Satan's Pet
A shadow always follows you, even into death. She found this out as she became her shadow, slipping away from her now-lifeless corpse and screaming into the fires of Hell's waiting room. Just a small accident, a misdirected attack in battle, and then bliss. No worry, no stress, and certainly no pain from eternal condemnation. Rachel Argnes, dead at 16, may she rest in peace.
Maybe I'm not going to Hell, comes the thought, with hope containing a significant amount more weight than her inky presence, swimming in a linear sea of swirling ebony. Emotions, streaming, flowing, pulsing through her flat plane of existence, only the purest pleasure a shade could know: tainted by the shadowy remnants of life behind her. A faint glow comes from the horizon, if such a thing exists in a real of insubstantiality, beckons Rachel, promising ecstasy with taunting whispers. Heaven is calling, welcome to paradise.
A problem, more of a realized impossibility, entwines itself with the dead girl's pleasure. No black droplets sprinkling down, but a quiet cover of gray, engulfing Rachel's being, souring her bliss.
"Precisely as you guessed, Rachel, you clever girl. That is Heaven over there! It's not often one as smart as you comes here so early." As the words pass through the ashen form, she cannot help but feel how flat and empty the praise is. If only everything felt less wonderful, less bliss, then maybe sense of everything could be made. "But my dear, if that's Heaven over there, where do you think you are?"
One single shard of true discontentment lodges itself in the euphoric entity. Ignorance splintered with a single question, Rachel blinks, finding herself reverted to humanity once more. Pulling her chocolate hair into a ponytail, nervous habit more than style choice, she waits for the knowledge to come to her again, fear paralyzing her otherwise sharp tongue.
Emotionless, monotonous, but audible. The knowledge previously obtained by injection becomes a faceless voice, hauntingly ringing in Rachel's ears as it proclaims its dire message. "Hell exists, simpleton, but it's not fire and brimstone. Hell is a shadow of heaven: pleasure enough, but only a fraction of what Heaven is like."
No sooner were the words spoken than Rachel becomes the embodiment of joy. Pure golden light, shapeless, perfect. An eternity within a moment, and her normal form returns. "Tell me, human, can you spend eternity here, knowing what you missed out on over there," the voice asks, a cruel, sardonic question with one answer.
Entire body shaking from the force of her panting as she slumps down, kneeling, Rachel manages to gasp out a simple "no" before tears begin to stream down her face, accompanying the wailing and teeth gnashing from the girl. Spun sugar swirled with honey, the voice speaks again, a soft melody that slices through all else. "I will offer you an alternative. Starting now, you can be eternally reincarnated as Pokemon of varying species, each time retaining all your memories. You will never truly die, you will never suffer this again. What say you?"
"Yes!" comes the scream of a reply, broken and disjointed from the sobs of pleasurable agony. A once proud trainer, reduced to a shadow of her former self, now kneeling on the midnight ground, broken.
"Let's get to it, then," comes the voice, one final time, gleeful in her misery. "You know, your panting just then gives me an idea... Welcome to your new Hell."
The effects are immediate. No warning, no excruciating pain, not even a tingle as her face begins to reform, a fleshy muzzle pushing out her mouth and nose, which becomes small and black. As Rachel's tongue elongates, and her teeth sharpen to a mouth full of razors, she laughs: of all the impossible situations after death, losing her humanity was never high up on her list of things she would be doing. Her ears migrated to the top of her head, slowly growing into long, curved, gray horns to complement the dead girl's rapidly shrinking and morphing head and growing neck.
Rachel's vision, already turned sideways, courtesy of her new muzzle, loses some hidden element, but what this is she cannot be sure in a world of black. Still unable to be frightened amidst the bliss of her realm, the former trainer can only look on curiously as her hair seemingly explodes off of her head, gently falling around her to give way to a short, lustrous coat of fur that grows all over her body- black with splashes of orange, not exactly her first choice, but not horrible.
What Pokemon is this? she thinks to herself as the transformation continues its death grip on her body. I haven't seen anything like this in Kanto.
Her puzzlement continues as her fingers recede, and her hands become large, velvety paws, small talons emerging from the end of each toe. As twin gray bands encircle her wrists, Rachel feels near identical changes taking place in her heeled boots, bringing her crashing to the ground as her balance on two legs is lost. Loud cracks sounds like gunshots, signaling the change in Rachel's bones throughout her body, indicating the change is almost complete.
Three gray ridges grow onto the former human's back underneath of her shirt as a similar one snakes around her neck- an ornamental skull fighting its way out of her fur at the base of her throat. A thin, tubular tail erupts from the base of her jeans, writhing in the air behind her, the end growing out into an arrowhead. A final pulse runs through Rachel's body, leaving her panting once more as her anatomy shifts to allow for a future litter of puppies, and the transformation is complete.
A flash of black light, and even Hell ceases to exist, leaving only a shadow. A shadow always follows you, even into death.
A/N: So, it's been a while since I've written anything. Hopefully this is going to be the start of regular stuff, though. This was a prompt given by a friend, and I've never done TF before, so I hope it went well. (For those of you wondering, the prompt was to do a Houndoom TF, and the phrase "a shadow follows you, even into death") Don't judge me too harshly for a warmup? Read and review, please, and I hope you enjoyed~