Heather wasn't much for celebrating birthdays. She used to love them, but after 28 years they'd kind of lost their luster. The lack of presents didn't help.
Which was why, after coming home from work to her apartment, she was confused to see a weird notebook laying on her doorstep.
Her first thought was that a neighbor left it there as a gift. Her second thought was that her first thought made no sense; she almost never talked with her neighbors, so how would they even know her birthday, let alone go out of their way to get her something? And even if they did and even if it wasn't necessarily a birthday gift... Seriously, a lousy notebook of all things?
She mentally skimmed through a few other ideas. It belonged to a burglar who dropped it and left it behind in a rush. (Which didn't make much sense.) Some university student or other mistook her apartment for theirs and dropped it when they realized their mistake. (Which made both more and less sense than the previous idea.) It was hers and she somehow forgot about it, and she had it with her for some reason and dropped it on the way out this morning. (Which made no sense at all.)
Sighing, Heather picked it up and turned it over check for a name, only to become more confused.
"...'PokeNote'...?"
Like the back, the front was half red and half white. Unlike the back, though, it had two key differences. One was a white circle in the middle that divided the two halves. But the more important difference was the notebook's name in the red half: PokeNote.
"Poke... As in Pokemon?"
The design certainly looked reminiscent of a Poke Ball. And the title used the same goofy font as the Pokemon logo. What was this, some bootleg merch?
Her confusion compounding, Heather opened the notebook, read the contents of the first page, and promptly shut it. Her confusion compounded. After taking a quick look to make sure nobody else was around, she rushed inside her apartment and slammed the door shut.
It was a small place, being one of those four-bedroom apartments where each bedroom had a separate entrance. Hers didn't have much beyond her bed, the closet, and a desk for her laptop. Modest, not to mention lacking in any personal touches to liven up the place, but it served its purpose.
But such things were far from Heather's mind at the moment. She was too busy rereading the first page and trying to wrap her head around it.
"Become a...Pokemon anthro? What even is that?"
She was plenty familiar with Pokemon; she played a few of the games as a kid and even kept up with the new 'mon designs they put out every few years. But Pokemon anthro? Like a humanoid Pokemon? Like a... like a human Pikachu? And this thing claimed it could turn a person into one if she just wrote their name in it. And not only that, she could specify the changes, like what kind of Pokemon, body, and even personality. Rewrite a person's entire being, just by writing in this notebook. Amazing if true, but...
"This is total bullshit."
...totally unrealistic. Just some weirdo's idea of a prank.
So she dropped the notebook on the desk and stood up, moving to leave for the kitchen. "Not even gonna play along with this," she muttered. "Just total bullshit. No way anyone would actually believe this."
Unless...
Heather stopped at the door to the kitchen, looked back at the notebook. It was dumb. Absurd. Unrealistic. She had no reason to entertain the notion this PokeNote could do what it claimed to. No reason at all.
And yet...
Her hand, hovering at the door handle, lowered slowly. She turned around. "It's... It's total bullshit," she told herself, less certain than before. Which was ridiculous, since she had absolutely no reason to believe the notebook's nonsense. Absolutely no reason at all.
Still...
She sat down and opened to the first page again. Read the guidelines again. Somehow, it seemed a little less bullshit. Not that it could be anything other than bullshit. It had to be, it was unrealistic. Totally unrealistic. Totally.
But say it isn't...
Heather turned to the first empty page. All those lines, clean and prime for writing down people to change, to transform, to...evolve.
Assuming it wasn't bullshit. Which it was. Definitely. Totally. Had to be.
"Why am I even thinking about this...?" As Heather asked herself this, a hand reached for a pencil. It came to hover just above the paper, poised to write a name. "I must be crazy... Or so bored of life I'll actually consider amusing myself with some weirdo's fantasy just to...shake things up..."
Then, as if waking from a trance, Heather straightened up in her seat, dropping the pencil. "Wait, even if I do use it--and only to remind myself that it's total bullshit--who do I test it on?"
She meant it as a rhetorical question, but regardless of intent, she began considering possible guinea pigs. It had to be someone she knew, someone she could immediately check the results on...
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