Insh The Pokemon Trainer

The orange Lucario sighed heavily and continued his trek across the landscape laid out before him. The leathery, hill marked paw he’d been caught on spread out for miles and miles in every direction he could see. His horizon was meerkat paw all around. And he couldn’t understand why his trainer thought this was a good experiment to perform.

Not even an hour ago, Insh had called him from his Pokeball. “Lucario, we have a project! I wanna get some work done with this new combination growth and ray but it hasn’t been beta tested yet,” the meerkat said, playing around with wires inside the gun. Lucario didn’t understand most of the following explanation his trainer gave about how the machine worked but figured that was probably for the best. Insh was known to dabble in more than his fair share of complicated mad science. If he tried to understand all of his trainer’s work it’d probably melt his brain.

“ ‘cario,” the Lucario replied simply.

“My thoughts exactly. The main point is that this is going to need a simultaneous test,” Insh replied. That wasn’t at all what his Lucario said, but that didn’t matter much to the meerkat. “So I figured the quickest way to test it is to do them both at the same time. I’ve programmed this to shrink you and to grow me. Proportionally. So the amount I grow is the same as the amount you shrink. Ready?” Insh aimed the ray gun directly at his Lucario’s chest, squinting his eyes behind the visor to try and get better aim.

The orange Lucario took a step backward. “Lucario!” he answered, shaking his head no.

“That’s the spirit! Now hold still, this will probably tickle,” Insh said before the world turned green.

That had been half an hour ago. Now he couldn’t be heard anymore by his trainer, so there was no way for him to voice his displeasure at the situation. Then again no one would be able to hear him at this size, even normal sized people. The last time he’d been able to measure himself properly, he was no taller than a blade of grass and that had to be a good 10 minutes ago. Who knew just how small he was now? Or how large Insh was?

The grooves in the meerkat’s paw were more like caverns with each passing second. Lucario took a seat on the edge of one of them and peered out into the blue sky. Or, he hoped it was blue sky. Kinda hard to tell with his perspective shifting all over the place. He’d been caught in Insh’s paw gravity for a while now, so there was no fear of falling off at least. But it kept flipping his orientation compared to the ground. Very hard to keep track of.

Nope, that was definitely the sky up there. He could tell only because a helicopter was approaching Insh’s paw, staying just out of reach of the growing meerkat. It looked positively puny in comparison. Wouldn’t have even been a gnat in comparison to the titanic meerkat’s toes, buzzing around to get a better view. This was a pretty scary place for it to be flying, the Lucario mused. Insh had neglected to add in a timer for the growth and shrinking, so on it continued. Being in range of a constantly growing meerkat was pretty dangerous for anyone who wasn’t him. At least with his shrinking size he could use Insh’s paw grooves as shelter from any stomping or debris.

The Lucario felt the ground shift under him as Insh’s paw impacted the ground, shaking the Earth for hundreds of miles. Looked like Insh was on the move again. Time to scoot back to safety and wait for the next break in his stomping. Or walking. Hard to tell the difference anymore.

“ ‘cario…” the Lucario mused. What an insane day. Maybe this would all get solved by the time he reached germ size. Or at the very least, atomic size. That wouldn’t be very fun to deal with. Especially considering how large that would make Insh in comparison; since their growth and shrinking was locked to each other the meerkat would be absolutely titanic if it got to that point.

In fact, Insh was absolutely counting on that happening. The enormous meerkat lay out on his back, covering the city in its entirety. “Ahh. Definitely a successful experiment,” he huffed, blowing clouds away with his breath alone.