(Man to Anthro Zygarde)


Ethan stared at the two girls standing in his way.  Emilia and...  Amelia?  With names like that, no wonder the two turned into a pair of screwballs.  There were a number of things that led Ethan to the conclusion that something was wrong with the duo, not least of which the matching lab coats they were wearing.  Or the fact that they introduced themselves with all the pomp and circumstance of a wannabe Rocket.
“Team Serum?”  He flatly repeated the name they gave him, looking them over again.  Kalos really was a place for all kinds.  Why his fiancée had dragged him here, he’d never know...
“That’s right!”  The younger of the sisters—Amelia?—beamed, fidgeting with her glasses.
“Yep.”  Ethan sighed.  “Of course you would be.  Listen, I’m really sorry, but I don’t have the time to sign any autographs.”
“For what?”  Emilia arched one of her eyebrows.
That was odd.  “Um.  Beating Team Rocket?  Isn’t that why you’re here?”
Emilia snickered sarcastically.  “Sweetie, that’s cute, but last I checked, you’re no Red.”
Ethan’s right eye ticked a little at that.  “Come again?  You do know I whipped his sorry butt back to Pallet Town, right?”
“Yeah, good job beating someone who hadn’t visited a Pokemon Center in two years.  Real impressive work.”  Amelia muttered, just loudly enough that Ethan could clearly hear every word.
“Hey, listen kid, you should show your elders a little more respect.”  Ethan frowned at the young woman, determined not to lose his temper in front of her.  Even if she was doing a rather good job of pushing his buttons...
Emilia laughed loudly, a sincere sound this time.  No doubt there was some inside joke between the two of them.  Well, he’d just leave the pair to their delusions.  After all, he had someone waiting for him at the Hotel Richissime...  Ethan rocked back on his feet, preparing to trigger his set of Running Shoes.
“Hold on!”  Emilia ran in front of him, waving her arms.
Ethan grunted in shock, making one step forward before he collided with her.  Luckily, her breasts were large enough to absorb the impact.  Unluckily, she had something in her hand, and Ethan grunted at the feeling of something sinking into his arm.
“Oh crap.”  Amelia muttered meekly from the sidelines, taking a step back.
“Oh crap?”  Ethan raised his arm, seeing an injector embedded in his jacket, its needle sticking into his arm.  “Um...”
Emilia smiled from under him.  “Don’t worry, it’s sterile.  Well, it was.  No sense in wasting it!”
“No, wait!”  Amelia raised her hand to forestall her sister, but she might as well have been yelling at a Snorlax.
The redhead quickly triggered the injector, and Ethan gasped as he felt its contents empty into his arm.  “What the hell?”  He grunted.
“Emilia, wasn’t that sample Z?”  Amelia gasped, running over to Ethan to yank the injector from his arm.
“And?”  Emilia shrugged, sliding out from under Ethan.  She sat cross-legged as though she was about to watch a television show, and her sister glared at her.
“We promised!  Just hurry up and help me get these pants off of him!”
Ethan jumped in surprise as the girl expertly undid his belt.  “Ah!  I don’t want to go to jail!”  He yelped, trying to scoot away from her.  Unfortunately, all that did was make it easier for her to get his pants around his ankles.
The bespectacled brunette continued her efforts as she spoke.  “I’m twenty-three.”
“Eighteen.”  Emilia offered helpfully.
“Shut up.”  She grunted, freeing the struggling trainer of his shorts.
“Give those back!”  Ethan leaned to grab his clothes back, pausing as he looked at his legs.  He blinked several times in rapid succession, trying to come to terms with the fact that his skin seemed to be a violent shade of green.  “Um.”
“Shoes and socks!”  Amelia shouted, her sister hurriedly complying even as she pulled out a pair of scissors, expertly cutting Ethan’s underwear down the middle so it was like a skirt.
“Ah!  Watch it!”  Ethan shouted, silently thanking Arceus that she hadn’t cut anything more precious to him.  He grunted as Emilia slipped his shoes off, then gasped as he looked at his feet.  They looked deformed, as though his feet were—Amelia and Emilia each pulled off a sock, and Ethan nodded in slow comprehension.
His ankles ended in pointed stumps, almost like something’s tail.  All of the bones in his legs cracked, and Ethan could picture them forming new joints.  He nodded again, giving voice to his thoughts.  “This is a dream.”  The trainer said with mild detachment, watching as the skin on the back of his legs darkened to a midnight black.
Now that he’d accepted that this was in his subconscious, the only thing he had to worry about was how badly his skin matched with his clothes.  Ethan laughed a little hysterically, watching as his legs conjoined into a single tail.
The two girls looked at each other uneasily.
“Don’t freak out...”  Amelia started, holding up her hands.
Emilia slapped Ethan hard across the face, and his vision swam for a few moments.  He shook his head, blinking rapidly.  Much to his surprise though, his cheek wasn’t really stinging.  He raised a hand to it and felt scales, rather than skin, beneath his fingers.  Come to think of it, his digits also felt a little reptilian against his cheek.  Could it be that he now had scales, instead of skin?
“Not a dream!”  Emilia chirped, snapping her fingers.  She paused, leaning to her right as she inspected Ethan’s shoulders.  “Wait.  Doesn’t Zygarde have—”
Ethan shouted in surprise as his back ached, a set of frills erupting from just behind his neck.  He could hear his jacket tear behind him, and he looked back to find a set of hexagonal black appendages jutting from his shoulderblades, some of the red scraps of his jacket clinging to them.  Each of them had a pair of inset green hexagons.
“There they are!”  Emilia chirped, clapping her hands.
“What do you mean it’s not a dream?”  Ethan’s eyes flew back to his tail, the limb flattening out as he watched.  Its tip ended with a few hexagons that mirrored those on his new frills.
Amelia stopped glaring at her older sister long enough to respond to Ethan.  “Nope, not a dream.”  She blinked a few times, then quickly pointed away from her and her sister, her eyes wide as she stared at Ethan’s chest.
He followed her gaze, finding that his chest was not only exposed, it was also half-black.  Moreover, the green scales also looked like they were... glowing?
“Look over there, quick!”  Amelia shouted at him, and he hurriedly obeyed, feeling something building in his chest.  He opened his mouth to cough and a jet of fire shot from his throat, dissipating harmlessly into the air.
“Okay.”  Ethan muttered, faint wisps of smoke trailing from the sides of his lips.  “That happened.”  He looked down and saw that the scales were still glowing faintly, then he looked up to the sisters with a grin.  “Explain or I do that again.”
“We of Team Serum change people into hybrid Pokemon and my sister injected you with something that will make you become one of the legendary Pokemon of this region its name is Zygarde and it’s a ground dragon and please don’t do that in our direction!”  Amelia gasped for breath after she finished speaking, and Ethan leaned back to let out a satisfyingly large stream of fire into the air.
Emilia looked at her funnily.  “You know that as one of our Poke-People, his attacks won’t hurt humans, right?  We worked that in after the little ‘Chrono’ incident.”
“Yes, but that doesn’t apply for our clothes, dummy.”
“Hey, respect your elders!”
Ethan let them argue for a few moments, slipping the sleeves of his jacket off of his arms.  It looked like his arms were the same green as his stomach and the front of his tail, which meant that the deep black on his form was almost like a regal cloak.  But if that was the case, what color was his face?  Ethan slipped out his phone, turning on the camera to get a better look at himself.
His eyes were a shockingly bright viridian, even brighter than that on the rest of his form.  It had to be some sort of illusion produced by the contrast between them and the black skin on his face.  That answered that, at least.  On the bright side, he didn’t have a muzzle, but a quick inspection of his mouth revealed that his canines were slightly longer, and he had a serpentine tongue.
Ethan couldn’t speak for the former, but Whitney would probably approve of the latter...  He chuckled as to what her reaction would be when he showed up at their room looking like this.  At least, assuming this was the way he’d look once the changes were done.  It certainly felt like he was done transforming, and Ethan took a moment to reflect on how just how his new form worked.
He slid his tail from between the girls, positioning it so he could approximate a standing position.  His scales glinted in the light, and Ethan shook his form, sending the tatters of his jacket to the ground.  He could feel each of his frills, and thankfully his mind knew almost instinctively how to control his tail.  It was like he’d been born part-Pokemon.
Come to think of it, he was part-Pokemon.  Wouldn’t that be able to have him use Pokemon-only items on himself?  The changed trainer dug into his backpack, grabbing a TM disc at random and slapping it against his forehead.
New information surged into his mind, and he found his face splitting into a wide grin.  Ethan curled his fingers into fists, turning away from the girls to focus and send a quick jab at the air.  A massive blast of energy shot form his fist, knocking a small tree over.
“Oh my God, this is incredible!”  Ethan flexed his arms, slapping his tail behind him.  It sent a minor shockwave through the ground, and Ethan roared with laughter.  No wonder Chuck and Bruno worked out so much, this power was incredible!  “I feel like I can do anything right now!”
“Except climb stairs.”  Amelia muttered at that perfect volume where her words were audible to everyone, yet quiet enough that they could be said under her breath.
Ethan opened his mouth to retort, then closed it slowly, turning back to his tail with a frown.  She kind of had a point...
Despite taking the wind completely out of his sails, Amelia decided to continue.  “Or ride bicycles, use running shoes, use traditional bathrooms—”
Ethan glared at her and she shut up almost immediately, her whole form stiffening as though she was paralyzed by his stare.
“Don’t mind her, she’s just bitter about the first trainer we changed.”  Emilia smiled at Ethan, slapping her sister on the back.  Amelia rocked forward slightly at the impact; then backward, falling on the grass with a soft thud.
“Ah!”  Emilia gasped, falling to her knees beside her sister.  She then started to poke and prod at the younger girl, tilting her head in confusion.  “Hey, Em, you okay?  Amelia? Emiiilia?”
Huh.  So apparently that glare might have been a technique.  Ethan would have to watch himself for things like that.  Of course, that did make it his fault for her current condition...  Ethan sighed, pulling a Lava Cookie from his bag.  “Here, this should help.”  He leaned down, his tail coiling behind him as he waved the cookie in front of Amelia’s face.
Her whole frame jolted; then her hands flew up, grabbing the sweet so she could devour it.  “Mm, thanks!”  She said between munches, brown crumbs scattering on her lab coat.  She swallowed the last crumbs of the cookie, wiping at her mouth.
“Any time.  That’ll be 500 Pokedollars.”  Ethan looked at her with a grin.
“What?  Aren’t they cheaper than that?”  Emilia gasped.
“They are.”  Ethan admitted.  “That said, you should keep in mind I’m not charging you for the damages done to my clothes.”
Amelia nodded, pressing her glasses a little higher on her nose.  “Much obliged, though I’m sensing an impending ‘if’.”
Ethan nodded, winking.  “If you tell me if Kalos has a Pokemon League for your ‘Poke-People.”
“As a matter of fact...”  Amelia grinned conspiratorially, and Ethan found his dark face breaking into a smile.  It looked like this vacation would be much better than he’d anticipated...



Up next time on The Misadventures of Team Serum!

Whitney kicked open the entrance to Team Serum’s hideout, which was fairly impressive given that it was a sliding bulkhead.
“Um.”  Amelia looked at her in wide-eyed surprise.
“Miltank.”  Whitney snarled, looking at each of the sisters with a savage glare.  “Now.”