She grinned at her reflection, throwing a brown-tipped paw inside it. She let the breeze brush her orange fur. Yawning, the mouse turned and padded away from the pond, wandering around the fields yet again. It had been so many days, such a long time, since she had left that prison of hers. She wasn't sure if it was a prison, now that she thought about it. She was barely even there.

But didn't they want to kill me? How long has it been?

'Thirteen years,' her mechanical voice muttered. The mouse grinned. Whenever she asked herself a question, or was confronted with something she was confused with, that mechanic voice would answer her.

Frowning, the mouse sighed. Thirteen years! That was a really long time. To stave off boredom, she always went around walking, exploring new lands, but it had gotten... boring, admittedly. Life was so troublesome! She wondered why she didn't end it then. After all, if this was going to become her forever life, living was really no point.

"I'm... thirteen years old," the mouse muttered, a much more Pokemon-sounding voice, unlike her inner mechanical one. "That's... a long time."

She sighed, turning around. I've left that building, and... and I'm really far away from it. I wonder what's happened to it...

Always on cue, her mechanical voice replied. 'News says that their building had been assaulted, exploded, and is now a place full of Ghost-type Pokemon.'

"That's... sad, I think that girl who made me run really did have good intentions." The mouse bit her tongue. "Nah, she's just some kind of alien... Humans aren't kind. Not for creating me."

"Hm, who're you?"

What do you mean who am I? You're my "dictionary", and you've known me for so long.

'There is another creature beside you.'

Blinking, the mouse turned around and jumped. The mechanical "her" was right! It was... an overgrown lizard! A yellow lizard with a black neck, and a black head, and a black-tipped tail! What kind of lizard was this..?!

"U-Uh! You're no-not a human, are you? But you're not a l-lizard!" the mouse squeaked nervously. She'd never in her life met anyone else that didn't look like a human. She was, as you could say, deprived of a normal life.

"A lizard? I'm a Heliolisk. Name's Casten. I asked you who you were, and you clearly overreacted."

"Over—" Her tongue got twisted there.

'Overreacted,' her inner mechanical voice corrected.

"Overreacted... No, no! I mean, my name is—wait, what's a name, if I may ask?"

'A word or set of words that a person is referred to.'

"Oh." The mouse bit her tongue, painfully. "B59."

"B59? That's a name? Numbers in it, too? C'mon, that's a weird name. You can rename yourself, if you want, nobody really cares..."

"B59 is a fine name," the mouse blurted. "I—I'm sat—sat—"

'Satisfied.'

"—satisfied with it!"

Casten looked at the mouse with a very confused expression. "Hm... B59... What about... Bei?"

The mouse stared blankly at him. "Um... Bei? What's a Bei? Is it a name? ...It sounds cute," the mouse admitted. "But how did you create it?"

"'E' is the fifth letter in the alphabet, and 'i' is the ninth. B is already there, so line it up in order it 'B-E-I'," Casten explained patiently. "If you don't like it, you could always think of something by yourself, y'know."

"No, no, like it," the mouse said, shaking her head. "...Bei." She grinned, liking the way it rolled off of her tongue. "Bei, Bei, Bei, Bei..." She giggled. "I like it!"

"Uh-huh." Casten nodded. "So... where d'you live? Anywhere nearby? 'Cause if you do, you'd wanna go back soon. It's getting late." Casten was definitely worried for this girl who seemed to be everything but the definition "sanity" and the like. It was worrisome.

"Me? Bei? Living somewhere nearby? No, I live very far away." Bei paused to think about it. "I don't know whether it's where I live, but I was made there!"

Casten sighed. "Where are your parents?"

The mouse blinked. "Parents? Oh, I don't have those stuff. Never had them in the first place."

"Bei, you're a Raichu. You're a Pokemon. You have to have parents!"

"Oh, so I'm a Raichu? That's cool! Well, I don't have parents, dunno about you..." Bei shrugged and smiled. "I'm an experiment!"

"...An experiment?"

That tone.

Why did it make her feel so... so... agh.

Bei bit her bottom lip and nodded tentatively. "Y-Yeah. Um, created by... not-normal standards." The Raichu frowned slightly. "How do normal Pokemon get about? Hm, that makes me wonder..."

'Reproduction.'

How do they reproduce?

The voice did not answer.

"Well... Let's not mind that for now. Where are you going?" Casten asked.

"Er." Bei got caught there. She wasn't sure where she was going, if anywhere.

'Nowhere,' the voice provided, suspiciously not answering Bei's question earlier.

"Nowhere," Bei echoed. "I've got nowhere to go in the first place. I know nothing about the world, so... Hey! But y'know, when I was walking one day, I went near this yellow lump, then I—I started glowing, y'know! Then my appearance changed, it's called 'evolution', that's what the voice said."

"What voi—"

"But I wanna go see whether I can evolve again, so I'm traveling! It's fun to see new appearances! Maybe I can find a lump that makes me look like you?" Bei grinned admiringly. "That'd be cool!"

"Bei, you evolved because you went near a Thunder Stone lump. You went near it while you were a Pikachu, and evolved into a Raichu. You can't evolve further," Casten explained, sighing exasperatedly. "Seems like you don't know anything about the world—what's that on your left ear?"

Bei tilted her head. "Huh? ...An ear?" she suggested, tipping her head downwards to allow him to check.

After a while of inspecting, Casten sighed. "Looks like some sort of logo... It's a fire rising over mountains, and it's completely red. What's that mean..?"

The Raichu was quick to recognize it from the description. She growled and shot up. "No way! They gave me that logo when they created me?! Ugh! That sucks! Well, at least I know that's the logo to look out for if I see any other robot-stuff..."

"So what are you gonna do?"

"Hm. I suppose I'll follow you." Shrugging happily, Bei nodded towards him. "I've got nothing better to do, do I? I'll decide what I want to do later."

"Oh. Well. Sure."

Bei padded after him, as she sighed, relieved that she was now not wandering stupidly around the land. She was joyous, to say the least.

...

What was "joyous"?