"Let me fill you in on something."
"Wait, what?" I called out. My voice echoed in the endless void. One familiar figure stood in front of me. His black hoodie was replaced by a white one, and his cargo pants were a dull grey. But the same eerie-dark shadow resided inside of the hood.
"What the hell is going on, Mog?" I asked while looking around and judging my surroundings.
"You already know what's going on, you passed out and I'm messaging you through your dreams. Of course I could've done this whilst you were awake, but I find it just as easy to do things like this."
"Right, right. So why are you messaging me while i'm unconsciousness?" I snapped impatiently. He seemed to ignore my attitude as he went into his explanation.
"You're off to a great start, y'know that?" The Master of Games complimented me. "But let's be honest, you're doing too well," he said. What did he mean, 'too well'?
"How do you figure?" I inquired.
"Tell me; do you cheer for the underdog?"
"Yes, of course. It gets boring watching the same person win a game over and over again. I like to see a good fight."
"Well, that's how I feel about you. You're far too much of a protagonist. I want to see the main character go through hardships and struggles, but so far you've been destroying the competition," he sighed and crossed his arms.
"This is my life now. To me, this is no longer a game-"
"It is to me, this is nothing but a good story, albeit with a few noticeable errors," he interrupted, startling me with how menacing his voice got.
"But I'm going through real hardships here, I want to win," I challenged.
"I like you; and I want to see you succeed at this. But you're boring; you're a boring character," Mog insulted. He started pacing about, his arms behind his back. I just stood there and stared.
"So I'm going to help you become interesting."
"How would you do that?" I questioned.
"Now I can't tell you that. If you knew, then it wouldn't help much on the whole 'boring main character' end. I'm basically giving you a hand and giving you a foot simultaneously."
"What do you mean, 'a hand and a foot'?" I asked.
"I'm going to shoot you in the stomach, then drop a first aid kit right next to you, basically." That's what he meant, the hand was the help and the foot was the hindrance. So they basically cancelled each-other out.
"You just revealed your plan," I snorted
"That wasn't the plan, that was an example."
"Alright, so what else do we have to discuss?" I asked irritably, sick of his condescension, even if I had actually brought it on myself. He froze in his pacing, and stared at me intently.
"That all depends; do you have anymore questions?"
"No." The void blinked black and white, then warped into an array of different colors that were inconceivably beautiful. That must have been what LSD felt like.
XxXxXxXx
My eyes fluttered open, the first thing that I noticed was that it was darker outside than before. I briefly got worried about Zevoa, seeing as I had let her out just before I passed out. However when I saw the red glow of her eyes; my panic subsided. She trotted up to me, I noted that there was a purple tail dangling from inside of her mouth.
I dug out my fire-starters and had them in one of my hands, ready to go. I scanned the area for usable firewood, seeing as it was freezing cold and dark as hell, I wanted to get a fire going to remedy both of those problems . After some minutes of searching, I found a broken branch laying next to a lonesome tree. I gathered it up along with a few thin twigs.
It didn't take very long for me to start a fire. Zevoa relaxed next to it, she viciously itched her side, attempted to ease her irritation likely caused by fleas or ticks.
I spaced out whilst watching her. What was he going to do to me? It could've been anything from tripping over a rock, or a boulder tripping over me. I shivered at the thought.
I made sure Zevoa was close at all times, just in case Mog decided to send something over to ambush me. I drew my large combat knife, ready for a fight. Zevoa sensed my anxiousness and became on edge herself.
I decided to get something to eat. That would take my mind off of Mog and his tricks. I hadn't had a bite in a little while and the only food that I could think of that was in the area was rattata and pachirisu.
It was a little fucked up that I thought of living things as nothing more than food.
With Zevoa loyally by my side, I began to venture far from my camp. The moon and stars were the only things illuminating my path other than my flashlight. I was grateful for the fact that there was no forest obstructing my view; meaning nothing could possibly be hiding from me. The only greenery were thin patches of grass and an occasional bush or tree. Everything else was gravel, boulders and pebbles.
For some reason, even with the relatively little amount of light brightening my surrounds, I could still see clearly. I just couldn't make out specific features. A small creature scampered in the darkness. It appeared to be some type of armadillo, except it was very large and had small cracks in its armor. It had large black eyes with a slight shine to them.
It froze and stared at us two. Zevoa looked at it curiously.
The armadillo was the first to break it's stillness and scurried away. But it was much too slow, and Zevoa caught up to it in a few strides. It kicked sand into the mightyena's face, causing her to backtrack a few steps and try to shake the sand out that was impeding on her vision. The creature took the opportunity to awkwardly run up to Zevoa and slash her across the chest. Zevoa growled and bit at the air, but the pokemon easily dodged it.
Zevoa sniffed at the air, attempting to detect the sandshrews location by scent. She deduced it was directly to the right of her and pounced in its direction.
Her judgement was correct. which in turn meant she was able to get on top of it. Her fangs became frosty, almost like icicles. She sunk the frozen fangs into the sandshrew's stomach; making it squeal bloody-murder. At first I feared it had died. But once she pulled her incisors out, the sandshrew was still twitching ever so slightly. Indicating that it was still alive.
It put up a good fight. Something about it made me want to capture it. It was a fighter at heart. It wouldn't go down easily. I needed something like that on my team.
I took the chance while it was in front of me. I pulled out a pokeball, and chucked it at the pokemon with all of my might. The sphere bounced off of the creatures forehead, and absorbed the pokemon up with a beam of red energy. It shook once, twice, three times. Then clicked. I had caught a sandshrew. I was so overcome with joy that I couldn't break my gaze from the pokeball.
Eventually I found my dinner. It was a rattata, Zevoa crushed its skull in one bite. The little rat put up much less of a fight than the sandshrew. I quickly separated it's purple hide from the meat then skewered it with a stick and roasted it on top of an open flame.
Skinning rattata wasn't difficult at all. Just a quick slit right above the rectum down to the feet, and I tore off the fur like a sweater.
Knowing how the body worked due to my experience in the medical field really helped in that aspect. All I really had to do was make an incision to the tissues connecting the skin to the muscle and viola, I had supper.
I discovered three new talents since I arrived in that world; carving, taming wild animals and peeling the epidermis from small mammals.
I tossed the sandshrew's pokeball at the gravel. The little armadillo appeared to still be unconscious, Zevoa sniffed at the creature in it's state. After learning it's scent, she tapped the creature with her paw, trying to make it move. It's eyes opened, and it must've been terrified, to be woken up by a 100+ pound hyena standing directly over it.
The sandshrew defensively curled up into a ball. Seeing this as some sort of game, Zevoa started pushing the armadillo ball with the tip of her nose, making it roll around on the rocks.
While Zevoa was occupied, I started to think about my brand-new pokemon. Sandslash was slow, but had a high attack and defense, and it was mediocre in every other catergory. It had very common weaknesses. Water, ice and grass. All three of those types normally hit on the special side, and a sandslash wouldn't be able to do much to soften a hit from one of those types.
Also, Zevoa displayed a move I was unaware that she had. Ice fang. That opened up a world of possibilities, I now could hit ground types for super effective damage. This seems pretty insignificant, but not when you consider that most of the common rock pokemon are part ground. The gym leader was a rock type specialist. I smirked at the thought of crushing the leader with the new technique.
It also would give me an edge against annoying grass type pokemon that I would no doubt encounter in the future.
The moves that she knew the commands for were bite and howl. Sand attack and scary face were still in the process of being taught. If I could get fire fang, thunder fang and poison fang then she would be a coverage machine.
Although she was pretty smart, but I wasn't naive enough to think that it would be easy to teach her those moves.
In the week that I had been training, the only thing that I ever thought about was Zevoa. I was bonding with her, and I wouldn't trade her for anything in the world. Except, well, maybe a few thousand crown so I could afford some real food. So almost anything.
I just hated the effect she had on me. I used to be a happy person. I didn't take stuff as seriously as I did after she popped up into my life. Her presence immediately put me in a sour mood, despite me genuinely liking her. She desensitized me to violence. I had never been a queasy person, blood and gore were nothing to me. I attribute this to me growing up with video games most of my life. This of course enabled me to want to become a doctor. But now blood and gore were second nature to me.
For example, when I took down the rattata using Zevoa. If I was in the same scenario a month ago, I would've been far more hesitant to kill the rattata. I used to have a philosophy that every living thing, from an insect, to a snake, to an elephant, was deserving of a chance to live it's own life. Now whenever I killed something I didn't even bat an eye.
I was slowly but surely losing my mind to that damned beast.
There were upsides of being a wild man though. I was hardened by my surroundings. I ate very seldomly and learned to ignore my stomach rumblings. One rattata was enough food for me, and I had been eating usually about one meal a day with some small things on the side like jerky and dried fruit.
It was unhealthy, I knew that, but what was the other option? There was not a constant food source out in the field. Obtaining three to five meals a day was not a simple task. It took an hour to get one rattata. Imagine if I had to get 3 of those, every few hours, for five times a day? I would have to train, rest and travel whilst I was doing all of that, too, mind you.
I laid under the moonlight for a while, eventually returning the sandshrew but leaving Zevoa out. I trusted that she wouldn't have ran off in the middle of the night. If she wanted to go she would've done it already, seeing as how I couldn't stop her whether I was awake or asleep.
That day was pretty exciting, if I could so myself. To hell what Mog said, I wasn't a boring person. I was in a world full of pokemon, for godsakes. I had a pet hyena. I knew a god. The list basically stopped there. Well, I was a nurse too, but that wasn't necessarily an exciting thing.
At least I knew that for the next few days my life would be thrilling enough for that demon, and I was damned sure of that.
Hope you enjoyed, please favorite, follow and review if you want to see more from this story.
