Chapter 2: This is really weird
The silence after Misty’s question wasn’t quiet. It was filled with the hum of the refrigerator, the distant metallic chime of the Center’s elevator, and the deafening rush of blood in their ears.
Misty watched the words hang in the air. How does this even work? They felt like someone else’s. A clinical question about a battle tactic, not about… this. She swallowed, her throat working in Ash’s Adam’s apple. The motion felt foreign and bulky.
Her gaze, against her will, dropped from Ash’s horrified blue eyes—her eyes—down to the form she once knew as her own. The pastel crop top, the soft curve of a hip she’d seen a million times in her own mirror. It was different now. It was a stranger wearing her skin, and the disconnect was making her head spin.
A hotter, more immediate signal pulsed through her, cutting through the mental fog. It was a low, demanding pressure, an unfamiliar tightness in the fabric of Ash’s jeans. Her eyes—his eyes—widened. Her mind blanked for a second, a white-noise static of pure denial.
Then, the understanding arrived, a crashing wave of humiliation. It was a basic, biological response. This body was reacting to a stimulus—the proximity, the tension, the sheer bizarre intimacy of the situation—with a straightforward, humiliating urgency. She had no say in it. It was like a sneeze building, but a thousand times worse. A traitorous heat flooded cheeks that weren't hers, and a wave of dizziness made her sway on Ash’s steady feet.
“Oh, you have got to be kidding me,” she whispered, the words a choked rasp.
Ash saw the change in his own face first. A flicker of confusion, then a dawning, mortified comprehension that turned his skin—her skin—pale. His eyes followed her gaze downward, then snapped back up, wide with a panic that mirrored hers.
His own thoughts, which had been a frantic loop of no no no no, tripped and stumbled into a new, shocking lane. He was looking at himself. At his body. And the very clear, very physical evidence of its arousal. The knowledge that it was Misty inside there, feeling that… thing… was so profoundly wrong it made his stomach lurch. Yet, a detached, horrified part of his brain, now filtered through Misty’s nervous system, supplied a rush of unwanted data. The pressure he felt in his own jeans was mapped onto her body as a phantom echo, a weird, tugging curiosity in the pit of her stomach. His face—her face—flushed a deep, hot scarlet.
“Misty…” he started, his voice thin.
“Don’t!” she barked, holding up a hand—his hand—as if to ward him off. She took a jerky step backwards, colliding with the door. “Don’t say anything. It’s not… I’m not… This body’s just broken. It has a hair trigger. It’s revolting.”
But the protest was weak, undercut by the sheer physical reality of it. She was furious, yes. Humiliated, absolutely. But also, inextricably, aware. The raw physical confidence she’d complained about earlier had a new, sharp edge. A driving, impatient energy that centered in that insistent thrum. It was awful. It was also terrifyingly potent.
Ash couldn’t look away from the tense line of his own jaw. He saw the conflict there, the shame, and beneath it, a spark of something else that made the air in the small room feel too thick to breathe. He felt his own heart—Misty’s heart—hammering against his ribs, a frantic bird in a delicate cage. The lavender smell was suddenly cloying.
“It said fusion,” Ash said, the words tumbling out in a rush. “A physical echo. Maybe… maybe it doesn’t have to be… I mean, maybe just…” He gestured vaguely, helplessly. His mind was a jumble of half-formed images, pieces of overheard jokes from older trainers, snippets from badly hidden magazines in Brock’s backpack. All of it was abstract, until now. Now it had a shape, and it was wearing his face.
Misty barked a short, bitter laugh. “What, Ash? Maybe just what? Hold hands? Do you think that thing was talking about holding hands?” She pushed off the door, running that hand through his hair again in a gesture of pure frustration. “It wants the whole stupid, messy, gross… completion. To collapse the barrier. That’s what it said.”
The word completion hung between them, stark and undeniable.
Ash looked down at his own hands—Misty’s hands. Slender, capable hands that could reel in a Gyarados. He imagined them touching his own body, the one currently standing across from him. The thought wasn’t entirely repulsive. That was the most shocking part. It was just a swirling mass of confusion, colored by a sharp, desperate need to be himself again. That need was beginning to dwarf everything else, a towering, screaming imperative.
“We have to,” he said, the realization hitting him with the force of a Tackle. His voice gained a shred of its old determination, even if it was pitched too high. “There’s no other way. We try to find that Pokémon? It could be anywhere by now. We wait? What if this is permanent?”
Misty stared at him. She felt the truth of it, a cold stone settling in Ash’s gut. The absurdity of their situation was absolute. The only path back was through a door neither of them had ever imagined, let alone wanted to open.
A long, tense minute stretched out, measured only by their ragged breathing. The morning light through the slanted window had crept across the floor, now painting a bright stripe over Ash’s—Misty’s—bare feet.
Finally, Misty let out a shuddering sigh. The anger seemed to drain from his frame, leaving behind a weary, resolved dread. The obvious physical tension remained, a stubborn, awkward fact in the room.
“Okay,” she said, the word barely audible. “Okay. But we don’t… think about it. We just… get it over with. Like a medical procedure.”
“Right,” Ash agreed, too quickly. “Like applying a Potion. A really… involved Potion.”
The analogy was so stupid it almost broke the tension. Almost.
Misty nodded, her gaze fixed on a point on the wall past his shoulder. “So. The bed, I guess.”
The floral quilt suddenly looked like the most intimidating thing in the world. Ash nodded, a stiff jerk of Misty’s head. He took one step, then another, each movement feeling clumsy and too loud. He sat on the edge of the mattress, the springs creaking under her slight weight. He didn’t look up.
Misty watched him—her—sit. She saw the slump of those familiar shoulders, the way the orange hair fell to hide her face. A violent, protective surge went through her—Don’t look so defeated—immediately followed by another wave of dizzying wrongness. She was protecting herself from herself.
She moved then, crossing the small space in three of Ash’s long strides. She didn’t sit. She stood before him, looking down at the top of her own head.
“This is the weirdest day of my life,” she muttered, not expecting an answer.
Ash finally looked up. From this angle, seeing his own face from below, shadowed and serious, was another fresh shock. “Yeah,” he breathed. “Tell me about it.”
For another moment, they just existed in the horrible, silent agreement. The ‘how’ loomed, vast and uncharted. The morning light felt like a spotlight.
Misty’s hands—Ash’s hands—clenched at her sides, then slowly uncurled.