(Shrinking Story)

Silph Company

Research and Development file #23638: The “Human Ball” Incident

Note: The following letter was originally received by our customer service department. It was forwarded to research and development and, later, the local police. Since the letter is part of an open criminal investigation, descriptions of names and places have been redacted in this copy.

Dear Silph Company,

I want to report a serious problem I had with one of your poké balls. I need your help, now!

You see, it all started a few years ago. I’m from [redacted town name]. The girl from next door, [redacted girl name], had been my best friend for as long as I can remember. We would play together all the time, and we both dreamed of becoming pokémon trainers. She would always tease me and say that I would be her greatest rival to push her to become a champion. I told her she would have to beat me first. Yeah, we would fight sometimes, but we were always friends, always there for each other.

When we were both old enough to start training, we set off to make our dreams a reality and began our pokémon journey as partners. That first year was wonderful. We went everywhere together. Our skills made us a perfect team. She knew everything about each pokémon and how to care for them, while I knew everything about pokémon equipment and the regions we planned on traveling through. So, even though she might have beaten me in catching a Lapras, I was the one she turned to when her Pokédex stopped working. We caught so many pokémon, had amazing adventures, and saw all of the [redacted region name]. Although neither of us made it to the championship, I did win two gym badges. She only won one badge, which I enjoyed teasing her about, endlessly.

Next year, we kept on traveling together. She won three badges in the [redacted region name], and I only won two. Of course, she mercilessly teased me about having more badges this time. It was around that time that I started to notice something different about her. When we were younger, I had always been a little taller than her. While we were traveling together, though, she started to grow taller faster than I did. Soon, she was a few centimeters taller than I was. She started joking that she was going to introduce me as her little brother. Although she never actually did that, I started to feel a bit awkward around her.

The year after that, her body started to fill out more. She began wearing bras. Her hips got wider. I found myself sneaking peeks at her curves when she wasn’t looking. It took a little while before I realized I was falling in love with her. Some nights I would stare at her tent and wonder if she would let me share it with her. I tried to work up the courage to ask her to be my girlfriend, but then I remembered what I looked like. Despite how mature she looked now, I still looked like a little boy. It felt so unfair. I mean, we’re the same age, after all. Puberty is really cruel.

I think she started to notice how I was looking at her, and she became a little more distant from me. She was not being mean or anything. We would still travel together and catch pokémon and make jokes, but she started spending more time alone, especially in towns and cities. I even caught her talking to some older boys in one city. That made me so jealous, but I felt like there was nothing I could do about it.

This year, I made up my mind to ask her out. One night while we were camping near this pleasant little lake, I noticed how she looked particularly beautiful in the twilight. We had passed a Nidorino and Nidorina earlier, and I had found myself envying the Nidorino. I decided that it was time to confess my love for her at last, so I sat next to her by the lake and told her how I felt. I figured that I had a chance. I had just started to show my first signs of puberty, and I hoped that would help. I mean, we had known each other forever. In fact, no one knew her better than I did. We both liked each other. Besides how I looked, why wouldn’t she want to be my boyfriend? She listened politely, but I could tell that she was feeling uncomfortable. Then, when I was done talking, she was silent for a while. Finally, she told me that I was her best friend but that was all I was ever going to be to her. She didn’t feel the same way about me, and besides, she didn’t feel ready to have a boyfriend yet. However, she still wanted to remain friends.

I agreed to remain just friends with her, but I felt this burning resentment inside of me. I was so embarrassed and angry. How could she treat me like that? Was I just some annoying kid to her now? Some pathetic little boy with a childish crush on her? It was so damn patronizing. So unfair.

I lay awake that night, crying, trying to think of what to do next. I found myself starting to hate her a bit, or at least, I was hating the injustice of what she had said to me. I still wanted her, but I also wanted to get revenge on her. I don’t know how to explain that feeling, but that’s what was going through my head. Then, an idea came to me. What if I could trap her like a pokémon? I could keep her in a poké ball on my hip. When I wanted to see her, I could toss her out, and she would have to obey me then. She would be mine.

I know how that sounds, and I was a bit disgusted with myself for even considering that idea. But, I was heartbroken and tired, and I wasn’t thinking straight.

As the days went by after her rejection, my mind kept going back to thinking about trapping her in a poké ball. I had always been talented when it came to technical things, and I kept some tools around to repair our gear. So, the idea of modifying a poké ball seemed possible to me. I dismantled one of my balls and did some research about how it worked. After experimenting for a while, I discovered that, with a few modifications, it really would be possible to turn a poké ball into a “human ball.”

So, I did it. I made a “human ball” to trap her.

[The original letter came with an attachment detailing the modifications he made to the poké ball.]

I scratched an “H” mark on the side of the ball to tell it apart from my regular poké balls. Then, one day I saw her sitting alone, and I took the ball out of my bag. I was about to throw it at her, but, in that moment, as I held the ball in my hand, I realized what a monster I had become. I put the ball away, and made a promise to myself to never use it. Still, I kept it with me. I don’t know why. Maybe I was just proud of what I had managed to do to it.

We continued traveling together, but there was much more distance between us now. We didn’t joke much anymore, and I saw her talking to older boys a lot more. She seemed ready to move on. Although she didn’t say anything about our future together, I knew that this would be our last year traveling as partners.

Then, one day, I caught her kissing a boy at our camp. I walked away before either of them noticed me, but I was aware then that I had truly lost her. Again, I felt that burning resentment in me. When we were alone that night, I pulled the “human ball” out of my bag again. As she sat by the fire, I snuck up behind her, ready to throw the ball at her, but then a twig snapped under my foot and she turned around to see me.

“What are you doing?” she asked me.

I was holding the ball up in the air, ready to throw it. “Um, nothing,” I said as I lowered the ball.

“It looked like you were about to throw a poké ball at me.”

I denied it, of course, pretended that I was just practicing my throw. So, I hid the ball behind my back and took a seat next to her by the fire. That’s when she confirmed it, she would be heading off on her own when we arrived at the next town. Our shared journey was coming to an end.

“But, we’ll always be friends. You’ll always have a place in my heart,” she said, putting a hand to her chest.

I said that I understood and that I would always be her friend, but I felt like crying. So, I stood up and headed for my tent.

“Wait,” she said as I walked away. “You forgot something.”

When I turned around, everything seemed to go in slow motion. I saw her throw something at me. In the darkness away from the fire, I did not see what it was, but I did feel it hit my chest with a thump. Then, a white glow surrounded me, blinding me. I felt myself disintegrate. My body just went away, and for a moment the world was just an endless void of white light.

Then, I felt my body reappear out of nowhere. As the light dimmed away, I found myself standing in front of an enormous bonfire full of huge logs, thicker than most trees. When I turned around to look at the darkness behind me, I was horrified to see a giant approaching me. It appeared to be over 30 meters tall. I felt like running and hiding, but I stopped when the giant was close enough to the fire for me to see it clearly. I realized that it wasn’t a giant. It was my friend [redacted girl name]!

She looked down at me, stunned, while I cowered beneath her.

“What happened?” she asked me. “You shrunk!”

“I don’t know,” I said, looking up at her crouching down above me. “What did you do?”

“I just threw your poké ball back to you,” she said, holding up the ball with the “H” scratched on the side. “Then, you disappeared. I looked everywhere for you until I noticed that there seemed to be a pokémon in the ball, so I let it out to see what it was, and you appeared down here.”

The “human ball” had worked, I realized. Only, I had been the one to be caught in it. Clearly, though, I had made a miscalculation. The ball had captured me as it would capture pokémon, but instead of restoring me to my normal size when I was released, it had kept me as small as I had been when stored as energy inside of the ball.

She picked me up and held me in one of her seemingly giant hands, and I realized that I was powerless to do anything to stop her now. Then, she said, “How could this have happened? You can’t just trap people inside of poké balls.” She looked at the poké ball in her other hand and noticed the “H” on the side. “Wait a minute, this is the ball you were tinkering with before. Isn’t it?”

“I-I can explain,” I said, but my voice felt so small and weak. I could see in her huge eyes that she was figuring out what had happened.

“You were going to throw this at me. Weren’t you?”

“No,” I said. “I wasn’t.”

She looked betrayed, outraged. “You wanted to trap me in a ball like a pokémon? Didn’t you? You disgusting little creep!” Her enormous fingers wrapped around my body like an Ekans.

“I can explain!” I felt like she was squeezing the life out of me.

“You were going to shrink me!”

“No!” I said, gasping for breath. “The shrinking was an accident. That’s not what it was supposed to do.”

“But, it was supposed to trap me. Wasn’t it?”

It felt like she was about to crush me to death. “Yes!” I confessed. “I’m s-sorry.”

She loosened her grip, but she still looked furious. “I can’t belive you would do that. After all of the time we spent together… I thought you were my friend. How could you even think of doing something like that?” Tears formed in her eyes. “How could you?”

“I don’t know,” I said, feeling even smaller now. “I suppose I felt hurt and scared of losing you. I’m sorry.”

She wiped her eyes with the back of her arm and said, “Well, I’m not going to hurt you. It looks like you got what you deserved already. I guess, since I ‘caught’ you, that makes it my responsibility to take care of you until we can figure out how to turn you back.”

I nodded.

“But, I’m not going to like it,” she said. “And after we’re done with this, I’m never talking to you again.”

“Right,” I said. “I understand.” As lousy as the situation was, I was relieved that she was going to look after me, since just the thought of encountering a wild pokémon alone at this size was terrifying. Still, an angry girl at her relative size was almost as terrifying.

Eventually, she calmed down and set me on a little camp chair. We talked for a little while and decided that we needed to visit a pokémon center in the nearest town. We hoped that there might be someone there that could help me.

She set me down in my tent to sleep and went to sleep in her own tent. I lay on my enormous sleeping back looking up at what appeared to be huge circus tent now, feeling terrified about what had happened to me but still optimistic that there might be a way to turn me back to normal again soon.

I woke up the next morning, wondering if the whole thing had been a dream. Then, the enormous zipper of my tent opened and my giant friend poked her head inside. I remember thinking that she looked very beautiful and terrifying all at once. Again, she picked me up and set me on the chair outside as she went about breaking camp. She left my bag under a tarp, since it would be too much weight for her to carry it and her own bag together. We decided to go back for it later. Then, she set me on the shoulder strap of her backpack and we left the campsite with me riding on her like her small pokémon.

We were days away from the nearest pokémon center, so I spent a lot of time on her shoulder as she walked. I would look up at her face and watch the sweat drip down it, watch her breathing through her huge lips. I started measuring everything about her compared to my own body. Her head was three times as tall as I was. Her mouth was just large enough that she might be able to fit my whole body inside of it. Her fingers were almost as long as I was tall. Her breasts… well, they made me feel small as well.

It was strange how quickly we developed a routine for her to take care of me at my new size.

At night, she would change into her pajamas alone in her tent. Then, she would bring me inside to let me sleep next to her on top of her bag. I would climb inside of one of her clean socks like a sleeping bag. Then, I would fall asleep while watching her giant chest rising and falling nearby like an enormous pair of hills.

During meal times, she would break off some of her food and feed it to me like I was her pet. She would pour water into a bottle cap and let me drink from it. At first, she seemed to take care of me only grudgingly, but the more times she fed me, the gentler she seemed towards me.

After a couple of days, she started joking with me again. Then, after lunch, she petted my head gently with one of her fingers. I said nothing, but I felt a little nervous by the kind look she gave me. I worried if she might be seeing me less as a person and more as her own pokémon pet. I said as much to her, but she said I was just being silly. After all, I would be back to normal again soon. She frowned a little after saying that.

The next day, she decided she needed a long break. She lay down in the grass on a hill in the shade of tree and set me on her stomach.

“Do you still love me?” she said, out of nowhere.

“What?”

“Do you love me?”

“Um,” I said. “I guess so.”

“Hmm…” she said and then went quiet. I sat and watched her breathing and thinking for a long time, but she said nothing more.

When she stood up to leave, she put her bag back on, but instead of setting me on her shoulder, she slipped me down into her cleavage, trapping me between her gigantic breasts.

“Hey!” I yelled, feeling a bit turned on and terrified all at once. “Let me out!”

She ignored me and started walking, leaving me surrounded by the flesh of her sweaty tits. When we stopped for dinner, she set me free, but she still ignored me when I complained about where she had put me. In fact, she started ignoring most things I said. Instead, she would talk at me like a pet or a small child, treating me as if I had no say in anything we were doing. That night, she kept me in her tent as she changed into her pajamas. I saw… everything. But, she was not worried at all. In fact, I think she liked that I was looking at her. She seemed to be enjoying how powerless I was now. I fell asleep and had uneasy dreams about her playing with me like a doll.

The next morning she complained that I was starting to smell. She said I needed a bath. She filled a bowel with water and made me take off all of my clothes in front of her. I felt so embarrassed for her to see me naked. My body felt so immature in front of her own mature body, but there was nothing I could do. She was the one in charge. She soaped me up with her hands and washed me. It… excited me. And, she noticed how excited I was.

When I was clean, she dried me with a tissue, but when I went to get dressed, I could not find my clothes. It seemed that she had hidden them somewhere or thrown them away. Instead, she picked me up, still totally nude, and slipped me back into her cleavage. Her bare flesh pressed against my own. I felt excited but uncomfortably trapped. Still, I didn’t even complain. I had given up trying to get her to listen to me at that point. She was going to do what she wanted to do, and there was no way for me to stop her.

Finally, we made it to [redacted city name]. I had thought she might give me my clothes back then, but she did not. She didn’t even take me out of her cleavage, leaving me there as we walked past the people in the city. I think a few of them noticed me, but no one said anything. I felt so exposed and embarrassed, but I was still trapped. There was nothing I could do.

At long last, we arrived at a pokémon center, but she hesitated before going inside. Then, without a word, she pulled me out of her cleavage and slipped me into a side pocket of her backpack. I complained, but she just zipped me inside. Moments later, I could hear her talking with the nurses as she got her pokémon healed up. She mentioned having a defective poké ball and wanted to talk to someone about it. They took her back to see a technician. That’s when she pulled me out of the bag and explained what had happened.

The technician told her to wait outside while he talked to me alone. Although she seemed reluctant to leave me with him, he did eventually convince her to put me on his desk and leave the room. Then, with the door closed, the technician asked me a lot of questions. I was so relieved to have someone actually listen to me again that I told him everything, even the embarrassing bits.

When I was done talking, he explained that he did not understand exactly what had happened to me or how to turn me back to normal. I was so depressed. I wondered if I would ever turn back to normal again. Still, the technician said I could dictate a letter for him to send to the makers of the ball, the Silph Company, which I suppose is what you are reading now.

I explained to him in detail what I did to the poké ball, and he made some technical notes, which should be attached here. Please, help me. I’m scared that I’ll be stuck like this forever. I will be staying in the city with my friend [redacted girl name] until we hear back from you. Hopefully, that’ll be soon.

Thank you,

[redacted boy name]

Note: The following letter is from the same technician. We received it three days after the first letter.

Dear Silph Company,

I was the technician in [redacted city name] who sent you the letter before about the boy who had shrunk himself with a poké ball. I’m afraid that I have bad news. It seems that the girl and shrunken boy have both disappeared.

I went to check in on them at the hotel they were staying at, but the people at the desk said that the girl had checked out of her room the day before. I asked if she had left a note or said anything about where she was going next, but they said that she had left nothing for me. They knew nothing about her plans or where she was now.

Next, I went to the police to file a missing person’s report. They said that they would try to find the kids but that there was not much they could do besides contact their parents. They explained that young pokémon trainers are notoriously hard to track down, being so used to camping in remote places. (By the way, please do forward a copy of the letter I sent you before to the police so that they have all the information that they can get.)

I am not sure what to do now. The girl took the modified poké ball with her, so I can’t say anything more about it besides what I sent you in my last letter. From what the boy had said, I worry about how she will treat him from now on, seeing him more like a pet pokémon than an old friend.

Please contact me if you need more information. I will get in touch with you again if and when I hear anything about the kids.

Thank you,

[redacted technician name]

Conclusions:

We received no further information from the technician or the police about the whereabouts of the two children mentioned above. The criminal investigation remains open.

Our technicians have attempted to replicate the modifications the boy had made to his poké ball, but we have not been able to replicate his results. The notes we were sent seem to have been incomplete or inaccurate.

We will investigate the idea of a “human ball” further, especially considering the possible combined applications of a “human ball” and “dynamaxing.” For now, though, this file is considered complete.