A/N Glad you decided to go past page 1 of my random ass rambling, best birthday present I could ask for from random strangers on the internet. Happy June 1st to me.

*blandly blows a party horn*

Anyways, enjoy it if you want. Just over 2k words on this one. Probably going to start writing longer and longer chapters soon once I get into the groove on this.

Yep, it was official. I have spent approximately 5 minutes following this Growlithe around and I already feel an acute sense of regret at this decision. It may be the best one available to me considering I am a helpless pokemon that can barely walk and doesn't even know its type.

Somehow, this thought did nothing to make me feel better. World is full of wonders, huh?

"-but anyways, that just goes to show what happens when you mess with me!" Growlithe said proudly, unaware I had completely tuned out what he said.

"Sounds fascinating. Now, about that water… how far away is it?" I respond, hoping that he took the bait and talked about that instead of his triumph in scaring a caterpie or something.

"Not that far now. Say, why do you think seeing yourself will make you remember what kind of pokemon you are? If you don't know, you wouldn't know." Growlithe inquires.

Ech, figured this would come up eventually. While admitting the truth wouldn't be bad, after all it isn't like the humans would know, it would be more trouble than I'm honestly willing to go through.

"Oh, well when I came out of my egg I kinda took a bad tumble and things are all mixed up now. I'm sure I'll remember eventually but I don't feel like waiting." I calmly reply. Total bullshit, but at least I don't have to answer the 1000 other questions Growlithe would ask if I told him the truth.

"Oh, is that why you can barely walk?" Growlithe asks innocently.

"Yeah, I guess so. Or it's because I've only been alive for a little bit. I have no idea what my development rate is if I'm honest. For all I know I could be doing great for my age." I say in a noncommittal way. It's just more bullshit considering in the games and anime newborn pokemon are good to go pretty much the moment they hatch but hopefully Growlithe doesn't know that.

"Can't say I've ever heard of that, but then again I have no idea what you are! You're still horrible at walking anyways, I've had to slow down soooo much so you could keep up." Growlithe states, running a few circles around me to demonstrate.

"Well then I guess I'm super lucky you're helping me out then Growlithe." I give him a happy smile and he seems to somehow perk up even more from it.

"That's right! Nothing will even dare come close to us once they see my battle face." He then makes a face at me that I guess was supposed to look intimidating but only looked dopey.

I feigned being frightened though, it's easier that way. Growlithe looked pleased and strutted away.

Ahh, manipulating emotions. Best trick in the book.

I felt slightly bad about manipulating someone who acts like an excitable child, but that part of me was quickly and ruthlessly crushed once I realized what I just thought. Not my fault this random Growlithe can't see through the most basic stuff that I did.

Looking around at my surroundings this was a pretty relaxing place. The forest was actually a pretty nice place, if disturbingly empty. Maybe it was just my small size, but the trees seem to stretch up to the sky itself before forming a canopy. Light filtering through the occasional gap, and there was a breeze shifting the branches.

This is one of my favorite things about forests, looking up at the canopy.

I'm still bothered by the almost complete lack of pokemon though. The only outlier is the Growlithe happily trying to show me around.

"Hey Growlithe, are there normally more pokemon around here? I thought forests were supposed to be full?" I ask, interrupting Growlithe from his self-imposed task of glaring at a tree. What did the tree do you may ask?

It was in the way of the trail, and the trail had to go around it. Thus, it was technically in our way towards the Lake.

"Oh! Well normally everyone is around but most of them are hiding. The Season just started and no one wants to be seen out in the open and caught that easily. But we don't have to worry! I'll scare away anyone dumb enough to try to catch us." Growlithe tells me, returning to growl the tree out of the way.

If any psychic-type pokemon were around and paying attention to me I'm sure they would have heard actual Dial-Up noises coming from me. I swear to god I think my brain actually broke for a few moments after hearing that.

"The… Season?" I ask weakly, hoping that I am having a critical misunderstanding of what that means.

"Yeah, the Gym Season. Where all those trainers run around and try to beat all the gyms before the season ends so they can do that tournament thing. I heard a few of them talk about it while they walked through the forest." Growlithe explains, finally making his way around the tree while giving it the stink eye.

"Okay, and if we know trainers are coming through here… why in the fuck are we not currently hiding somewhere?" I growl out, desperately trying not to yell and attract more attention than my goddamn cyan coloring already is.

Growlithe just looks confused and cocks his head at me. "Well, like I said. I'll scare away anyone we see. It'll be no problem!"

At least I now know what Growlithe's nature is. If it isn't Naive I'll eat my boot.

Err, well... My nonexistent boot? Whatever it's just a saying.

Suddenly, Growlithe straightened up and looked away from me. I'm not sure why, but I felt myself tense too automatically. It felt like my fur was standing up and my ears were perked, but I don't kn-

*crack*

I startled, turning towards the sudden sound.

And there's my goddamned trash luck. A single trainer was walking down a path looking at a small red device in their hands. Oh, that's probably a pokedex. Neat, let's not get seen by that trainer because I really don't feel like learning how rare I am by their reaction and subsequent battle.

"Grrrrrr! Get out of here you Trainer and I won't kick you out!" Growlithe yelled down the path.

"Oh dammit Growlithe they weren't even looking at us. Why? Just why? Humans can't understand Pokespeech anyways." I say full of exasperation, rubbing my face with a paw to clear away my sudden headache.

The human looks startled for a moment before pulling up his pokedex at us.

"Growlithe, a Puppy Pokemon of pleasant demeanor and great diligence. It drives enemies away with barks and bites. It has a brave and trustworthy nature and fearlessly stands up to bigger and stronger foes." The pokedex informed us. The trainer made a thoughtful noise and then turned it to me.

"No data. Would you like to enable National Pokedex mode?" It said. Okay, so I'm not in the list of pokemon that naturally exist here. Wherever "here" is. The trainer's eyebrows shot into their hair at this, slowly pressing a button on their pokedex.

"Zorua, the Tricky Fox Pokémon. Zorua hides its true form by changing its shape into people and Pokémon, and loves to surprise people. This Zorua appears to have an extremely rare coloration making it known as a 'shiny'." The pokedex rattles off.

Well shit, I'm kinda fucked now aren't I? Wait…

Did god make me a fucking shiny just to make my time harder because I accidentally tuned him out?

Meanwhile, the trainer sent out a Totodile about as fast as he could.

"Quick, Water Gun that Growlithe!" The trainer yelled dramatically, pointing at the Growlithe standing next to me.

"Yeah! Gonna fight, gonna bite!" The Totodile yells out, leaning forward and shooting a line of water right at Growlithe.

Growlithe dodged the initial burst of water while dashing towards the Totodile, only to get rocketed backwards right into a tree by the second blast that Totodile had sent.

"Huh, that was actually kinda smart to read the dodge like that." I mutter out loud, looking at Growlithe's soaked form. Also, geeze. That Naive nature really came back to bite him there. He is absolutely out cold right now.

"Now, use bite then point blank water gun on that Zorua!" I heard from the trainer.

"Oh, well shit. This is really not how I expected my day to go if I'm honest. Can we call a truce?" I yell out to the charging Totodile.

"Leader said to bite so I'm gonna bite!" Totodile yelled back, his mouth starting to gleam white signifying the move being charged.

Fuck, I don't even know what moves I know. I literally have to know some moves, so uh...

I was rudely interrupted by my opponent making a lunge at me, forcing me to dodge to the side by just throwing my body that way and scrambling back onto my feet.

Hey, sue me. I haven't learned how to move sideways correctly yet. It's harder than it looks damnit.

By the time I had gotten back onto my feet, Totodile was already making his next lunge at me. Thinking quickly, I dive under the mini-alligator's lunge.

"Now Totodile! Water gun!"

Suddenly a veritable wave of water slammed straight into the small of my back, leaving me skidding forward.

'Oooh fuck no, get up! Get up my new small body. I refuse to be caught by this kid.' I bitch mentally, legs already shaking as I try to stand up but failing. Out of the corner of my eye I see an object moving towards me. On instinct, I try to block it and swat it away.

Blinking a few times, I look on the ground where the foreign object was deflected at.

"Oh shit, that was a pokeball." I say, looking over at the kid that just tried to catch me. He looked very annoyed at this, especially as I got back onto my feet and leered at him and then the Totodile. Internally, I was already panting and seeing black spots on the edge of my vision but I hoped I was bluffing well enough.

The kid shouted out something but I couldn't understand it, but Totodile started to charge at me again with the signs of a bite formed in its mouth. Alright, I can do this. Just got to shake the numbness out of my legs and ringing from my ears from that water gun.

Wait… Bite was a dark type move right? I could take a ½ damage hit I think. Hopefully. God it would be embarrassing being outsmarted by someone who couldn't be older than 12 because of a gamble.

I feigned falling back down again, having to stop a smirk once I saw the kid's face light up with victory. Hopefully they wouldn't think anything of it.

At the next shout by the trainer, Totodile leaped. Gleaming teeth intended for closing around my head and knocking me out grew closer to me as I focused my energy into my claws and dug one paw into the ground.

Intentionally not dodging, I ate the hit of the bite and immediately swung my readied paw towards the Totodile. The alligator didn't notice and was blindsided by the hit, suddenly flung away as a burning pain overtook my body.

I tried to move my body to take advantage of the opening, but to my dismay my legs refused to move now. Worse, the dark spots in the corner of my vision have decided to grow into thick black rings around my entire field of vision.

"Okay, fuck. Fuck. I can't pull that again or I'm out and captured... " I mutter, shaking my head a bit to try and get rid of the throbbing pain I received where I was bit. I stood up strong again and acted like I was barely injured rather than hanging on by a thread and sheer stubbornness.

I leered at the pair again, and Totodile seemed hesitant to approach and even the trainer was having second thoughts. He pulled out another pokeball and I instantly grew wary, crouching down lower to make me a harder target.

Instead of throwing it at me though, he threw the ball at Growlithe who was still knocked out against the tree. With freakish accuracy, the ball flew true and impacted Growlithe right on the side before sucking him in.

*wobble*

*wobble*

*Ding!*

The kid pressed a button on his belt and the ball that Growlithe was in flew back to him, and he returned the Totodile. The trainer scowled at me before stalking off clearly in a bad mood.

Did he... just capture Growlithe and fucking walk away? After forcing me into a battle and making me fight for me freedom? That kid is on my permanent shit list from now on.

Fuck, I failed step 3 too.

A/N Not entirely happy with this, but oh well I kinda just want to get this sent out.

Shoutout to simpleflips.

But also shoutout to Cutter for guessing it right. Sadly I can't give you a cookie since my 3 year old nephew ate them.

Yeah so I chose Zorua/Zoroark for a reason. Mainly because I love stories where the main character isn't just a human when thrown into another universe but also thought that I would hate being in Pokemon and unable to be a trainer. So, what Pokemon can transform into things and is intelligent enough to be seen as valid if they really wanted to become a trainer?

Only thing I really found was Zorua/Zoroark. I wasn't going to do the shiny thing but it was a great idea once I saw it, since Shiny Zoroark is fucking cool and it also would make my life harder for avoiding confrontation. Win-win.

Peace.

-Taldor