Second Chance (Patreon)

The eevee looked carefully and nervously at her own front paws. With slow and deliberate motions, she placed her front right paw forward. It sank slightly in the worn, white blanket of the bed she stood on. For a moment, she seemed to consider her next move, and then moved her back right leg forward. Then her front left, and finally her back left. The small pokemon sighed and muttered “Eeevv...”

“Man, this is going to take forever. And what’s Mom gonna think anyway? I can’t talk. I can’t write – I don’t have thumbs anymore! She’s just going to see a wild pokemon in her daughter’s bedroom, and a sudden and surprisingly lack of her daughter in that bedroom.” The eevee sighed again. “How can I talk to her…? To tell her that I’m still her, I’m just… this. Um… um…” She thinks for a while, then spots her laptop across the room. “R-right! I… I should be able to still press buttons, even with these paws.” The laptop in question was on her desk, though. How was she going to get down from the bed and up onto the desk in this tiny body? Eevee are pretty spry, though, right? Surely she could make that jump. She just… needed to know how.

Back to walking slowly, she went. It was sort of natural, kind of like crawling, but somehow less awkward. It kinda just… felt right? Soon, she reached the edge of the bed. She deliberated for a while on how exactly to make the leap when suddenly her front paw slipped over the smooth edge.

“E-evee!” she cried as she fell to the thinly carpeted floor, flat on her face, and slumped over, finally ending up on her side. She groaned. “Ugh… That was only, like, two feet, but that felt so far…” Strangely, the mild throb in her forehead was already fading fast. She shivered, then pulled herself up to her feet and shook herself off. “I guess that’s one way to get to the floor.”

She slowly walked over to the chair legs and craned her neck upward. The chair was tucked in, so if she jumped up to the seat, she couldn’t get anywhere. No, she would have to jump all the way up to the desk. “This is impossible. There’s no way!” The surface of the table seemed miles above her. It’d be like jumping onto the roof of a building from the ground. But… she had to try. It was her only answer. If her mom came looking for her before she wrote that message… She shuttered just thinking about it.

The eevee took a deep breath, backed up a few steps, then thought for a moment. “I have to crouch, right?” She thought about all the times she had seen other pokemon do their high jumps. They just scrunched up their back legs and launched themselves. She wished she had paid more attention, but who could have known that she’d have to try it herself one day? Shaking her head, she crouched down, focusing on her back legs. She could feel the muscles in her legs tense up. Everything felt a little weird still – every new movement she felt just seemed wrong, but nothing was hurting or cramping, so perhaps it was for the best if she ignored it for now. She took a deep breath again, and after another moment of deliberation, she launches herself into the air.

She flew, a lot more than she was expecting, up to the table. She didn’t quite make it over though, and instead hooked herself on the edge. “Eevoi!” she muttered in surprise as she struggled to pull herself. Lacking the freedom of movement she had with her arms, she couldn’t really grip anything, but she did manage to swing one of her hind legs over. Being much stronger with those, she brings herself over and finally laid panting on the table top. “G-good! I made it… That was such a big jump!” She thought, amazed. When she stood up, she found herself feeling quite triumphant. Her tail wagged happily behind her. “I shouldn’t be okay with this. I have a tail. It’s wagging. That’s weird! But… that was good. Way to go, self!”

She walks over to the laptop and realizes another problem – it was closed. She doesn’t have hands. This thing is as big as she is. “Don’t freak out, we’ve done okay so far!” She thinks to herself. She tilts her head at it, then decides to go for the brute force answer. With her front right paw, she pushes against the divide between the top and bottom half of the computer. She doesn’t really even have claws, so she doesn’t have much of a point to pry them apart. Still, with enough persistence, she does wedge her paw into the opening. She doesn’t have another free paw – she needs three to stand – but… she does have her face. She had been ignoring her small muzzle, but she does have one. She nudges her face into the gap and, using her nose, pushes the laptop open. The screen flickers to life as her paws step on some of the keys.

Her tail wagged happily again. “I did it! If I was a normal eevee, someone would praise me for being so smart. Or shoo me away from the computer, I guess.”

Thank the heavens she knew how to tab the cursor over to the programs, because the footpads on her paws were not registering her movements across the mousepad. Once she had hit the tab key enough to line it up onto the notepad program, she got to work.

It was extremely awkward. Her paws were just a little too big for the keys, so she had to try to use a single digit on her paw, which wasn’t the most dexterous. So it was slow going, to say the least.

Several minutes later, she had typed out her message. Now just to get her mom. She looked down at the ground and hopped off the table without really thinking about it. It felt like quite a fall, but she managed to slink her body to spread the force. It was quite elegant, she thought. Maybe she was finally getting used to this.

She walked over to the door and stopped in her tracks. It was shut. With a round doorknob. Unlike the previous issues… there wasn’t a way around this. She couldn’t open this without hands. She knew of canine pokemon eventually learning how to open doors like this, but… She didn’t have that long. She was just barely getting the hang of walking, let alone jumping and falling. Brute force option again it is, she figured.

The eevee took a few steps back, then ran at the door. She smacked her forehead into the wood, creating a loud THUD and dropping her to the carpet. “Eevoi….” She groaned. “That hurt. Hopefully…”

“What was that? Is everything okay?” she heard a voice call out from somewhere behind the door.

“Perfect! Now she can come over here and open the door, and then I can show her the note I wrote, and then… well, I don’t know what.” She slowly got to her feet, and then her ears twitched slightly. Footsteps. “Wait-“

The door opened suddenly and forcefully with the poor eevee still just behind it. The impact sent her across the room, and she rolled a few times before coming to a stop sprawled out on the carpet. “Eeveeeee….” She groaned.

“Oh my god!” her mom cried at seeing the pokemon. “What…. What is that doing in here? Where’s…” she wondered out-loud.

The eevee shuddered and then got to her feet. “Ee-eevee!” She tried to explain. She shook her head, then looked at the computer, then to woman, then to the computer again. “Eevoi!” she cried intently.

“What are you trying to tell me? Something on the computer?” she asks, then walks over the laptop. “There’s something written here…”

Mom,

Please don’t hurt the eevee! It’s me. The eevee is me, mom! I don’t know what happened. I was just sitting on my bed, and then I turned into this! I don’t know if you can help, but… Please. Just… she’s me. The eevee is me.

-Emi

The woman grew pale. She slowly looked down at the pokemon, who simply looked sorrowfully back up at her. “Emi…? Emi, honey, is that… is that really you?”

The eevee nods readily. “Vie!”

Her mom was immediately teary-eyed and scooped the former human girl up in her arms. “Oh god… what happened to you? Why…” She gripped the pokemon tightly.

Emi sighed. She should be sad. Her own mother was sobbing into her fur, after all, at her apparent fate. But… The hug felt nice. And… With all the effort she had put in to get her mom that note, she felt… good. Like she actually succeeded at something. For once.

“Eev,” she said gently. Her mom took a breath and looked at her. “Wh-what? You… why aren’t more upset? You can’t… you can’t be okay with this?” The eevee looked pensive, then started to squirm in her arms. Once free, she hopped to the tabletop and started typing something again.

“ ‘It’s weird. But. I think I’m okay with this. For now. It’s actually kind of fun.’ ” Her mother read from the screen. “B-but… n-no! You’re not a pokemon! You’re a girl! A-a human girl! My daughter! You can’t…”

The eevee looks at her mom sympathetically from the counter. The woman shook her head. “No! This… this isn’t okay! I’ll find a way to turn you back! I-I’ll go call the professor!” And with that, she hurries out of the room.

“Mom… It’s okay…” She thought, but all she said was “Eevoi…” She hopped down to the floor and then slowly followed her mom out of the room.

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Later…

Her mom, still not totally calm about the whole situation, carried her in her arms through the streets of the city. It felt nice. Her tail swished idly beneath her, and her front legs were draped over her mom’s arms.

Another lady gasps as she see Emi and her mom, and hurries over to them. “What an adorable eevee! I’ve never seen one with blue eyes before! It’s so pretty!” she gushes. “Oh, I guess my eyes stayed the same color. Weird.”

Emi’s mom didn’t know what to do. She chuckled awkwardly. “Y-yeah. She’s… she’s great.”

Emi’s tail wagged harder. They were talking about her! She was the cute one! She grinned happily. “Vie!”

“Awww! Do you mind if I pet her?” the woman asks. “She wants to pet me? Should I let her? Wait, pokemon love to be petted… I bet it feels awesome, right? I have to know!”

“ ‘Pet her ‘…?” Emi’s mom repeated. “Um…” She looked down at the eevee in her arms. Emi looked back up to her and grinned, happily saying “Voi!” Her mom sighed and shook her head. “Okay, sure, I guess,” she said and loosened her grip on Emi so that the other woman had a better angle.

The woman giggles and reaches a hand out to Emi and scratches behind her ears.

It was probably the best thing Emi had ever felt.

She melted under the woman’s pets, laughing happily and leaning into it to get better angles. “Aw!” the woman gushed. “She really likes the attention! You are so lucky to have such an adorable and loveable little eevee!”

Emi’s mom smiled softly and looked down at the pokemon still squirming happily in her arms. “Y-yeah…”

The other woman sighed. “Well, I’ll let you girls go now. You be good now, you hear?” she says to the eevee.

Emi nods. “Vie!” The woman giggled and wondered on her way.

The eevee sighed and relaxed into her mother’s grasp. “Man. That. Was. Awesome! Now I know why Uncle’s zigzagoon is always so desperate for pets. I wonder if I can talk to him now…”

“You… you really liked that, didn’t you?” Her mom whispered to her, somewhat weirded out. “I-it’s still you, right…? You’re still in there, right?”

Emi tilted her head, confused, but then nodded readily. “Vei!” “I guess I really was acting like a pokemon there… But… is that such a bad thing? After all… if Mom doesn’t find a way to turn me back… this is just me now. And honestly… Would that be such a bad thing?”

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The next morning…

Her mother looked over the note Emi left her this time.

Mom,

I know you’re really upset by this. But. Do you think you could be okay with it? I think I like this. Being an eevee. It’s fun! I’m happier than I’ve been in… years, I think. I know talking with you is hard, since I can’t talk anymore… but we can make do, right? That said… if I’m going to be an eevee, then… I want to actually be an eevee! I want to learn tricks – moves, that’s what they’re called, right? I want to do that! And one day, if I’m up for it, maybe we can… I can… Maybe find a way to evolve me into something really cool! All of that still kinda weirds me out, but… It also sounds kinda exciting too. And just because I’ll be acting like an eevee sometimes, or a lot of the times, doesn’t mean that I’m not still me! And I can still type out messages like this if I need to tell you things.

Again, I know you don’t like this. But can you please try? For me? I know it’ll be weird, but can I just be your cute, little eevee?

-Emi

Emi’s mom teared up again. She slowly crouched down and looked at the expectant pokemon in front of her. She carefully pulled Emi into a hug and thought for a moment. Then, with shaky breath, she said, “Okay. I don’t like it. I really don’t like it. But if this is what you want, then… I’ll go along with it. I don’t know how I’ll explain all this to everyone, but… I’ll try. For you.”

“Vei!” Emi said joyfully as she wagged her tail happily. “Thanks, Mom. Even if I can’t tell you that right away, thank you.”