Ganger Gets Smol

Ganger huffed as he looked through the backpack filled with his training equipment. Potions and Protein bars and Rare Candies filled every portion of it, but he pushed those out of the way in favor of a small binder. Inside was a set of dozens of CDs lined up in neat rows. This was his TM binder, filled with just about every move that a Pokémon like himself could ever learn to use. The dewott flipped through the pages, annoyed by the moves he saw.

“Nothing new to try out. So boring to have the same moves to use all the time,” he sighed. Each move on the list was less interesting than the last. He’d already used every move possible. But Ganger was so sick of his move set that he was willing to try anything. The dewott flipped idly, hoping that by some miracle something new would appear in the pages.

Once he reached the last page of TMs, he slammed the book closed. As usual nothing was new. He was just about to throw the binder away when something fell to the ground with a clack. With a raised eyebrow the Pokemon leaned over the table to see what it was. The TM disk fell upside down, so the name on it wasn’t initially visible. When Ganger picked it up, he gasped and smiled.

It was a TM for Minimize. He didn’t remember buying this, or trading it from anyone, or ever getting it in the first place. Right now he wasn’t going to look a gift Mudsdale in the mouth. Where the TM came from wasn’t important; it was new, and that was enough. The Dewott booted up a small computer in his backpack and inserted the disk. This was the newest in Pokémon tech, a revolution in the use of TMs. Just insert your disk to the slot and watch a short video, then presto, new move learned!

He should’ve realized that something was a little wrong when the machine blue screened immediately. The machine booted up again right away, and it didn’t seem damaged. So Ganger wrote it off as a temporary glitch. These computers were always having trouble after all; the woes of new technology. The Dewott took a seat and watched the video, a rapid fire flashing of data, subliminal messaging, and finally a How To video from an entirely too peppy Chancey on using the new move.

Once finished he jumped to his feet, eager to try out this new move. It helped that the Dewott had a vested interest in shrinking and making things smaller. Or really, changing sizes in anyway whatsoever. He’d already been through most of the growth moves though: Bulk Up, Growth, Strength, even Hyper Beam when he felt like doing something with a much larger than usual package. But there were surprisingly few moves for shrinking, and Minimize hadn’t been an option previously. If he weren’t so excited, Ganger might have wondered why that might be. Instead though he just focused his energy and channeled the move through his body.

Immediately the otter felt his clothes expand around him. The green and red hoodie looked more like a poncho, with his shoulders just barely wide enough to keep the neck of the shirt on his body. Minimize was the sort of move that instantaneously changed a Pokemon’s size, so Ganger had no sense of impending vertigo. Instead he just had trouble keeping his clothes on his body. The Dewott grabbed at the waist of his cargo shorts to try and keep them up.

Strangely, the move seemed to activate yet again. Ganger hadn’t done it on purpose this time though. He wasn’t sure how to feel about that. It wasn’t all that bad being smaller, but it was nicer when he had control over it. This time his clothes actually did pool around his ankles, only half as tall as he was just a few seconds earlier. The sweatshirt flopped over his shoulders and down past his waist, landing at his feet along with the shorts. He shrank away slowly until the ‘mon found himself looking upward at the roof of his house, far away and hazy like it was out of focus. The lip of his piled up clothing was still taller than he was, which made Ganger guess he had to be around less than half a foot tall.

The little Pokémon was nearly thrown to the ground when it shook beneath him. Something was coming closer, the footsteps thooming louder and louder. Ganger climbed to the edge of his shirt to get a better look. Then he had to crane his neck backward to look way up. The shaking of the room came from an enormous kangaroo. The marsupial loomed overhead, wearing a sweatshirt and jeans, with grey fur and a cap. Ganger recognized him immediately; it was Alkali.

“Hey roo! Down here, in the clothes,” Ganger yelled upward to get his attention. The kangaroo didn’t seem to notice though. He realized his voice was too quiet and squeaky for Alkali to hear. What did get Alkali’s attention though was the pile of clothes in the middle of the living room.

“Huh. That’s odd,” he mumbled, before reaching down to pick up the shirt and pants. The sky above Ganger was filled with a hand, shadowing over the landscape. With a small ‘eep,’ the Dewott was plucked up along with the clothing and held tight to the roo’s chest. He was barely a bug compared to the kangaroo’s pecs, flexing and bumping the Dewott back and forth when Alkali walked. Alkali’s pec looked a bit like a football field in size comparison. Ganger realized that was probably a safer place to stay rather than the clothes, so he jumped from the sweatshirt over to the furry surface.

He could probably be safe here but… with a squeak Ganger watched helplessly as his Minimize move activated on its own again. That settled it: he didn’t have control over his own shrinking. That was a dangerous realization. Minimize gave Ganger 10 uses before he would run out of PP. If he couldn’t stop himself from using every instance of it, things would get very small, very quickly. The otter climbed atop a single strand of Alkali’s fur to get a safe place to stop and think. He wracked his brain to come up with any solution to his out-of-control diminishing.

By the time he was finished, the world looked much different around him. At first he shrank through to cellular size, floating around in a bacteria. After that he found that the bacteria was made up of chains of proteins, DNA, molecules… and now he was sitting atop a single atom. It spread out in all directions like the surface of a planet; Ganger could barely see the curve of the atom on the horizon.

“Man… it’s a good thing I didn’t use that PP Up before this all started. Could’ve been much smaller,” he said aloud. The larger issue was figuring out what to do once his moves regenerated from resting. The tiny otter gulped, unsure how to feel about that.