There are the hunters and there are the hunted. Remember that, Genesect.

The words echo in my head as I look down at the unconscious Zoroark at my feet. She eluded me for months. Foxes are cunning creatures, but I am the hunter. I always win. I feel the heat radiating from the machinery on my back, softly hissing from the burst of superheated energy.

I am unnatural. A creation. A modified experiment, testing the limits of a fusion, one of Pokemon and technology. I can little about my past. Most of the memories I possessed are a blank space in my mind. Yet one thing I have remembered. It refuses to be forgotten.

Team Plasma.

My creators.

I come from a past long gone, revived from the dust I had become. Revived as a hunter. That's me. A hunter. A killer. Genesect, terror of the new age. That was all they told me. They refused to reveal anything else. Am I too dangerous?

I remember nothing after. Another blank space in my memory. In the present, I am lost. Team Plasma is gone and my searches are in vain. There is only me now. And I do what I was created for. What I remember.

I realize I drift off and anchor myself in the present. Perhaps mental freedom is a flaw. As if being wired to a machine of destruction, being the machine of destruction, wasn't detrimental. Every day I feel the weight of the artillery strapped to my back. The innovation of the century, they say. Testing the limits of nature and machine. I grew accustomed to it. I accept the fact that I was now, simply put, a living tank.

I take one more look at my fallen prey, and start walking off. The hunt is over.

"You bastard!"

Who was that? I turned to the sound of the voice. It was a human. She appears to be female, and in her early stages of maturity.

She's angry. Humans are angered easily. Why would she be angry at me?

"Look what you did! Heartless bastard!"

I looked down at the limp Zoroark under my feet. She is angry at me for wounding the Zoroark. Of course. Humans always grow attached to Pokemon. But what does she want me to do?

She doesn't respond, understandably. How can she respond to what she can't hear? Nobody can understand me, and I stopped expecting it long ago. I was not created with a speech drive, I was created with weapon drives. Hunters don't talk. All they need is functioning senses and a weapon.

Right?

Yet often I find myself lost in thought, drifting away from the solid world and into the deep, endless expanses of my mind. Or what's left of a mind after 300 million years of decay, spliced together by whatever circuitry I was installed with.

"Cold blooded killer!"

The human screamed at me again. Anger is a powerful emotion; it can surpass fear and anxiety, bypass the greatest pains. But I see the female's anger weakening. I do not give her the satisfaction of a response. I glare at her, my synthetic eyes unmoving. Before long she had walks away, retreating to the safety of her kin, leaving only me to ponder her accusations. To drift among thought once more and rationalize with myself.

Heartless bastard... Cold-Blooded killer...

I know I lack a heart to pump blood through my body. But then again, I am not the only hunter in this world to lack a cardiovascular system. Was she accusing me of being unnatural then, a monstrosity of technology's most cruel advancements put together in the means of me? I was created to be a hunter, a tracker. It's expected for a hunter to make a kill, yet why did the human denounce me for it?

Cold Blooded. Heartless.

And in that moment, I understand why she hated me, loathed my existence.

Emotions... Pity. Mercy. Fear. Anger.

I was not programmed to feel emotion. Is it my fault? Or is it my creator's? Did they believe it was unnecessary for me to be able to feel as they shaped me to their will?

What is my existence without emotions? Am I just a ruthless hunter, killing everything in my path without hesitation or second thought? Because I was created to do so?

Perhaps I was supposed to be an icon of fear and destruction, as my makers intended when they fused nature and machine to create the most dangerous and effective weapon.

But tonight, I refuse to be the killer I was designed to be.

I may not be programmed to feel.

I may not be programmed to cry.

I may not be programmed to laugh.

I may not be programmed for mercy.

I may not be programmed for compassion.

I may not be programmed for empathy.

But I can think, and I can act. I was given an independent mind. My creators are no longer on this world.

Tonight, I would be my own programmer.

Tonight, I would defy my purposes.


The Zoroark's breaths come in shallow patterns, accompanied by a weak cough as her lungs struggle for the oxygen her body demanded. Many Pokemon are fragile, and life slipped through their bodies rather easily.

I carry her through the misty forest of night's domain as gently as a mechanical hunter could manage. Starlight fades as tree and bush grows dense. But I know my destination.

We are almost there.

You are not dying on me.

And for a moment, her eyes flicker open and seem to acknowledge me before closing again, leaving me to order to return to the dark clutches of unconsciousness.

But in that moment, that split-second, it seemed she understood.


Author's Note: It's about time I picked up this story again. A bit of a tone shift, but I feel more comfortable writing this way. A lot has changed from when I first wrote this and where I am now. So let's see where this goes!