Part 1
It was another ordinary day at the office. Except that I was late this morning. Hey, don't give me that look. Have you tried to get a t-shirt over a bulb? I think not. So anyway, I reached PXR headquarters half an hour late. I scanned my admin all-access pass and the doors slid open to welcome me. Someone was playing guitar over the intercom again. Sigh, I would need to ask Comatose to practice in his own time in future. Not that he was bad, but surely he had some actual work to do.
I headed for my desk at the back of the office. I passed Rival Max's desk first. He was looking a bit off this morning, somehow. Maybe he was up too late plotting the next big GCEA update: "everyones Pokémon go back to level 1 and are eaten by a Giratina. And no, Brettles never does catch that Weedle".
"Morning fellow hooligan," I said casually. We had been friends for years, but he wanted more commitment, so here we were, fellow hooligans. I stopped to give him the customary hooligan high five, but he just stared at my hand for a moment, before proceeding to remove his shoe and pass it to me. "Uh, so that's what we're doing now?" I said approvingly. Shaking up the routine was always good. It would prevent imposters from infiltrating out little hooligan duo!
Being a Bulbasaur, I had no shoes to offer, but handed him a stapler from the desk next to me. It was a rainbow stapler belonging to Speed-X, but she was no where to be seen. That Snivy would be mad when she found out, but that was tomorrow's problem. Rival Max accepted the stapler gladly. At least, I think he was glad. He still had that strange empty grin on his face.
"Well, work to do!" I said cheerfully and walked past him. The Shaymin Noblejanobii was nearby. usually she had her face buried inside a book, but today she seemed to be wrestling with another Shaymin who was almost her exact doppelganger. She thwacked the other Shaymin on the head with a very heavy-looking book. "Good morning Noblejanobiis," I said nonchalantly and continued on my way. Sheesh, what was with this place this morning? Was anyone getting any work done?
I knew Suicune's Fire wouldn't let me down. The Flareon was a studious sort, when she wasn't called away on long secret missions. Today however she was rolling in front of the fire with that same strange grin I had seen on Max's face. Strange one, that Flareon. But that was Xanthe for you. I tiptoed past, not wanting to interrupt her. I'm sure she was doing something important.
I'd finally reached my office. Gladly, I shut the door, drowning out Jacob's guitar solo and the chatter in the office. I groaned when I saw the huge pile of paperwork on my desk. Sigh. Where was Caite-chan? I'd need her to organize this lot before I could go through it. I picked up my phone to page her, but before I could dial a single numeral, there was a knock at the door.
"Come in," I responded wearily.
When I looked up, the Vanillite Tenacity was hovering in my doorway. "Have you heard about Ditto, our lord and savior?" he said happily.
I raised an eyebrow. Did someone spike the water with red cordial again or what? I know Trainer17 thought we should all be more peppy and fun, but this was no way to go about it. He promised at his last promotion that he wouldn't do it again!
"I have heard about Ditto," I responded. "In fact I have a small collection myself. Even some foreign ones. Great for breeding, you know. IVs, even shinies!" As I gave Tenacity a run down of all the wonderful ways you could abuse Ditto, he seemed to lose his happy demeanor. In fact, his little ice cream eyes narrowed and he seemed to be positively fuming, because he was slowly melting, dripping vanilla on my new carpet.
"Um, you might want to take care of that," I said, getting up, shooing him backwards and shutting the door. How did he get in here anyway? I would need to speak to Neo Emolga about security.
So as I said, so far it was a completely ordinary day.
*BEEP! Attention Pokémon Trainer Sarah! HKim has mentioned you! You have a new message! BEEP!*
Sigh. Harry again!? Who'd let him out of the retirement home this time? That Bulbasaur could talk his way out of anything. It was impossible to keep him quiet for long. He was always climbing to the highest place available to make some speech or other. Stirring up the people and all that. A true leader. That's why we had to keep him out of the way most of the time. The last thing we needed was an uprising against one of the larger Pokémon forums. I wondered what Harry wanted now. New toilets for the URPG wing? More rainbow ponies? World domination?
I headed back out of the office, shutting the door behind me. Everyone seemed to have disappeared... I guess Harry had mentioned them too. Oh, there they were, gathered out on the balcony. Harry was standing on a podium flanked by Noblejanobii and AWA1997. I didn't know the latter very well, but the Dratini-like Pokémon had a determined look on his face, and Noble looked like she was ready to fight. Just what was going on?
I slipped out onto the balcony, just catching the start of Harry's speech.
"Friends," he began. "We have been invaded."
Part 2
So when HKim said we were being invaded, I admit my first thought was, Here we go again... But as I listened, a few things started to fall into place.
"I'm afraid the forum is in grave danger," Harry continued from his podium. "I have been informed that a sinister presence has been lurking amongst us. It is none other than the feared transforming masters: the Ditto. They have attacked, stealing the identities of our friends and converting others to join their cause. It is unclear what their goal is, but many of our own have already fallen. Tenacity, Xanthe, Max, Speed and Sam have all been taken prisoner, while Ditto run amok in their place."
I looked around the gathered Pokemon and humans. Sure enough, those five were missing, along with a lot of others. Well, I guess that would explain the strange grins... I puzzled.
"Our very own EmeraldSky is investigating the matter, trying to figure out what the Ditto want and how we can stop them," Harry continued. "Steven_Six has been sent in as an undercover agent to scout out the Ditto hideout, while Lightning Dash breaks out our supply of Zoroark to help shield our defenseless members from this onslaught. And finally, Neo Emolga has rallied our very own Electric Rodent Regime to help stop the spread of this disease!"
A cheer went up from the crowd. My palm involuntarily made contact with my head. This was how we were going to stop the Ditto?! "Why can't we just ban them all?" I cried, but my voice was drowned out by the growing cheer.
The Electric Rodent Regime... I still recall the day that Neo's newest project was unveiled. We had some extra money in the budget that year, thanks to the shady deals I had done with the spam- That is to say, the money came from the spambot companies who- The point is, we had some extra moolah and Neo wanted to spend it on defense.
"Defense?" I'd scoffed. I'd been eyeing a lifesize replica plushie of myself, which I thought we could put at the front of the office to watch over everyone. Maybe install some cameras in its eyes... But Neo managed to convince me. To tell you the truth, I only agreed because I wanted to keep Neo busy. When that guy gets bored, he starts coming up with crazy ideas. Just the month before he turned half the forum into Pikachu! Our insurance had covered it, barely, but they had amended our contract, adding a clause which disqualified any future electric-mouse related "accidents" from being paid out. Sadly, Lunar Latias and Chakramaster still hadn't recovered. So the crazy Emolga was given the green light for his little defense project.
The day he took me down to check out the prototypes is one I'll never forget. I thought he was creating crazy advanced weaponry, maybe some catapults too, for good measure. But instead I was met by hundreds of electric rodent-inspired mech suits, each with Thunderbolt capabilities, Neo assured me proudly. I tried on the Dedenne suit and I admit it was pretty fun frying the targets. But man, was that fur itchy! It still makes me scratch involuntarily just thinking about it.
"Tazz and I have the Electric Rodent Regime in full working order and ready to go," Neo had notified me a few weeks later.
"Tazz?" I replied, lifting an eyebrow. "You mean The Nonexistent one?" I don't know why Neo kept insisting that his imaginary friend was involved. I'd had reports just the week before that Neo had been unleashing a bunch of weapons at some kind of hill down the road, Ho-Oh knows why. When he was questioned, he claimed that he and Tazz had been fighting over said hill, but it all sounded nuts to me. Besides it was more like a grassy knoll.
So here we are facing the most terrible threat to the forum so far, and Harry wants to use Neo's science project to fight back. Worse still, my most trusted advisors had been turned into Ditto.
"We do have a few clues about where all these Ditto came from," Harry continued. "A new member joined us recently. He seemed to be a regular guy, no one suspected a thing. Alas, his absurd posting capacity should have tipped us off that he was being controlled by the Ditto hivemind!" Harry shook his head, boos issued from the crowd. "Who knew, on that Fate-d night, that this new member would seal our-" Harry looked over the crowd to see that many of them were glaring. He dared not make another fate joke. "-destiny," he finished, wincing. The crowd lowered their weapons.
This was insane! I knew I had to do something, so I slipped backward, out of the crowd and toward my office.
Originally Posted by Lunar Latias
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. Pika Pair with the yellow bundle of fluff Chibi Altaria..
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