I HAVE REPLACED THIS CHAPTER WITH A SLIGHTLY EDITED VERSION, AFTER REALIZING A BIG MISTAKE. WHICH YOU CAN EASILY FIND BY READING THE REVIEWS. BUT DON'T DO THAT. XD

Anyways, this version doesn't have any issue with the parents, so it should be readable without any complaints that the parents are monsters. All the rest is the same, actually, except the one part, as well as a minor fix on something else. Chapter Two will be posted shortly, as I will attempt a consistent, weekly update on this story.

Enjoy.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

This was what my heart was reduced to. The simple contracting and expanding was getting harder, more strenuous, and ready to give out at any given minute. It was, to use the old phrase, ticking like a time bomb, and if someone didn't cut the right wires I was going to blow.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

My stomach acids had staged a revolt, eating away at the lining, Mightyenas eagerly feasting on a Stantler carcass. One kidney was on strike, and slowly coaxing the other to join. Taking a simple piss set my genitals on fire. Every breath was bated, strained, reluctant. My body was working so poorly, you'd think they were under a failed communism regime. Hey, if the kid lives through the day, we're fine.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

This was what my days were reduced to. It was like a countdown clock, but nobody knew when it would hit zero. All I knew was that it kept me in some sort of constant panic. I'd almost gotten used to it, strangely enough, but that'll happen when you've been lying in a hospital bed for a month. They tried every medication, any medication. They even tried pot.

Nothing worked. My body was deteriorating like old paint.

The last thing you want to hear a doctor say is "I don't know." It symbolizes hopelessness, being desperate. In other words: the end.

I heard it two days ago.

They tried not to have me hear. The doctor hid behind a corner and told my parents. He hushed his voice and spoke calmly. Hey, he was too jaded by being surrounded by death every day to really care. So I heard him say it. I heard the stunned silence, then the choked-up breaths of my mother. My father was trying to stay calm, but I heard him begin to break down as well. And as I lie there on the hospital bed, a sobering thought pierced through my head, cracking my skull wide open.

I was going to die.

8.7

I flatlined yesterday.

Defibrillators brought me back, though.

I thought I was going to panic, to flail and kick and scream as Death slowly took over my soul and body. And yet, I fell peacefully away, quietly drifting into the abyss before I was jolted awake.

Life and death must be next-door neighbors.

8.8

The doctor came in today and closed the door, making sure it was just us two. His eyes looked… not morbid.

"Alistair, do you know what a soul transplant is?" he asked, by my bedside now.

"Soul transplant?" I replied.

"Guess not. Well, it's just a nickname for the procedure, since the real name is incredibly long and hard to pronounce. Anyways, it's a very risky procedure, but it's worked out often enough for us to be able to offer it to patients in dire circumstances such as yours…"

The doctor pushed the bridge of his glasses up on his nose, and his spike brown hair was staying almost perfectly in place, without any trace of gel. I simply nodded and let him continue.

"Essentially, it's a type of brain transplant. Your mind gets put into a new body, and if it adjusts, you carry on life as normal in the new body."

"That's even possible?" I questioned, and the doctor nodded with a sly grin plastered on his face.

"The wonders of today's technology, eh? Of course, the risks and huge. A hundred and one things could go wrong, and any of them are likely lethal in your state."

"So are you asking if I want to do it?" I responded.

"Why yes, yes I am. I did ask your parents, by the way. They're all for it as well."

"Cool, I guess my option's clear then."

"Very good- oh! There's something else… I checked on the possible bodies to put you in, and… let's say you're gonna have some adjustments to make."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, right now we don't have any male bodies other than that of a 70-year-old diabetic's, and I seriously doubt you want a woman's body."

"That leaves me with becoming…"

"Yep."

I sighed, and looked at my hands. Pretty soon, they'd be gone, replaced, a line and a blurb on my life's timeline. I'd always been good at making adjustments, but this… unless I was given the right body, this could be a thorn in my side the rest of my life. Not to mention the huge risk of me dying in surgery. That usually wasn't good.

The doctor sensed my apprehension, and said "Hey now, the odds of you living are as good as you dying, pretty much."

I looked up at him and raised a single eyebrow.

"Okay, poorly worded. But would you rather waste away in bed like this? Come on, I'll show you the bodies we have, you can at least get an idea of who we have available."

I slowly nodded, and he transferred me to a wheelchair. He rolled my ever-present IV and me down to the second floor, and they had just a few bodies to choose from, for two reasons the doctor told me. One, the demand was obviously low. Two, they had to meet a high level of requirements in order to have it decreed safe to be transplanted into. Obviously, one doesn't want to be transplanted to a body with more holes than Swiss cheese, and probably wouldn't be anyways.

I glanced at the choices, but my decision was pretty clear. This pokemon was humanlike, not to mention he looked pretty awesome. The doctor said he'd held up incredibly well too, for he'd been dead for over a year.

"Well, you ready Alistair?"

"Nope," I said, forcing a grin.

"You're gonna be fine, I just know it. You've made it this far."

Luckily enough, a surgery room was open, and the doctor rushed me over. The last thing I saw as the anesthetics invaded my body was another gurney being wheeled in.