
This is another old story of mine. Someone requested that I reupload it. Enjoy!
“The Pokemon World had come to know of an impending disaster, and an era of calamity had struck the once peaceful village. Alakazam, with their keen, scholarly mind had read about it in tomes, the local Absol warned the adventurer’s guild of doom indescribable, but the elders had chosen to ignore them! You see the cobblestone pathways begin to break in two and crumble. Snorlax, with their insatiable appetite began to hoard food, while Diglett mined to depths the earth to hide. All business had stopped, and there was nothing but drought throughout the land.”
“That means no clean clothes!”
There was a pause as a group of young scoundrels krept over a shaunty table. A grovyle eyed a toxicroak with a smirk, clearly sharing some sort of inside joke with each other after that ludicrous reaction. To the side sat a red-faced pancham scratching the top of his head. “Did I say something funny to you guys?!” he spat, swiping dice off of the table with a flick of his paw. “Hey! Cool it!” griped a slowpoke, who hesitantly and carefully picked up the pieces bit by bit. All of them chuckled with each other, and returned to immersing themselves into the game.
Flame bit the air as two powerful jaws clamped together as he spoke - immediately the group fell silent. A charizard sat behind a decorative DM screen, his long neck making him tower high over the rest of the group. His tongue lashed as he told stories of death, destruction, and mayhem to the group, sometimes even rising to his feet and pacing around the room, his flaming tail lashing fiercely behind him. This went on for nearly an hour, until the orange giant had run out of breath. “And there was nothing left.” He said in a deep, guttural snarl. He closed his journal dramatically and glanced around at the failed party, smoke trailing out of his snout. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Make sure your character sheets are filled out, and -”
“Are you sure that your campaign is balanced? This is the third time we died at this part.” Grovyle interrupted. The grass-gecko’s eyes widened as the charizard peered down at him. It wasn’t the first time when things got heated; she went home with a couple leaves scorched when Charizard got too into the game. She curled her fingers together and smiled uncharacteristically as the two stared at each other.
Charizard’s chest inflated with air, and his nose sparked with smoke. The grovyle prepared herself to leave but he just let out a sigh. “I’ll check my notes and see what the issue was.” He chuckled to himself. “I’m still new to this, just like all of you. Did I do a good job?”
His party cheered him on. The only complaints that he had ever received was he asked for too many snacks. Of course, he may have sported a slightly more rotund figure for a charizard, but it was nothing to be concerned about. His friends definitely didn’t seem to care. If anything, all of the extra food was a way to bribe him for easier combat. Charizard folded his wings behind his back and gathered his papers together. “Alright, I hope you all have a good day!”
Charizard smiled as the group left his humble abode - the insides of a charmander’s head popping out of the ground with an open mouth for a door. He frowned as he inevitably realized that the fun had gone for the day, and peered out of the window to the sky. Suddenly, the clouds began to swim together and darken until the land had turned black. Lightning bolts crashed in the sky, illuminating his shocked face. That was where he had fought Rayquaza until he had persuaded it to shoot a hyper beam through a meteorite that was about to hit the planet. He took a big gulp, and shook his head back into reality. The weather returned to normal. He would kill to have an adventure like that again. Nowadays, there were so few jobs that he had taken a liking making them himself, on paper, of course.
“Well, I suppose I could use some rest.” Charizard said, standing wide on his feet and sauntering slowly over to his bed. Insomnia had made nights pretty hard, but the main factor keeping him awake was his lust for adventure. It just wasn’t the same nowadays; he woke up, grabbed a cup of coffee and a sandwich from Kangaskhan, who had taken a liking to him staying home as opposed to risking his life on a near-daily basis. She always threw in an extra sandwich or a side of eggs or sausages which certainly didn’t help with his slowly curving figure. Then, he’d sometimes grab a massage from Dugtrio, or tanned in the Magma Cavern. But his favorite time of the day was his game. Pretending of days of turmoil and destruction probably wasn’t very healthy, but he loved it. He wished his little fantasy would never end.
That night he rested easy, for he got a little enthusiastic with the game tonight. Charizard woke up the next day with a vigor that rivaled the days when he and his partner had found mew. He struggled to get to his aching feet, for after all this time as a pokemon, he still couldn’t get used to the evolution. He swiped away the hay that stuck to his leathery back, and licked his chops. His stomach growled, and he glanced down at it as if it had betrayed him. Ever since he evolved, his hunger was near-insatiable. He never realized how big charizards can get until he started eating damn near five thousand calories a day. Three hundred pounds was looking to be an accurate number soon if he kept up his diet.
Chansey told him it was perfectly normal to be his size, especially with all of the adventuring he had done. Stunting his evolution for so long had definitely taken a toll on him as well. What had been created was a titan of a charizard standing at six feet and seven inches tall, and yet he still felt as if he had been a little on the docile side. His thunder thighs held muscle on top of muscle, rivaling the texture of a bolder, but were bloated enough to where he had to waddle instead of walk anymore. It didn’t help that his long, thick tail frequently lashed from side to side, throwing off his weight if he didn’t widen his gait. As for the rest of his body, well, it was a little soft. Some days he felt like a walking sack of pudding, for his grotesque belly swayed from side to side like a pendulum, bouncing each time the center of his body mass balanced on his two stocky legs. He learned to control this extra pudge, because in his early days as a charizard, it wasn’t unusual for him to accidently throw off his weight and collapse on nearby furniture or pokemon. His shoulders are sturdy as a brick wall, supporting two stalwart arms that rippled with muscle he had gained from dozens of fights. His face was still sharp, and his eyes were full of energy, but his wings were beginning to grow tired of lifting so much weight. He regularly chose to walk instead of fly nowadays.
The only thing he wore was the scarf that he had received at the very beginning of his adventure so long ago. The blue cloth barely held enough length to be wrapped around his neck, so he had fashioned it into a bracelet on his arm. Charizard stretched, wrapping his hands around his back and pushing his belly out, and let out a loud, beefy yawn. Before he could even take one step, he could hear Pelipper’s wings flapping frantically just outside his open door. He raised a brow, and his eyes grew wide as the bird didn’t stop at his mailbox, and instead bolted through the doorway and crashed into the dirt pile in the middle of his room. “Pelipper!” Charizard gasped and jumped towards their safety. Pelipper shook their head and groaned, “Charizard! We need your help! It’s uh… uh!”
Charizard’s heart raced. When was the last time he felt this adrenaline? His hands shook as he helped the bird to their talons, and stood steadfast, trying to prevent himself from bolting out the door without even knowing what the issue was. “What is it? I’ll burn them to ash!”
Pelipper coughed, and dusted their feathers. “I’m sorry! I had to look - there was no envelope.” They procured the letter from the delivery bag and held the letter to Charizard. There was, in fact, no attempt to seal it, though he wished they did. The parchment was covered in strange colors, like it had been smothered with berries and dried in the sun for several hours. The letter itself held very few words, but the writing filled the entire page. It looks to be the scribblings of a madman, because they had pushed so hard on the pencil that the parchment tore.
Still, Charizard’s tail whipped wildly in excitement as he read the message aloud, “BELLY HURT NEED HELP NOW!”
Pelipper whimpered, and looked towards the ground. “I hope I’m not too late! There is blood all over the message! They’re probably bleeding out right now!”
Charizard sighed and dropped his shoulders. “Pelipper, this smells of berries, not blood. I’ll go either way. Where did you find this?”
“Oh.” Pelipper shook and fluffed their feathers. “I found it in front of Tiny Woods. I hurried here as fast as possible! I can’t imagine what it’s like to have a… hurt belly!”
The orange pseudo-dragon raised his brow and asked, “You’ve never had a belly-ache?”
“Is that what they’re asking? I wouldn’t have known. I thought they had been scratched, or mawed, or...”
Charizard, thinking that this conversation could continue until the end of times, lifted their wings and ascended into the air. Tiny Woods was just a minute away, so it wouldn’t take too long to sort this out. He doubted anything would come from this mission, but it beat doing nothing. It was probably another Snorlax that ate a toxic orb. “Thanks, Pelliper!” He called as his great, blue wings beat the sky, sending shockwaves of air onto the canopies of the trees below. He swore that the foliage seemed a little more lively than usual. The tree trunks were thick; a museum of ancient life that had flourished here in solitude. The air was warm. Warm enough to even make Charizard sweat. His vision was blinded by his own perspiration that fell from his sharp brow.
The smell was inviting. The fresh forest air seemed to pass through his lungs and relax his muscles, but the sugars of berries had reminded him of how hungry he was. He held his belly uncomfortably as he flew, his fingers digging more than an inch into the soft, leathery flesh wrapped around the climax of his paunch. “This was no time for eating!” Charizard grumbled to himself, speeding up his pace.
Oh, was he wrong.
His wings grew heavy, and the air thinned. It was hard to breathe, and keep his eyes to the horizon. His tongue dried, and limped out of his long, huffing maw. His stubby arms and legs lay dormant to his sides, his muscles relaxing more and more until he hardly wanted to move. His stomach grumbled louder than a lion’s roar, and he began to plummet with each off-beat of his wings. The only time he had issues flying was when he carried three dozen stacks of gravel rock back to the market. This was different. Had he finally gained too much weight? It had been weeks since his last expedition. Perhaps he wasn’t fit for adventure anymore. But this hunger - it was unnatural. Never before had his appetite gotten in the way for helping out a pokemon.
Charizard shielded his eyes as he began to crash into the canopies of the trees, his heavyweight body crashing through the limbs like a boulder launched through a trebuchet. His descent only stopped when he became entangled in a group of sturdy branches; they cradled him between his swollen haunches and his chubby love handles like a noodle wrapped around a fork. His stomach bundled up against his chest and made him look even more spherical, but that was the least of his issues right now. He struggled uselessly, kicking his legs and lashing his tail around. A spark lit up in his maw, and he took a deep breath. The limbs faded away as flame engulfed them, and like a meteor, Charizard plummeted to the ground and lay belly-up, satisfied in a pile of ash.
“Who goes there?!” Charizard heard a gruff voice call from afar.
From above, he saw a shadow swing from branch to branch dexterously, but their body looked old and saggy. That was when he saw a purple glow from their hands, and he knew that they were using psychic powers to assist them. When they drew close, their white and purple fur gleamed in the light between the leaves for the first time. It was an orangutan pokemon he had never seen before, which was an odd occurrence after seeing everything from Weedle to Mew. Immediately, his senses heightened as a means to fend off whatever creature this was. If he hadn’t seen this pokemon before, it must have been something big - legendary, even. Despite suffering from starvation, Charizard tried to roll onto his feet.
He hardly moved an inch.
The orangutan clomped down onto the forest floor, their great arms elongated enough to where they could sprint on all fours. However, they slowed as they drew near. Their eyes were wild, glancing up and down frantically at the charizard, yet he could tell that they were those of a wise, old pokemon. Their head cocked to the side curiously at the sight of the charizard, and they sniffed the air. “Ash.” They said with a wheezy, whisky-glazed growl. They glanced at the incinerated wood piles around the fiery beast. They held their hands in the air as a sign of peace. Charizard gave a snort, and fire and smoke spit out of his nostril, but he was much too sore and exhausted to do much more. “I am Oranguru,” they said, trailing two fingers in the pile of ash and examining it thoroughly, “A human like me does not belong in this land, and so do you!”
For the first time, Oranguru smiled and began to tremble with energy. Charizard’s heart rose to the top of his long neck. There were very few that understood his past - that he did not originally come from this world. This pokemon had already known before they had met each other! The sound of that nearly gave him enough energy to rise to his elbows, but he quickly collapsed back down with a jolt. His bouncing belly grumbled, and he groaned. “I want to know more, but I am very hungry.”
“Rightfully so, good sir!” Oranguru exclaimed. He swiftly rose to his feet and gave the climax of the charizard’s belly a few playful pats. “You are gigantic for a charizard! I’m sure that you can eat more than the average fill.” Oranguru giggled as he received an evil glance from Charizard. “And I think I know why. But first, let us feast. Thankfully, I have retained my opposable thumbs. Harvesting should be much easier for me than you.”
Oranguru helped Charizard lean his back against a tree and began his search for anything and everything edible. Charizard could only sigh uselessly as he watched his new friend grab grub for him. For a moment, he felt like a king, and that was something that he had never wanted. For the past year or so, he had given everything to help others. Nowadays, he felt greedy and slimy for his actions, when in reality, people were just trying to help him and celebrate his accomplishments. Charizard hated when someone got his mail for him, or cleaned his home, or gifted him things. It felt like he deserved nothing despite saving the world. This was no different.
Oranguru returned hastily with a big bundle of apples and berries wrapped in his saggy arms, and dropped them on the forest floor next to Charizard’s resting spot. It was easily enough grub for the two of them, but another trail of apples and berries followed behind him, levitating slowly towards the two with a purple aura enveloping their soft exterior. They dropped on top of Charizard’s belly, drumming rhythmically off of him and next to his side. Immediately, he went for an apple and ravenously chowed down on it, barely stopping to breath before eating another, and another. Each only took a few bites, and it hardly sated his appetite.
“Is this going to be enough?” The great ape jokingly said, eyeing the pseudo-dragon with a smile. He poked the charizard’s underbelly and watched his finger sink away in its soft flesh before letting go and seeing the jiggling rebound.
Charizard tore away a hefty piece of oran berry and swallowed it whole before wiping his maw clean with his shoulder. His eyes lowered and he barked, “You sure like to test your boundaries, don’t you? What’s all this degrading for?! I haven’t heard of many humans turning into pokemon. Last time I checked, there was only me and Gengar. Where do you come from?”
Oranguru let out a sigh and sat lazily on the mushy grass of the Lost Woods. Charizard could tell that he was frail, old, and very, very shaky. “I am Jackson from the S.S. Wonnim. I was the navigator for a small group of five from the Sinnoh region to Galar. A storm struck, and our boat was lost. Now, I have turned up here, as a pokemon, as well as the rest of my crew, at least to my understanding.”
Charizard was having a very difficult time wrapping this around his head. He wasn’t entirely sure what a human even was, in all honesty. “Sinnoh? Galar?” He grumbled, rolling around a cheri berry between his long tongue and the roof of his mouth. They sounded familiar, but he couldn’t picture it at all. He was on a boat? He hated the open sea! Why would he have done that?
Jackson folded his arms around his chest. “It appears that I am the only one that knows the full story - the other crewmate can recall a little more than you though.” Charizard frowned and smoke trailed out of his nose again. Still, Jackson continued, “I’ve found two of the five, and you make the second. I suppose I am the third, so that leaves two of them left.”
“You say that I sailed the seas, but I hate water.”
“You hate water now.” Jackson said with a smile. “You’re a charizard. Of course you hate water, just like how I hate being in the dark. No, you were excited to return home from a vacation.”
Charizard gulped down a huge heap of berries, all with different healing effects so he went a little woozy for a second. He never won arguments against psychic types, so instead he hiccuped, and spat, “I was on vacation? I’m from Galar?”
Jackson cackled until he started to cough. He cleared his throat and said, “Yes, and an odd one at that. You know what that means, correct?”
Charizard hardly knew where Tiny Woods was on the map. He was more of a visual learner. “No, but I’m guessing that you’re going to tell me.”
Jackson nudged Charizard on the snout with a flick of his thumb and said, “You’re Galarian! A Galarian charizard-er-human. Those charizards can gigantamax. You are sure to have retained some of that Galarain blood, so that is why you eat so much!” There was a pause and the oranguru itched his head. “Well, and you were quite an eater even before then.”
Charizard snorted. “Alright, big-brain. What’s my true name?”
Jackson smiled. “Oh! Right! You don’t know your name. It’s Oliver.”
Charizard’s heart sank this time to the core of his belly. Why did that sound so familiar? He nearly began to sweat just thinking that this might be his true name. This pokemon knew so much. Could he trust him? There wasn’t really a reason not to. For some reason, he even thought that Jackson sounded familiar. Maybe this was his true past? He wanted to know more about himself.
“Okay! Call me Oliver then. What did I used to do for a living?”
Jackson snickered. “Oh, you were an odd one. Never had I had someone so big on my boat. Your appetite rivaled that of a Snorlax, it did.”
Oliver rolled his eyes and waved his hand lazily in the air. “Okay, get on with it!”
“You were a sumo, a sumo from Galar.”
“A sumo?! Like Hariyama?” Oliver’s eyes glittered with joy. “That sounds awesome!”
Jackson cocked his head. “Well… it would be, erm, awesome if sumo wrestling was big in Galar. You were quite an odd one, must I remind you. You were so adamant to make it popular in Galar some might say it was courageous, but in truth, it was mad. People are not so accepting of fat bodies beyond the stern tradition of sumo, however, I must say it was impressive to see you next to my flimsy old frame.” The oranguru seemed to grow tired after sitting for so long. “You damn near capsized the boat when you walked on it for the first time.”
Oliver’s head was rolling. That was why he had a bigger appetite than others! He must have retained that wrestler mindset of eating and working out so much! It was odd to finally have an explanation for his sudden weight gain, but that didn’t change the fact that he was getting fat. He supposed it wasn’t all bad to be fat, and nobody cared if he liked a few extra meals back home. The only thing stopping him from eating was himself!
Jackson lifted up an apple delicately in his hand and tossed it towards Oliver’s open maw. He caught it dexterously and nearly swallowed it with one bite. Jackson patted Oliver’s belly in praise, which felt way less odd now that he knew the reasoning behind it all. In fact, he almost welcomed it. But, Jackson rose to his feet before he played with his belly more and stretched. His back and legs popped, and he groaned in relief. “Like I said, I do not like the dark. I have traveled far to meet you, and do not know this location as much as I like. A navigator that does not know their way is a bit frightening, don’t you think? If you have a home, I would be happy to stay there.”
Oliver started to rise to his feet, his chest and face covered in the juices of the fruits, and his heart sank. “The mission!” How long had it been?! He’s been sitting here for nearly hours talking with this stranger, and completely forgot why he came here. “I-I gotta go! I need to do something!”
Jackson grabbed Oliver’s arm and said, “Wait! I sent that message!”
Oliver sighed and looked down at the oranguru. “Oh, thank goodness. I thought someone was out there hurt. Wait - is your stomach okay?”
Jackson shrugged. “Oh yeah. I was poisoned and forgot I had a pecha berry on me. Silly me! I was lucky that that bird was flying overhead. I levitated my letter up until it smacked into their face! Haha! They nearly fell into the forest with me.”
Oliver frowned. “Your head isn’t all there, is it, ape?”
“The Pokemon World had come to know of an impending disaster, and an era of calamity had struck the once peaceful village. Alakazam, with their keen, scholarly mind had read about it in tomes, the local Absol warned the adventurer’s guild of doom indescribable, but the elders had chosen to ignore them! You see the cobblestone pathways begin to break in two and crumble. Snorlax, with their insatiable appetite began to hoard food, while Diglett mined to depths the earth to hide. All business had stopped, and there was nothing but drought throughout the land.”
“That means no clean clothes!”
There was a pause as a group of young scoundrels krept over a shaunty table. A grovyle eyed a toxicroak with a smirk, clearly sharing some sort of inside joke with each other after that ludicrous reaction. To the side sat a red-faced pancham scratching the top of his head. “Did I say something funny to you guys?!” he spat, swiping dice off of the table with a flick of his paw. “Hey! Cool it!” griped a slowpoke, who hesitantly and carefully picked up the pieces bit by bit. All of them chuckled with each other, and returned to immersing themselves into the game.
Flame bit the air as two powerful jaws clamped together as he spoke - immediately the group fell silent. A charizard sat behind a decorative DM screen, his long neck making him tower high over the rest of the group. His tongue lashed as he told stories of death, destruction, and mayhem to the group, sometimes even rising to his feet and pacing around the room, his flaming tail lashing fiercely behind him. This went on for nearly an hour, until the orange giant had run out of breath. “And there was nothing left.” He said in a deep, guttural snarl. He closed his journal dramatically and glanced around at the failed party, smoke trailing out of his snout. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Make sure your character sheets are filled out, and -”
“Are you sure that your campaign is balanced? This is the third time we died at this part.” Grovyle interrupted. The grass-gecko’s eyes widened as the charizard peered down at him. It wasn’t the first time when things got heated; she went home with a couple leaves scorched when Charizard got too into the game. She curled her fingers together and smiled uncharacteristically as the two stared at each other.
Charizard’s chest inflated with air, and his nose sparked with smoke. The grovyle prepared herself to leave but he just let out a sigh. “I’ll check my notes and see what the issue was.” He chuckled to himself. “I’m still new to this, just like all of you. Did I do a good job?”
His party cheered him on. The only complaints that he had ever received was he asked for too many snacks. Of course, he may have sported a slightly more rotund figure for a charizard, but it was nothing to be concerned about. His friends definitely didn’t seem to care. If anything, all of the extra food was a way to bribe him for easier combat. Charizard folded his wings behind his back and gathered his papers together. “Alright, I hope you all have a good day!”
Charizard smiled as the group left his humble abode - the insides of a charmander’s head popping out of the ground with an open mouth for a door. He frowned as he inevitably realized that the fun had gone for the day, and peered out of the window to the sky. Suddenly, the clouds began to swim together and darken until the land had turned black. Lightning bolts crashed in the sky, illuminating his shocked face. That was where he had fought Rayquaza until he had persuaded it to shoot a hyper beam through a meteorite that was about to hit the planet. He took a big gulp, and shook his head back into reality. The weather returned to normal. He would kill to have an adventure like that again. Nowadays, there were so few jobs that he had taken a liking making them himself, on paper, of course.
“Well, I suppose I could use some rest.” Charizard said, standing wide on his feet and sauntering slowly over to his bed. Insomnia had made nights pretty hard, but the main factor keeping him awake was his lust for adventure. It just wasn’t the same nowadays; he woke up, grabbed a cup of coffee and a sandwich from Kangaskhan, who had taken a liking to him staying home as opposed to risking his life on a near-daily basis. She always threw in an extra sandwich or a side of eggs or sausages which certainly didn’t help with his slowly curving figure. Then, he’d sometimes grab a massage from Dugtrio, or tanned in the Magma Cavern. But his favorite time of the day was his game. Pretending of days of turmoil and destruction probably wasn’t very healthy, but he loved it. He wished his little fantasy would never end.
That night he rested easy, for he got a little enthusiastic with the game tonight. Charizard woke up the next day with a vigor that rivaled the days when he and his partner had found mew. He struggled to get to his aching feet, for after all this time as a pokemon, he still couldn’t get used to the evolution. He swiped away the hay that stuck to his leathery back, and licked his chops. His stomach growled, and he glanced down at it as if it had betrayed him. Ever since he evolved, his hunger was near-insatiable. He never realized how big charizards can get until he started eating damn near five thousand calories a day. Three hundred pounds was looking to be an accurate number soon if he kept up his diet.
Chansey told him it was perfectly normal to be his size, especially with all of the adventuring he had done. Stunting his evolution for so long had definitely taken a toll on him as well. What had been created was a titan of a charizard standing at six feet and seven inches tall, and yet he still felt as if he had been a little on the docile side. His thunder thighs held muscle on top of muscle, rivaling the texture of a bolder, but were bloated enough to where he had to waddle instead of walk anymore. It didn’t help that his long, thick tail frequently lashed from side to side, throwing off his weight if he didn’t widen his gait. As for the rest of his body, well, it was a little soft. Some days he felt like a walking sack of pudding, for his grotesque belly swayed from side to side like a pendulum, bouncing each time the center of his body mass balanced on his two stocky legs. He learned to control this extra pudge, because in his early days as a charizard, it wasn’t unusual for him to accidently throw off his weight and collapse on nearby furniture or pokemon. His shoulders are sturdy as a brick wall, supporting two stalwart arms that rippled with muscle he had gained from dozens of fights. His face was still sharp, and his eyes were full of energy, but his wings were beginning to grow tired of lifting so much weight. He regularly chose to walk instead of fly nowadays.
The only thing he wore was the scarf that he had received at the very beginning of his adventure so long ago. The blue cloth barely held enough length to be wrapped around his neck, so he had fashioned it into a bracelet on his arm. Charizard stretched, wrapping his hands around his back and pushing his belly out, and let out a loud, beefy yawn. Before he could even take one step, he could hear Pelipper’s wings flapping frantically just outside his open door. He raised a brow, and his eyes grew wide as the bird didn’t stop at his mailbox, and instead bolted through the doorway and crashed into the dirt pile in the middle of his room. “Pelipper!” Charizard gasped and jumped towards their safety. Pelipper shook their head and groaned, “Charizard! We need your help! It’s uh… uh!”
Charizard’s heart raced. When was the last time he felt this adrenaline? His hands shook as he helped the bird to their talons, and stood steadfast, trying to prevent himself from bolting out the door without even knowing what the issue was. “What is it? I’ll burn them to ash!”
Pelipper coughed, and dusted their feathers. “I’m sorry! I had to look - there was no envelope.” They procured the letter from the delivery bag and held the letter to Charizard. There was, in fact, no attempt to seal it, though he wished they did. The parchment was covered in strange colors, like it had been smothered with berries and dried in the sun for several hours. The letter itself held very few words, but the writing filled the entire page. It looks to be the scribblings of a madman, because they had pushed so hard on the pencil that the parchment tore.
Still, Charizard’s tail whipped wildly in excitement as he read the message aloud, “BELLY HURT NEED HELP NOW!”
Pelipper whimpered, and looked towards the ground. “I hope I’m not too late! There is blood all over the message! They’re probably bleeding out right now!”
Charizard sighed and dropped his shoulders. “Pelipper, this smells of berries, not blood. I’ll go either way. Where did you find this?”
“Oh.” Pelipper shook and fluffed their feathers. “I found it in front of Tiny Woods. I hurried here as fast as possible! I can’t imagine what it’s like to have a… hurt belly!”
The orange pseudo-dragon raised his brow and asked, “You’ve never had a belly-ache?”
“Is that what they’re asking? I wouldn’t have known. I thought they had been scratched, or mawed, or...”
Charizard, thinking that this conversation could continue until the end of times, lifted their wings and ascended into the air. Tiny Woods was just a minute away, so it wouldn’t take too long to sort this out. He doubted anything would come from this mission, but it beat doing nothing. It was probably another Snorlax that ate a toxic orb. “Thanks, Pelliper!” He called as his great, blue wings beat the sky, sending shockwaves of air onto the canopies of the trees below. He swore that the foliage seemed a little more lively than usual. The tree trunks were thick; a museum of ancient life that had flourished here in solitude. The air was warm. Warm enough to even make Charizard sweat. His vision was blinded by his own perspiration that fell from his sharp brow.
The smell was inviting. The fresh forest air seemed to pass through his lungs and relax his muscles, but the sugars of berries had reminded him of how hungry he was. He held his belly uncomfortably as he flew, his fingers digging more than an inch into the soft, leathery flesh wrapped around the climax of his paunch. “This was no time for eating!” Charizard grumbled to himself, speeding up his pace.
Oh, was he wrong.
His wings grew heavy, and the air thinned. It was hard to breathe, and keep his eyes to the horizon. His tongue dried, and limped out of his long, huffing maw. His stubby arms and legs lay dormant to his sides, his muscles relaxing more and more until he hardly wanted to move. His stomach grumbled louder than a lion’s roar, and he began to plummet with each off-beat of his wings. The only time he had issues flying was when he carried three dozen stacks of gravel rock back to the market. This was different. Had he finally gained too much weight? It had been weeks since his last expedition. Perhaps he wasn’t fit for adventure anymore. But this hunger - it was unnatural. Never before had his appetite gotten in the way for helping out a pokemon.
Charizard shielded his eyes as he began to crash into the canopies of the trees, his heavyweight body crashing through the limbs like a boulder launched through a trebuchet. His descent only stopped when he became entangled in a group of sturdy branches; they cradled him between his swollen haunches and his chubby love handles like a noodle wrapped around a fork. His stomach bundled up against his chest and made him look even more spherical, but that was the least of his issues right now. He struggled uselessly, kicking his legs and lashing his tail around. A spark lit up in his maw, and he took a deep breath. The limbs faded away as flame engulfed them, and like a meteor, Charizard plummeted to the ground and lay belly-up, satisfied in a pile of ash.
“Who goes there?!” Charizard heard a gruff voice call from afar.
From above, he saw a shadow swing from branch to branch dexterously, but their body looked old and saggy. That was when he saw a purple glow from their hands, and he knew that they were using psychic powers to assist them. When they drew close, their white and purple fur gleamed in the light between the leaves for the first time. It was an orangutan pokemon he had never seen before, which was an odd occurrence after seeing everything from Weedle to Mew. Immediately, his senses heightened as a means to fend off whatever creature this was. If he hadn’t seen this pokemon before, it must have been something big - legendary, even. Despite suffering from starvation, Charizard tried to roll onto his feet.
He hardly moved an inch.
The orangutan clomped down onto the forest floor, their great arms elongated enough to where they could sprint on all fours. However, they slowed as they drew near. Their eyes were wild, glancing up and down frantically at the charizard, yet he could tell that they were those of a wise, old pokemon. Their head cocked to the side curiously at the sight of the charizard, and they sniffed the air. “Ash.” They said with a wheezy, whisky-glazed growl. They glanced at the incinerated wood piles around the fiery beast. They held their hands in the air as a sign of peace. Charizard gave a snort, and fire and smoke spit out of his nostril, but he was much too sore and exhausted to do much more. “I am Oranguru,” they said, trailing two fingers in the pile of ash and examining it thoroughly, “A human like me does not belong in this land, and so do you!”
For the first time, Oranguru smiled and began to tremble with energy. Charizard’s heart rose to the top of his long neck. There were very few that understood his past - that he did not originally come from this world. This pokemon had already known before they had met each other! The sound of that nearly gave him enough energy to rise to his elbows, but he quickly collapsed back down with a jolt. His bouncing belly grumbled, and he groaned. “I want to know more, but I am very hungry.”
“Rightfully so, good sir!” Oranguru exclaimed. He swiftly rose to his feet and gave the climax of the charizard’s belly a few playful pats. “You are gigantic for a charizard! I’m sure that you can eat more than the average fill.” Oranguru giggled as he received an evil glance from Charizard. “And I think I know why. But first, let us feast. Thankfully, I have retained my opposable thumbs. Harvesting should be much easier for me than you.”
Oranguru helped Charizard lean his back against a tree and began his search for anything and everything edible. Charizard could only sigh uselessly as he watched his new friend grab grub for him. For a moment, he felt like a king, and that was something that he had never wanted. For the past year or so, he had given everything to help others. Nowadays, he felt greedy and slimy for his actions, when in reality, people were just trying to help him and celebrate his accomplishments. Charizard hated when someone got his mail for him, or cleaned his home, or gifted him things. It felt like he deserved nothing despite saving the world. This was no different.
Oranguru returned hastily with a big bundle of apples and berries wrapped in his saggy arms, and dropped them on the forest floor next to Charizard’s resting spot. It was easily enough grub for the two of them, but another trail of apples and berries followed behind him, levitating slowly towards the two with a purple aura enveloping their soft exterior. They dropped on top of Charizard’s belly, drumming rhythmically off of him and next to his side. Immediately, he went for an apple and ravenously chowed down on it, barely stopping to breath before eating another, and another. Each only took a few bites, and it hardly sated his appetite.
“Is this going to be enough?” The great ape jokingly said, eyeing the pseudo-dragon with a smile. He poked the charizard’s underbelly and watched his finger sink away in its soft flesh before letting go and seeing the jiggling rebound.
Charizard tore away a hefty piece of oran berry and swallowed it whole before wiping his maw clean with his shoulder. His eyes lowered and he barked, “You sure like to test your boundaries, don’t you? What’s all this degrading for?! I haven’t heard of many humans turning into pokemon. Last time I checked, there was only me and Gengar. Where do you come from?”
Oranguru let out a sigh and sat lazily on the mushy grass of the Lost Woods. Charizard could tell that he was frail, old, and very, very shaky. “I am Jackson from the S.S. Wonnim. I was the navigator for a small group of five from the Sinnoh region to Galar. A storm struck, and our boat was lost. Now, I have turned up here, as a pokemon, as well as the rest of my crew, at least to my understanding.”
Charizard was having a very difficult time wrapping this around his head. He wasn’t entirely sure what a human even was, in all honesty. “Sinnoh? Galar?” He grumbled, rolling around a cheri berry between his long tongue and the roof of his mouth. They sounded familiar, but he couldn’t picture it at all. He was on a boat? He hated the open sea! Why would he have done that?
Jackson folded his arms around his chest. “It appears that I am the only one that knows the full story - the other crewmate can recall a little more than you though.” Charizard frowned and smoke trailed out of his nose again. Still, Jackson continued, “I’ve found two of the five, and you make the second. I suppose I am the third, so that leaves two of them left.”
“You say that I sailed the seas, but I hate water.”
“You hate water now.” Jackson said with a smile. “You’re a charizard. Of course you hate water, just like how I hate being in the dark. No, you were excited to return home from a vacation.”
Charizard gulped down a huge heap of berries, all with different healing effects so he went a little woozy for a second. He never won arguments against psychic types, so instead he hiccuped, and spat, “I was on vacation? I’m from Galar?”
Jackson cackled until he started to cough. He cleared his throat and said, “Yes, and an odd one at that. You know what that means, correct?”
Charizard hardly knew where Tiny Woods was on the map. He was more of a visual learner. “No, but I’m guessing that you’re going to tell me.”
Jackson nudged Charizard on the snout with a flick of his thumb and said, “You’re Galarian! A Galarian charizard-er-human. Those charizards can gigantamax. You are sure to have retained some of that Galarain blood, so that is why you eat so much!” There was a pause and the oranguru itched his head. “Well, and you were quite an eater even before then.”
Charizard snorted. “Alright, big-brain. What’s my true name?”
Jackson smiled. “Oh! Right! You don’t know your name. It’s Oliver.”
Charizard’s heart sank this time to the core of his belly. Why did that sound so familiar? He nearly began to sweat just thinking that this might be his true name. This pokemon knew so much. Could he trust him? There wasn’t really a reason not to. For some reason, he even thought that Jackson sounded familiar. Maybe this was his true past? He wanted to know more about himself.
“Okay! Call me Oliver then. What did I used to do for a living?”
Jackson snickered. “Oh, you were an odd one. Never had I had someone so big on my boat. Your appetite rivaled that of a Snorlax, it did.”
Oliver rolled his eyes and waved his hand lazily in the air. “Okay, get on with it!”
“You were a sumo, a sumo from Galar.”
“A sumo?! Like Hariyama?” Oliver’s eyes glittered with joy. “That sounds awesome!”
Jackson cocked his head. “Well… it would be, erm, awesome if sumo wrestling was big in Galar. You were quite an odd one, must I remind you. You were so adamant to make it popular in Galar some might say it was courageous, but in truth, it was mad. People are not so accepting of fat bodies beyond the stern tradition of sumo, however, I must say it was impressive to see you next to my flimsy old frame.” The oranguru seemed to grow tired after sitting for so long. “You damn near capsized the boat when you walked on it for the first time.”
Oliver’s head was rolling. That was why he had a bigger appetite than others! He must have retained that wrestler mindset of eating and working out so much! It was odd to finally have an explanation for his sudden weight gain, but that didn’t change the fact that he was getting fat. He supposed it wasn’t all bad to be fat, and nobody cared if he liked a few extra meals back home. The only thing stopping him from eating was himself!
Jackson lifted up an apple delicately in his hand and tossed it towards Oliver’s open maw. He caught it dexterously and nearly swallowed it with one bite. Jackson patted Oliver’s belly in praise, which felt way less odd now that he knew the reasoning behind it all. In fact, he almost welcomed it. But, Jackson rose to his feet before he played with his belly more and stretched. His back and legs popped, and he groaned in relief. “Like I said, I do not like the dark. I have traveled far to meet you, and do not know this location as much as I like. A navigator that does not know their way is a bit frightening, don’t you think? If you have a home, I would be happy to stay there.”
Oliver started to rise to his feet, his chest and face covered in the juices of the fruits, and his heart sank. “The mission!” How long had it been?! He’s been sitting here for nearly hours talking with this stranger, and completely forgot why he came here. “I-I gotta go! I need to do something!”
Jackson grabbed Oliver’s arm and said, “Wait! I sent that message!”
Oliver sighed and looked down at the oranguru. “Oh, thank goodness. I thought someone was out there hurt. Wait - is your stomach okay?”
Jackson shrugged. “Oh yeah. I was poisoned and forgot I had a pecha berry on me. Silly me! I was lucky that that bird was flying overhead. I levitated my letter up until it smacked into their face! Haha! They nearly fell into the forest with me.”
Oliver frowned. “Your head isn’t all there, is it, ape?”
Category Story / Fat Furs
Species Pokemon
Size 120 x 120px
File Size 76.9 kB
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