"Good evening, Lulu," the now familiar cloaked man stepped out of the fog,"I think that it is time for me to reveal to you exactly why I've spent so long studying you, and for a long time, without your knowledge of it."
"Answers are long past due when it comes to many other questions as well," I stated plainly.
"Those will come later."
"I hate to sound spoiled, but I would like them now."
"You must be so confused."
"I am."
"My messenger delivered my note to you, I assume."
"Your messenger?" I asked, recalling the events of the day before.
"Yes, he should have given you a note reading"B fk ymup ulaji, Ryfl Xyil. Ymup kmseip wfq ebq qfvbmp," The man waved his hand, causing some of the fog behind him to turn into a note with the letters that he had just recited."
"I did not receive this note, but it looks like some sort of a code."
"So, it seems you have passed the test of observation, most pokemon who are even slightly capable of reading see it as gibberish, the truth is, that it has meaning, a meaning special to you, Lulu."
"I'll never be able to understand that," I complained.
"That's the point."
"What do you want with me anyway?"
"I believe that with a sample of your blood, I could unlock the secret that allows you to survive as a hybrid, and pass on whatever rests within you to humans and pokemon alike. Society would be greatly improved!" the fog behind the man changed to show a city filled with humans using pokemon abilities freely, and speaking in English to their pokemon. Huge banners marked with the letter S in a purple color hung from buildings. They were the same banners that were on the ruin that I had seen when I received the note. The city seemed perfect at first glance, but beyond that, something began to feel off to me.
"I won't do that for you," I shook my head, and turned away from the vision created by the man, but it was all around me. I could not escape it.
"You must."
"That world isn't the utopia that you would expect!" I yelled.
"Oh but it is," the man seemed to hiss.
"That's impossible," I closed my eyes so that I wouldn't have to see the city,"If part of me was used to grant a human pokemon abilities, or a pokemon human intelligence, the dangers of the world would only be amplified. If you have been watching me, as you claim, and I feel that you have been, you would know the nightmares that come with my life. Imagine a human who with that part of me that you want to give them fully became a pokemon. Now imagine that they are not trained to simply dodge the charge of a fearow."
"They would be doomed."
"Exactly."
"It would be interesting, just to know what a human would do in that sort of a situation. One power granted by human intelligence is improvisation, and the ability to change your strategy when such an action is necessary. Unlike you, I trust in the human mind."
"I trust that you have no experience in such a situation, whoever you are."
"I do not, but my master does, and he imbues me with knowledge at all times."
"Your master?"
"Imagine a perfect being. A human who can use pokemon abilities, speak to pokemon with ease, and control the minds of those who they overpower."
"It is terrifying."
"It is quite the opposite. My master does not control me, but she does empower me. I use this power on my quest for knowledge about pokemon around the world."
"Why are you telling me this?"
"I am warning you, Lulu, my master will control this world someday whether you embrace them or not, will you join me?"
"You are the group that fought against Kanto ten years ago!" I called out,"I saw your banners, and I will not join people who seek to take control of my home in a violent manner, or any manner for that reason. Our current leaders are sufficient, and I will not be a tool to your uprising," and then it hit me,"but you don't even want to give people the powers of pokemon to help society. You want to weaponize such abilities, to make your own extremely powerful. And turn those who oppose you into small, helpless pokemon, and attempt to execute them by sadistically releasing them into the wild, and watching as they are torn to pieces by stronger, wild pokemon."
"You are totally wrong, I assure you. I do not seek a weapon at all."
"My answer is no, and that is final, I assume that we will speak later," I woke up just after I said this. I looked at a small digital clock just beside the bed that was given to me by the nurse. It was early in the morning, but the healing ointment that I was given before I went to sleep had worked wonders, and I was fully healed.
I grabbed my backpack, and walked into the front room of the pokemon center to see a small crowd of people. A young human girl walked up to me, and carefully pet my head. I noticed that this blonde haired girl held a microphone, and a white eevee sat on her shoulder.
She then held her microphone up to my face,"Hello!"
"Pi?" I answered using the pokemon language so that I would not draw unwanted attention to myself.
"I am going to interview you!" the girl exclaimed,"So, what's your name?"
"Pi… chu…" I continued using the pokemon language to address the human girl. While I spoke to her, the eevee that had been perched on her shoulder, leapt down, and began licking me.
"Please satisfy my trainer," It said as it continued licking me.
I began laughing as the eevee's rough tongue kept tickling me,"Hey get off me!" I then said in English.
"You can talk!" the girl lit up.
"Pi?" I asked again, trying to mask my mistake as if the human had misheard me.
"I know you talked," she smirked,"and since you don't seem to want to talk, I'll tell everyone that you can talk, unless you give me an exclusive interview."
"You start," I conceded.
"What is your name?"
"My name is Lulu," I answered quietly.
"Do you have a trainer?" the girl asked.
"No," I answered,"I guess you could say that I'm wild, by technicality, but I won't hurt anyone unless I have to."
"Have you battled any other wild pokemon?"
"I fought a pidgeotto a few days ago, but that's a long story."
"Can you tell me?"
"So," I said quietly,"a few days ago, I left Palette Town, and before I reached Viridian City, I was attacked by a massive pidgeotto, had I made a single mistake then, I would not be here today."
"What a jerk, that pidgeotto," the girl frowned,"why would such a thing attack you like that? Did you provoke it?"
"You must really not understand how wild pokemon see each other," I muttered.
"I do too, understand!" the girl protested,"You all are a big group of friends who are happy to like throw parties together, and be caught by trainers when you want to move on in life."
"No," I laughed,"trust me, I wish that was the way that life worked. In the wild, bigger pokemon attack smaller pokemon for food. That pidgeotto wasn't just being a jerk, it wanted to eat me."
"That must be an outlier, I've heard that ekans likes to hug other pokemon."
I froze for a second before responding angrily,"It is not a hug, ekans wraps around a pokemon that it plans to eat, and slowly squeezes the life out of it by wrapping around its victim, and suffocating them. If it succeeds in that attack, which it usually does, it proceeds to swallow its prey whole, and if they survived the initial attack, then they get to suffer until they die from the acids inside of the ekans' stomach."
The girl just stared at me,"but that can't be, pokemon are supposed to be nice, I even wish that I could be a pokemon."
"No," I replied,"you still are totally wrong, you would hate living as a pokemon, living in fear of everything that is slightly larger than you…"
The eevee dove on top of me, and put its paw over my mouth,"Now I have no idea what you think that you are up to, but if you keep going on, and telling my trainer that she is wrong in her childlike dreams, then I am going to have a problem."
"The world isn't the rainbow-filled plane of divinity that you think it is," I finished, and stormed out of the pokemon center doors into the bustling streets of Pewter city.
"Poison fang, now!" I heard, from behind me, and just then, I felt two teeth, as sharp as knives bite into my shoulder, piercing my flesh, and injecting poison into my bloodstream. I hollered in pain, then noticed the girl watching in horror from the pokemon center. When I saw her, and let my guard down just for a second, the pokemon that had just bitten me pushed me to the ground.
She ran out, with the eevee on her shoulder,"Uhh…" I heard from the ground,"Use quick attack on drapion!"
"Use Crunch on that eevee!"
"Eevee, no!" I heard loud footsteps scurry back towards the pokemon center.
"Please help me," I thought as the pain in my shoulder began screaming at me to do something. I couldn't move, and the pain began to spread across my entire body. When I tried to get up, I just fell back on my head. I was unable to move, but worst of all, I was totally conscious. My muscles were fire. Everything was cold though. Hotter, colder, hotter, colder, but no happy medium in miles. Sparks began leaking out of my cheeks, and flowing right back into my own body causing the pain to become even worse.
I felt a human pick me up. "Please, Arceus, help me," I thought. There was no answer. The world was spinning, but continuously moving forwards. Towards what exactly.
"I caught a talker," I heard a nasaly human voice,"no need for 'er though, so at the right price…"
"Thirty thousand," another human replied in a deep voice.
"'Ows about a lil' more than the usual price of a an especially rare shiny, being able to talk is a much more special trait in my…"
"CRACK!" a sound filled my ears, and I began falling.
"How about I take the talker, amd all of your money," the man with the deep voice answered, then who I only could assume was the deep-voiced human picked me up. I released all of the electricity in my body onto him.
"Jerk!" the man slapped me,"if only I had a pokeball on me, I'd put you in it, but for now, I have to get you to the pokemon center. I can't officially name you until I capture you in a pokeball, but when I do, I think that something related to toilet humor will be in order.
I passed out after he said that.
When I woke up, the kind nurse from before was looking at me,"I have bad news for you," she said,"While you were getting better here, somebody murdered your trainer, you were never captured in a pokeball though, so it was decided that nobody could inherit you. Now that this information has come in, we are going to let you finish resting up, then we are going to release you back into the wild. Are you alright with that?"
"Yeah," I said.
"Wait," the nurse lit up,"You can talk?"
"Pi?" I realized that I had tiredly repeated the mistake that had likely gotten me into trouble before. The memory was quite hazy though.
"Ugh," the nurse looked down at the porcelain mug that she was holding,"bad coffee, huh."
"Pi, pi," I said in agreement.
"Your eyes," the nurse finished looking me over,"they remind me of someone who used to be very important to me. All of my sisters and I used to love him.
"Pi?" I asked wondrously.
"His name was…"
"Chansey!" an especially large chansey ran into the room, seemingly angry at the nurse, and quickly pulled the nurse back out to the front room.
I looked at a calendar. December 1st, it read. I had been away from home for two weeks now, but that did not make sense, for I did not remember travelling for even a single week.
I shook it off though, thinking that I was just tired, and went back to sleep.
I was not met with a grey world. For once, my natural sleep went uninterrupted.
When I woke up, I was met with two soft red eyes.