A/N: Written for the Kanto Pokemon League Competition Round 2, with the Dark typing (writer's choice). Also written for the Indigo League Challenge, Pewter Gym trainer 2 (write a fic under 500 words in an hour). Word count is 469.
Cuteness Unkempt
Her fur was standing on end, and so she stretched out her slender tongue and licked it back. Those harsh hairs stung the dry yet tender skin, but the Purrloin had no trainer to feed her food full of nutrition and brush her fur until it shone a smooth splendour. She had no home to call her in from the dusty windy days – or the rainy days as it were, or the scorching ones. Nor did any trainer passing by on the road want her, guarding her with suspicious eyes until she vanished from their sight.
Those gazes had made her angry and bitter and she gladly paid them back, paid them back by playing the role of the deceptively sweet demon, springing on them unexpectedly with her sharp claws – not like a feral cat, no, but an arrow who'd buried itself in its target before the shaft was seen. She'd steal from them as well, steal so she could continue to live and grow and torment, steal so that she became the demon on the road that was a nuisance but too weak to become a threat.
Once, she had been cute. Devilishly cute, the whispers had said. Once she had had a trainer: a trainer she had thought had loved her. But those whispers had been too much, and the trainer had abandoned her to the roads, leaving nothing but tears that had crusted her fur and a ribbon that the feline had shredded into non-existence with her own claws.
It didn't take long after that for the world to remould her into a scruffy little demon with unkempt fur and bitter yellow-green eyes who travelled backwards and forth without a destination in mind. Even those other Pokemon who shared her road looked down at her: Poochyena and Houndour, with their sharp canine teeth; Murkrow, with its jabbing beak.
She showed her claws; they watched her warily, at the start, and then they laughed. Laughed because her claws only scratched when their teeth or beak drew blood. Laughed when other people and Pokemon ran from them after a feeble fight while swatting away her stings. And she would strike even more ferociously the next time, and break a little more skin.
The world continued to shape her, and soon she was like those other beasts of the road, and her claws had the eternal stain of blood. Her eyes were almost entirely yellow by then, and her fur perpetually ragged and almost black.
People still passed through her road, even as one woman screamed and one child lay bleeding on the side. Because they had a destination at the end of the road, and Purrloin…all she had was the fleeting thought: that that crying woman looked a lot like the trainer she had once had long ago.