a/n: Got bitten by the Pokémon bug again, which explains why all my recent stories are for that category. I've been wanting to write something that explores the odd relationships between humans and wild Pokémon, as well as between trained Pokémon and wild ones, while also delving into the strangeness of how/why/which specific elements of human (and inhuman) life and government structure might be different in a world where Pokémon training exists as an institution.
I know all that sounds incredibly vague, so just try and bear with me. Mostly this is a story about adorable kitty-cats, and a bunch of city dwellers trying to survive in the wilderness.
Please remember to review if you have any feelings about this story you'd like to share!
"Cruel Pokémon"
– Species classification for Liepard, National Pokédex #510
She was nearly asleep in her den when she heard the first distant, mewling cries.
The Liepard's ears pricked. Her green eyes opened, pupils dilating rapidly in the darkness, and silently she lifted her head so as to intently listen for what she'd only half-heard outside her cave. The wind in the mountains blew softly that night, or else she never would have caught it at all: the carrying sounds of a child Pokémon, its voice piteous and weak in the far distance.
The noise was difficult to distinguish from the wind it traveled on, but the Liepard could tell at once that its owner had to be small, desperately frightened. That alone wouldn't have been sufficient cause to rouse her from her den—she knew Pokémon died often in the mountains, young and old, and plenty by her own teeth—but a sharp stab of familiarity in the sound gripped her attention. She knew these cries, she was certain of it. But from where?
It took her a moment, and then Liepard felt a rush of evocative memory: it had been buried so long within her as to be practically forgotten, but the mewling in the distance brought it back...
There were two of the Purrloin kittens, infinitesimally small, a male and a female. They were not her littermates, but younger kin, hatched barely long enough for their eyes to have opened but already preening vainly by their reflections in the water. She watched, bemused, as the two made a game of outdoing one another's performances, neither ever directly acknowledging the other's existence but obviously aware of each other all the same. The competition went on until they both caught sight of her staring from the grass, and the two scampered over, meowing loudly. The sound was adorable for all its selfishness, and with a purring rumble she obliged them, knowing they desired to be taken back to Mother to be fed...
The Liepard stiffened in her den, standing abruptly amid the collected reeds and feathers and walking over to the edge of the cave where she'd made her residence. The sound she could hear on the wind was the crying of a kitten, much like the ones she'd known before. Its cries were faint from such a distance, but she was certain it could be nothing else—or at least, nothing that lived here naturally. Meowth kittens, Shinx cubs, these Pokémon did not make sounds like a baby Purrloin. Similar, perhaps, but not the right pitch, the correct inflection...it had been a long time since she'd heard those cries but the Liepard hadn't forgotten.
Her mind raced. Not-quite-thoughts tumbled in uncertain agitation beneath her memories. The wailing tugged at her, reawakening the old compulsion she'd had to care for her younger kin. Wild Purrloin didn't live in these mountains. If there was a kitten of her species here, like her long-ago younger brothers and sisters from the wild, then that kitten would have been a trainer's Pokémon. There was every possibility that it had been taken by its trainer to a human data-box, and released, just as the Liepard herself had been. It might not understand.
The Liepard was strong. She had evolved on her own in the wild, had never depended fully on humans even as a captured Pokémon. She knew well enough how to survive on her own, and had been prepared to do so when the time unexpectedly arrived.
A kitten, however, would not know. And though the Liepard wasn't compassionate by nature, she also wasn't so detached as to abandon an infant of her own kind here in the wild mountains: not a small, helpless thing like her younger kin had been, a kitten she knew she could care for. She wasn't devoid of nurturing instinct.
She was not a human.
The Liepard listened for the cries a moment longer, hovering at the mouth of her shallow cave. Upon pinpointing the precise direction that they were coming from, she moved—an invisible blur of feather-light steps across the jagged earth, with nary a sound nor a flicker of motion to betray her presence.
Do not fear, she thought, willing the kitten to remain safe from predators until she arrived. Stop crying, little one.
I come.
Trainer Tips!
Use your Pokédex or a search engine to find and listen to the audio of Skitty's cry. Then, check against Purrloin's for comparison.
