A Pokémon with a persistent nature, it chases its chosen prey until the prey becomes exhausted.

3

My silken fur may have eased me through the bushes like oil, but rocks and roots still stuck out to catch the four paws used to running on two feet.

I stumbled, rolled, and kept running. Angry yips accompanied the nip of teeth on my tails, which streamed behind me like banners. The fire continued to trickle from my mouth, burning my throat and gut where it fed on my fear.

Soon, the trees and bushes gave way to boulders. I scrabbled up them with my dull claws, weighed back by my mass of tails.

Jaws clamped down on one. I heaved forward with a mighty yank. The teeth slid to the very tip, running in stride with my slowing climb.

Just as I reached the top of the largest boulder, which melded into the beginning of a low cropped hill, Mightyena slid before me with a shower of dirt, pebbles, and claw on stone. He lunged, jaws open, fangs bared.

I dropped and rolled, falling down the side of the rock. Squawks of pain came as he collided with the rest of his pack.

I hit the ground with a lung collapsing thud.

Move! I screamed at my stunned body, my paws weakly scratching at the dirt. The loss of oxygen put a stop to my blue, firey saliva as well. I dropped open my jaws and heaved, both the air in and my legs beneath me. Onward, trot, jog, then back to a stumble as the earth beneath me teetered like the deck of a ship. My sides scraped stone, tree, back around the side of the hill, through the trees, back into the bushes.

I'll never get away, I gasped for breath, my legs growing heavier with each one. This isn't my body. They can smell me. I don't know this place.

Then, my front paws fell into liquid frostbite.

I screamed and recoiled, thoughts of lava, acid, anything that could have caused such discomfort—

And found a narrow, ankle-deep stream.

I felt like an idiot. Fire poke'mon. Duh. But I looked at my paws, a little damp, but otherwise unharmed. And the cold had been more startling than painful, though it was far from comfortable.

The barking rushed ever closer.

On a whim, I turned and followed the stream, doing my best to keep out of the water.

It's how the bad guys always escaped the cop dogs in the movies. They crossed a river or something, right?

Sooner than I expected, the foliage burst apart. The ground fell away into a cliff, leaving nothing but a thin spray of water and air.

I hadn't even the breath to cry out. Wind whipped past me with a sting brother to the water. Colors whirled about, blended through with black paws and tails.

Then a thwack of water. Freezing, wet, wet, wet wet—

I clawed to the surface. Through the sheer hysteria overtaking me, I could just register the earthen gorge of ferns and thin threads of mist from the little streams falling in before my mind focused entirely on getting out. I had always been a confident swimmer, and enjoyed it, but anything 'me' had fled my mind, leaving only the instinct and distress of a fire poke'mon.

When I came back to my senses, I had crawled out onto a shore more pebbles and rotten wood than sand. My tails had grown numb and waterlogged, and I could barely pull them, let alone the rest of me, completely clear of the river.

The moment my front paws touched grass, I collapsed, gasping.

"Ow," I whimpered. "Owie. Owwwww."

Water burned. At least cold, early autumn water did.

I struggled to listen for those stupid dogs over the rush of water and my own heavy breathing. Maybe if I had bothered using my nose instead of my ears, I would have seen the worst threat coming.

But since I didn't, my only warning was the rustling of bushes before my world and my senses were engulfed in a flash of light. Some great invisible hand curved me down and down, through a ground that no longer existed, till I made a full rotation, round and round till I couldn't make sense of tail or nose.

Then, nothing.

Author's Note: I know this is a short chapter, so I'll have the next one up either tonight or tomorrow. It is of proper size.