garage. Luckily, he recovered fast, and sped off into the forest surrounding the lake.

Flying felt exhilarating, but the thrill wore off fast. John regained reason as soon as he landed. He began thinking about necessities - food, water, and a place to hide from anyone who might be after him. He heard a gasp when he startled a few campers around Lake Wobegon in search of food; luckily for him, one of them was carrying a camera and happened to snap a pic before he ran off. That was when he got an idea.

Despite his good looks as a human, John had never been a photogenic person. It was time for that to change.

He waited until it was dusk. A family of a man, a woman, and three kids was stationed around the water's edge. He had to time this right: behave like a natural predator, but make sure that the family wasn't asleep.

He was able to find food easily. A rabbit blared yellow-orange beneath its brown fur. John had nothing against rabbits, and felt his stomach twist when he realized he would have to kill one. Nonetheless, he needed food, as well as something that would make the family notice him. The rabbit satisfied both, but John would not be happy about the dirt that would be on his hands...or lobster claws.

Please be awake... John thought. His claws were ill-adept for praying, but as he chased the rabbit towards the campsite, he found himself hoping that luck would be on his side, even if God was not.

There was a snap and a squeak as his claws closed around the rabbit's neck. It was a quick death, but the rabbit's squeak was enough to get their attention. He saw the hot bodies rustling inside a camp tent of a color that probably looked different to him than it did to humans. Hisses of "get the camera!" circulated inside a large orange tent before two young heads and a man with a camera peeked out.

Then, flashes. The Scizor in him was dizzied. He let his inner (outer?) insect do what it wanted and shield his eyes with his spotted claws. It would make for a realistic picture. One good, clear shot was all he needed for someone to write a story about him. He had been avoiding them before, but that was without really thinking. Any press he could get would flush this Br0nygon guy out.

The rest of the night was dull. Only crickets punctuated what was otherwise dead silence. Sure, he had been camping a few times, but those times, he had always been able to turn back. A week in the wild was fun; it was a lot less fun if it happened to be permanent. Now he could not turn back...could he?

John quickly realized that he could not live like this. He missed Caroline. Steak. Being inside a house. He had to venture back into town, insofar as it was a town. Who cared if he was a bug? If he appeared in broad daylight in front of millions of witnesses, so much the better. He would would venture out in the morning; for now, a thicket would have to suffice for sleep.

~April 24th, 2012, 7:30 A.M.~

John woke up at first morning light. His first instinct was to rub his eyes. Only after looking at the pincers that his hands had become did he realize how bad an idea that was.

"[Right,]" John said aloud. It was hard having no fingers. It was even harder not being able to speak English.

Well, time to pay a visit to the old homestead, he thought.

John's glassy wings flapped in the sunlight as he glided and jumped his way into town. He still instinctively avoided main roads, and went to his house by backstreets and backyards. A few dogs barked at him. Once, he stayed until the owner got nothing but a brief glimpse of his wings and abdomen. He knew what would get people talking; getting people talking was his job. Former job.

He finally saw his red-painted house. He sped around back, but remained suspended in mid-air for a few minutes before peeping on Caroline through the back windows. A familiar scent had just caught his attention. He finally saw the source waiting for him on a white plate located on the front steps.

Steak! he thought. Caroline had left him steak! And hot sausage! Catching a still piece of meat was a lot easier than chasing after meat that was running around, so he decided to indulge himself. He found that the easiest way to eat the meat was to pick it up gently in his claws and bite off little bits. There were times when he was almost tempted to spit it out; although the rabbit had not been particularly pleasant to eat, it contained none of the nondescript chemicals his breakfast links had in them. He reminded himself that Caroline had prepared this with nothing but love. Maybe it was a placebo, but that one little thought almost nullified the unnamed poison that the sausage makers laced their product with.

Caroline had left him another present as well: that morning's issue of the Wobegon Sun.

John tried to focus on the neon-buzzing letters that made up the headlines on the Sun. He expected politics on the front page as usual, but was pleasantly surprised. Today, the newspapers were running quite a different headline: "Red Alien Sighted Around Lake Wobegon." As John read the headline on somebody's driveway, he made a promise: whoever this Br0nygon was, he would find out what he did, and fill the whole world in on it.