This is a work of fanfiction by Butterfree/Dragonfree/antialiasis and is not to be reposted without permission. This story is in no way official or endorsed by Nintendo, GAME FREAK, Creatures Inc., or The Pokémon Company.
Morphic
For more information on this story and a full list of chapters and extras, click here. Please note that Morphic is rated R (M if you prefer Fiction Ratings) for strong language, violence and other sensitive subject matter.
Chapter 4
Author's Note: Remember that warning before the first chapter about how the fic is going to include sensitive subjects and may offend people? Yeah, that wasn't referring to that little abortion debate. It was referring to what you'll see in this chapter and later.
So again, I will emphasize that this fic is not trying to rant or preach about anything. All there is to it is characters with opinions. You have been warned.
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“We are gathered here today to discuss a desecration of life and of God’s Creation. We are here to discuss a most brutal violation of the laws handed down to us from the Holy Spirit when our ancestors fled to the Pokémon world. We are here to discuss abominations against nature and the natural hierarchy where humans rule over Pokémon. I am referring, of course, to the Pokémorphs.”
Isaac Daniels looked around the room. It was just the church cellar, mostly used for Sunday school, but religion was always steadily losing its popularity among the young and a few months ago they had canceled Sunday school and instead started to hold meetings for the few attending children in each other’s own homes, while the parents had weekly meetings here after having convinced the priest to lend them the room for the purpose. That, incidentally, was why no one had bothered to change all the light bulbs in the room that had gone out. There was only one that still worked and that one only barely: it flickered on and off every now and then, leaving the room in momentary darkness.
It was truly pathetic, he thought, for an institute of such former greatness as the church, that not only were all the influential bishops starting to preach liberalism, hypocrisy and loose interpretations of God’s word: the few true believers, when they needed to meet and discuss matters of true spiritual importance, had to do so in secrecy thanks to those appalling free speech-violating hate crime laws, and not only in secrecy, but in a dark, messy church cellar with nonfunctional lights.
“The Pokémorphs,” he repeated. “Humans, though created in His image, should not play God, but those propagators of science and evolution of course disregard this as fantasy. I need only cite the very fourteenth Commandment: ‘The creatures shall be the humble servants and the men shall be their kind masters: they are distinct by their nature.’ It tells us that the Pokémonly and the humanly are to be separate. And we are again warned in the Book of Visions, 21.5: ‘And there will be no more distinction between the men and the monsters: the Machoke shall pose as man and lie with the woman as the man.’ By creating the Pokémorphs, they have blurred the natural border between humans and Pokémon, and thus brought us one step closer to the looming apocalypse prophesized in the Book of Visions.”
He looked over the small group again as they nodded in agreement. “Ten years ago, a semi-religious movement chose to fight for the unborn Pokémorphs’ lives. They chose to do this because they valued the sacredness of life above the clear laws condemning the creation of those creatures. But this was based on a misunderstanding. It is, after all, the Lord’s creation and the miracle of natural conception that are things of sacredness; lives created by Man, as the Pokémorphs have, only violate His laws by their very existence. He must be frowning upon us now for having let them live and poison their surroundings for ten years, having let them go to school with our children…”
“One of them was in my daughter’s class,” a woman commented. “I had to have her moved to a different class. Apparently many other parents were doing the same, so they were having difficulties keeping the class together. It’s good to know there are still sensible parents around.”
Isaac nodded. “That does not, however, justify their existence, and the Lord has given us some signs to emphasize this. Mia Kerringan the Scyther Pokémorph, in particular, has shown herself to be a creature of evil, as she has now twice attempted to attack innocent religious children at the school they go to when they tried to expose her to the Word of God. I believe our very own Monica Sellers is the mother of one of the children.” He nodded towards a plump woman with curly red hair.
“She threatened him with her blades…” she sobbed in response as the gathering looked quietly at her.
“The liberal media and the brainwashed public have already accepted the existence of the Pokémorphs. Already, large companies have offered Jean Ambrose the Vulpix Pokémorph the title role in the upcoming films based on the ‘Sarah Hooter’ books, which have already been established to be spreading Pokémon-superiority propaganda and messages of hate towards the righteous. Additionally, some of the scientists responsible for the experiments have expressed that they do not regret creating the Pokémorphs and shown enthusiasm towards the idea of future genetic experiments. First and foremost, it is David Ambrose, the leader of the original Pokémorph project.”
Isaac looked around the room. A couple of people shuddered at the mention of the name.
“You have all noticed him in the media. Atheist and staunch supporter of the scientific worldview. Some of the other scientists were religious as children but then lost their faith (and in fact a couple claim to be liberal believers), but he never believed. He has ridiculed people of faith in public on multiple occasions, is known to drink excessively at times although not as often as he used to, and is a good enough debater to have weaseled every single one of the Pokémorphs into our public schools. He has also proclaimed the manmade Pokémorph children to be superior to naturally conceived children and wants to legalize genetic experiments with human embryos. It is clear that his anger towards God has grown extremely violent, and he seems prepared to do just about anything to get his revenge on the creation. He is more dangerous than all the morphs, simply because he is an adult and can create more of them. Now that he has defended Mia Kerrigan the Scyther Pokémorph after her vicious attacks on the other children twice and managed to force the school to keep her, it has become clear that he must be stopped at all costs. The safety of our children, and of the future world, is at stake.”
A few of the men nodded in agreement, but Isaac noticed a woman looking doubtfully up at him.
“I hope you understand what kind of action I am suggesting we take here. Ladies, what remains is a discussion for the men. You may leave early today.”
There was a short silence as the women looked around at their husbands, but none objected. The sound of chairs scraping the floor echoed off the walls as they stood up to leave. Isaac even held the door open for them. He was a gentleman at heart.
There was no doubt in his mind that he was going to do the right thing, no fear of being caught and sent to prison. He wouldn’t have budged even if those darned liberals hadn’t gotten the death penalty abolished a couple of centuries ago. The Lord had visited him in his dream and told him to do it. It was his ultimate purpose in life.
David Ambrose had to die.
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Katherine Harrison dropped her pencil.
She hissed at her hand. Even now, when she had been practicing it for seven years, it was still happening at least around once a week at school.
She pushed her hand down on top of the pencil that was now lying on her desk and tried to get her flaplike fingers to grab hold of it properly. The rustling gave it away altogether too loudly, but the teacher had gotten so used to it that she only glanced briefly at Katherine, rolled her eyes quickly and continued talking. The other students briefly looked over at her. It was only because it was autumn. By Christmas, this year’s classmates would all be so used to it that the sound wouldn’t register in their brains anymore.
She finally managed to fish the pencil up with the petals of her blue rose and awkwardly positioned it so that she would be able to write with it before resuming taking down notes. Scritch scritch. Sometimes she really hated her mother and her coworkers. She wasn’t only a Roselia Pokémorph with fingers that were more like weak petal-like flaps she couldn’t do much with and attracted rather a lot of attention along with the large green thorns sticking out of her head: she also grew so fast that she had been forced to go through twelve years’ worth of schooling in only seven years. Just how difficult was it possible to make school for one’s potential daughter before her birth? And to boot, she was left-handed. That just really took the cake, although her mother had sworn many times that the left-handedness had not been intentional.
Well, it was not like it wasn’t technically the Stop Abortion Movement’s fault, anyway, in an ironic way, although out of her mother’s coworkers, only Dave had ever gotten tasteless enough to actually mention that in his defense. Theirs and Brian’s. Katherine snorted. Oh, yes, Dave. Of course everything is always everybody’s fault but yours. It’s not like the person who thought of doing illegal genetic experiments in the first place is to blame for anything at all. No way. He just provided the genius behind the first ever successful gene-splicing in complex species. No relation at all to the consequences.
Of course she had to admit she was sometimes grateful for Dave. He was the most enthusiastic fighter trying to allow the Pokémorphs to lead a semi-normal life of the bunch and he had managed to talk all of the morphs’ way into public schools despite their obvious difficulties, whether in the form of their physical and mental capabilities developing at supernatural speed, their hands being roses or their arms having blades on them. That, she had to admit, was definitely something. There was no way anybody but Dave could have convinced the schools to let Mia in and to keep her after she very nearly slashed her schoolmates to shreds. Twice. Hell, she was a Pokémorph herself and still wouldn’t hesitate to conclude that Mia had simply shown herself to be extremely dangerous to whoever came within a two-meter radius of her. Sometimes she seriously wondered if Dave was using hypnosis or something.
She realized she’d been letting her mind wander way too much; she had stopped taking down notes long ago and was now just staring emptily out the window that she had to be seated by for her thorns to photosynthesize. She had difficulty concentrating when she didn’t have sunlight shining on her.
She was pretty messed up and would have a very difficult life compared to everybody else, she had long ago realized. But really, she couldn’t do anything about it, and couldn’t help thinking she’d rather be there and have some difficulties picking up pencils than have been aborted as a fetus or even never have existed at all. And heck, even though most people at school must have gotten the impression that having roses for hands was hell, it only really got annoying when it came to holding and controlling small objects like pencils. At least she could move the petals with some force when she used them right. She was still practising to be able to play the violin, and was starting to see a little success.
At least, she thought to herself when she turned back to the teacher to continue taking down notes, she was not Gabriel.
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“Hey, uh…”
Gabriel turned around, looking at a little brown-haired kid he hadn’t seen before who seemed, from the looks of it, to be extremely nervous. A few other kids around his age were standing a short distance away, watching.
“Your… you know…” The kid pointed at Gabriel’s hair.
“Let me guess, it’s on fire?” Gabriel asked dully, blindly slapping the front of his spiky red hair with his hand as the kid nodded timidly. He tried his best to stroke his hair back so it wouldn’t get too close to the flames above his eyebrows again. Not that he expected it to be successful for any considerably stretch of time. He had, after all, been trying to keep his hair out of those flames for ten years now, and it always managed to get back into the fire after a while.
“Thanks,” he said to the kid and turned to leave.
“And… um…”
“What? My hands dripping again?” Gabriel sighed as he turned his head.
“Yeah.”
He looked down at his left hand, which was dripping warm orangeish goo onto the ground.
“Oh. Sorry. It happens.” He hurriedly smeared the slime up his arm with his other hand and then looked at the kid and the group that was still goggling at him. “Let me guess, just finished your first day of school here?”
The kid nodded, still looking at him with wide, terrified eyes.
“Well, I suggest you get used to it,” Gabriel told him and prepared to leave again.
“So are you the… the…”
“Yes, I’m the Slugma Pokémorph,” Gabriel replied with a sigh. “Please try not to make me angry at any point in the future, because if my body temperature gets any higher than it is, I happen to have a very uncomfortably high risk of major organ failure.”
The kid ran for it. Gabriel smiled grimly after him.
“My life sucks,” he sighed as he headed towards his home.
Page last modified July 14 2017 at 20:44 UTC