Chapter 8 - Preclusion of Choice

The space surrounding Solonn was utterly silent and utterly dark, but far from still, anything but empty. Rushing through this lightless, ethereal plane, a stream of pure power surged like a mighty river. It carried the most wonderful feeling along its current, an almost inebriatingly sweet familiarity that embraced the very core essence of his being, comforting and revitalizing him as it flowed freely all around him.

No! No, come back! he tried to call out, as the last of the flowing energy passed him by, giving him barely the time to note its departure as it hurried to some distant, invisible point far beyond him. But his cry was completely in vain; in this place, it seemed that he had no voice. All at once, he found himself suspended helplessly in empty space, the life-sustaining flow of elemental power having drained out and dried up completely from this place.

He almost did not feel it when something disturbed the emptiness around him, something foreign, indiscernible. Just as soon as he had noticed it, before he could even begin to perceive its true nature clearly, a strange, pacifying wave emanated from whatever-it-was and engulfed his mind completely. All will be fine, it seemed to tell him. Be not concerned. The suggestion came as gently as could be, but also as insistently and irresistibly as was possible, if not moreso. Perhaps it was death; perhaps it was salvation; perhaps it was something entirely beyond reckoning. Whatever it was, its consoling command was obeyed without resistance. The Glalie slipped away from all further thought and sensation without a care.

* * *

The most vague notions of awakening crept into Solonn's mind, just out of grasp of his full consciousness. Unhurriedly, he began to reconnect to his senses, and before fully awakening, with his eyes still closed and his consciousness liable to slip right back into sleep at any moment, he decided and attempted to rise up.

But failed.

Still only minimally awake, and emerging very slowly from what had been an almost fathomlessly deep sleep, Solonn felt something only marginally resembling concern. He thought he had just commanded himself to rise up from the floor and into the air; perhaps, he considered in a detached way, he had not sent the order to his body after all. So, he tried once more to lift off...

...And failed again.

As his mind unmuddled and awakened even further, Solonn began to develop a burgeoning panic, one that spiked when the notion finally hit him: I can't get up...

With a delay, his eyes opened to a view of the ceiling, where a plant hung in a basket directly above him, a number of leafy tendrils spilling over the basket's rim to dangle floorward. The picture his eyes presented seemed weirdly dull, lacking in definition and color. He began blinking rapidly, trying to clear out whatever was hazing his vision. At the same time, he set about continuing to try and ascend, but his body did not respond, as if it did not even understand the instructions he was giving it.

His ears filled with the sound of pounding blood as his heart began racing. Why can't I get up?! He tried, to very little avail, to calm himself enough to make sense of things. It seemed that while his mind had almost fully awakened, his body was having an unusually difficult time following suit. He conceived of the notion that maybe it would have an easier time responding to an order to execute a simpler, less demanding action. He decided to forego trying to ascend into the air for the time being and instead just concentrate on getting off of his back and sitting upright and face-forward.

This demand, it seemed, was not too extravagant for his body to carry out in its strangely compromised state. However, as it did so, Solonn found himself stricken by a very unusual sensation; as his face pitched forward, he felt something seeming to cinch together in the vicinity of his abdomen - almost a bending sensation, as if at a waist, which was something that he did not have.

...And yet, he did.

He cried out in disbelief at the sight that met his eyes once he had succeeded in sitting up and facing forward, a brutally unreal picture that told him in the most blunt manner possible how it was that his body had bent in a fashion that should not be possible. There before him, he saw a pair of long, pale-skinned legs ending in five-toed feet. And unless his mind was playing a very cruel trick on him - it had to be, he told himself silently in a repeating loop - those limbs were his.

No...no, this can't be real...I'm still dreaming, I've got to be... Solonn was almost able to believe that conclusion. But still...Swallowing against a hard knot of dread that had built up in his throat, he stared intently at one of the impossible feet and, hoping and expecting in equal measures that the effort would fail, he willed it to move.

It moved. Right on command.

"AHHHHH!" In a violent flurry of motion, he half-jumped, half-scuttled backwards in horrified surprise, flailing madly. In his futile attempt to escape from his own feet, the back of his head connected very sharply with a corner of the small table near which he had fallen asleep. He exclaimed wordlessly at the pain as it exploded across the inner surface of his skull. There was no doubt about it - the pain was real. Though Solonn agonizingly wished it weren't so, it seemed that reality was determined to literally beat the unbelievable truth into his head. This was not a dream. This was really happening. Somehow, impossibly...he had become Human.

He swooned in a sudden wave of weakness and slumped backwards against the side of the nearby armchair. A growing ache awakened in his chest as his heart hammered ever faster, ever harder in sheer, animalistic terror. He panted, drawing in air that seemed horribly flat and tasteless. Disarrayed thoughts and frenzied, tangled emotions raced through his mind, frenetically circling and tearing at his brain like a tornadic wind, leaving him severely lightheaded. He felt as though he might pass out from the bewildering shock at any moment, and would have been all too grateful to do so, but in an almost sadomasochistic way, his brain stayed conscious and forced him to suffer along with it as it continued to torture itself with this brutally bizarre reality.

Though he desired very strongly not to do anything of the sort, a cruel compulsion forced him to look upon himself, to force-feed the unreal image of what he had become into his brain. Unwilling eyes swept over the form of his new, Human body. It was long and lean, the skin alabaster-pale and shimmering with beads of sweat, with no part of it covered by clothing of any kind. This was the first time he had ever seen a Human body unclothed. In the same stark, tactless fashion that everything else about the situation had shown itself to him thus far, Solonn was made to recognize that he was, at least, still male, and the way by which he'd determined this left him mortified both for his own sake and that of an entire species. Good gods, they keep that out?

This body was more than just very strange - it was wrong. He should not have this; he should not be this. He moaned softly, a tortured sound, but not at the throbbing, shooting pain in his head so much as at the savage surrealism of the situation.

Several moments after the fact, he felt something oozing across his skin at the site of the painful impact on the back of his head, and he uttered a small, mournful sound at the new, unpleasant sensation; it was just one more thing to further deny him the option of pretending this whole situation away and dismissing it as some dream or hallucination or other lie of the mind. Shaking, he glanced down at his impossible hands as they lay limply at his sides; then, only half-aware of what he was doing, he lifted one of them to the back of his head. He recoiled at the warm stickiness he found there amidst the forest of soft hair that was now his own. He then brought that hand before his face, and he felt his throat go dry at what he saw. There, smeared across the tips of his long, spidery fingers, blood glistened wetly in the room's soft, artificial lighting - red blood, and not at all evanescent. Human blood, for a Human body.

Which he should not have.

Solonn closed his eyes and tried to retreat into the corners of his consciousness, thoroughly overwhelmed. This was all too much for his mind to bear. He could not even remotely fathom how such an incredible thing could have possibly happened, nor could he even begin to think of what he should do under these circumstances.

Sighing, he allowed his eyes to open, conceding to the fact that he would not be given the mercy of release from his awareness of this situation. He turned his head and let it sink listlessly to his left shoulder, faintly regarding a number of long, jet-black strands of hair that fell across his face. Through them, he saw the little table at his side, on which sat a small, flat, black box.

A course of action occurred to him as he recalled the little device's function: he knew not what to do about the situation that had befallen him, but perhaps Jal'tai would. Solonn could think of no one else available from whom to seek any possible solutions. He reached up towards the device and pulled it down towards himself. He turned it over briefly in his hands for a moment as he retrieved the memory of how to operate it. Voice-activated, he remembered, you tell it what to do. With another second's perusing of his mind, he recalled the instructions that he was to give it.

He looked upon the large speaker that dominated one surface of the strange paging device; seeing no other prominent feature upon the device, he figured that this was the part of it to which he was to direct his command. He took a deep breath, trying to get a hold of himself long enough to do what he intended to do here in spite of the toll this occurrence had taken on his mental state; then, he spoke his intentions to the little black machine.

"Page," he said almost breathlessly, and felt his throat constrict as soon as the word had escaped it. His new voice, peculiarly, sounded remarkably similar to the one he had possessed as a Glalie. True, it was not nearly as sonorous, nor did it possess the hissing aspiration that lined the edges of a Glalie's voice, but its tone and accent seemed to remain as they were. It was an oddity that confounded and anguished him. He still sounded like himself - why couldn't he still look like himself, as well?

There was a small beep, and a tiny, green light awakened beside the speaker. "Please state the name and room number of the one you are paging," the device uttered in the same feminine, mechanized voice that the transport device outside the suite had used.

"Jal'tai," Solonn answered hoarsely, "room 44-B." He dearly hoped that he had remembered that number correctly.

"One moment please..." the device said. Solonn held his breath as he waited for a response.

It seemed that, blessedly, his mind had successfully retained the correct number for Jal'tai's room, for after several seconds: "Yes? Is there something you need?" Jal'tai's familiar, kindly voice came through the speaker.

"Oh, yes," Solonn responded shakily, his voice charged with urgency, "yes, there is."

"Oh, dear..." Jal'tai clearly had no trouble detecting the distress in Solonn's voice. There was a brief pause, then, "What's the matter?"

Solonn strongly doubted that Jal'tai would believe the answer to that question. "Can't explain," he replied hurriedly. "Just need you here now. Please hurry."

Another pause. "Yes...yes, of course. I'll be right up," Jal'tai said finally.

"Connection terminated," came the mechanized voice of the device then. The beep sounded again, and the green light turned off.

Solonn set the paging device down on the floor beside him and released a long, weary sigh. All he could do now was wait for Jal'tai to show up - even if he only had seconds to wait, he was not sure that he could endure it. He was fully aware of how nearly every muscle in his body trembled in anxiety, his hands shaking like leaves, with minute yet powerful twitches tugging and pricking at the skin around his eyes and mouth. Vaguely, he wondered if he might not lose this impossible body just as soon as he'd come by it, for it seemed to be threatening to shake itself to pieces.

As the seconds crept slowly by, he stared forward blankly, barely blinking, at one of the suite's draconic statues that sat a couple of yards away. The creature depicted had a sleek, highly aerodynamic-looking shape, with long, tapered wings standing out diagonally from its back, a long neck, and an almost avian face. It lay on its marble pedestal with its taloned forearms crossed in front of it, and gazed sightlessly back at Solonn through its stone eyes with a look of serene calm. Solonn could only futilely wish that he were in a position to return a matching expression to the smiling stone figure.

A voice sounded then, startling Solonn in his compromised state, pulling his attention at once from the statue of the Dragon Pokémon. "Solonn? Are you all right in there?" It was Jal'tai. "May I come in now?" the Swellow asked him through the wall.

"Please do," Solonn called back shakily.

"Of course, of course...just give me a moment here..." Jal'tai responded.

A tone sounded within the suite shortly thereafter. "Prepare to receive a visitor," the familiar, mechanized voice said calmly. Solonn turned towards the wall separating the suite from the hall outside. A second later, a shimmering, pale green field of light formed within the suite, above a tile that matched the one outside, and it coalesced into the form of Jal'tai, who stood there in front of the wall with a concerned look leveled at Solonn. If he was at all shocked or surprised to behold a Human where there should have been a Glalie, he did not show it.

The bird walked over to where Solonn half-sat, half-lay, approaching him without a word. He stopped before the former Glalie, ruffled his wings and folded them tightly against his back, and gave him a long, unflinching look, his brow and beak setting into an expression that was difficult to quite interpret.

Already greatly unsettled by what had befallen him, Solonn found himself unnerved further by the way the Swellow stared, those steely, raptor's eyes bearing hard upon his form...his naked form...

Solonn inhaled sharply in sudden mortification. This was one detail which he had overlooked...and now this creature was getting an unobstructed view of something which Solonn would not show to just anyone under normal circumstances, not even to those of his own kind. Feeling the blood rush to his face in a hot wave of embarrassment, Solonn repositioned himself hastily to cover his shame.

"Relax, relax," Jal'tai said coolly. "It's nothing I haven't seen before. After all," he paused briefly to take a breath, his gaze into Solonn's eyes sharpening further, "it was I who designed that very body for you."

That took a very long moment to fully register in Solonn's brain. For a moment, he forgot to breathe. He fixed the bird with a protracted, stupefied stare.

Jal'tai nodded. "It's true, Solonn."

The former Glalie's stare went flat. For countless seconds on end, he made no response whatsoever, frozen in the moment. Then, he inhaled very slowly, very deeply.

"Why," he began, his voice constrained so badly that it was distorted almost beyond recognition. "Why...and how...in the fires of a thousand hells...did you turn me into a Human?"

Jal'tai closed his eyes and lowered his head. "Yes," he said soberly, "you are owed an explanation for all this. It is imperative that you be made to fully understand the situation. I will address your question of 'how' first, since that comes with the shorter answer...To begin to answer that question, I must start by being more honest with you with regards to the matter of who...and what...I truly am."

The Swellow suddenly took to the air without warning, hovering in place to Solonn's right, just inches below the ceiling. "Don't be frightened by what I am about to show you," Jal'tai said, his words accompanied by the sound of his steadily beating wings, "for it is my true form. I am and shall still be the same person in spirit that I have shown myself to be whilst in your presence up to this point."

Solonn could only stare mutely at Jal'tai, watching speechlessly as from every inch of the avian's feathered body, a shimmering like heat waves roiling over hot asphalt began to blur his form. For a split-second, Jal'tai completely lost definition, becoming nothing more than a wavering mass of faint, rippling light. The light then intensified, and the shimmering mass in the air began to take shape once more. When the light faded away a second later, the Swellow was gone. In his place was something very different: cobalt blue and palest grey; feathered still, but no longer a bird.

Jal'tai was now a Dragon.

"There," Jal'tai said in a tone that was clearly meant to be soothing, though it failed in that endeavor. His voice was exactly the same as it had been before he had revealed his true form.

Solonn stared agape at him for innumerable seconds. Wide with astonishment, his eyes then began casting flitting, neurotic glances back and forth between the hovering form of Jal'tai and the draconic statue nearby.

Jal'tai followed one of the former Glalie's darting glances, and then let out one of his trademark chuckles. "No, no, dear boy," he said effervescently. "That's the female of my species you see depicted there. That is a Latias. We menfolk are Latios."

The Latios might as well have said anything there for all Solonn cared; there were very specific things he wanted to hear about from Jal'tai, and the difference between the males and the females of the Dragon's species was not one of them.

"What does that have to do with...with this?" Solonn demanded in a pained-sounding hiss, sweeping his gaze quickly over his now-Human body before returning his wild, bewildered stare to the Dragon.

"Well, my dear boy, the matter of my species is actually quite relevant to what has been done to you, for it was by the Transfigure technique, an ancient art which survives in practice today by none outside the Lati race, that you were given this new form. A Swellow could not have used the Transfigure technique; on the chance that you might have known that, I deemed it necessary to reveal my true form, lest you fall short of believing me when I told you how it was possible for me to transform you."

Solonn had not known what Swellow were and were not capable of, and knew not why it should be any easier to believe that a Dragon could possess the power to transform him than to believe that a bird could. Nor did he care to know these things. Jal'tai's explanation as to how the change was made held little meaning for Solonn and fell quite short of a satisfying answer.

Hoping that the other question would yield an answer that he could use, "Why, Jal'tai?" Solonn pressed in a brittle voice, the words more exhaled than spoken.

Lowering his head, Jal'tai drew back slightly from Solonn. "Forgive me, Mr. Zgil-Al," he said soberly. "I sincerely regret not being more straightforward with you from the start. But there was only one way this could be done feasibly, and unfortunately, it did require me to keep you largely in the dark up to this point."

The Latios clasped his talons and met Solonn's gaze steadily despite the way the Human's eyes pierced into his own, the anguish and confusion held in those deep brown irises making the former Glalie's eyes seem to burn brightly despite no longer being luminous. "The first thing you need to know in order to understand the situation is this: I am not merely a proud citizen of this great city. I am also the mayor and director of the Convergence Project, its guide and guardian."

"Well, good for you," Solonn croaked acidly. "And what is it about that, exactly, that required you to turn me into this?"

"Patience, my boy," Jal'tai said evenly, unfazed by Solonn's venom-laced response, earning a severely indignant look from the former Glalie. "You must allow me to explain; it is crucial that you understand the circumstances which have come to include you, and understand them completely, and not just for your own sake, either."

The Latios paused for a breath, then released it on a sigh before proceeding. "I love my city, Solonn," he said wistfully. "I love it more than anything else on this Earth. The fact remains, however, that I will not be around to guide it forever. Therefore, it will become necessary for someone to one day take my place.

"This is where you come in, Solonn. Now, it may not be obvious to the eye of the beholder, but I am getting on in years...Soon, I will be retiring from my position as mayor of Convergence, and the city will need someone to take my office when I depart. That someone is required to have a very particular and very rare skill in common with me - it is rendered a vital necessity by the very nature of this place. My successor must be able, just as I am, to freely and fluently communicate with Pokémon and Humans alike. My successor must possess The Speech."

To that, Solonn reacted immediately, and strongly. In a flurry of severely awkward motion, he scrambled away from the chair against which he had been reclining and began crawling backwards in a crab-like fashion away from Jal'tai, compelled to put a healthy distance between himself and the Latios as swiftly as he could manage. How did he find out?! he wondered fearfully. His mind was now racing much too fast to light on many explanations, but the solitary one that managed to come through seemed the only one that could be plausible anyway.

And just as soon as it had appeared in Solonn's mind, it was confirmed. "Yes, Solonn. I am a Psychic," Jal'tai said, nodding. "But, no, that's not how I learned of your gift. Not initially, anyway," he clarified.

Lowering his talons and turning them palms-outward in a curiously Human-like gesture, trying to appear as non-threatening as he could, Jal'tai began to glide slowly towards Solonn, his wings remaining rigid and stationary, suggesting that some less mundane force powered his flight. Solonn continued backing away from Jal'tai as the Latios continued to persistently advance, but soon found himself backed into a corner, trapped by a wall to his left, a large, oak dresser to his right, and the Dragon before him, who had clearly accelerated his approach somewhat as he was now only a foot or so in front of Solonn.

Jal'tai settled himself onto the carpet before Solonn, folding his forearms in front of his chest, and continued. "I saw you, you see," the Latios explained. "The day before last, I saw what happened to you in Lilycove," he elaborated, with a note of earnest sorrow coloring his voice on that statement. "I was out for a nice flight; as I mentioned before, I do make occasional excursions outside Convergence, just for a change of pace. I decided to alter my usual course a bit that day, and chose to go eastward instead of the southward direction I usually take. My course found me flying over Lilycove, and there, I caught sight of a most deplorable scene..."

A definite tinge of disgust entered Jal'tai's words here, a disgust so strong that it held him from continuing for a few seconds. "I saw a sign out in front of an old, rather miserable looking theatre, promising a real, live...'talking' Pokémon inside..." The word "talking" was ejected from the Dragon's beaklike mouth with such force and clear distaste as if it was something on which he had been gagging. "I saw a small group of Humans rush you into the theatre through the back way," he went on. "I slipped in after them, cloaked by my Psychic abilities. I found you sleeping backstage, and I tapped your mind while you slept, just deep enough to learn if what the sign outside that wretched scene claimed was accurate, and thereby learned that, indeed, it was.

"Even if it hadn't been, though, I would have broken you out of there. The way you were being treated there...as a spectacle...sickening..." he hissed, his scarlet eyes narrowed in vehemence. "I was about to make a move towards your liberation, too, but just then, a new Human presence came onto the scene, one in whom I immediately sensed benevolent intentions regarding you. A quick tap of her mind told me that she was your friend, and had come to rescue you from your would-be exploiters.

"You had awakened at this point, but your attempts to escape were foiled by a restraining technique, one cast by a creature whose presence I had not even detected. I went and searched about the vicinity for the caster, and thereby found a Sableye - a Dark-type, able to evade detection by my Psychic senses. I dispatched him at once by means of a Dragon Claw."

Solonn's eyes contracted to dark slits in sudden suspicion. "Morgan told me that she had taken him out," he said.

Jal'tai sighed. "I am afraid that both you and she were misled where that is concerned," he told Solonn. "You see, your Human companion happened to walk in onto the scene where the Sableye had been hiding just as I was dealing with him - the summoning of the technique I used to take him down required me to shift my focus from my Psychic element to my Dragon element, thus forcing me to forego my invisibility, and so it was that Morgan saw me there. I should explain that my kind are...valued by Humans - " there was another charge of the Dragon's particular brand of revolted emphasis on the word "valued" " - due to our potent Psychic and draconic abilities...though I sensed virtue in this particular Human, I was in no position to say the same about the other Humans in her life, and I confess that I was unwilling to take a chance on whether or not her integrity was so strong that she would keep my appearance a secret.

"Hence, I found it necessary to modify her memory of that event. I quickly rendered myself invisible once more. Then, I placed a hammer that I found lying nearby into her hand and implanted a memory of her using it to knock out the Sableye, and I made her forget having seen me." He closed his eyes and lowered his head briefly, as if in shame. "I regret that action now. I should have given her the benefit of the doubt. I should have recognized just how honorable her nature truly was. I did come to recognize it, after watching her help to liberate you, and following her as she guided you to safety outside the city..."

The Latios's semi-avian face took on a faint, wistful smile. "She, a Human, actually chose to let you part from her company rather than allow you to remain and risk exploitation again...very noble...very rare. Anyhow...following the events of that evening, I knew you could go nowhere but east, and so I waited in the grass for you, and then brought you here."

"You could have told me all of this at the start," Solonn said stonily. "And none of that explains why you needed to mutate me."

"Actually," Jal'tai said, "within what I have just told you lies the precise reason why your transformation was necessary. You were taken to be made into a spectacle by those Humans in Lilycove because you were a Glalie who could speak their language. For that most rare and wondrous quality, you were regarded as a freak - a valuable freak, yes, but a freak nonetheless - and you were treated as one.

"Now, you are a Human who can speak Pokémon languages - you have been speaking Glalie language this entire time, as a matter of fact," Jal'tai added. "My point is, Humans sought to exploit and degrade you as a freak when you were a Pokémon. They will not, however, do that to you as a fellow Human. The unfortunate truth is that generally speaking, Humans only hold true respect for their own kind. That is why I transformed you."

"Without my consent!" Solonn shouted, throwing a feral look at Jal'tai.

"Yes, and I apologize!" Jal'tai responded swiftly, actually sounding quite hurt. "But that was only to spare you the experience of what would have been a very painful and disturbing process. The nature of my method is such that if the subject knows the change is coming, their brains cannot be made to ignore that it is occurring. With that in mind, I had a sleep-inducing drug added to your meal at Whitley's, designed to swiftly send you into a very deep sleep. Once I was certain you had fallen asleep in here, I entered the suite. Then, using certain of my Psychic abilities, I put a sort of...for lack of a better term, a lock upon your brain to separate it from your tactile senses so that you would not awaken while I changed you."

"You did it that way," Solonn said accusingly, "because you knew I would say 'no'."

Jal'tai winced. He then turned the most wounded expression that Solonn had ever seen upon the former Glalie. It did nothing whatsoever to bring down the fearful, outraged fire that was burning brighter by the second in the Human's eyes. "Please, my dear boy...please...You must believe me when I say that I never wanted to cause you suffering. My course of action was for the sake of mercy, and, yes, it precluded your choice. For that, I am sorry, Solonn, sorrier than I could ever adequately express. But it had to be done. I need you, Solonn."

For a moment, Solonn had nothing to say to the Dragon. He merely maintained an unforgiving gaze straight into the scarlet eyes of the creature who had done this strange and terrible thing to him, remaining silent save for the rasping of his long, hard breaths as they were forced harshly through him, his shoulders trembling from the violence of his respiration. At length, he closed those feral eyes and allowed his head to sink to his chest, his long, black hair almost completely veiling his face, and he remained this way for a very long moment.

Finally, he lifted his head and opened his eyes, and he turned an incredibly cold, penetrating stare upon the Dragon, his brows drawn together in a hard chevron over his eyes, the already severe lines of his angular face sharpening further. It was a remarkably Glalie-like stare, Jal'tai noted; it lacked only the smoldering, deep blue luminosity those eyes would have shown in simmering anger prior to their transformation.

"You're no different," the former Glalie said, his voice uninflected save for the places during that statement where it threatened to break. "You want to use my abilities to serve your purposes. You seek to exploit me, Jal'tai, just like the Humans did in Lilycove. You are no different from them."

The Latios pulled his head back as sharply as if the Human before him had just taken a swing at him. His eyes widened dramatically, then narrowed sharply. "How dare you!" he hissed in outrage. "There is a tremendous difference between myself and those - " In lieu of a word, Jal'tai chose to describe the abductors of Lilycove with a short blast of acrid-smelling, sickly-yellow Dragonbreath over his shoulder. "I," he went on, his voice dripping with indignation, "respect you."

"You respect me?!" Solonn echoed sharply, incredulously. "Is that why you've lied to me and subjected me to a physical transformation without my consent? Is that why you insult my intelligence by expecting me to just sit here and swallow everything you say after that?"

"Solonn, please..."

The former Glalie shook his head, his ebon hair swishing. "No, Jal'tai. There is no reason why I should listen to you, not when you've been dishonest from the moment we met." The birth of a sudden suspicion flashed across his features. "Answer this, Jal'tai: If running the city required me to be made Human, why didn't the same job require that of you?"

"Because you cannot do this," the Latios said simply. And with another rippling shimmer, the Dragon was gone. Sitting there instead was an elderly, goateed Human man - one whom Solonn recognized immediately as the man pictured on the sign at Whitley's.

"This is what the citizens of Convergence, as well as those with whom I do business outside of town, see when they look at me," Jal'tai said. "And this - " he suddenly sounded the part of the old man, too, with the Human language to match " - is what they hear. To them, I am a Human by the name of Rolf Whitley. Under this guise, I became a very important, if not widely publicly recognized figure in Human society. In addition to being the mastermind behind the Convergence Project, Rolf is also a very important senior member of the International Pokémon League. I could not have attained that kind of power and the resources that come along with it in my true identity as a Pokémon."

Jal'tai reassumed the form of the Psychic Dragon. "Now, under less demanding circumstances, I could simply apply a mirage to you, too. In fact, when we entered Convergence, and when I brought you into this hotel, I presented you just as you now appear. However, the method does have its limits, limits that make it impractical as a full-time, twenty-four-seven solution. For one thing, I cannot maintain a mirage over you from a distance, and not much of a distance, either. You would have to remain within the sphere of my Psychic perception, which, in my old age is, I'm afraid, quite small. I think we can both agree that it would be quite impractical for me to follow you like a shadow everywhere you go, right?"

Solonn gave him a look that suggested that he was not even inclined to agree with Jal'tai on the sun being bright and the night being dark.

"Furthermore," Jal'tai continued, "it is not enough to merely look like a Human. You must support the image you present accurately in the physical sense, as well. You must feel like a Human. What if another Human wanted to shake your hand? You would have to be able to offer one that he or she could clasp, one that he or she could feel. Now, while I am able to produce 'solid' mirages, as I use for my own needs in portraying a Human, I am afraid it is outside the scope of my abilities to project a 'solid' mirage over you and keep some kind of mirage or cloak over myself at all times. And it would be necessary for me to conceal my true identity somehow if I were to remain near enough to you at all times to maintain your disguise; again, being what I am, I must not let just anyone see me about. Furthermore...I will remind you of the fact that I will not be around to conceal your identity forever. Hence, the only feasible way for you to meet those particular demands of this position was for me to subject you to the Transfigure technique."

Jal'tai sighed very heavily, lowering his head slightly and passing a talon backwards over it as if raking it through hair in another curiously Human gesture. "Solonn...do you not recognize how very important it is to the future of the world that the Convergence Project is kept alive and running? This community must be maintained, for it is a shining example of the fact that Pokémon and Humans can and should live and work as equals; that anything they can do, we can do, too. It's an example sorely needed by the world. The state of relationships between Humans and Pokémon desperately needs to be changed. Solonn...did you know that most Humans do not realize, or else deny, that Pokémon are sentient beings?"

Solonn only stared back with wild eyes. His throat worked, but he did not answer.

"I didn't think you were aware of that," Jal'tai said softly, reading Solonn's blank silence correctly. "It's true, though. The majority of Humans regard Pokémon not as people, but as mere animals." Potent, fiery vehemence rose up through his voice at those words, and it danced within his scarlet eyes, seeming to set them alight. "That is why they will only respect one of their own kind," the Latios went on. "Hence the unfortunate need for our façades."

Solonn was silent for a moment after Jal'tai finished speaking. He appeared to be deep in thought. Then, with a look in his eyes that spoke both of dawning epiphany and the prelude to a fierce volley of fresh accusatory barbs, he said, "You said you needed me - me, specifically, because I have 'The Speech', as you called it..." A hint of disgust played about his features, telling of how he clearly found the moniker the Dragon had pinned on his abilities to be utterly ridiculous. "You said that the person in charge of this city has to have this ability - it's necessary because the person running this city has to be able to communicate just as well with both Humans and Pokémon, because the job requires you to deal with both, do I understand right?"

Jal'tai blinked in surprise; then, his features relaxed into an expression that looked equally relieved and impressed. "Yes, that's correct," he confirmed.

But to the Dragon's surprise, Solonn shook his head. "No, Jal'tai. There was another way. You told me of it yourself, don't you remember?" The Latios only stared back in bemusement. "Unown-script, Jal'tai. The writing that both Humans and Pokémon understand, designed to make communication between them possible. An official language of your city, one that everyone here is made to learn."

Jal'tai tried to speak here, but Solonn pressed on, something fierce burning in his eyes. "Anyone who knows the Unown-script, any of the people of this city, could have been your replacement. And before you go and remind me that it has to be a Human, I'll remind you that there are Humans in this city, and they know Unown-script because it's mandatory here."

Solonn's face was a twisted mask of anguish and outrage at this point; he looked positively deranged. "You didn't need me," he seethed. "It could have been anyone! You didn't need me!" he cried, sounding almost hysterical.

"Solonn...you must get a hold of yourself," Jal'tai said, sounding genuinely concerned for the former Glalie; however, there was also the slightest hint of a warning along the edges of his voice. "Calm down, please..."

Solonn, however, was inconsolable. "You didn't have to do this to me! You didn't need me!" he shrieked, spit flying from his mouth, his face lividly red with fury.

Jal'tai let out a long, slow exhalation, and met Solonn's feral stare with an expression like that of a parent who has finally lost the last shred of patience for a child's behavior. "I said, calm down," he said, rising into the air to look down upon Solonn with displeasure. There was a terrible, almost ominous gravity to his voice that hadn't been there before, a far cry from the jovial tone he had once used with Solonn. He raised his talons, then brought them swiftly together and pointed them at Solonn, as his scarlet, reptilian eyes suddenly blazed with a livid, fuchsia light. At once, the Human's eyes grew massively wide with shock, and he began gasping madly at the air as if suddenly unable to breathe.

"I cannot have you losing your mind, Solonn," Jal'tai said gravely. "Not when you have such a demanding future ahead of you."

Solonn could only stare back in mortal terror at Jal'tai as the Dragon's telekinetic onslaught continued, crushing him into the corner, exerting excruciating pressure upon him that kept his lungs from filling and threatened to shatter every bone in his body. His vision was failing, growing dark around the edges and hazing out of focus, and he could feel a smothering oblivion beginning to consume him. He was going to die any moment now, he knew. And there was nothing he could do about it.

But before he could succumb to the terrible pressure and the lack of air, his tormentor relented, ceasing the telekinetic torture at once. Solonn immediately took a massive, involuntary gulp of air, pain exploding within his chest as his lungs refilled themselves violently. His body immediately slackened, slumping over against the dresser, his head hanging low. After several more brutal, gasping breaths racked his aching ribs, he weakly raised his head to look up at the Latios, his face a pale, sweat-drenched mask of pure, primal terror.

Jal'tai regarded the former Glalie with a stony, displeased glower. "I'm very disappointed in you, my boy," he said heavily. "I had thought you would understand the crucial importance of this project. This is about something far greater than you, Solonn. This is about the future of our world, a better future. An equal future. Without our efforts, Pokémon will never get the respect and dignity in the eyes of Humans that we deserve."

He set himself back down on the floor before the traumatized Human, who immediately shrank further into the corner from him. The Latios sighed, the sound carrying equal measures of exasperation and seemingly earnest sorrow. "You must accept your destiny, Solonn," he said quietly. "You must realize that you were blessed with The Speech for a higher purpose."

He laid a talon consolingly on Solonn's arm; Solonn immediately flinched at the contact, but had not the strength to resist further. "Please, Solonn. This is a most wonderful and important calling that has chosen you...you should be honored, Solonn. At the very least, you should recognize that losing your head over this is not going to make things any different for you, and it's not going to make things as they were. You must find the serenity to accept the things you cannot change. Please..." he implored, squeezing the Human's arm gently, "do not make me have to pacify you again. I told you that I never wanted to cause you suffering, and I meant it..."

The Latios sighed sorrowfully again, and rose back into the air. "Now, to answer your earlier questions regarding Unown-script - as I was attempting to do then, but you wouldn't allow me to get a word in edgewise - it is true that Unown-script is mandatory for all citizens of this city to learn. However, it is not required learning in the rest of the world. As mayor and as part of the Convergence Project, you will frequently have to deal with outsiders, both Human and Pokémon, with whom you will have to be able to speak on their terms. A Human who possesses The Speech is the only one who can speak freely to all peoples, to whom all peoples would listen. Hence, you are as you are. It is as simple as that. So, you see, I do need you, Solonn."

The Dragon cast a glance off to his right, towards the bedroom. "In time, I hope you will be able to see things more clearly. Until such time, I'm afraid you will have to remain in this suite. I will give you the code to exit the room using the transport tile when I feel you are ready to re-enter society as a Human, and I will gladly speak more with you in order to help you prepare for your future duties, but only once I can be sure that you have regained your composure enough to listen to me. For now, though, I think you could do with some quiet time alone to relax and contemplate your destiny."

Jal'tai's eyes once again took on the fuchsia glow that accompanied his telekinesis, and once again, he applied the Psychic force to Solonn. However, instead of torturing the Human, he used his powers to gently lift Solonn from the floor this time. Panic showed plainly on the former Glalie's face; he desperately desired to be released from Jal'tai's telekinetic hold, but it prohibited his motion completely. He could not put up any sort of a struggle against Jal'tai's power.

The Latios guided the helpless Human through the air, bringing him into the suite's bedroom, then set Solonn down upon the bed. "Be at peace, my dear boy," Jal'tai said in a warm, paternal tone. He relinquished the light in his eyes, and his hold over Solonn along with it. Then, a golden light blossomed around him. A second later, it faded, and Jal'tai was gone.

Solonn lay there where he'd been placed, alone now, but finding no comfort in his solitude. Jal'tai was gone for now, but in making his exit through Teleportation, he had revealed that he could return at any time, without any warning - knowledge which only added to the miseries that Jal'tai had already inflicted upon him. That Latios...that liar, that creature who had usurped the former Glalie's life for his own ends, warping and changing it into...Solonn felt a pang of the most powerful anguish as he thought upon what he had become, and what he could no longer be.

He was not what he used to be. His identity was gone, stolen from him and replaced with that of something he was not. He knew that there was now no returning to the life he had once known. Even if he could escape from this suite, this prison, this city and the life-stealing madman to whom it belonged...what then? He could not go back to anyone he once knew; not Morgan, and not his own kind - or what had once been his kind - back in Virc-Dho. None of them would recognize him now, and would certainly not believe that he was not as he appeared, that he was the Pokémon they had once known, trapped in a Human body...

The former Glalie moaned softly, as if in defeat. Trembling, he drew his arms and legs up against his chest in a fetal position, almost as if trying to collapse into himself and disappear. He felt his anguish turn to a painful, physical surge that swelled in his chest and then welled up behind his eyes until finally, they could hold it in no longer. Lying there, in this body that was not his own, Solonn cried for the very first time in his life as he fully realized the impact of this strange, terrible new reality. His life, as he had known it, was over.

Next time: Jal'tai wants to begin grooming his replacement as soon as possible. His replacement has other ideas...See you then!