RUN, MISTY, RUN!
CHAPTER THREE: WALK A MILE IN PONYTA'S SHOES

Misty woke feeling achy and muddled. It was another warm, muggy morning. Everything was swathed in a thick haze colored bronze by the rising sun. Her shirt was soaked with dew. She must have fallen asleep where she stood and spent the night stretched out on the hard ground. She stretched, yawned, then reached up to run her hands through her hair.
Her hands tingled oddly as they touched her hair. Something about it felt wrong, but not like tangles or dampness. In fact, her hair felt warm. Hot, even. Puzzled, Misty tugged her ponytail down where she could get a look at it.
Her hair was on fire!
With a screech, she tried frantically to beat out the flames. But they only flared higher. After a moment, she realized that neither her hands nor her scalp were being burned. She yanked her ponytail down into view again. Now that she looked closer, she saw her hair was not on fire. It had somehow been transformed into living flame, like the mane of a Ponyta.
A terrible thought occurred to her. She looked down at herself to see if anything else was changed.
Something must have gone wrong! Horribly, horribly wrong!
She had come to Skewbald Island to capture a Ponyta after a fellow trainer, Aidan, told her that an all-Water type team was too limited and that she should branch out into other types of Pokemon. But she wasn't used to Fire types, and it seemed she would never be able to teach her Ponyta even the simplest moves. Just when she was ready to release her new Pokemon back into the wild, Aidan showed up and let her in on a training secret. He offered her the use of a special, rare pokeball that he claimed would allow a trainer to dream they actually were a Pokemon. The insights from the dream, he claimed, would teach her to effectively train the Fire type Pokemon.
She'd waited til he left last night and followed his instructions exactly. First, she released Ponyta from the regular steel-and-red pokeball. It watched her, its ears flicking nervously. Ponyta didn't trust her yet. It made Misty's heart ache to see the beautiful creature so unhappy and fearful. She tossed down the silver-and-pearl Dream Ball.
There was no flash of brilliance, no swirl of sparkling mist, the effects she was used to with a normal pokeball. Instead, a pulsing blue-white light rose slowly from the heart of the pokeball. She and the Ponyta stared at it, transfixed. With each pulse, the light grew, splitting apart into swirls of purple, gold and green. When the first wave of light enveloped her, Misty gasped. She felt herself being lifted, her body dissolving into a cloud of pulsing brightness. Is this what a Pokemon feels when it is captured by a ball, she wondered. It was terrifying, but also strangely pleasant.
The next thing she knew, she woke up looking like this!
From the waist up, she appeared normal. But from roughly her belt line down, her skin was covered with thick, soft, yellow fur, exactly like that of a Ponyta. She could tell this clearly because, although she was still wearing her blouse, her shorts had disappeared. There were even streamers of flame fluttering from her ankles, seeming to spring from her own flesh without burning it. But her legs were not a Ponyta's legs. They were shaped exactly as they were before, except perhaps longer and slimmer. Her feet were longer, too, and unusually narrow. They were covered with fur top and bottom except for the underside of her toes and the ball of her foot. The bare skin there thick and tough as leather. Her nails looked as though they'd been painted dark gray, but apparently that was the actual color of the nail now.
"I'm a half-Ponyta," Misty exclaimed, rather foolishly. She twisted about to see if she'd also sprouted a Ponyta's flaming tail.
She had, but it wasn't quite where she expected. And she found her shorts.
They, and the tail, were on her second pair of legs.
Misty shrieked. She no longer had a behind in the normal place. Instead, her legs were actually her forelegs, set on a second, horizontal torso covered in fur that stretched out behind her. Her second set of legs were identical to the first, slim furry human legs with gray nails and anklets of harmless flame. Her shorts were on the hips of these hindlegs, but just barely. The fiery tail seemed to have split the middle seam when it grew out. Now it streamed proudly behind her. She looked a bit like a centaur, but with human legs and feet instead of equine legs and hooves.
Misty gingerly examined her face, afraid she now had a Ponyta's head. But except for her ears, which were pointed and covered in fine, silky hair, her face felt unchanged.
A glint of morning sunlight drew her attention to the silver-and-pearl Dream Ball, laying innocently on the grass a few yards away.
"Stupid thing," Misty cursed. Instead of making her a Ponyta in her dreams, it made her one in reality. Luckily it hadn't worked completely, or she might have become an ordinary animal and wandered off to join the wild herds, never to remember she was actually a human girl. She might look like a freak, Misty told herself, but at least her mind was still her own.
She leaned over and reached out for the Dream Ball. It was too far away. Misty decided it must be time to figure out if her strange new body was even functional. Slowly, she maneuvered both her sets of legs into a kneeling pose. Then she stuck out her right front leg and levered herself up, pinwheeling her arms for balance. She couldn't get very far up without moving her hind legs, too. She shuffled her back feet forward until her hind legs were in a squatting position, then pushed up with both at once. Just like that, she was standing.
"Wow," Misty said quietly. She'd expected to feel clumsy, but even though her extra torso and legs must have almost doubled her weight, she felt light as a feather and very stable. It was like the difference between a car and a motorcycle. Her four strong legs held her easily. She found that instead of standing flat-footed, her feet naturally held an arched position, with just her toes and the ball of her foot on the ground. It looked like she was wearing invisible high heeled shoes.
She took a few experimental steps. Her knees came up high, with a prancing motion, and she tottered forward on tiptoes. At first, she held her arms out like a tightrope walker, but as she went round and round the clearing she became more confidant. She found when moving slowly it was best to swing both legs on the same side forward together, otherwise she had a tendency to step on her own heels. This gave her a dignified, swaying pace. But when she sped up a bit, she found it her legs naturally falling into a two step, the right front and left hind rising together, then alternating the left front and right hind. She looked like a parade of one, marching in perfect step.
Through the trees, Misty glimpsed a stretch of Skewbald's beach, and the sun rising over a beautiful stretch of ocean, gilding the waves. She was suddenly seized with an urge to gallop across the beach, her mane and tail swept by the wind, her four legs carrying her as swift as a bird.
Before she could make a move, however, she was startled back to reality by the sound of human voices. Misty looked down at herself and knew she couldn't let people see her like this. They would take her for a monster, or try to trap her in a pokeball. Since she was at least Pokemon now, a normal ball just might be able to contain her. She didn't feel like taking the chance.
She backed into the bushes. For a moment she considered standing like this, her lower body and hind legs hidden, and trying to pass herself off as a normal girl. She might be able to send a message back to the mainland for help. But even if they ignored her flaming hair and pointed ears, there was no way she could conceal the fact that she was naked from the waist down, at least in the front. Of course, there was nothing there, just smooth, hard muscle and soft fur, like a Ponyta's chest. But she still felt naked. Backing further into the bushes, she tried to tug her blouse down and wished desperately she'd worn something longer than this stupid halter top.
Just as she fully hid herself, two young men rode into the clearing on scruffy little Ponytas. Judging from their overalls and thick accents, they must be locals. One carried a pokeball.
"I know I saw hoof prints leading up here," the short, bucktoothed one was saying. Misty thought he looked a bit like a human Rattata. "It prob'ly split off from the main herd."
"The Phantom doesn't run with any herd," the tall one said scathingly. "He's a loner. That's why we can never get him on the roundups."
"We'll get him this time, though," Rattata-face chortled. "That Rocket guy'll pay through the nose for a specimen like that."
Misty ground her teeth. These men were poachers. The Skewbald Ponytas were only supposed to be captured during the yearly roundup, and the proceeds from the sales went to improving the town of Piebald, which owned the island. But someone with a big enough wad of money had convinced these two lowlifes to go on an illegal off-season round up.
Suddenly the Ponytas froze, lifting their heads and sniffing suspiciously. They must have caught my scent, Misty thought, scrunching down lower in the bushes. The men kicked their mounts, but the Ponytas refused to go further. They stamped and snorted, shaking their heads.
"Stupid critters," the bucktoothed man growled. To Misty's horror, he reached out to a nearby tree, snapped off a branch, and smacked the poor Ponyta on the rump. The Pokemon bucked, but the man clung to it like a burr.
Outraged, Misty rose up and leaped from the bushes, shouting, "You can't do that!"
The Ponytas whinnied and reared, nearly throwing the two poachers.
"What is that thing!" The tall man yelled, pointing at her with a shaky finger. He looked as if he'd seen a Haunter.
"It's a goddess! A Ponyta Goddess!" The short man babbled. "She must protect the wild herds!"
With a high-pitched, girlish scream, the tall man hauled around his Ponyta and kicked it into a gallop. His fellow poacher was right on his heels.
Misty laughed as she watched them go. Well, if they thought she was a Ponyta Goddess, so be it. They wouldn't be coming back here to bother the wild Pokemon again.
Still, as fun as it had been to scare the two bad guys, she now knew for sure how ordinary people would react to her strange new body.
She herself was becoming used to it. In fact, she was even beginning to enjoy the feelings of power and speed her four legs gave her, and the pretty way her tail flared, but she would never be anything more than a monster to human society. It was time to get the Dream Ball, change back, and go on with her journey. She would just have to learn how to train Ponyta the old-fashioned way.
And boy, if she ever saw that Aidan again, she would give him a piece of her mind!
That reminded her, she'd better get that Dream Ball and stow it away safely. She looked around. Now where did it get to? She thought it was over by that pine tree, but maybe she'd accidentally kicked it into the bushes while she was practicing walking.
Misty circled the clearing, peering into the thick myrtle bushes. There was no sign of the ball. Growing scared, she thrashed through the underbrush, kicking her way through the thick tangle of honeysuckle and blackberry vines like a demented weed whacker. The more frantic she became, the taller and brighter the flames of her head and tail flared.
After an hour of wild searching, Misty was forced to admit she'd lost the Pokeball. She leaned up against a tree, panting, her four legs trembling with the unaccustomed effort. Her flames died low. Now what would she do? She might be able to swim the bay, but she couldn't go walking around like this. And she certainly wasn't going to join a herd of wild Ponyta! Aidan said the Dream Ball was experimental. She didn't even know who made it. But somehow, she'd have to find them.
Otherwise, she would remain like this forever.