Both Artemis and Raikou listened intently to the story, although the boy missed out on Umbreon's editorial comments even though he could take a pretty good guess at what the pok?mon said. So he thought, hearing about Orva's first transformation She learned it naturally? Artemis was a bit surprised by this new evidence, he had always thought that becoming a pok?morph and actually being able to control one's power was something that required intense training under the supervision of someone who understood the process, but of course there had to be at least one person who had just learned it naturally, how else would the information have been passed on?
"I see..." he said slowly "My story is quite different from yours then, although probably not half as interesting, I'm afraid. You see, becoming a pok?morph was a conscious choice on my part. It happened about a year after I had begun my travels, not too long after I managed to track down and persuade Raikou here to join me."
"Raiko-ou-ra-ko-raaai-koui..."(Last time I fell for that I'm-a-poor-defenceless-little-orphan-and-really-need-your-help routine , believe me.) Raikou muttered with an attempted frown.
"I had more or less blurted out my desire to get rid of Ragnar at any cost to the doctor who made the graft for me, and it just so happened that one of his friends...another doctor, can't remember his name anymore, had been appointed to find test subjects for a top-secret project. Well, the good doctor must have dropped of my name to him at some point, because one day two guys in black suits came up to me and informed me that I had been accepted." he took a deep breath "I was one of the youngest in the group of about thirty test subjects. They'd hook us and our chosen pok?mon up with these strange machines." I still don't know what they did, but whatever it was it hurt, bad."
"Rai-kou" (tell me about it...)
"It wasn't really a user friendly method..." Artemis concluded the sentence quickly moving the story onward, unwilling to dwell on these particular memories "Well, after the first round of existence our membership had been cut down to seven. They told me they'd been close to calling it six. I was unconscious for a week. At that point I didn't really think it could get any worse."
"Raiko-ou-rai-rai-ai-ai-kooou!." (Look who's talking. You weren't the one who had to adjust to walking on two legs)
"Well I had to adjust to sending an electrical current down everything I touched." Artemis snapped, no longer able to ignore Raikou's editorial comments.
Raikou looked ready to retort, but seemed to think the better of it.
"Well" Artemis said, turning back to adress Orva "The rest of the procedure was a bit more enjoyable; we were taught how to tap into our newfound powers, as well as the restraint not to use them unnecessarily. We were actually rather excited, until the Donovan incident." his face darkened at the thought, noticing Orva's lack of recognition for the name he continued "There was this one morph, a Shuppet one, Oliver Donovan. He...didn't adjust as well as the others. He had these strange mood swings; friendly at one moment and ready to strangle people at the next, then one day he just lost it and started attacking everything in sight until he was...subdued. They named it morph-frenzy and claimed that it was because the Shuppet's will power was stronger than Oliver's, it sounded logical at the time, but now..." he shrugged "I'm not so sure. They referred to the amulets as 'meditative tools' claiming that they didn't have any real power. They put his amulet in circulation again, and soon enough; the number of people going crazy multiplied. Those who retained their sanity were scared off, quiting the project, except me. The project ran out of funding soon after, who cares how powerful the end product if you can't control it after all? I was the first and last to 'graduate' from that institution, under strict orders not to mention it to anyone. Not that it matters any more, Ragnar had everyone involved seized for their 'impudence'. And that's the end of my story" Artemis concluded, soon realizing just how long he had been droning on "I haven't bored you, have I?" he asked "Please try to ignore my long-windedness if you can.
