As Dragonair's sinuous body leapt out of the water with ease, he saw the human clearly commanding the Lanturn that had just attacked him. Truthfully though, it wasn't being attacked personally that frustrated Dragonair so much. Pokemon vying for territory was just a natural part of life, and he had accepted that since he was a tiny wiggler of a Dratini. What made the dragon type Pokemon genuinely angry though was seeing the guilt on the Lanturn's face as they'd electrically charged the water to force Dragonair out, not just shocking him but zapping dozens of weaker Pokemon from Magikarp to Azurill in the process. Thus, Dragonair felt no guilt in doing what he did next. If the human so clearly considered the other Pokemon in the surrounding environment as reasonable collateral damage in order to secure itself a dragon type, then clearly the human itself was fair game as a target. Or at least, the wooden watercraft within which the human was standing.
Dragonair threw back his head upon his long, slender neck. He felt his long, serpentine body cutting through the air as he reached the apex of the leap he had begun just seconds ago, and as he opened his muzzle wide ready to deliver a blast of dragon rage, his eyes bulged. He felt a deep, powerful glow bursting forth from both sockets, and with a strangled yet still melodic wail, Dragonair felt a surge of energy like nothing he had ever known before as a Hyper Beam erupted from his maw and lanced across the water, cleaving the human's boat in half and sending the previously grinning, arrogantly confident human flailing and tumbling into the lake which surrounded the small island Dragonair called home.
Seconds later the Pokemon splashed back down into the water, but rather than feeling the thrill of victory or the exhaustion that Dragonair had seen a rare few other, powerful Pokemon exhibit immediately after summoning forth such a colossally powerful attack, Dragonair felt strangely hot. Even the crisp, cool January waters around him weren't able to quell the heat he felt rising from deep within his core. Snaking from end to end of his long body as, just like with his eyes a brief while ago, he felt and saw a dazzling white glow consuming his flesh. For a moment he panicked. For a moment he feared that something had gone terribly, terribly wrong with the new attack he had just manifested for the first time. But then, something occurred to the Pokemon. A memory from many, many years ago, when he had fought off a whole mass of Krabby in order to defend the rock where he had chosen to sleep when first arriving on the island he had called home ever since. The heat had consumed his small, Dratini form back then too. The dazzling light had burst forth from every inch of his body, and then...
Then, he had evolved.
A pillar of light burst out of the lake, and Dragonair's sonorous roar rang out for miles around as he felt his form twisting. Changing. As he felt... something growing. Spreading. Stretching out from the lithe frame that was all he had ever known. He cried out with overwhelmed intensity, not in pain nor in pleasure, just sensation like nothing he had ever known before, and then...
*******
When Dragonite awoke, he was lying flat on his belly upon the shore of his lake island home. The afternoon sky was clear, and though he had never been a fan of the cold, the cool breeze was somewhat refreshing against his skin after all that heat. His eyes widened as he remembered what had happened. As he realized that the reason he felt so heavy, so massive as he lay there was quite simply because he probably was. Because he had evolved. But... evolved into what? Dragonite had never met another Pokemon of his species before, not since memories of two looming figures that
had seemed to float away from him even as he peeked, freshly hatched out of the remains of his egg. All he could assume therefore was that like when he had changed from Dratini to Dragonair, he would grow larger, stronger, and become an even more powerful version of the slender, snake- like dragon type he had always been. A smile slowly formed on his face, and wiggled his way up the shoreline. Or rather, he tried. He squirmed and shifted his body in the way that had always allowed him to easily locomote on ground or through water with graceful ease, but the only result was the sensation of his belly wriggling against the sand immediately beneath him. He tried to move again, putting more strength behind his muscles and...
``...ite!! Dragonite!''
A strained cry of confusion escaped the Pokemon as he felt something very, very strange. He moved. His muscles flexed and he felt part of his body lifting itself off the ground. Only... it wasn't a part of his body that he knew. It wasn't a part of his body he had ever felt before. This wasn't like when he had evolved from Dratini to Dragonair and had gotten a cool new horn on the top of his head. He had barely been able to feel the horn beyond being aware of its presence as a part of him. Whatever he was feeling now though, it was moving. It was flexing and bending and... he cried out again in uncertain nervousness as something started to... wiggle. He turned his head where he was still lying flat on his belly, looking down towards the source of the sensation, and uttered yet another strangled, booming wail of surprise.
His bulging eyes were staring down at an arm. He had seen them on other Pokemon. He knew what they were and what their purpose was, of course. But, why was one sticking out of his body? And, why was that body so big? So chunky!? Why was his body a golden, sandy sort of yellow color now when all his life he had been beautiful shades of watery blue?!? His muscles tensed again in his nervousness, and once more Dragonite groaned in dismayed uncertainty as this time he was able to watch first-hand, quite literally, as his arm twitched and the fingers at the end of the limb dug into the sand, clenching and digging through the damp golden grains before ending up in a clutched fist.
Turning his head in the other direction, Dragonite found another, similar limb on the other side of his torso. He flexed and shifted once again, and with a growing sense of dread the Pokemon rolled himself over onto his back, able to achieve at least that much locomotion the way he intended, before looking down the length of his big, rounded, chunky torso, and seeing yet more limbs sticking out from the hefty, bottom-heavy base of his body. A pair of legs. LEGS!! And a tail, too. Not just a long, slender extension of his lower body, but a definitively separate tail protruding from the base of his torso, behind the protrusions of those legs.
For more than an hour, Dragonite lay there on the sand just trying to understand how this could have happened. Had something gone incredibly wrong with his evolution? Had a mythical Pokemon somehow swapped his consciousness with that of an entirely different Pokemon which did in fact have arms and legs, and there was now some other creature flopping around in confusion in the limbless body that was supposed to be his? While those thoughts raced through his mind, he kept experimentally moving those new limbs. Slowly growing more accustomed to the strange, alien feeling of instinctive motor control he had over each one. He opened and closed his hands. He extended and curled back in each individual digit one by one. He wiggled his toes. He kicked with his legs and slapped his tail down against the sand. And all the while, he grunted and huffed and whined in discomfort as he shifted and squirmed on his back, feeling as though he was lying on a rock or something other than soft wet sand.
Eventually, the discomfort of just lying there grew so intense that Dragonite resolved to really try and move. Even it meant using his limbs to do so, rather than slithering in the manner that still felt so natural, but now seemed practically impossible for the dragon type to achieve. He rolled himself
back onto his belly, and closed his eyes to try and focus on the sensations without having to look at and acknowledge the weird, extremely unnatural feeling movement of his limbs. He moved his arms and placed the palms of his hands flat against the sand, and grunted as he began to apply force, pressure down against the earth. At first the positioning of his arms was all wrong and he couldn't get the leverage he needed, but after a little experimentation he found the right angle, and gasped in surprise as just like he had intended, he felt his arms pushing down and lifting his upper body off the ground. Next, he began to move his legs, or to try, only to feel his arms give out and bring his face crashing back down into the sand as with so much focus suddenly devoted to his legs, he forgot to maintain the tension in his upper limbs.
Dragonite scowled, but didn't give up. He tried again. And again. And again, and eventually let loose a cry of triumphant joy as he wiggled, wavered slightly off balance, but managed to use his tail to steady himself and leave his body propped up on its knees, no longer flat upon the ground but kneeling upright in an almost bipedal stance. The pressure and discomfort on his back was gone now, but when Dragonite peered back over his shoulders to try and identify the source, to see if he'd somehow hurt himself while lying down on the sand, he couldn't even bring himself to cry out as yet another revelation washed over him. He stared down at the two membranous, gently fluttering wings protruding from his back. For several minutes more in fact, until his neck began to hurt, he just watched his wings as he slowly managed to figure out which muscles controlled their movement and began to beat them in more of a rhythm, then stop them and tuck them back against his body in a manner he figured would allow him to lie down much more comfortably.
Before Dragonite could consider his next move though, before he could even think about how he was going to get off that beach and head back to his den, not that it would probably fit this huge new body of his anyway, he heard a cry from the lake a short distance away. Slowly, carefully, extending wings and arms to balance himself, Dragonite carefully shuffled around on the spot on his knees to look directly out over the water, and tensed up as he saw the same Lanturn from before splashing swiftly through the water towards him. Even as his body readied itself for battle though the dragon type Pokemon saw the difference in Lanturn's body language, and sure enough as the fish Pokemon floated close to the shore, she cried out to Dragonite not with anger or vengefulness, but fear and concern.
``Lanturn! Lan, lan! Turn!!''
Dragonite's eyes bulged. He had just wanted to scare the human off, nothing more. He looked down at his legs folded beneath him. At his stubby arms. He turned back to the water Pokemon, about to tell her that much as he wanted to help, much as he was sorry that her trainer couldn't swim and was stuck clinging to the wreckage of his boat with no way to get back to shore, his new body probably wasn't capable of swimming out and saving the human like he would have been able to with ease as Dragonair. Except... he felt his wings flutter upon his back.
Wings. He knew what wings were for. He had seen countless bird Pokemon in the skies overhead and dozens upon dozens of Zubat living in the caves on the island, and their wings all served the same function.
Slowly, shakily, Dragonite flopped forward onto all fours, but only so he could lift his legs and plant his feet firmly on the ground. Carefully, unsteadily but swiftly learning how to balance his upright posture, he stood up, fully bipedal and towering over the wide eyed, still clearly distraught Lanturn who, apologetic as she was for her trainer's bad behavior and for following its instructions without question, clearly still cared for the human deeply. He had to help her. He would, because this body wasn't helpless. It wasn't useless. It was just new. But if he could master it. If he could learn to control the strength he was certain he could feel inside himself, it wouldn't just be this one Pokemon
and her trainer he could help. He'd be able to protect the entire island and all the Pokemon on it, so that he, and all of them, could have a peaceful life for many, many years to come!
Dragonite flapped his wings hard. He felt sand whipping up around him. He stumbled and toppled forward as his wings beating against the air propelled him off balance, but righted himself again and repeated the action, only with his wings tilted at a slightly different angle. The newly evolved adult clenched his eyes shut and grit his teeth, fighting to control whatever nerve endings he now had, with all his might. His wings flapped faster, harder, and Dragonite's eyes bulged open as he felt himself not feeling lighter exactly, but less bound by the forces of nature that had always told him a jump upward would be immediately and inevitably followed by a fall back downward.
Unsteadily, uncertainly, Dragonite felt his feet no longer planted flat against the sand. He stretched his legs out and grazed the ground with the very tips of his new toes, and then... then he couldn't feel even that, because he was airborne, floating, flying several inches above the beach.
He looked to Lanturn who was staring up at him with intense gratitude, and nodded slowly. ``Dragonite. Dragon!''
She nodded back, turning on the spot within the water with a flick of her fins, and immediately dashing off through the water to lead Dragonite to her trainer. Carefully the dragon-type Pokemon shifted the angle of his wings, and with another flap began to propel himself both upward and forward in the same direction. The cool winter air rushed past his scaled body as he cut through the air more swiftly than he had ever been able to propel himself through water. He gasped as in a matter of seconds he overtook Lanturn, and had to figure out how to make himself stop and hover once again, dipping and almost falling but managing to right himself once again just moments later. He was so fast... so maneuverable, despite his bulky frame! In the air, none of that seemed to matter. After letting Lanturn take the lead again, Dragonite followed once more. To avoid getting too far ahead, he started to zig-zag. He tested his flight capabilities further, spinning around and around in the air. Looping over himself. Flying down close enough to the water that he could reach out a single arm and touch the lake's surface, seeing his reflection grinning back at him with increasing delight from within the water.
Soon he and Lanturn were at the boat, and soon after that the trembling, shivering, soaking wet human was clinging to Dragonite's big, strong body, while Dragonite used his arms to cradle the tiny, helpless human safely in a way his former, limbless body never would have been able to manage.
He carried the human back to shore. He set it down on dry land, and as he stood towering over the human, watching it weep and speak its language that Dragonite had never heard enough to learn, he gasped when suddenly the human lunged forward and wrapped its arms around him as best it could in a tight hug. A hug which Dragonite's own arms were actually able to return, in a manner that was so soothing, so comforting that it brought tears to the dragon Pokemon's own eyes.
As he held the human and felt its warmth, its gratitude regardless of his lack of understanding of its words, Dragonite smiled. He heard Lanturn calling out from close by as she finally caught up and splashed gleefully, dragging herself out of the water by her fins to join their embrace, nuzzling against both her trainer's legs and Dragonite's ankles.
Closing his eyes, Dragonite sighed in contentment. He squeezed the human a little tighter in his arms, and fluttered his wings upon his back, already imagining the next time he'd get the chance to try flying again.
This new body was still weird as heck, and he didn't know if he'd ever get used to having so many different things sticking out from all over him. But overall, maybe this evolution wasn't a mistake. Maybe he was meant to be this way. And maybe, just maybe, this first day and the challenges it had already presented him were only the beginning of Dragonite learning what he was truly capable of.
This is a(nother) story I purchased from Jeevestheroobunny based on a random stray thought I had one day, out of nowhere, while sitting on the train.
For one or more unfortunate and tragic reason or reasons, we as organisms—human beings and animals alike—may suffer from the loss of one or more limbs in our lifetime. Sometimes it happens in our adult years, after a lifetime of using that limb and depending on it for our day to day function, sometimes it may be lost early in our lives, or sometimes it might grow incorrectly or not at all, due to an accident or a birth defect. Regardless, as a species, those afflicted with this (often sudden) change are forced to adapt to a life without those limbs, or adjust to life with prosthetics of them.
But one afternoon in the middle of my ride, I wondered to myself arbitrarily: what if it were the complete opposite? What if you suddenly gained several limbs out of nowhere? Especially if it were at a later stage in life? What kind of mental and physical (and hell, even cultural) shock would that be? And I don't think there's a better example of that out there than a Dragonair evolving into a Dragonite. Think about it. Dratini and Dragonair are limbless serpents; water noodles. And when they reach their adult form, they turn into THAT! Seriously, put that to your minds for a moment.
Most creatures, like you and me, slowly learn how to use our extremities as we grow from birth and infancy and build our muscles and memory through them all our youth, and hone our skills for them all our lives. Think of how jarring it must be to go your whole young and adolescent life, reach adulthood and suddenly go from having zero limbs to having NINE, if you could the antennae at the top of the adorable little head(or ten, if you're a male Dragonite 😈). Zero to nine limbs, with absolutely NO idea, knowledge, or muscle memory on ANY of them, at the supposed PEAK of your growth. It's crazy.
So, I asked Jeeves to do a clean(gasp!) story about how a Dragonair/ite might feel about that. And what he came up with was both beautiful and realistic. It even touched my heart deeply. I regret that it took me so long to share this story with all of you, but trust me, this link is going EVERYWHERE!
I hope you all enjoy Dragonite's First Day, and special thanks to Jeeves for his limitless imagination and immense writing skills. 🥰
