Learning to Fly
Chapter 7: Alien Instincts
A Clover Guild Story
By Ribombee-anon
Previous part: https://rentry.org/RibombeeFly6
One week after my training began, I woke up early to the familiar pitter-patter of rain. I yawned and put my hands behind my head, gazing up at the window above the desk. A storm was sweeping over Capim Town. Gray clouds filled the sky, loose leaves fluttered in the wind, and raindrops fell against the glass and ran down in streams. Ever since I was a child, I loved the soothing sight and sound of rain. Observing it from the safety of the indoors never failed to calm me down, and always helped me sleep at night.
So why did I feel anxious right now?
The rain didn’t soothe me as much as it should have. I felt like I had two voices in my head: one encouraging me to relax, the other warning me about getting wet. The first voice won, since I was warm and dry here in my dorm, and I knew there was no risk. Still, why did this fear crop up in the first place?
“Instincts,” I muttered under my breath.
I thought back to the last week. I’d trained with KFC three times so far, and I felt like I was starting to get the hang of it. Now that I had some experience, I wasn’t as nervous as I’d been before beginning this quest. Even so, some concerns still lurked in my mind, and one of the biggest was the growing challenge of my Pokemon instincts. This physical and mental training was meant to remove the disconnect between my human and Pokemon sides, which had most likely arisen because a Ribombee differed so much from a human. Before training, I still had a human’s mind stuck in a Pokemon’s body, so the goal was to accept my new identity. However, this came with the risk of losing touch with my old human self. My new fear of getting wet was just one example of this, in addition to the unusual competitiveness and eagerness that I felt while exercising over this past week.
How serious would this problem get? Was I at risk of losing my grip on myself and changing entirely? If I became a totally different person, with new opinions and mindsets and responses to things... that was no different from my old self being utterly erased. It was the same thing as death.
I shuddered and buried myself deeper in the cotton balls comprising my bed. Maybe I was overthinking things, but this question had been looming in my mind lately, and I couldn’t ignore it no matter how hard I tried. I hadn’t poured my heart out to anyone yet, but I did inform KFC of some of my concerns before. He was understanding and supportive, and he already told me that meditation would help with this issue, so I tried to stay hopeful that it would work out in the end.
I lay there and tried to ignore the rain, using the tricks my trainer had taught me to calm my mind so I could get back to sleep. It must have worked, because I was startled awake when I felt something sharp gently poking my exoskeleton. I opened my eyes to see Sneasel leaning over me and giggling.
“Good morning, sleepyhead,” she said.
“G-good morning, Sneasel,” I said. I glanced at the window, and saw the rain was still coming down.
Sneasel followed my gaze and grumbled. “Stormy, huh? I ain’t too big a fan of rain. How about you?”
I hesitated, unsure what kind of response would be the most truthful. It was hard for me to make up my mind, with two sides arguing in my head, but my old self won out.
“I... I like it,” I said at last. “I enjoy rain.”
* * *
After having breakfast, we discussed what to do today. Sneasel wanted to work out and then do a job from the mission board, despite the storm. While visiting the basement recently, she found an old raincoat made of woven cedar fiber, so the rain wouldn’t be an issue for her. I didn’t want to leave the guildhall and brave the storm, so I chose to stay here and help our guildmate Macom with his cartography. I’d recently started working as his assistant; I wanted to be more useful around the guildhall, and cartography was one of the few available jobs that was possible for someone of my tiny size.
Sneasel left, and I joined Macom in the map room. At one point, I had to go to the guildhall’s library and retrieve a map for him, but it was very difficult because it was high up on a shelf. I managed to retrieve it with some effort and ingenuity, but it was a sickening reminder of how immobile I was without working wings. Although the rest of the day went more smoothly, I always grimaced whenever I thought back to how the simple act of grabbing an item from a high place was now a huge task for me. On the other hand, it also provided me with even more motivation to complete this training and unlock flight. But getting to that point would also require me to deal with the new instincts I was feeling...
Around dinnertime, Sneasel returned and joined me and Macom in the mess hall. Rain still fell outside the windows, but I could tune it out, since the room was abuzz with activity as our guildmates gathered and ate their meals. The guild’s chef made an array of food to accommodate the many different species in the guildhall, but I was the only insect in the group, so the chef didn’t make anything special just for me. I’d been required to subsist on berries and fruits for the last month or so, which left me feeling unsatisfied. Out of both desperation and curiosity, I’d also tried grains, vegetables, and even meat. While the flavor sometimes was enjoyable, they often tasted wrong and made me sick. For this reason, I tried to limit my diet to the few things that settled well.
However, I made an exception tonight once I saw one of the meals on offer: grits with chickpeas and mushrooms. Grits were just boiled cornmeal, but they were a good base for various other meals, and they were easily one of my favorite foods. My mom always made them a lot, so they had plenty of sentimental value for me. I asked Sneasel to get a couple scoops so I could try our chef’s version.
“You sure you can stomach it?” she asked.
“I want to taste them, at least,” I replied. “I know there are some things I can’t eat now, but th-this is my favorite food. I should be able to enjoy this, right?”
“Worth a shot,” she said.
She put some extra grits on the edge of her wooden trencher board, then got a bowl of stew for her dinner. She also got a bowl of grits for Macom (at his request) and some berries for me, then we all went to a long table to eat together. Our guildmates Chespin and Wooper were already there; Sneasel and Macom sat across from them, and I sat between them atop the table itself.
Chespin and Wooper had bowls of grits like Macom, but Chespin hadn’t started eating yet. He was busy prodding his food with a wooden spoon, while his armless partner was hunched over his bowl and greedily gobbling his meal up.
“I take it you dislike grits?” Macom asked Chespin.
“I haven’t tried it before,” Chespin replied, “but it doesn’t look appetizing. It just looks like mush. I got some because Wooper said it was good, but I’m second-guessing myself.”
“Who cares what food looks like?” Sneasel asked. “As long as it tastes good, it’s fine by me.”
“Is that why you took some?” Chespin asked, pointing at the little scoop on the edge of Sneasel’s tray.
“Nah, this is for Booker. He wanted some.”
“It’s one of my favorite foods,” I explained. “It’s really popular in Georgia, w-which is where I’m from. I remember having grits all the time.”
Wooper finally lifted his head from his bowl and rubbed his messy face on a napkin. “See, Chespin? Booker likes it too! It’s good! Give it a try!”
Chespin reluctantly did so. In a surprised tone, he announced that he didn’t dislike it. He continued eating, using his vines to handle a second spoon and help Wooper eat without making such a mess. Macom and Sneasel started eating their food too, while I went over to my portion of grits and eagerly scooped up a little handful.
I took a bite of my favorite food. I instantly regretted it.
There was the rich corn flavor of stone-ground grits that I enjoyed so much back on Earth, and it had the creamy yet somewhat coarse texture I expected. Granted, it was coarser than I remembered, but that was because I was tiny now, so the little ground-up bits of corn felt larger than they used to be. Aside from that one difference, it was exactly how I hoped it would be. And yet... my tongue and brain simply weren’t registering it the same way. An unpleasant tingling spread through me, making me grimace and freeze. This food was utterly unappetizing now. So much so, in fact, that I did something I never thought I’d do to grits: I spat them out.
My tablemates were startled, and stared at me. Full of confusion and embarrassment, I tried to shrink away.
“What’s wrong?” asked Sneasel.
“I d-don’t know,” I murmured.
My partner scooped a bit of grits onto the tip of her claw and licked it off. She shrugged. “I dunno how it’s supposed to taste, but it ain’t gross or anything.”
“Did it taste bad to you?” Wooper asked me.
“Maybe you just expected it to be different,” Macom suggested. “If you had your mother’s recipe in mind, this new one could come as a shock. I have no problem with it.”
Chespin said, “I think it’s fine too. Maybe it’s just you?”
I stared at the remaining grits in my hands. This was a food that I always loved ever since I was a child, but now it sickened me. It felt like my brain was broken.
No... it wasn’t broken. Not exactly. It was just different. It was the brain of a Ribombee, and it had its own preferences.
“Y-you’re right, Chespin,” I said quietly. “It is just me.”
Silent and shaken, I wiped my hands off on the edge of Sneasel’s napkin, and also cleaned up the small bit of food that I spat out. My tablemates expressed their sympathy and resumed their meals, although Sneasel seemed more focused on watching me. Perhaps she was trying to see if I felt okay, but I didn’t pay much attention to her or anything around me. I just took a small berry from Sneasel’s tray and idly munched on it, staring blankly at the table as I wrestled with my worries.
What finally took me out of my stupor was hearing KFC’s familiar voice saying my name. He had come over and sat beside Sneasel, bringing his own dinner tray. It had another bowl of grits for himself, but there were also had two corked vials, both about half my height. One had a golden liquid inside, while the other contained a few misshapen clumps. I wasn’t sure what they were, but they were made of a smooth waxy material colored in shades of brown and yellow.
“Good evening, Booker,” said the Combusken. “I don’t know if you noticed me, but I was sitting nearby, and I saw what happened. Your food didn’t agree with you?”
I gulped. “I... I guess not. That was one of my f-favorite foods, but... now it tastes awful.”
“Do you know why?”
“Because my body isn’t... human anymore.”
“Exactly. Do you remember at the start of the week, when I said we should work on your diet? Watching what you eat is a crucial part of training and getting stronger. It will help you connect with your Ribombee side, and keep you healthy too. You should start eating foods that are natural for your new body. Corn isn’t something a Ribombee usually eats, so that’s why it doesn’t taste appetizing to you anymore.”
“Wait,” said Chespin. “So, you were watching him, and you let him eat the grits even though you knew he’d hate it? Why didn’t you warn him?”
“We learn from our experiences,” said KFC. “Especially bad ones. I’d be a poor teacher if I stepped in to save my student every single time he made an error. Sometimes it’s good to make mistakes and learn from them.”
“You’re quite the tough teacher,” said Macom. “But I can respect that.”
Sneasel smirked. “If you think he’s tough, you should see how my old tribe did things.”
“I could say the same thing about my own tribe,” KFC said, his voice oddly quiet and somber. “Anyway, we’re getting off topic. Booker, I came here to talk about your diet. I did a little research, and learned a Ribombee’s natural diet mostly contains nectar, honey, and pollen, alongside fruits and berries. These provide all the nutrients you need. From now on, I want you to eat these things.”
“Can he survive on that?” asked Macom. “It’s very different from what a human eats.”
“It sounds like a terrible diet to me too,” KFC replied, “but a Ribombee is different from a Combusken or Mareep. You’ll have to accept that your body acts differently than it used to, Booker. You need to avoid a lot of foods now, because you won’t be able to digest them properly, and they can make you sick. That’s why I brought some things for you to try.”
The Combusken uncorked both vials. I gasped as my antennae automatically tilted towards them, picking up a pleasantly sweet and appealing scent. My mouth immediately began to water.
Sneasel’s nose wiggled, and she leaned closer to the bottles. “Wow,” she said. “That’s pretty sugary.”
“Too much for me,” said Macom.
“Speak for yourself,” said Chespin. “I love sweet stuff! KFC, you said Booker gets to eat this all the time? Lucky... Hey, can I try some?”
“Save some for me too!” Wooper added, bouncing up and down on his bench.
KFC held up a hand. “Maybe later,” he said. “These are for Booker. The liquid is nectar, and these clumps are called ambrosia. Apparently, it’s fermented pollen with some other ingredients mixed in, and it’s a popular food for Bug-types—at least, that’s what the vendor told me. Have a taste. I think you’ll like it better than the grits.”
My trainer poured out the few clumps of ambrosia onto a corner of his wooden trencher board, and set the nectar vial down beside them. I went over, stepped up onto his board, and picked up a piece of ambrosia. I eyed it warily. I wasn’t sure if I’d like it. I’d never had it as a human—as Macom said, it wasn’t something humans would eat as their main food source. However, I couldn’t argue with the pleasant sensations emanating from my antennae, or the way I was starting to drool. I took a deep breath, then took a bite.
My eyes went wide. The flavor was absolutely amazing! It was hard to put into words—incredibly sweet, but somehow not overwhelmingly so, and the fermentation added a hint of sourness to it. The texture was grainier than I expected from the waxy appearance, but it didn’t bother me at all. I greedily finished the chunk I had, making my partner chuckle.
Much less nervous now, I moved on to the nectar. The vial was half my size and almost full, but I could lift it and tilt it without much trouble, thanks to my insect strength. The nectar was sweet with a floral taste, and somehow was even more delicious than the ambrosia. I wanted to gulp down the entire vial, but it was impossible to consume the whole thing at once. I drank as much as I could, then let out a satisfied exhale as I set the bottle down again.
“Seems like you’re enjoying it,” Macom said with a smile.
“I am,” I said. “More than I expected...”
I fell silent, staring at these new foodstuffs. They tasted wonderful, and they were healthy for me. It was a major shame that I was unable to tolerate grits, the food that brought me so much joy before, but at least I had a good alternative now. I should have been able to derive some satisfaction from that.
Instead, as I thought about it more, any happiness I felt was replaced by a pit in my stomach—not because the food didn’t settle well, but rather, because it settled too well. This food was bizarre for a human, but in this new body, it was normal. And that was yet another reminder of the changes I was undergoing as I kept training and getting more in tune with my Pokemon side.
Something as basic as a new diet showed how different my body and mind had become. The fears I’d felt over the last week were compounded. How much was I going to change?
* * *
My worries cast a dark cloud over the rest of the evening. The rain continued, which didn’t help my mood, since I still had mixed feelings about it. Yes, I had told Sneasel that I liked rain when she asked about it at the start of the day, but that was only one half of my mind talking. Underneath, my Ribombee side still hated it, which resonated with the anxiety that had just shaken me at dinner.
In a slightly successful attempt to distract myself, I spent a couple hours reading alone in the guildhall’s library. Whenever my worries cropped up again, I tried to reason with myself that these mental changes were only temporary, and my mind would stabilize long before I lost my sense of self. As much as I wished the problem would go away on its own, though, part of me knew it wouldn’t be that easy.
Eventually, Sneasel met up with me again, and we returned to our dorm to get ready for bed. She brought me to our desk, but as I took off my belt and walked over to my bowl of cotton balls, she blocked me with her hand. I stopped and looked at her. She was sitting at the desk and watching me instead of going to her own cotton-filled mattress.
“What is it?” I asked.
“You feeling okay?” she asked me. “You look pretty led... leth... letarded? Is that right?”
“E-excuse me?” I stammered. “Wait. I think you mean... lethargic.”
“That’s what I said. I mean, you’ve been acting bummed for a while. You had a bit of a rough time at dinner, and you were still pretty glum when I came to get you from the library. You’re usually happy to be surrounded by all those books, you little nerd, so I know something’s up.”
“Um... yes, I’m worried about things, b-but I’m a bit better now,” I replied. It wasn’t entirely true.
“As long as you ain’t any worse, that’s good,” Sneasel said. She moved her hand to pat me on the head. “I get it. It’s gotta suck to not be able to eat your favorite food anymore. I know I’d be bummed if I had to stop eating mangoes or meat. But it ain’t the end of the world.”
“Right... Thanks for checking on me,” I said quietly.
“No problem. Anytime you wanna talk about anything, just lemme know. I ain’t the best listener, but we’re partners, so we gotta look out for each other.”
“I appreciate that... G-goodnight, Sneasel.”
“Goodnight, Booker.”
My partner got up, put her badge and bandanna on our dresser, then went to her bed. I kept watching her as she lay down and got comfortable. For some reason, I didn’t feel like sleeping yet. There was still a pit in my stomach, and my thoughts kept going back to my fears. I knew I couldn’t sleep like this.
“Wait,” I said, before I could change my mind. “C-can we talk some more? Just for a bit?”
Sneasel rolled onto her side and looked over at me. “Sure. What’s up?”
Steeling myself, I explained my issues. “What happened at dinner... really came as a shock. I know it’s just food, and it sounds like a d-dumb thing to get upset over. The ambrosia and nectar taste really good, so... it’s not like I’m forced to eat something I hate. But they’re so w-weird and alien, which really highlights how I’m changing, and that’s... unsettling. Not only that, but... grits were special for me, because my mom made them a lot. When I think of that food, I think about my p-past and my family. So if I can’t eat it anymore... if it makes me sick, and I hate the taste of it... then it’s like I’m being s-separated from my past. I’m losing part of what I was, part of what makes me... me. So, I guess that’s why it’s b-bothering me so much. I hope that made some sense...”
Venting like this was uncomfortable, but I needed to get my thoughts out. Now that I’d done so, I just sat and waited to see how my partner would react. She silently pondered my lengthy confession for a bit, then got out of bed and sat at the desk again.
“I think I get it... So, you’re scared of changing?” she asked.
“Basically,” I replied, sitting down and looking up at her. “Having my mind replaced by s-something alien is just... scary to me.”
“Yeah, I remember you were upset about feeling more like a Pokemon on your first day working out. But I didn’t know you were this shaken up about it.”
I hung my head. “I don’t want to feel this way, b-but I can’t help it...”
“Sorry, partner. Can’t say I know how you feel, though. I never transformed like you did. But hey, maybe you can talk to another human about it. I know KFC said your Aura’s more messed up than anyone else in the guild, but still, I bet you ain’t the only one having this kinda problem. Maybe someone figured out a good way to handle it already. You should ask around.”
“M-maybe, but... then I’d have to talk to people.”
Sneasel chuckled, although I hadn’t meant it as a joke.
“I don’t like the idea of p-pouring out my heart and talking about my problems to just anyone,” I continued. I looked up at my partner again and added, “I’m... most comfortable talking with you.”
“Aw, thanks. For now, all I can say is it probably ain’t worth losing sleep over. Don’t let it bother you. So what if your favorite foods are changing? I mean, as long as you can eat healthy and stay strong, that’s what matters. And even if you can’t eat that food your mom made for you, you’ve still got the memories, right? Those ain’t gonna change.”
I was silent for a bit, slouching and thinking about my partner’s advice... and trying to ignore the persistent rain falling outside. It had been going on all day, but it was amplified now that the conversation had paused, and I couldn’t resist shuddering as I heard it. Just this morning, I’d told Sneasel that I liked it, but was that honest? More and more, I was thinking that I’d lied to her—and myself. I had good memories of rain from my life as a human, but they were being corrupted because my new Ribombee body rejected rain. And that flew in the face of what Sneasel just said. My memories weren’t safe. They could be strangled under the weight of fear and revulsion, corrupted by the instincts of my new form.
I would have spiraled deeper into those dark thoughts if Sneasel hadn’t suddenly patted my head again. I flinched and glanced up.
“It’s gonna be fine,” she said, in a voice that was unusually soft and gentle. “I know it ain’t easy. But you can ignore it and get over it. I know you can.”
I stopped slouching and sat a little more upright, leaning my head into her claws. “I’m glad you think so,” I said. “I mean, I’ll try my best to stay positive. And I... do feel b-better knowing you’re with me.”
“And I always will be,” said Sneasel. Her gentle headpats were abruptly replaced by a firm noogie, and I squirmed and shoved her claws away. She giggled and gave me a confident grin. “Chin up, partner. Hope you feel better after getting a good night’s sleep.”
“Me too,” I said, feeling a bit more lighthearted now. My partner hadn’t fixed the problem entirely, but I felt like the storm was starting to lift, enough that I could force a smile at least. “See you in the morning. And... thanks again.”
Next part: https://rentry.org/RibombeeFly8
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