Movement stopped being a decision.
It became a negotiation.
The river did not push him forward so much as it tested him, pressing and releasing, waiting to see what would give. Every time he tried to swim with intention—go there, avoid that, stay still—his body answered with something broader, blunter. A single command rippled through his entire length, turning careful thought into exaggerated motion.
He overshot rocks. Spun when he meant to turn. Drifted when he tried to anchor himself.
Frustration flared hot and useless.
*I know how bodies work,* he told himself. *I had one.*
That memory felt distant already. The certainty of limbs—arms that reached, hands that grasped—had been replaced by a continuous awareness, a sense of himself as one long, flexible thing. There were no joints to lock, no fingers to curl. Control came from waves of contraction, subtle differences in tension that he barely understood.
Instinct filled the gaps.
When the current surged unexpectedly, his body curved into it automatically, angling itself just enough to reduce drag. When sediment thickened the water ahead, he slowed without conscious thought. His fins adjusted, correcting his balance in ways he could feel but not yet command.
It unnerved him how *easy* it was to let instinct take over.
He tested himself deliberately.
Near a cluster of stones, where the current split and rejoined in small, unpredictable eddies, he tried to hover in place. He focused—really focused—on staying still.
His body trembled, overcompensated, and drifted sideways into a rock. The impact wasn't painful, exactly, but it jarred him, sending a dull vibration through his scales.
*Again.*
This time he let the water move him first, feeling its direction, its strength. He adjusted only slightly, aligning himself instead of resisting outright.
He stayed in place for nearly three heartbeats.
The success was small, but it mattered.
---
Hunger returned in waves.
It was less dramatic than before, more insistent than sharp. A constant reminder that whatever he was now required maintenance. Feeding felt less humiliating the second time, and less again the third. He learned which surfaces held the most growth, which algae were worth the effort and which tasted of nothing but grit.
Sometimes he fed alongside other Feebas.
They did not acknowledge him.
They moved mechanically, scraping and drifting, their awareness shallow and untroubled. Watching them stirred an unexpected fear—not of death, but of dissolution.
*Is this what I'll become if I stop thinking?*
He tried to speak once.
The attempt startled him more than it did the water. His mouth opened, and what came out was not sound but a faint pulse, a vibration that traveled a short distance before fading. It wasn't language. It wasn't even a cry.
It was a Pokémon move in its most primitive form—an unintentional release of energy shaped by anatomy, not meaning.
The silence afterward felt heavier than before.
---
Danger announced itself without warning.
A pressure change rippled through the water, subtle but wrong. Instinct screamed, and he reacted before his mind could process why. His body flattened against the riverbed, fins pulled close, scales angled downward.
A shape burst through the murk above him.
Sharp. Fast. Teeth.
A Carvanha.
It snapped at something just ahead of him—another Feebas, slower to react—and missed by a hair's breadth. The smaller Pokémon darted away in blind panic, and the Carvanha twisted after it, tail slicing through the water with predatory precision.
The turbulence rolled over him like a wave.
For a frozen second, he waited for the pain.
It didn't come.
The Carvanha vanished downstream, chasing easier prey.
Only when the water settled did he realize he had been holding tension in every muscle he possessed. When it released, his body sagged, drifting up slightly before he corrected himself.
*I survived,* he thought.
Not because of planning. Not because of intelligence.
Because his body knew what to do.
The realization unsettled him more than the near miss.
---
As the light above dimmed, the river shifted into a different mood. Movements slowed. Predators became rarer, replaced by the distant, rhythmic pulses of larger creatures passing through deeper channels.
Fatigue crept in quietly.
He found a shallow depression between stones where the current weakened, tucked himself in, and let stillness take over. Rest was not sleep—not the way he remembered it—but a soft fading of awareness, thoughts blurring at the edges without fully disappearing.
Images surfaced unbidden.
A hand on a bus rail. The smell of rain-soaked concrete. A voice calling his name—whose name? He couldn't remember it clearly. The sound of it felt important, but the shape of it slipped away when he tried to grasp it.
Fear spiked.
*No. I won't lose that.*
He forced himself awake, pushing against the lethargy. The effort felt disproportionate, as though maintaining consciousness required more energy than swimming.
*Is this what Pokémon experience?* he wondered. *Or is this just me?*
There was no answer.
Only the river, flowing as it always had.
---
When awareness sharpened again, something was wrong.
The water ahead vibrated with a low, steady rhythm, heavier than any single Pokémon's movement. The sediment shifted, drawn into a slow spiral. The current bent, not abruptly, but decisively.
Something large was approaching.
He retreated instinctively, pressing himself against the stones. The pressure increased, rolling over him like distant thunder. For a moment, he considered fleeing—but there was nowhere to go without exposing himself.
The shape emerged gradually.
Massive coils, dark and armored, moved through the deeper channel with terrifying grace. Red markings glowed faintly along its body, cutting through the murk like embers beneath water.
A Gyarados.
It did not look at him.
It didn't need to.
Its presence alone was enough to dominate the space, to declare ownership of the river by sheer existence. Smaller Pokémon scattered long before it reached them. Even the water seemed to part respectfully around its form.
He stayed perfectly still.
Every human instinct screamed at him to run, to do *something*. Every Pokémon instinct told him the opposite.
The Gyarados passed, its tail sending a final, sweeping current that nearly dislodged him from his hiding place. He clung to the stones with every ounce of strength he had, body trembling.
Then it was gone.
The river slowly exhaled.
He remained where he was long after the danger had passed, shaking in a way that had nothing to do with cold.
*This world isn't built for me,* he thought, the realization settling heavily. *Not as I am.*
And yet—he was still here.
His body, inadequate and unremarkable as it was, had carried him through hunger, confusion, and death itself. It had reacted faster than thought, endured more than he expected, adapted without asking permission.
Reluctantly, he acknowledged it.
This body did not exist to fulfill his expectations.
It existed to survive.
As the faint light above shifted again, marking the passage of time he could not measure, he loosened his hold on the stones and let himself drift back into the slow, patient flow of the river.
He did not trust this body yet.
But he would have to learn to work with it.
Because for better or worse—
It was his now.