AN: This is literally just an attempt to write out my annoyance we aren't getting new Gen 5 content. There were SO many hints and I was SO hyped for a Legends Unova game! Anyway, disclaimer, I do not own Pokemon or any of its characters, just my OCs and the plot. With that, please enjoy me shamelessly indulging in my obsession with everybody's favorite Pokemon whisperer.

Chapter One: When We Began

My life began with a storm and a black fox. My first solid memory is burying my face in his coarse black fur as if he were a stuffed animal as shelter from the driving rain and freezing cold, and looking into his blue eyes.

He spoke to me, but I couldn't understand what he was asking until he repeated himself. Twice.

'Hey, kid? What are you doing out here? It's cold and wet and you'll freeze without a thick pelt like mine.'

At that moment, I barely thought about anything. I was barely aware of my surroundings. It was like I had just been born.

I didn't know I wasn't supposed to understand what he said until later.

It didn't even register that it was unusual that the high-pitched chatters and yelps translated themselves in my head into easily comprehended English words until my attempt to describe it left trained psychiatrists shaking their heads and expressing the hope I was kidding or would grow out of it.

So, I did the only logical thing and answered back.

"W-where am I?"

'Offhand, I'd say a big green area with some trees for decoration. The humans call it Jacob Park. I call it home.'

I looked around, noting my surroundings were just like what the fox described. They were also completely unfamiliar.

"H-huh? W-what am I doing here? How did I get here?"

'I thought you could answer that. I just came back to my den hoping to get out of the rain, and there you were.'

I forced myself up, dimly noticing how freezing and soaked I was, and immediately felt a massive surge of pain rip across my right side, pain that prickled up to the same side of my face and neck - and to a lesser extent, on the other side.

The fox's hackles immediately rose in alarm. 'Great twin dragons, kid! What happened to you?'

"Wh-what do you mean?" I replied.

It was only then that I saw the blood.

I was dressed in semi formal clothes that might have looked nice if they didn't have a massive, lurid red stain down the side and front, extending to my sweater and overshirt sleeve, and look like they had been salvaged from a pack of rabid dogs. Looking under my shirt had me looking at a massive slash mark down my torso which was still bleeding and looked tainted with something poisonous. My right arm had an extra bend where there wasn't supposed to be one, several of my fingers - on both hands - pointed a way they weren't naturally supposed to point, and my left arm was covered in scratches and teeth marks, like it had been used as a chew toy by something with far too many teeth. Gingerly reaching up to touch my face, I felt a surge of pain as my broken fingers met raw flesh and came away stained red.

For a moment, I sat there, staring at my battered, broken body in horror.

Then the freezing rain and shock were no longer enough to dull the pain.

I toppled back over, using my left arm to staunch the bleeding from my side and, unable to scream, settled for taking massive, shuddering breaths that bordered on hyperventilating instead.

'Whoa, whoa, hey, kid!' the fox yelped. 'Ohhh… G-Get on my back. Now. I'll help ya walk, you need a hospital.'

I collapsed against him, and the fox practically carried me to a large building with a red cross on the sign out front.

I only managed to walk through the sliding doors and look at the receptionist blankly, who screamed as if she were looking at one of the living dead, before I fell to the floor, unconscious.

The first night I remember passed in a fitful whirl of surgeries, hospital beds, and horrified nurses. Talk of 'no family contact', 'lack of identification', and 'animal attack' were passed around just outside my range of comprehension.

When my body wasn't so flooded with painkillers and anesthetics I couldn't think straight, I asked repeatedly about the fox. For hours my questions were dismissed until a nurse finally told me that the fox was being kept by an Animal Control officer until they could decide what to do with him. I begged them to let the fox go free, even, if they couldn't do that, bring him to me so I could see he was alright, but they were adamant that a wild animal wasn't allowed in the hospital's halls.

Finally, the last of the surgeries (of the night, at least) was done, and I was allowed to return from the state of half-awareness the high amounts of painkiller - morphine was clearly mentioned, and I had taken a moment to, in my addled state, wonder why and how I knew exactly what morphine was down to the chemical structure, but my own name or how I had come to be lying in Jacob Park so grievously wounded was a mystery to me - had kept me confined in.

I awoke in a starch white hospital bed, my right arm in a cast, my fingers splinted, swaths of gauze wrapped around my other arm and right side, hiding a dizzying amount of stitches and slathers of medicine, and my face was covered in adhesive bandages and also stitched up across the cheek below my eye, where the worst cut was. The pain was still there, but it had died down to the point I could think through it. The morphine, I suspected, was to blame. An IV tube was somehow squeezed into the crook of my left arm despite the rest of it being bandaged and was attached to a drip hanging above my head. A doctor was standing over me.

"Oh, good, you're awake," the doctor said in relief. "You gave us all such a fright, staggering in here like a zombie at that hour. I never thought you would recover so fast; I assumed you'd still be out for a long time. You went through five surgeries tonight, you know that, young man? Five!" He leaned down and winked at me. "Somebody upstairs must really like you."

I blinked in confusion, my mind drawing a blank as to what to say, before I replied quickly. "I…guess so."

The doctor sat down. "I have a few questions though. To start, we couldn't find any identification on you, and you said you couldn't remember when we asked you about your name or any family we could contact. I thought that was just the morphine talking, but…"

I shook my head. "I-I can't. Remember that, I mean."

The doctor frowned. "What's the last thing you do remember?"

"Waking up in the park tonight," I replied.

The doctor's frown deepened. "And you don't know how you were injured?"

I shook my head, wishing he would leave so I could think things over myself.

He muttered under his breath, before looking at me again.

"Can you try? Don't strain yourself, but… bits and pieces are better than nothing."

I nodded anxiously, before shutting my eyes and trying to think it over.

I remember waking up in the park and talking to the fox. I remember discovering I was wounded. I remember getting carried to the hospital. I remember passing out.

But when I tried to reach back further, I felt sharp fireworks of pain go off in my head, making me clutch my temples. My memories stopped short, as if I had struck a wall.

The doctor grabbed my arm. "Hey, don't push it!"

But just before he did, a vague image slipped through. It felt distant and unreal, like a dream. In it, I was running, pelting, through a thick forest, someone or something in hot pursuit.

Shaking my head to rouse myself from the image. I looked up at the doctor.

"I… I remember a forest. I was running; something was chasing me."

The doctor furrowed his brow. "An animal, I guess? I guessed from your wounds that some animal was involved."

"I… don't know. I can't remember what it looked like."

"Hey, hey, take it easy." the doctor soothed. He stood up. "Like I said, little pieces are better than nothing at all. And maybe more will come back, given time to recover."

"But… why? Why did I lose my memory?"

"A lot of times amnesia has something to do with trauma - physical or mental. Yeah, it can be the result of a condition, but from what I saw you're a perfectly healthy person, and perfectly healthy people don't lose their memory for no reason." He snorted. "From the way you came in here, it's a sure bet you went through something traumatic."

"Will they… come back? My memories, I mean?"

"I want to say yes, but…"

"But…"

"...Memory loss is a funny thing. Sometimes, episodes can last only a few hours, and they just forget what they were doing the night before or something similar. But there are some people out there who are missing massive chunks of their memories, as you are, and they don't regain those memories for years. A lot of those cases never completely recover everything, either."

"So, you're saying I could stay like this, with no idea who I am, for the rest of my life?"

The doctor shook his head. "I wish I could offer you more optimistic news. All I can say is keep hoping; your memories might come back. But I wouldn't hold your breath and expect that."

I let my head drop and buried my face in my hands.

"...On the bright side, you're recovering nicely from your injuries apart from that, which means, give or take a week or two to ensure the surgeries went well, you'll be able to go home soon."

"But where is home?" I muttered, my voice muffled behind my hands.

"We asked around, and there's a state foster home willing to let you stay," the doctor replied. "It's not the best option because it's so short notice, but given no family members have called in, it's the best we can hope for."

At my expression, the doctor tried to smile reassuringly.

"Don't worry, young man. I'm sure everything will work out in the end."

I couldn't return the smile.

The doctor left the room to retrieve the instruments he needed and returned with them in hand and an older woman in tow. She smiled graciously at me.

"I can see why you didn't want one of the younger techs in here," she said somewhat mischievously. To me, she added, "You are quite the handsome young man, you know."

The doctor uncomfortably cleared his throat, prompting the nurse (I assumed she was a nurse) in tow. Her comment, however (aside from making me feel embarrassed and flustered) prompted me to realize that I didn't know (correction, no longer remembered) what I looked like.

Well, apart from the glimpses I could get of my body - slender arms and legs (currently wrapped in casts and bandages) and pale, weak-looking hands that looked like they never touched the sun, with long, thin fingers (also splinted).

When I quietly whispered this to the doctor, he nodded in understanding.

"I hadn't thought about that personally, but-" he coughed awkwardly. "-Forgetting everything means forgetting everything, I suppose. Kathy? Can you get a mirror?"

I tilted the handheld mirror Nurse Kathy brought from side to side in my hands, examining the reflection looking back at me.

Not a single detail was familiar. If it weren't for the fact that the image was copying my movements, I would never have guessed it belonged to me.

My face was thin and pale, with that same sickly, tissue-paper, never-touched-the-sun look as my hands. The only mark on it was the large, stitched scar across my cheek, stretching down to my jaw, surrounded by a rash of smaller, less severe cuts in a crescent moon from above my eye to my chin. All of them stood out sharply pink against my white skin.

The only way I could accurately describe my eyes was sleep deprived. Dark rings (which looked especially severe given how pale and sickly I looked) were visible under them, and they were noticeably bloodshot. They were green, but what shade of green seemed to change depending on how the light reflected off them and the way I angled the mirror - hence why I was tilting it side to side, fascinated.

My hair hung in waves down my back, with the exception of some shorter, spiky strands that framed my face and a large chunk that looked like it had been burned off, the singed ends just brushing my shoulder. What was really odd about it, though, was the color.

It appeared to be an unusual shade of green, matching my eyes. Part of me pointed out, urged on by the doctor and Nurse Kathy exchanging looks, that such a hair color was decidedly not normal. I carefully ran my fingers through it, wincing when they caught on a snag.

"Is it dyed, do you think?" Nurse Kathy asked.

The doctor looked at me, and I shook my head helplessly. I didn't think I was the kind of person to dye my hair, but then again, I didn't know the first thing about myself.

"The only way to know for sure is to get a sample analyzed, but that's not necessary. The only reason we might is if it was needed for an investigation of some kind, or if whatever dye used - if there was any - was causing some kind of negative reaction. Since you're not under investigation for any crime - I assume - and you aren't showing signs of an allergy, it looks like we don't strictly have to."

"...Right. So, what do you plan on doing with me?" I asked.

"Well, first, we need to keep you under observation to ensure nothing went wrong with the surgeries. If all goes well in that regard, we'll probably be able to discharge you. Again, a local foster home agreed to let you stay there until a family member steps forward looking for you. Obviously, having someone come forward is the best case scenario, as it's the most stable option for you, personally - and I'll be frank about that. But given that no one has, at least tonight…"

"I understand. It's… It's unlikely."

The doctor frowned sympathetically. "I really wish there was something I could do about your memories." He shook his head, before turning to leave. "But… there are some things a doctor visit can't fix."

Nurse Kathy was last to leave. "There's the remote to operate the TV. Press that button there if you need anything, and we'll be right there," she said kindly. "Would you like to have the light off so you can sleep?"

"Yes, thank you."

I was left in darkness, the only light coming from the hall outside and other patients in the same suite as I was who were watching their own TVs.

At first I tried to go to sleep. However, I had spent enough of the evening anesthetized from the surgeries I had undergone that I felt wide awake. When I did sleep, it was fitfully, in short bursts, filled with disjointed images of my memories of that night interspersed with that same faint, dreamlike scene of running, panicked, from something through a shadowy forest, lightning cleaving the sky in two. The shape that I could not identify closed the distance between us no matter how fast I tried to run, and each time, the dream ended just before the massive claw tore through me.

I awoke, panting and disoriented, having to ensure I was alone before trying to sleep again.

In the predawn hours of the morning, I gave up on any attempt at true, restful sleep. Instead, I flicked on my room's television.

The TV's audio had a metallic kind of quality to it, and I didn't think I liked it very much. In addition, I was aware of other patients next door trying to sleep. So, I turned the volume all the way down, and fiddled with the remote trying to turn the subtitles on. Once that was done, I flickered through the different channels, trying to find one that interested me.

It was after a long time of clicking past infomercial after infomercial (why hospital televisions devoted so much time to them was beyond me, considering the patients didn't have a use for what they were selling much of the time) that I found a nature documentary that caught my eye. Almost by uncanny coincidence, it was about foxes. I watched the animals onscreen and thought about my unusual friend and where he was.

And thus I spent my first night in the hospital - the first night of many.