It felt like almost an eternity had passed. Meowth had no idea what day it was any more; he had spent the majority of the time drifting in an out of an uncomfortable slumber, the rest sitting upright and staring across his bed into the dark.
Just like he was now.
Even so, his mind wasn’t all that concerned about the aspect of confused chronology. The pain didn’t feel so relentless now; maybe the medication had finally sunk in, or maybe he had just become used to the gnaws and stabs of his metamorphosis. Meowth wondered what sort of appearance he had taken on as he examined the glass surfaces of the monitors on the other side of the room, slightly tinged with a faint glow from the outside hallway. Whatever the shape it must have been one that hadn’t affected his eyesight yet; the figure was pleasantly surprised that his excellent vision was seemingly unaffected. Nevertheless the distinct lack of light within the room made it impossible to make out a reflection upon the screens at all, regardless of how good his eyesight was. Not that Meowth was all too concerned over seeing himself at this moment in time; his thoughts drifted and wandered, unable to keep a focus.
Something was missing. Something important. But he couldn’t work out what it was.
Without realising what he was doing the figure reached up toward his forehead, expecting the smooth, familiar coldness to encounter his fingertips. But instead they were met with warm, uneven, slightly clammy skin. Meowth withdrew a breath of dismay.
“My charm…” he uttered softly. “Ih…it’s…
…gone.”
All of a sudden the figure felt himself lose control. In a matter of seconds he had his head thrust between his hands and was crying bitterly, no longer regardful over who might hear.
“I’ve made a big mistake!” he sobbed. “I don’t wanna be human! I don’t wanna live wit’out my charm! I…”
Meowth’s regretful exclamations were rapidly silenced by the sound of someone frantically struggling with the doorknob. A moment later Gloria’s worried face drew into sight.
“What happened?” she spluttered, sitting down upon the edge of the bed. “Did you hurt yourself?”
“I’ve hoit myself in da worst way possible” came the deeply shameful reply. “I took away my own Pokemanity. Dis was all such a big mistake…”
Gloria squinted as she watched the shadowed creature’s head move slightly from the force of a repressed sob.
“I don’t believe you’ve removed it at all” she commented firmly. “Though your body is changing, your mind and soul remain the same. You’re still a Pokémon on the inside”
“But no one can see dat part!” Meowth cried, before his head slumped forward onto his chest. “My charm is gone and a part of me has gone with it!”
Gloria hid a slight smile as out of her pocket she brought a shiny object.
“I thought you’d be wanting to keep this” she murmured, placing the item into Meowth’s hands. His shoulders tensed slightly as it made contact. “That’s why I put it safe after I’d removed it. After all… I’m sure you wouldn’t want to throw away all the memories that it holds.”
The grip upon the charm tightened as Meowth let out a deeply relieved sigh.
“No…” he began. “I wouldn’t. Thank you, Gloria”
The woman continued to smile, but the expression had gathered an element of wistful sadness.
“It’s ok, Meowth. But you shouldn’t doubt yourself so. A choice is a choice,” she said. “You weren’t forced into doing it…were you?”
“No.”
“You made the decision from the feelings in your own heart, didn’t you?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Exactly” Gloria concluded. “If you follow your heart, every decision you make will be the right one. In this confusing world with its conflicts of opinion, sometimes the best person to listen to is yourself.”
Meowth looked up and caught a glimpse of Gloria’s lost gaze as it passed straight through him.
“Dat’s very philosophical,” he murmured. The woman gave a half-hearted laugh.
“Dad always used to tell me that I’d make an excellent scholar.”
A lengthy silence descended. Meowth watched Gloria as she stared back at the shaft of light passing from the hallway into the room and gave out the occasional sigh.
“Somet’ing botherin you?” he inquired after a few minutes had passed. “Ya seem real deep in thought dere”
“Guess I was” Gloria replied. “This situation and the thought of memories brought some of my own to mind.”
“Oh?”
“You see, regardless of how you look at your circumstance, you’re very lucky,” she said, without looking up. “Your cell restructure process is turning out the way it was meant to. But in the many efforts before you, others who committed their bodies did not fare so well. One of them happened to be my beloved Meowth who I’d named Errol.”
Gloria brought out a small photograph enclosed in a golden frame and passed it into the sliver of light to augment the image upon the surface.
“Just like you, I have always been treated as someone different” she stated. “My dad desperately wanted to send me and my brother away to live with my grandparents. Kiet agreed immediately, innocent to the implications this deal brought, but I was deeply upset. I thought that he had stopped loving us, but now I realise that he cared for us more than I knew. It was why he wanted to send us away, so we didn’t have to go through the forced labouring that he and mum had been withstanding all those years before.
Nevertheless, father reluctantly took me with him and I learnt those facts the hard way. Incarcerated within the Cinnabar Team Rocket laboratory I was an outcast, divided by my views on what I saw. The other children my age were very cruel to me, in both words and action - they treated me differently, just because I cared about the Pokémon experiments and felt sorrowful for their tortured existences within those glass containers.
He could see how their atrociousness hurt me so, but he knew there was no way to free me from the horror that I had entered. Instead my dad attempted to bring comfort, in the form of a runt Meowth that he rescued from certain extermination. A Pokémon of my very own to care for and protect... so ironic how things turn out.”
“What dya mean?” the creature inquired. Gloria looked up at him and a distant sheen descended upon her eyes.
“He ended up protecting me.”
The woman reached across her right hand and carefully pulled back the sleeve of her lab coat, causing Meowth to furiously battle against the urge to gag. Gloria’s left arm was a mass of pulsing wires, each one woven beneath her pale skin like an experimental human tapestry. It was a horrific sight, even compared to what Meowth had seen occurring to his own body over the past few days or so.
“Wh-wha…” the figure barely managed to utter. Gloria glanced at him sadly.
“This was the final devastating result of their malice” she sighed. “When the other junior scientists’ envy over my partnership with Errol became too great, they sought to tear us apart. My protest was met with severe retaliation; soon I found my garments locked in the cogs of one of the laboratory machines as they turned relentlessly, unable to escape.
Errol leapt to my rescue without a second thought - I saw him flailing in his attempts to reach for the emergency shutdown lever. Even after he had managed to grab hold it took him several seconds to pull it down. By then half my left arm had been almost devoured by the machine.”
Gloria pulled her sleeve back over the cybernetic disorder and brought the photograph back into view, running her fingers down the sides of it in an attempted act of self-comfort.
“Errol must have felt so devastated at his delayed attempts at rescue. Maybe it was that which drove him to do what he did... maybe he had thought being in a human form would have given him the ability to protect me better. Whatever reason it had been for he lent his body to the laboratory in an attempt to make himself human not long after I had been admitted to hospital. But the technology was new at the time…and he didn’t survive the primitive techniques of cell mutation that the scientists used…”
She looked down at the picture, and more of her tears spattered against the glass.
“I do not mourn over the physical destruction it left me to live with, but over the mental destruction that drove Errol to die. He cared so much for me…and now…he’s gone…”
Meowth let out a guilty breath as Gloria sank into a semi-silent sorrow. He was beginning to wonder whether it had been a good idea to ask her the reason for her thoughtfulness. The woman answered his question by looking back at him, a faint glimmer of hope in her eyes.
“Maybe you could be the Errol that my Pokémon could not.”
“I guess I could be,” Meowth smiled sadly. “Errol…dat name would take some gettin’ used to. But den again, all of dis will…”
***~~***~~***~~***~~***
The figure felt a sudden cold grip his entire body. Shutting his eyes tighter and squirming uncomfortably, he tried to gather his thoughts relating to the events he had witnessed earlier. Had his conversation with Gloria all been a dream? The sudden drop in temperature was making it hard for him to come to a conclusion.
“Mggh…” he groaned, scrabbling at the covers in a bid to wrap it tightly round himself. “I know dis place has major budget cuts but dis is ridiculous! Whadda dey trying ta do? Freeze everyone ta death? An what happened ta dis blanket? It shrink or somet’ing?”
“No…” came a giggle from a short distance away.
“You’ve grown”
His eyes shot open to be met with the cheerful countenance of Gloria standing in the doorway, holding a plate.
“Morning Errol” she smiled. “I brought you some breakfast”
‘Breakfast’ consisted of a grilled Tauros steak, two Combusken eggs, mushrooms, tomatoes and potato waffles. The heavy aroma had soon occupied the room and Errol’s stomach was quick to rejoice by uttering an unbelievably loud gurgle.
“Sounds like da best idea I’ve hoid in a long time!” he grinned, sitting bolt upright and reaching out to take the plate. Then he paused in mid-action, eyes widening. Gloria looked at him, puzzled.
“Something wrong?” she asked. Errol had become frozen in what looked like a state of silent elation, a smile creeping from the corners of his mouth and erupting into a huge grin.
“I got hands!” he exclaimed, wiggling his fingers to prove a point. “Human hands! An’ dey’re not mutated or nuthin!”
Gloria nodded happily, before placing the plate on the man’s lap.
“That’s right. Your transmutation period is complete, so now you’re allowed to have solid foods again. Though there may be a couple of issues you’ll want to discuss after you’ve eaten.”
“Suffass whut?” Errol inquired with his mouth full. The woman looked slightly awkward.
“There were a few things the modification procedure failed to alter” she explained. “Mostly upon your face. Your whiskers still exist, as do your fangs and the shape of your pupils remains like that of a Meowth.”
“Ya don’t say…” The figure swallowed and went to take another mouthful. At this point he caught a glimpse of himself upon the reflective surface of the knife he was holding, and almost choked. Gloria hurried to his aid but calmed down slightly as Errol managed to regain control of his own breathing.
“It will probably take a while to get used to” she reminded him. The man chuckled at this as he continued to examine his face.
“You bet! I almost didn’t recognize meself dere…”
It was the reflection of a blue-eyed, middle aged human countenance that graced Errol’s sight now; decorated with a shock of golden hair and a lopsided smirk. He reached a free hand up and carefully stroked it across the similarly coloured fuzz that had settled upon his chin.
“…not surprisingly” he concluded. “Looks like I’ll be needing ta shave. Dose times watchin Jimmy do it will finally come in useful.”
“And the whiskers?” Gloria asked.
“I t’ink dey’re rather fetchin’” Errol commented brightly. The woman shook her head.
“Maybe so” she began. “But out there in the Rocket community you’ll stand out like an Armaldo wearing bloomers! And that’s the last thing you or I want, especially since the scientists have no idea what your human form looks like. They’ll have to be removed.”
Errol heaved a sigh at this. He knew she was right; and regardless of his reluctance it had to be done. With humanity came losses as well as gains, after all.
“Okay…” he murmured. “You’re da boss.”
***~~***~~***~~***~~***
After a lengthy process of hair removal from his chin using a bowl of warm water, some shaving foam and a disposable razor Gloria had provided from her own room, Errol arranged himself neatly upon the bed and awaited the final step into humanity. Gloria bit her lip as she took a small implement from her pocket that closely resembled a ballpoint pen and began making some adjustments to the dials on the side.
“I did attempt to get some anaesthetic, but the risk of arousing suspicion was too great” she explained shakily as the end of the device began to glow white. “I’ll try to make this as painless as possible for you, but if you do feel the release the tension then its best you bite the edge of the blanket.”
Errol laughed heartily at this.
“Dya honestly t’ink my tolerance is dat thin?” he inquired. “Hey wit’ da kinda pain I been through lately, both mental an’ physical, I doubt a little extra’s gonna make much diff’rence.”
“I hope you’re right” Gloria replied, raising the tool. “Because this is the first time I’ve ever had to test out my surgical skills.”
“Whaa-AAAAAUGH!”
There was a small rustle as a severed whisker tumbled down the blanket and off the edge of the bed. Errol clutched at his face, eyes creased up and watering heavily.
“Whoa…” he panted as blood began trickling down his cheek. “Dat was unexpected.”
“I’m everso sorry” Gloria stammered, hurriedly looking for the Swablu fluff she was certain she had brought to clean up any messes. Upon finding it, she quickly moistened a piece using the bowl of water that she had cleaned and refilled since the shaving incident, and handed it toward Errol.
“What’s da matta?” he inquired, taking the swab and pressing it against his face. The woman slumped her head miserably as she turned off the tool in her hand.
“I…I can’t do it”
“Whaddya mean you can’t do it?” Errol protested, almost dropping the swab. “Ya started already! Ya can’t quit now!”
Gloria covered her eyes as she turned toward the door.
“I don’t think… that I’m the best person to be doing this for you,” she murmured. Errol put on a very stern expression.
“Well I do” he stated firmly. “In fact I couldn’t t’ink o’ anyone better. You’re havin’ a dip in confidence, dat’s all.”
The woman turned round slowly to look at the figure as he slowly removed the swab from his cheek. By now the blood had clotted sufficiently but there was a noticeable scar across the side of his face where Gloria had made the incision. She winced upon sight of it, but Errol continued regardless.
“Though ya shouldn’t be, in my opinion. Dere’s no reason for you to feel you’re incapable of anyt’ing, afta all youse got both da skills and da intellect”
Gloria blushed deeply at the compliment.
“Thank you…”
“I should be thankin’ you, Gloria” Errol insisted. “For all dis commitment you’ve shown me. For puttin’ your life on da line jus’ for da sake of givin’ me a new one. For continuin’ ta show me such care an support even now. I owe ya so much.”
“You don’t owe me anything, Errol” Gloria replied with a shake of the head. “Just seeing your appreciation and happiness is all I need.”
This time it was Errol’s turn to blush. The gazes of the two figures had locked in a silent scrutiny; Gloria was the first to realise and awkwardly averted her eyes before returning to powering up the surgical device in her hand once more.
“Now let’s get the rest of those whiskers off, shall we?”