Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

She woke slowly. Everything was blurry but she wasn’t in pain. She blinked to clear her vision and immediately realized something was wrong. She was in a forest, when she distinctly remembered dying in a hospital bed. 

Ah. She had finally passed away. This must be Heaven. The forest was gorgeous and sunlight filtered down through the treetops. While it was less cloud-like than she imagined, she didn’t mind at all. She was pain-free for the first time in years. Leukemia fucking sucked, and chemotherapy sucked even more.

She’d spent years in and out of hospitals, but her cancer had never really responded well to the treatments. It was particularly aggressive and she’d accepted her fate a long time ago, made peace with it in a sense.

Her parents had not. They worked themselves into the ground to pay for the insurance and all her treatments. St. Jude helped a little, but she was a little past the target age demographic.

She remembered having a big argument with her parents over stopping her treatments. They weren’t working anyway, so she’d dropped out of school and got to spend her last few months where she’d still felt well enough to walk around in Japan.

It had been a dream come true. She’d loved every second of her trip to Tokyo, with the highlights of her trip including four out of the six main Pokemon Center Official Merchandise stores.

She’d fallen in love with the franchise as a child. She’d been eight and her very first video game ever had been a copy of Pokemon Ruby. She’d passed away in that hospital bed surrounded by family and holding her favorite Zorua plushie.

She hoped they were doing okay, but for now, she just enjoyed the scenery. She eventually decided to get up and explore a little bit, wondering if she’d find her grandma here somewhere, or her childhood dog, or maybe even her guinea pig.

When she tried and failed to stand up, she knew something was wrong. She could tell her limbs were all wrong. She frantically looked down and saw two little paws instead of hands.

Oh. This was one of those, wasn’t it?  

She knew those little paws. Black and tipped with red socks, she had a sneaking suspicion as to what she looked like now. Craning her neck around, she was greeted by the sight of a small black vulpine body, complete with adorable fluffy fox tail.

She tried again to stand up, trying to take into account that she was not meant to stand upright on two legs any more. That attempt went much better. Her legs were splayed out a little, trying to compensate for how awkward the whole thing felt. 

It took her several minutes to get walking down, but it wasn’t too hard. Seems like her new, hopefully cancer-free body came with some actions sort of pre-installed.

Okay, I’ve died and clearly the universe has had a little hiccup, and now I’m a Zorua. Okay. This is fine. I thought I was gonna die, but I’ve just gotten a new chance at life, so hopefully my own fucking body doesn’t crap out on me like my last one did.

Okay, don’t panic. I’ve imagined this scenario a hundred times, right? ‘What would I do if I got dropped into the Pokeverse?’ Easy: take over the fucking world, or at least have my own criminal empire. 

Seriously, if this world is anything like the anime portrayed, the villains here suck so much ass, it isn’t even funny. I always told myself that if something like this ever happened, I’d be running the joint in under five years.

And even if it was way more realistic, then I’d still be able to become a really good Pokemon trainer. People were so stupid with their battle tactics. Why shout your commands at your Pokemon loud enough for the opponent to hear? Then they’ll just be able to counter whatever strategy you just came up with!

Solution: either use a different language or some form of code like ‘attack pattern delta’ or some shit like that, idiot. Then your opponent has no fucking clue what your plan is. 

Even better, learn German as your secret combat language, because there were fewer things more terrifying in life than having an angry German person yelling at you, especially if they had access to a fire breathing dragon that would obey their every command.

Seriously, the villains would be so much more effective if they just employed some common fucking sense, and a little something called ‘The Evil Overlord List’. 

Also, in accordance to the list and also common fucking decency, treat Pokemon with kindness and respect. Those are sentient creatures with the ability to shoot lethal amounts of lightning or call down a literal meteor strike. Only an absolute fucking dumbass would abuse a Pokemon. Like Giovanni with Mewtwo.

The man was smart enough to put together a team of scientists smart enough to clone and create the most powerful Pokemon ever, but somehow also not smart enough to realize that he should probably give it some kind of really good incentive to stick around and listen to him.

Does he do that? No, of course not. Instead he treats the creature that is definitely smarter and stronger than him like garbage, and is then surprised when it destroys shit and flies away.

Moron.

Solution: endear yourself to your Pokemon, make them strong and gain their love and respect, and they’d literally die for you. It isn’t hard to treat something with kindness and respect! Not being an absolute dickhead was literally the easiest thing ever, and yet none of the criminal teams seem to have realized that.

Her criminal team would be different. Every grunt would be mandated to have six Pokemon, and to follow a strict training regime to make them strong and keep them strong, with strict guidelines on how they were to treat their Pokemon.

Abusers would have their Pokemon revoked and be punished severely for being an asshole to innocent animals.

All grunts would have to attend mandatory strategy courses so they didn’t suck at Pokemon battles, and promotions would be based on ability and merit and nothing else.

And most Pokemon cared about their trainers, right? So instead of having a big messy Pokemon battle that you could potentially lose, just command your aforementioned giant dragon to take the trainer hostage! Make the Pokemon get back in their Pokeballs if they didn’t want youngster Joey to get a face full of Flamethrower. 

Also, she’d perform a little corporate espionage and force the Silph Co. to provide them with Masterballs. Then, she’d just catch or have a really fucking fast pokemon that could fly that she could ride, and then just stalk Ash Ketchum until he inevitably fucking bumbled across a Legendary Pokemon.

Then, riding her aforementioned super-swift flying Pokemon like a Pidgeot or a Garchomp, swoop in and snipe the catch and fly off with the freshly caught Legendary before anyone had any time to react.

Then, just make nice with the Pokemon after. That was what all trainers did. The Pokemon might hate their guts at first, but gain its respect and admiration, and you’re golden.

She knew such things were possible, because there was that one asshole who showed up to the Pokemon League with a Darkrai AND a Latios. Seriously, what the fuck had happened to that guy? He’d managed to catch the closest things that existed to literal GODS and everyone just kinda went, ‘oh that’s neat’ and you never saw them again.

Just...what?

And those weren’t even the most powerful or rare Legendaries either! Ash had encountered and managed to befriend Giratina! Imagine rocking up to the block with Pokemon Satan in your back pocket! People would shit bricks!

Ash was such a fucking dumbass, it actually made her mad. Seriously, all he had to do was go, ‘hey I know you’re probably really busy and stuff, but could you just come help me out for a couple of weeks so I can win the Pokemon League? It’s sorta been my childhood dream, but I can’t seem to get there no matter how hard I try! Help a pal out wouldja? I’ll release you right after, promise!’ and just win the League like that.

Or what about offering to catch the Legendary but letting them out of their ball immediately and letting them go off and live their own lives, safe from being potentially caught by an evil douchecanoe?

Seriously, everyone was an idiot except her. The solutions were so easy and no one but her seemed to see them!

Anyways, back to her current predicament of being four legged and way more adorable than she used to be. She couldn’t do any of that if she got caught by some random asshole ten year old, so she needed to find a solution, and fast.

Knowing her luck, Zorua were not at all native to wherever the fuck she was, and if word got out that there was a super-rare Pokemon out in the local woods, she’d never get a moment’s rest!

Thankfully, some of her shitty karma seemed to have balanced itself out and had given her the perfect solution to both problems at once!

She was a Zorua, a master of illusions and disguises, although she was more inclined to believe it was more like true-shapeshifting than a mere illusion.

In the movie featuring Zorua, it had transformed into a human, and had picked stuff up and carried things around, which was something a mere illusion couldn’t do. So, there had to be more substance to the shape changing than that.

Oh sure, Zorua and Zoroark were totally capable of illusions on a mass scale as well, hiding entire buildings and forest clearings and shit like that. Honestly, if she played her cards right, that ability could just be broken as all fuck.

Imagine being in a battle, and casting an illusion that you were actually three feet to the left of wherever you actually were. You can’t hit what you don’t even know is there! And also, just the sheer thievery potential and possibility of trolling the shit out of people was too good to pass up. 

She could just walk into a store looking like some random shmuck, grab something and cast an illusion to make it look like the item was still there and that she wasn’t holding anything, and just walk right out with whatever the hell she wanted!

It was basically Genjutsu from Naruto, and everyone knew how absolutely bullshit hax the Sharingan was.

But first things first. Find a reflective surface to get a good look at herself and then start practicing her powers. If she was right and it was an actually a true shift, then she could then transform into a dirty, lost little girl, one young enough that any ignorance about how the world worked could be excused, and then wander into any small town looking pathetic, and wait for someone to help her.

She wasn’t worried about creepers or child molesters or anything like that, because if some creepy bastard tried anything funny, she’d drop the disguise in favor of her own safety and annihilate the asshole using her Pokemon powers. Creeps that preyed on children didn’t get to keep their breathing privileges if she caught them.

Then, she could just claim ignorance about everything, maybe include some kind of head wound in the illusion just to really sell it, and get herself into the nearest orphanage or foster home or however the shit stuff like that worked in crazy anime coo-coo land.

Then, she’d have a legal identity and paper trail, and then she’d really be cooking with gas! Yeah, her world domination plans would take a lot longer than five years, but for this, she could play the long con.

She’d fly through school since she’d already gone through a general education for the most part, and probably get a scholarship. Then, she’d read every single fucking book about Pokemon care she could get her grubby little mitts on. She’d be a goddamn fantastic trainer or die trying. She’d get a starter Pokemon of some kind and be off on her own journey.

She could use her ability to understand Pokemon by virtue of being a Pokemon to totally cheat. If a regular Meowth could learn to talk, then so could she, and she had the advantage of already knowing what it was like to speak like a human.

At some point in her journey, she’d catch herself, so that anyone who found out her secret couldn’t just huck a ball at her and ruin everything. She didn’t have to ever use herself to battle, and could just claim her ‘Zorua’ was just super shy and hated strangers if they ever started asking questions as to why nobody ever saw it.

If push came to shove, she could probably project an illusion of herself as a Zorua in case anyone started getting suspicious. Though, that whole tactic would limit her to only five actual Pokemon she could use in a fight.

Was it possible to register a Pokemon as a non-combatant so you could carry six plus any extras? Why was the limit six, anyway? She supposed she’d learn that in trainer school, if she ever got that far.

She toddled her way through the woods for a bit, frustrated at how slow travel was now that her legs were five inches long, and absolutely paranoid about any noise that could potentially be a predator Pokemon, or even worse, a human.

The forest seemed oddly quiet though, and she was able to find a shallow pool of water, much too dirty to drink from, but good enough to provide a reflection.

Oh holy shit I’m so fucking adorable!

She spent a good few minutes admiring herself in the puddle, just drinking in the sight of an actual, living, breathing Pokemon, no matter that it was now her own reflection. She practiced dialing up the puppy-dog eyes to eleven, and was not disappointed.

Okay, enough screwing around, how do I get my powers to work?

It took a couple of hours, and a bit of meditation, but she eventually succeeded in transforming herself into a Vulpix, the Pokemon she thought of to look as similar to Zorua as you could get.

It had basically the same proportions and basic shape as a Zorua, so she figured it was good as a beginner step. Even though she had no idea what a real-life version of a Vulpix looked like, her new form didn’t look like a cartoon version at all. Everything was proportionate and looked stunningly realistic.

She tried wagging all of her new tails, and discovered she could feel with all of them and they interacted with the environment, moving grass and leaves around.

So, it IS a true shapeshift. Perfect.

In the anime, when Zorua transformed into a human, it still had a tail, and a tendency to hold its hands like paws and walk funny.

It also couldn’t hold its shape if someone grabbed its tail. That would make the Zorua drop the illusion almost immediately, and she couldn’t afford to have such an obvious give away or weakness.

She tried transforming back into her old body, and like magic, she was back! She was also naked, and the shock of that made her drop the illusion immediately, cheeks flaming with embarrassment. She quickly looked around to make sure that no one had seen her, and was relieved to find herself alone in the woods, just as she had been for the past few hours. 

Then she realized that as a Zorua, she was always naked, and that took several minutes to calm down from. Her fur covered everything and no one expected a Pokemon to wear pants, so everything was fine. Right.

While she hadn’t held her human shape very long, she did hold it long enough to see that instead of a tail, her eyes stayed the same bright sea-foam green as her Zorua form.

Hopefully that meant that she’d have to get poked in the eye or some shit to be forced to drop the illusion. Accidental eye-poking wasn’t super common thankfully, so that was probably a non-concern.

Her stomach rumbled though, and she was getting thirsty. Hopefully there were some berry bushes or something around here. She shifted into a Rattata, the blandest, most common Pokemon she could think of that still had four legs.

Rattatas were lame and also a dime a dozen, so hopefully any people she stumbled across wouldn’t want to catch her.

She eventually found some food, an Oran berry bush, and had finally managed to encounter the first Pokemon other than herself in these strangely-empty woods. It was a Pidgey, two of them actually, which didn’t really narrow down the places she could be all that much, unfortunately.

She could also understand the things like they were speaking English, which was cool as fuck, but she could still tell they were making ‘Pidgey’ noises underneath the comprehensible stuff, which lined up with this being coo-coo anime land and not something more realistic.

In order to say ‘Pidgey’ the things had to have a complex set of vocal cords, certainly ones capable of making other sounds, which was good news for her master plan of being able to talk like a human again.

They were talking about the most boring, banal shit ever, and she just decided to ninja her way in, grab a couple of berries and get out. She didn’t know if these birds had staked a claim on this bush or something, but she was hungry.

Unfortunately for her, the birds had keen eyes and managed to spot her stealing their berries, and were quite upset about it.

“Hey! Those are ours, you can’t have any!” one of the birds said angrily.

“Well I’m hungry and lost! I don’t know where I am, and there’s plenty of other berries on that bush! You won’t miss a couple!” she yelled back, hoping to get away without a fight.

“If we just let you take them, then others will come looking for free food too! If you want those berries, you have to battle us for them!”

“Are you kidding me right now? Fine, you wanna fight? Then let’s fight!”

She didn’t know any moves yet, but Rattata had huge teeth, so she was sure biting something and clamping down with all her might would probably inflict some kind of damage.

She also didn’t know if this was anime fantasy land where no one died and none of the Pokemon ate each other despite the Pokedex saying otherwise, or if this was about to be a fight to the death.

She didn’t want to die again so soon, so until she was shown proof to the contrary, she’d fight like her life depended on it and pull absolutely no punches. Honor had no place in a fight, and this was clearly a two on one, as well as being her first fight as a Pokemon.

I’m so fucked, aren’t I?

She hadn’t even attempted area-wide illusions, and she wasn’t about to waste precious time trying.

One Pidgey started flapping their wings hard, and a great force of wind started up. A Gust attack, then. Other than pushing her around, it didn’t seem to do anything, so she just dug her tiny rat claws into the earth and charged forwards, attempting to bite the thing.

She had to dodge to the side though as the other Pidgey came swooping in, beak lit with white energy. Peck, then. The bird missed and kept going for a bit before circling back around, giving her an idea.

When the Pidgies tried another Gust and Peck combo, clearly their strategy of choice, she made sure to position herself in such a way that when the second Pidgey came swooping in, when she leapt over the suddenly startled bird, it didn’t react in time to pull out of its dive, and it plowed right into the first Pidgey, sending them both into a tree.

She then decided that discretion was the better part of valor, and ran away with her spoils while the two Pidgies were busy untangling themselves and shouting at each other. By the time they’d sorted themselves out, she was long gone, having made off with many more berries than she’d planned to take in the first place.

She’d run a fair distance, somehow managing to drag all the food with her, and she tucked into her food while hiding in a bush. 

The berries were delicious, although they were kinda dry, which only made her water situation more dire. She ate until she was full and then went off to search for some water.

Thankfully, all her senses were jacked all the way up to eleven, and after a few more minutes of wandering, she detected the soft sounds of a bubbling brook.

She followed her nose and ears and soon discovered the source to be a small stream which had crystal clear water.

It looks clean at least, and my nose says it's fine, but I swear to god, if I get intestinal worms from this…!

She bent down and instead of lapping up the water like a normal Pokemon probably would, she dunked her face in far enough to suck water into her mouth, like she would if she were still a human.

While she may be a shapeshifting magic fox currently in the form of a glorified rat, she was still human in mind, and would not lower herself to lapping at water like a dog!

Now that her hunger and thirst were sated for the moment, it was time to find some shelter. She could always just hide in a bush, but that didn’t seem very cozy or warm.

She looked around for potential shelters, but her luck had run out, it seemed. Well, if she couldn’t find a shelter, then she’d just make one herself!

She looked around carefully and determined that she was, once again, completely alone. She dropped her shapeshift and examined her paws a bit more. She mostly resembled a fox now, and foxes dug and lived in burrows, right? She’d just find a place with some soft-ish dirt and get to work.

She eventually decided on a space beneath a dead tree. The roots would be dry and easier to dig through, and she hoped the dead stump would keep the roof from caving in on her.

Digging was hard, dirty work, but she managed a very small shelter after a few hours, just in time for the sunset. She washed herself off in the nearby stream and shook herself as dry as she could before making her way to her little comfy hole in the ground.

She curled up and quickly fell asleep.

She had no idea quite how many days she spent in that forest, but it was at least a few months. She practiced everything she could think of. Any moves Zorua could learn, a bunch more shapeshifting and illusion practice, and she’d started on her human form and speech.

She’d determined that she must have been pretty far away from civilization, because she’d never heard so much as a whisper of a human. She’d learned quite a few things actually. 

Firstly, it seemed as though whatever world she had ended up in was a cross between coo-coo anime land and something more like real life. Pokemon did eat each other sometimes, if the species was carnivorous or omnivorous and there weren’t enough berries to go around.

Moves were difficult to learn, but she probably had a much easier time of it than a real wild Pokemon, because she still had her human brain with all of its creativity and resourcefulness to rely on. She was basically her own trainer!

She had herself gone back when she’d figured out Pokemon moves and claimed the berry bush for herself. She’d accidentally bit one of the Pidgeies too hard and broken its neck during the fight, scaring the other one off. Pidgey tasted kinda like pheasant.

She’d even managed to teach herself the move Dig, even though it was a TM move in the games. She also had access to Extrasensory, which was an egg move, and also fucking OP when the scariest opponents in the woods were Beedrills.

Rumors had spread about the unnatural Rattata that lived near the stream though, so after she pummeled a small swarm of Beedrill into the ground using a move she had no way of knowing or using if she’d been a real Rattata, other Pokemon avoided her like the plague, which suited her just fine. 

She still almost died from that encounter though. That had been scary.

She figured out how to cast area-wide illusions, though it was hard and could be exhausting if she tried doing anything too big, but she could sort of tie the illusion to an area, and as long as she charged it with a bit of energy now and then, it would stay up on its own, which was a relief.

She used it to hide where her little burrow was, and managed to figure out how to set up a sort of invisibility field around herself, though it took quite a bit of concentration at the moment.

Another thing she’d also practiced was flying. Yeah, you heard right.

If she transformed into a Pidgey, she had wings and her bullshit Pokemon hax made her lighter too. She often wondered if what she was actually doing was the move Transform, but she never gained or lost the ability to use any moves, so it was just a physical change it seemed. 

Her eyes always transformed too, so it seemed the Zorua traits only crossed over to her human form, which was interesting but also bullshit.

She had been mentally preparing for days to transform into a Pidgey and fly off to find civilization. Her human disguise was flawless, especially after she figured out how to transform with some fucking clothes on.

If she did that, though, she couldn’t take the clothes off, as they were part of the transformation. She decided on a dirty, tattered sleeping gown as for her first disguise as the injured, lost child.

Her adult human form mostly looked like she had, except she had...photo-shopped a few things. Her skin was a gorgeous pale color, unmarred by moles or freckles. She had jet-black hair that was silky smooth and her same vibrant blue-green eyes. Her eyelashes were long, her eyebrows were shapely, and she had, ahem, enhanced her figure, just a bit.

A nice flat tummy with legs for days and an ass to die for. Her breasts were a nice handful but nothing too big. She’d had some real knockers back in her first life, and containing them and keeping them from bouncing all over the place had been a pain in the ass, and chest.

Being able to use them to get what she wanted out of life was nice though. It was almost sad how much boys fell over themselves to help a girl with nice tits when she seemed to show even the slightest bit of interest in them. It also attracted assholes by the droves though, so she decided to have a modest but still shapely bust this time around.

In short, her new human adult form looked drop-dead fucking gorgeous. While she’d never thought herself ugly or even all that below-average exactly, she’d just never been super satisfied with her body or face the first time around, so she decided to make herself look like whatever the fuck she wanted this time around. No self consciousness regarding her looks this time around, no sir!

Her child form was cute as a button though. All big eyes and hopeful smiles. She could now speak flawlessly in any form to boot, and not with any ridiculous accent! That had really been the final piece she’d been missing, and now that she had that part down pat, she was ready to go interact with people again, and sleep in a real bed, and eat cooked food.

She’d practiced holding her human form through all kinds of hardships and things like sleep, because the last thing she needed was for somebody to find out about her secret because they jumpscared her or caught her napping or something equally as stupid.

Shapeshifting was mostly easy as cake though, with made sense considering it was supposed to be her species signature ability. She was wary about being scanned by a Pokedex or other medical devices, unsure of what they would report, but additional testing had shown that unless she got a severe injury, her shape would hold, although it would take more and more concentration to hold onto it the more she was injured.

That had been a scary week, and it was also how she’d figured out she had access to Extrasensory. A bunch of Beedrills had basically ambushed her, and bug moves fucking hurt!

She’d managed to use her new super effective move to mop the floor with the stupid bugs after, but she’d almost died, she was pretty sure. She definitely would’ve died if she hadn’t had the foresight to stock up on different status-healing berries she’d found. That mushy Pecha berry had probably saved her life from death by poison.

So, now she hated Beedrills, and bug types on principle. Call her a racist, but when a single bee sting could almost kill her, she felt she had a right to be suspicious of anything and everything insectoid.

Today was the big day. She’d stuffed herself on berries, drank a lot of water, and was ready to go blend in with the humans!

First step: Fucking finding any humans to blend in with! Seriously, where the hell is everyone?!

She felt like she’d flown for hours, and she was starting to get hungry again. She was just about to give up and land for the night, when she finally, finally, spotted some signs of civilization in the distance. The sun was close to setting, though it hadn’t quite started yet.

She winged her way towards civilization again, and almost fell out of the sky upon recognizing a very familiar Pokemon Research Lab.

Holy shit, it’s Pallet Town! This is my lucky day!

If she was able to tag along with Ash for at least a little bit, she was bound to meet Mewtwo at some point! She really wanted to meet Mewtwo. He deserved way better than he got. Not all humans were complete dicks, and he deserved a hug.

She landed in the woods not far outside town and transformed into her little girl form. She’d be in it for a good long while, subtly aging up her disguise until she was full-grown again. 

She wondered if Ash would age, or if the one conspiracy theory about Ho-oh granting him eternal youth would turn out to be true. Then she wondered if she was even at the right point in the timeline for Ash to even be in Pallet Town, but it didn’t matter, she was committed now.

She made sure to rub some dirt on herself and made doubly sure to get her bare feet dirty as all hell. She was supposed to have been wandering in the woods for weeks. She made herself look almost half-starved and started up the waterworks to get some authentic tear tracks through the dirt on her face.

She dirtied up her hair and made sure to get it nice and tangled, adding in a couple of dead leaves as a finishing touch.

She looked to be around five or six years old, plenty young enough to not have any idea what’s going on. Only that she was cold and lost and didn’t remember a thing, and won’t you please help me, sir?

Disguise and cover story in place, she stumbled out of the woods and proceeded to ‘wander’ right into Professor Oak’s lab, which was still open, just barely, by the looks of things.

All the assistants seemed to have already left for the night, and it was just Oak sitting over at his desk, doing something on an old-fashioned looking computer.

“E-excuse me, sir but I’m lost...can you tell me where I am?” she stuttered, sniffling a little for effect.

Professor Oak looked up sharply from his desk in surprise, and then nearly fell out of his chair once he got a good look at her.

“Sweet Arceus, what happened to you?! Are you okay? Where are your parents?” Oak said as he came around the desk to help her.

She didn’t entirely have to fake the tears, this time. Talking to another human was so wonderful after all this time. She also greatly missed her parents.

She teared up and started bawling, only feeling a tiny amount of guilt as Oak seemed to panic, clearly not knowing what to do with a crying little girl.

“I-I d-don’t know-w! I c-can’t remember! E-everything h-hurt and I was-s in the wo-ods and I’ve been-n lost and c-cold a-and…!” she dissolved into tears, finally letting some of her grief and emotions out, now that she could afford to. In the wilds, survival was paramount, everything else came after.

Oak frantically tried to soothe her. “There there, it’s alright, you’re safe now! Why don’t we go down to the local Pokemon Center and get Nurse Joy to have a look at you, alright? I’m sure she has some medicine to make you feel better!”

She sniffled heavily. “R-really?”

Oak nodded and began leading her by the hand through the streets. The Pokemon Center was practically next door, which made sense.

Nurse Joy was appalled by her condition of course, and she was soon given a simple hot meal and a hotter shower, much to her delight. She even got some fresh clothes, even if they were many sizes too big for her. Turns out Pokemon Centers usually had almost a small motel-type complex attached to them for trainers to stay at during their journeys.

Nurse Joy tried to scan her using some device, presumably to figure out if she was hurt, but she pretended to have a freakout over it and medical procedures in general, blubbering about how she couldn’t remember only that it was bad, and she didn’t wanna be in the doctor’s office anymore.

The adults gave in easily after she promised to tell them if anything hurt, and she replied that other than being hungry and cold with a minor headache, everything was fine.

They gave her some children’s Tylenol equivalent and she pretended to take it when Nurse Joy left the room to have a private conversation with Oak, presumably about what to do with her. Despite her human shape, she was still a Pokemon, and she didn’t know what medicines or foods would react badly with her system.

She knew that giving dogs people food was generally really unhealthy for them with only a few exceptions, and she hoped that a Pokemon’s digestive system was a little more robust. She missed dairy so fucking much. She’d kill for a cold glass of milk right now.

God, if her new body couldn’t handle dairy, she would cry forever. Milk and cheese was her lifeblood, and she’d endure all the gastrointestinal distress in the world for a nice chunk of smoked gouda.

Nurse Joy and Professor Oak came back into the room and began asking her several questions regarding her past, or whatever she could remember.

She claimed that her head hurt really bad when she’d first woken up, and she’d been in the woods ever since, scavenging berries and running away from any Pokemon she stumbled across.

She said she couldn’t remember anything, not even her name, let alone where she was from or who her parents were.

The adults exchanged glances before retreating to have another private conversation. She hoped they didn’t try to send her away to a different town or city, she wanted to stay where the plot would probably happen!

The adults re-emerged a few minutes later.

“Well sweetheart, we’ve had a talk and we’ve decided that the best solution for right now is to have you stay with Professor Oak for right now, he looks after his grandson too, so you’ll have someone your age to talk to. Is that alright?” Nurse Joy asked.

“O-okay. Is your grandson nice?” She asked, looking up at Oak with wide, curious eyes. 

She was genuinely curious if Gary had always been an arrogant jerk of if that had only come about later. It also confirmed that she was right on time, timeline-wise to start travelling with Ash once he started his journey. 

Hopefully she wouldn’t have to tag along with him for too long before she got to meet Mewtwo, because she found Ash’s character to be supremely annoying, especially in the early anime episodes.

He seemed wholly unprepared to start a Pokemon journey and was just kind of a shit trainer that got by on dumb luck a lot of the time. She didn’t suffer fools gladly, but she’d put up with his immaturity until she’d gotten what she wanted.

He just refused to actually use his brain a lot of the time and didn’t seem all that serious about training his Pokemon or caring for them, besides Pikachu. Hell, he abandoned all of his other Pokemon at the end of each season, sending them off to Oak’s ranch and never really interacting with them again!

That pissed her off so fucking much, she couldn’t even describe it. Like, hey dipshit, maybe the reason you keep failing to win the League is because you refuse to dedicate yourself to bringing out your team’s full potential! You stick with them for one season, try and fail to become the Champion of whatever region, send all your Pokemon away and then start over again!

Yeah, she got that it was a show, but come the fuck on! What kind of message does that send to your Pokemon, or the kids watching?! 

I don’t know about you, but if my trainer shipped me off to a boring ranch after failing to win the League, no matter how good he says I did, I’d think he abandoned me because I wasn’t good enough! Especially if he never even came to fucking visit more than once a year!

Honestly, she might just try and win Pikachu over or try to snatch him up when Ash fails to show up on time for the most important event of his life.

She’d make sure Pikachu got spoiled for love and affection, as well as the best possible training regimen. How delicious would it be to make off with the franchise mascot and be a better protagonist than Ash ever was, all by virtue of having more than two fucking brain cells to rub together?

She’d save the world and run a criminal organization, how ‘bout that?! Suck on that, ‘chosen one’! She’d be a savior to the world publicly, and then a mafia don behind the curtains, and no one would ever know they were the same person, because she could fucking shapeshift!

Okay, new plan! Steal Pikachu and then become an anime protagonist, as well as the main villain! No one would ever see it coming! Ahahaha!! Cue the ominous thunder and lightning strike!

But back to the matter at hand.

“Oh, uh, yes, he’ll be very nice to you, don’t worry about that!” Oak said, glancing off to the side and getting a stern expression on his face.

Okay, so the answer is Gary is already a prick, but Oak is gonna give him the ‘be nice to this girl or else’ talk. Fucking sweet. 

She can’t wait to totally smoke his ass in academia, knock his ego down a few pegs when the random little girl who can’t remember her own goddamn name can identify every Pokemon ever discovered so far, as well as their movesets and stat spreads!

Being stuck in a hospital bed with nothing to do but trawl wikis, watch professionals duke it out, play the games myself, and generally obsessing over this franchise is finally paying off!

Get ready world, because you won’t know what hit you!

“Gary, come downstairs please, there’s someone I want you to meet!” Oak called up the stairs.

“Coming, Gramps!” Came an obnoxious-sounding boy’s voice.

Lord, give me strength.

Gary Oak came pounding down the stairs in all his spiky-haired glory. Gary seemed to pause upon seeing her.

“Who’re you?” He asked bluntly.

“Gary, don’t be rude! This girl is going to be staying with us for a while, I expect you to treat her kindly, she’s had a rough time,” Oak said.

“Sure, whatever. So, I’m Gary, what’s your name?” Gary said flippantly.

“I can’t remember. That’s why I’m staying here. I woke up in the woods a while ago and I can’t remember anything, not even my parents,” She said.

“Woah, really? Dang, that is rough! So whadda I call you? Maybe you can pick a name until you remember your real one?” Gary said. Something in him seemed to soften a little bit. She then remembered that Gary’s parents had never been mentioned on the show, not once.

Well, that explains the sudden sympathy.

“Oh, um, can I think about it a little bit? That seems like a big decision…” She said, and she did actually need to think about it. She didn’t want to go by her old name anymore. That girl had died a sad, slow death in a hospital bed and hadn’t really gotten to accomplish all that much in her life.

She’d make sure to grab this life by the horns and make it her bitch before she went out either in a blaze of glory or peacefully in her sleep after living a full, satisfying life. 

If the latter happened and she’d never gotten found out as a Pokemon, she’d arrange for some kind of memoir or autobiography to be released, along with a bunch of proof just to cause one last bit of chaos.

“Sure, I’d want to make sure I didn’t pick something lame, too. Lemme know when you make up your mind!” Gary said before he ran back upstairs.

Oak just sighed and began leading her to the guest room she’d be staying in for the foreseeable future. He explained they’d be going out shopping at the local market to get clothes that fit her better.

He left her alone for the night soon after that. It was getting quite late. She pondered her new name as she fell asleep, and just before she nodded off, she’d decided.

How’s that quote go again? 

“They say the greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.”

Yes, that sounds thematically appropriate. 

I think I’ll go with Lilith.

Chapter Text

Professor Oak had indeed taken her to the local markets the next day to shop for clothes and other basic necessities. She made sure to thank him every time he bought her something, because she knew how expensive providing for a kid could be.

She’d been barely into her early twenties when she’d kicked the bucket, and she’d be the most angelic, well-behaved kid ever. At least where the adults could see her, that is. 

She had very little desire to spend time with a bunch of selfish, snot-nosed brats who didn’t even know how good they had it. Like she’d said earlier, she didn’t suffer fools gladly, especially not ones who seemingly refused to learn from their mistakes.

She’d already worked out the basics of a plan. 

Be the best, most helpful, most well-behaved kid ever, and establish a strong love for Pokemon, Pikachus in particular. That wouldn’t be hard to fake, since she loved Pikachu anyway. They were fucking adorable, and it was a damn shame they sucked so bad in the games, stat-wise.

She’d do amazing in school and ace all the tests about Pokemon, and establish a desire to become a trainer and go on her own journey. Then, when Oak finally came into possession of Pikachu, she’d ‘accidentally’ stumble across him and begin building a rapport with the adorable mouse. She’d shower him with love and affection and promise to make him the strongest Pikachu the world had ever seen.

Then, when the day all the rookie trainers were to receive their Pokemon finally came, she’d beg Professor Oak for the Pikachu she’d come to care for so much to be her starter. 

Time-travel bullshit aside, if that was actually canon in this universe, he’d have no logical reason to refuse her, and if he did, she’d take one of the other starters and trade Ash for Pikachu, since he’d wanted one of those ones to begin with and had only gotten saddled with Pikachu because of his tardiness.

They didn’t bond at all until Pikachu had saved both their lives from all those Spearow, so if she got to him before then with a Kanto starter he wanted and a willingness to trade, he’d fork Pikachu over no problem!

Then she could privately laugh at how much she’d just screwed the timeline over and get to pet an adorable Pikachu whenever she wanted! Honestly, she’d spoil the shit out of any and all of her ‘Mons. 

She thought most of them were either cute or cool to some degree and she’d have no problem spending hours brushing them all or shining their scales or what-have-you for hours.

They’d be the best groomed, most pampered Pokemon ever, and they’d still be able to kick all the ass.

She couldn’t wait.

Five years was usually considered a long time by most people, but to Lilith, it seemed to pass by in a flash.

There was so much to learn about the new reality she was in, she never lacked for interesting things to learn about.

She’d given her master plan some more thought once she’d started to implement it, and had adjusted some things.

Firstly, while she could have absolutely destroyed all the tests about Pokemon, she restrained herself and while she did much better than average for a five year old, it was nothing mind-blowing.

She decided that flying under the radar was preferable in her current situation. The less scrutiny she was under from anyone at all, the better.

She knew dick-all about the history of any region or how any laws worked, aside from obscure ancient history involving Legendary Pokemon, not that she showed anyone that knowledge.

As it turns out, the Pokemon Unown still resembled the English alphabet and she could read the carvings in basically any ruins.

She’d discovered that after seeing photos of some ruins in some history books. Turns out nobody had ever actually managed a working translation, and nobody currently alive except her could read what the carvings said.

She absolutely kept that knowledge to herself, it could come in handy as an advantage later.

Learning the new weirdo script everyone in coo-coo anime land used had been a massive pain in the ass, but she’d done it. Thankfully, it was still a phonetic language instead of symbol-based like traditional Japanese Kanji, but that didn’t make learning how to write in a new language any less irritating. She kept a secret journal in her room of all the information about the anime’s timeline she could remember.

Unown only vaguely resembled English letters, so regular English writing was likely going to be untranslatable to everyone else too, since it wasn’t like she was just leaving a Rosetta Stone equivalent just lying around for anyone in coo-coo anime land to bumble across.

And it was indeed coo-coo anime land she found herself in, with some things being a little different from the show. 

For one, meat did exist, but it was all cloned and grown in a lab, like how 3D printed organs were being developed back in her original world. It made some amount of sense to her, since while intelligence levels varied a bit depending on species, most, if not all Pokemon, were sapient to some degree.

People didn’t want to kill and eat something sapient, obviously, so lab-grown meat was a solution modern-day humans had found.

The method had actually been discovered when scientists had been developing the technology to revive fossil Pokemon, many decades ago. Muscle tissue was simple to create compared to a whole, complete living organism.

Vegetarian fare still remained much more popular for the most part, she’d found. Her preference for such a meat-heavy diet had actually been considered a bit weird, since most kids didn’t even really try meat until they were a bit older.

It wasn’t like meat was super expensive or anything, it was still mass-produced due to how many people owned carnivorous or omnivorous Pokemon, but it was just a cultural thing she supposed.

Her Zorua body seemed okay with pretty much every human food she’d tried, so that had been a relief. 

Moo Moo milk and its related products were gifts from Arceus themself, she was sure about that. It tasted many orders of magnitude better than any regular dairy products she remembered eating back home.

She insisted on a glass of the stuff at every meal, and was often seen carting around an insulated lunchbox with various cubed cheeses as snacks. Gary liked to tease her about her dairy obsession, but he could fuck right off. Cheese was amazing, and coo-coo anime land cheese was even better.

You could pry her new dairy away from her only out of her cold, dead hands.

Speaking of Gary, he’d taken to calling himself her older brother after it was decided that she’d be staying with Professor Oak until she got her memories back, which of course was never going to happen.

When Oak brought up the possibility of sending her away to get adopted or fostered by a more suitable caretaker, she’d thrown a massive bitch-fit, and Gary had helped, surprisingly, so she got to stay once Oak realized she wanted to stay with them.

She didn’t want to leave her prime spot for fucking with the plot, and she rather liked living with the Oak family, despite Gary being an obnoxious, arrogant brat a lot of the time. He had his sweet moments, and he did actually try to be a decent brother to her.

Ash was annoying though. He and Gary would get into fights over who was going to be Kanto’s next Champion, both physically and verbally. She’d usually end up being the one to break up the fighting by calling them both idiots and shooting off a barrage of Pokemon related questions that they almost never knew the answers to, but she did, of course.

She tried to motivate the both of them to actually learn and pay attention in classes so they’d both be better trainers, but it seemed to be an exercise in futility, unfortunately.

Lilith certainly paid rapt attention in any classes relevant to being a trainer or caring for Pokemon. Her grades were impeccable. She had learned so much in five years.

Movesets remained consistent with the games, but stats weren’t really a thing beyond stuff like ‘some Pokemon excel at physical attacks and some are better at special attacks’.

Any species could reach much higher heights than they could in the games, which made sense with stuff like Ash’s Pikachu. Levels were also not really a thing, but while any Pokemon could theoretically learn any one of its moves at any time, powerful moves like Thunder or Hydro Pump typically required a Pokemon to reach a certain threshold of ability.

It had to do with how Pokemon attacks worked. Pokemon all had energy inside them that they channeled through metaphysical pathways in their bodies to form attacks. The energy had to be converted into an elemental typing if it was anything but a Normal-Type attack or one of the Pokemon’s native Types first though.

Powerful moves required more energy, and channeling and properly controlling larger amounts of energy took a lot of practice, obviously.

Honestly the mechanics of moves was fascinating, but there were also glaring holes and gaps in the knowledge that Lilith didn’t understand. Pokemon were vastly mysterious creatures, and there were relatively few scientific types in this new world, so scientific progress for the inner workings of stuff was a bit slow.

People figured out many ingenious ways to harness Pokemon’s powers for inventions or modern conveniences, but the science behind any of it was known only to a few, and no one had a totally complete picture of how shit worked really, but nobody besides Lilith seemed overly bothered about that fact.

Honestly it drove her a bit nuts. It was like teaching a monkey how to operate a light switch, but not knowing what electricity was, nevermind the complex electrical engineering knowledge required to fully understand how to properly make use of any of it.

Regardless of the lack of common fucking sense anyone seemed to have or the seeming inability to question things, Lilith learned so much. She practically lived in Pallet Town’s local library, soaking up info like a sponge.

Pokemon looked a lot different in real life compared to the games or anime. Honestly, the closest anything came was the 'Detective Pikachu' movie, though it got stuff wrong too.

Pikachus were not actually as fluffy as the movie portrayed, unfortunately. They had sleeker fur, much like what was found on short-haired cats or really short-haired dogs. 

They were still fucking adorable. Lilith already had quite the plush collection going.

She collected plushes back when she’d been human, and she had restarted her hobby here. Her disguise was flawless still, though she occasionally transformed into a Pidgey and flew out her window in the middle of the night to practice using moves and fighting in her true Zorua shape.

She had carefully crafted her persona to be a kind, helpful girl who almost never caused trouble and was an excellent student. She often helped with small things around Oak’s lab and got to interact with some of the lab’s Pokemon.

Early on in her time with the humans, she’d discovered that she still smelled like a Pokemon to other Pokemon, which confused a lot of them and made some of the more skittish ones especially wary of her. She’d solved that problem by applying an additional layer to her human disguise, which was a scent-based illusion that made her smell like a human girl.

Despite her speaking the human tongue flawlessly, something about her speech was more easily understood by Pokemon, and so she was able to gain their trust quickly by being able to understand them much better and communicating more directly with them.

Gary had seen her conversing with various Pokemon like she would have a ‘fellow’ human and had proclaimed her a ‘Pokemon whisperer’, much to her amusement.

She actually used her ability to understand Pokemon to smooth over various Pokemon-human issues, making her quite popular with the lab folk, since she could explain the procedures the scientists wanted to perform and keep the Pokemon calm during them.

It was never anything invasive or harmful, but trying to get a blood-pressure cuff on a grumpy Tauros was a lot easier when you could explain what the cuff was and that it wouldn’t hurt or take very long to said grumpy Tauros.

Of all the things she learned though, one thing had her especially concerned. While Dark, Steel, and even Fairy Types were a thing and had been classified for decades, no matter how much Lilith trawled the somewhat-primitive internet or libraries, she found not a single mention of Zorua or Zoroark anywhere. Not one.

Lilith hoped that just meant that the Zorua and Zoroark population was just really good at hiding and not anything else, but with her shit luck, she doubted it.

Overall, things had been going very well for Lilith. She hadn’t been found out, no one so much as had an inkling of suspicion about her, only sympathy for the poor lost girl with amnesia, and butter wouldn’t melt in her persona’s mouth.

She was kind, helpful, cheerful, and very good with Pokemon, so everyone in town adored her to some degree. She didn’t even have to entirely fake everything. She genuinely did have compassion and was a generally happy person most of the time, she just expertly hid her more devious, cynical, sarcastic side, like any true Slytherin would.

Any truly Slytherin would never actually get sorted into Slytherin, what with its horrible reputation. A smart person would shoot for Hufflepuff. Nobody ever suspected a ‘Puff of being the mastermind behind the curtains, and the whole house’s emphasis on loyalty would ensure that any aspiring Dark Lord or Lady would have a super-loyal inner circle to start out with.

Anyways, Lilith was counting down the days to her tenth birthday, when the adults of this fucked-up universe gave creatures with insanely destructive powers to ten year olds and shoved them out into the world with no adult supervision, and somehow, nobody died or got grievously injured.

Seriously. Coo-coo anime land was wild.

She’d decided on sharing a birthday with Gary, since her human guise had been around the same age and it was just convenient. It had pleased Gary as well, so it was no big sacrifice to shift her birthday back a few months. Not like anyone knew when her real birthday was supposed to be anyways, since she’d claimed ignorance on her age too.

Lilith went to the lab for at least a little bit each day, arguably to help out Professor Oak in the lab, but secretly it was to stealthily gather info and check if he’d caught Pikachu yet.

Lilith was starting to get worried, when three weeks before the proverbial big day, it finally happened.

“Hey, Mr. Oak, what’s with that Pokeball over there, why’s it got a lightning sticker on it?” Lilith asked, already knowing the answer to that.

“Oh! I caught a Pikachu this morning, it was chewing on the electrical wires and it didn’t seem inclined to leave after I tried shooing it away, so I caught it,” Oak explained.

“A Pikachu?! Really?! Can I take it out to the ranch and play with it, pretty please?!” Lilith pleaded, heart soaring. 

It’s finally happening! EEEEE!

“Oh, that’s right, you hold a fondness for Pikachu, don’t you?” Oak said, looking thoughtful, “Well, it’s almost lunch time...why don’t you feed the other Pokemon and take Pikachu with you? Be careful though, it's a bit grumpy from being caught, but you’re so good with crabby Pokemon…”

“We’ll be fast friends, I’m sure of it! I can’t wait to see a real Pikachu!”

“Ahh, I’m sure you’ll get along fine,” Oak smiled.

Lilith sped through her lunchtime routine with the various lab Pokemon, giving them each short greetings which they returned, a bit confused as to why she seemed in such a rush when she usually took her time and had conversations with some of them.

Pikachu’s Pokeball was burning a hole in her pocket though, and Lilith was about ready to vibrate right out of her disguise in excitement. She was finally going to meet Pikachu, after five years of preparation, her plans were going to start truly getting set into motion.

Lilith made her way through the ranch, not fearing the fearsome beasts that surrounded her on all sides in the least. She knew all their names, their real names, and had known most of them for years.

Pokemon names were a bit weird by human standards. They called themselves almost by titles or descriptors. The lab’s aging Arcanine, for instance, called himself ‘He-who-watches-over-others’ which was usually shortened to ‘Watches’.

Lilith herself had decided that her Pokemon name would be ‘She-who-deceives-the-world’, not that she’d ever told anybody that. It would be a dead giveaway to her whole scheme.

The lab Pokemon all loved her, because she was always willing to sneak them small snacks and treats of human food and she brushed or buffed their coats and scales whenever they asked her. Pokemon were usually easily pleased and gave their trust easily too, for better or worse.

Lilith found it very soothing and satisfying to turn a grumpy Pokemon into a puddle of happy goo in her lap after giving it a thorough grooming. The Pokemon of Oak’s lab were the best looking 'Mons in town, and they all knew it.

She made her way to a secluded clearing, since she wanted privacy so she could have a real conversation with Pikachu. Just like how she could speak human in her Zorua shape, she could speak Pokemon while in her human shape, although doing either looked odd, though for slightly different reasons.

Lilith lightly tossed the Pokeball into the air, and the capture device spat out a glowing light that coalesced into the form of an adorable electric mouse. Lilith fought the urge to snatch him up in a hug and squeal like the child she disguised herself as. He’d likely shock her like he’d done to Ash in the first episode of the show.

Instead, she sat herself on the grass to be more at his level so she wasn’t looming over the poor thing. She employed all her learned techniques into looking as non-threatening as possible.

Pikachu looked around the clearing in confusion and suspicion, eyeing her up.

Although most would have heard, “Pika Pi Pikachu?” Lilith heard the much-more comprehensible, “Who the hell are you and where the hell is this?” 

“Oh! You have quite the mouth on you! How delightful! No worries, I won’t tell anyone,” Lilith said with a wink, absolutely uproariously amused that Pikachu had a potty mouth, the same as her.

“What the hell are you on about, crazy human? Oh, why do I even bother, not like you can really understand me…” He grumped.

“Oh, I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” Lilith said with a shit-eating grin, speaking what she had dubbed ‘Poke Speak’ for the first time using her human mouth since she had arrived in Pallet Town.

Pikachu gaped up at her in disbelief.

“What the fuck?”

Lilith couldn’t help it. She burst out laughing.

“What the fuck indeed! That pretty much sums up my life so far!” Lilith laughed.

Pikachu continued to stare at her before slowly replying, “You can talk like a Pokemon? How? I’ve heard tales of humans that have psychic powers, are you one of those?”

“Oh, no, I’m not psychic at all, quite the opposite actually! The only Psychic Type move I know is Extrasensory! I haven’t even figured out how to get telepathy to work yet,” Lilith said, absolutely delighted at all the confusion she was causing. She’d had to suppress her inner little shit for five years, fucking sue her.

“What? None of that makes any sense! Humans can’t use moves!” Pikachu exclaimed.

Lilith just smiled wider and leaned forward, using Extrasensory to levitate a few sticks and stones in a nimbus of violet-blue energy.

“I suppose it’s a good thing I’m not really human at all then, isn’t it?”

Pikachu looked a little frightened now, and his cheeks started sparking a bit.

“Start making sense before I fucking fry your creepy ass!” He shouted.

Well, I guess the fun’s over then, I’d rather not tank a Thunderbolt to the face, thanks.

“My human name is Lilith, but I suppose a much more fitting name would be ‘She-who-deceives-the-world’. It’s what I do all day, every day, after all!” She said delightedly. “I’m actually a Pokemon, same as you, but I have the ability to transform myself and cause illusions, so I decided to see what life on the other side was like,” Lilith explained. 

“I have to say, humans have it pretty sweet. All I had to do was look like a lost child and everyone was practically tripping over themselves to help me. Three hot meals a day and a safe place to sleep at night, every night, was totally worth learning how to talk like a human.”

Pikachu was no longer sparking threateningly at her, but was again staring at her in confusion.

“Wait, you’re a Pokemon too? But you smell just like a human!”

“That’s the power of illusions, my friend! What is anyone but a brain piloting a meat-suit and perceiving the world through their senses? When you have the power to alter what anyone’s senses tell them, it might as well be their new reality,” She said smugly, dispelling the illusion hiding her scent. Pikachu jerked at the sudden change.

“Woah, you smell totally different now! That’s fucking freaky!”

Lilith puffed up at that, deciding to take it as the complement it surely wasn’t meant as. 

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent, and if you take what someone is using to hurt you and turn it into armor instead, they can’t do shit about it. Get fucked, haters.

“Why thank you! I can do a whole lot more than that,” Lilith said with pride, casting multiple illusions in quick succession. It was a bit tiring, not that she let such a thing show, though. She had an audience to impress.

The sky went from noon to midnight, the trees went from deciduous to coniferous, and snow began to gently fall from the sky, chilling everything it touched.

Pikachu again looked shocked and amazed at the sudden changes to his surroundings, looking around wildly.

“What--how’s it snowing? Where’d the sun go?!”

Lilith snapped her fingers and dispelled everything, including the transformation of her own form. Her human clothes fluttered to the ground and she stretched her much shorter limbs.

“Ahh! It’s good to be back! Though I will forever miss opposable thumbs whenever I don’t have any!” Lilith laughed. She turned to Pikachu, who was staring at her in fascination.

“Hello there! I’m Lilith, trickster extraordinaire, and aspiring Pokemon Trainer, at your service! What may I call you, you handsome devil?” Lilith asked in good humor. 

Pikachu blushed at her compliment, which somehow showed through his fur, “Oh, uh, I’m He-who-splits-the-sky. Nice to meet you?” He said, confused.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you as well! Now, I’ve brought lunch with me, so why don’t we tuck in and talk more? I’ve got some berries, cheese, a bit of jerky, and something I think you’ll really like called ‘ketchup’!” 

Pikachu, He-who-splits-the-sky, did indeed like ketchup, just like the show portrayed. Lilith found it endlessly amusing that he was so fond of a condiment. 

Sky-Splitter, the shortened version of Pikachu’s name, ate berries covered in ketchup using his paws, and Lilith used a gentle application of Extrasensory to levitate cubed cheese and jerky strips into her mouth, since her paws had quite lackluster flexibility in the whole ‘grabbing things’ department.

While the pair ate, Lilith explained a bit of her plans, mainly the ones involving becoming a Trainer and becoming the Kanto Pokemon Champion. She could ease him into the idea of becoming a crime lord later, when their relationship was a bit more established.

“Wait, so you wanna be a Pokemon Trainer...while being a Pokemon yourself?”

“Exactly! I know it sounds stupid, but you would not believe how dumb human children are. I’m shocked they don’t all die in the first two weeks of their journeys honestly. I can promise you I’d be a much better Trainer than a real ten year old human.”

“But...why? Why the whole charade, I mean? What’s so great about pretending to be a human all the time? Don’t you ever get tired of it all?” Sky-Splitter asked.

“Why, you ask? The real question should be ‘Why not?’. When I’m pretending to be a human, I have access to so many things I never would have otherwise. A kind family adopted me when I had no-one but myself, I get to eat things other than berries and raw meat, I have a safe place to sleep each night, I don’t have to worry about predators or other humans trying to catch me, and I get to learn so many things about the world!”

“But...you’d have all those things if you had a Trainer of your own too, and you wouldn’t have to pretend to be someone you’re not.”

Lilith sighed. He was right in a way, but Lilith was human first and foremost, and the idea of having to obey another human like a Pokemon would was just unacceptable to her, not that she could tell Sky-Splitter the first bit though.

“Absolutely not. I will never have a Trainer of my own. Never. I am the master of my sails, the captain of my own ship,” She turned to look Sky-Splitter right in the eyes, so he’d know she was serious about this, “I bow to no one. I never will. A man chooses, a slave obeys. I refuse to be a slave.”

“But being a Trainer’s Pokemon is about companionship! Pokemon aren’t slaves!”

“Aren’t they? Your Trainer tells you to jump, and you don’t even get to ask ‘How high?’ you just jump. Your Trainer tells you to fight a certain way, even if you’d rather fight a different way or use a different move. If you aren’t good enough, you get left behind and replaced when a better fit comes along. Sure, not all Trainers are assholes, but some undoubtedly are, and I’d rather not take that risk, thanks. I don’t bet unless I stack the deck and have blackmail on everyone else betting. When I play, I play to fucking win.”

Sky-Splitter didn’t have a reply for that. They sat in silence for a bit before Lilith spoke up again.

“Well, now that we’ve gotten the heavy philosophical shit outta the way, my human disguise turns ten in a couple of weeks, and the big ceremony where Trainers receive their first Pokemon happens a few days after that. I plan on being the best, like no one ever was, and I could really use your help. I can tell you’ve got a hell of a lot of potential, and are pretty strong already, and I’ve studied on how to be a Trainer at human school for years and I’ve got the best grades in the class. Together, with your raw power and my amazing strategies and smarts, we’d crush the opposition. So, whaddya say? Partners in crime?” Lilith offered. 

If the deal went sour, she’d be disappointed--crushed really--but she’d understand. She didn’t want to be a slave, and she refused to own slaves either. Since she could actually fucking communicate with Pokemon, she was actually able to ask consent before the Pokemon in question got too indoctrinated with Stockholm Syndrome.

All her 'Mons would be her willing partners, 100%. If they ever wanted to leave, for any reason, she’d let them go without too much fuss. It wasn’t right to hold someone against their will like that. Future crimes notwithstanding, any personal companions she had would be loyal by choice, not psychological fucking brainwashing. That shit was fucked, and she did not stan. Not that she wouldn’t use such a thing to her advantage if she had to, but given the choice, she’d really rather not.

Sky-Splitter looked thoughtful before replying after some minutes of silence.

“Oh, fuck it, might as well. I already got caught by that old professor dude, and he’d probably just fob me off onto some random ten year old shmuck who doesn’t have a clue. At least with you, I’d get decent conversation,” Sky-Splitter said, shrugging.

Lilith beamed at him before crawling into her clothes-pile and transforming back into her human disguise. She reapplied the scent-illusion and re-adjusted her rumpled clothes before turning back to Sky-Splitter. She knelt down and held out a hand for him to shake, and he did so.

“Welcome aboard! I look forward to helping you reach new heights and fucking obliterating idiots who get in our way on our journey to the top!”

Little did they know that that handshake, that tiny paw in that small child’s hand, forever changed the fate of the world.

Far away, in the space between spaces, an ancient god awoke and spoke for the first time in eons.

“Oh, shit.”

Chapter Text

After Sky-Splitter had agreed to be her starter, Lilith felt like she was on top of the world.

Fucking take that, canon! I fart in your general direction!

After that, she outlined a training plan to Sky-Splitter, to prove that she knew what she was talking about. After teaching herself Dig without a TM, she felt she could probably do the same for any other Pokemon.

The whole process of learning moves was fascinating to her. It essentially involved teaching one’s internal energies how to take on a certain element before using it in different ways.

For example, she taught herself Dig after spending large amounts of time expanding her little burrow into something larger and more comfortable by digging normally. Eventually her energies figured out how to adopt a minor Ground Typing, and by channeling the energy through her claws, she could carve through the earth with unparalleled ease.

She also learned some interesting things after she interrogated Sky-Splitter on what moves he could already use. She knew that Gen 8 moves were a thing after looking through a massive compendium of all known Pokemon moves online one day at the library, but finding definitive lists of movesets online or in books was basically impossible.

Apparently nobody had sat down and come up with a comprehensive list for that, since most Trainers didn’t tend to write about or publish books about what their Pokemon were capable of, so there were a lot of contradictory answers.

Like whether or not Pikachu could learn Surf or Fly. Some sources claimed it to be possible, while others refuted those claims.

Lilith knew that Pikachu could actually learn Surf and Fly, but that was only by being a specially distributed Pikachu or the special Partner Pikachu from the Let’s Go games, but she didn’t count those ones really, since they were spin-off games.

There was already a move called Magnet Rise which described itself in the games as ‘The user levitates using electrically generated magnetism for five turns,’ and she wasn’t sure about everyone else, but it sounded a helluva lot like a limited form of flight to her.

She also knew that in the Gen 8 games, any Pikachu could just straight-up learn Surf from a TR.

So, in the new insane reality she found herself in, if bullshit like ‘Thunder-Armor’ actually worked, she could figure out a way to get Pikachu to fly using the power of magnetism, Magneto-style, come hell or high water.

Sky-Splitter already knew the moves Quick Attack, Thunder Shock, Thunderbolt, Agility, Leer, and Tackle.

Lilith found this interesting, as Tackle and Leer were not moves Pikachu could legitimately learn. When he was shown using them in the anime, it was later acknowledged as an error.

So I guess the anime rules take precedence, which is good news, since it means absolute horseshit like ‘Thunder-Armor’ is a legitimate, viable strategy. I can’t wait to come up with crazy move combos of my own and blow people’s tiny pea-sized minds. Seriously, no one in this place has a single drop of creativity, I swear!

Sky-Splitter was skeptical that he could ever learn how to fly or generate tsunami sized waves, but after Lilith demonstrated her mastery of Dig, he admitted that learning moves without TMs was possible, at least, but he was still doubtful.

Lilith returned to Oak’s lab after that, Sky-Splitter riding on her shoulder.

“Mr. Oak, do you know where the anti-static brush is? I need to borrow it real quick!”

“Oh, Lilith, you’re back! And you’ve made a new friend I see!” Oak laughed after spotting Pikachu’s place of pride on her shoulders, using her head to prop himself upright.

“Yeah! We’re gonna be best friends, just you watch! But I wanna practice my grooming skills some more, and now’s a great time to practice on an Electric-Type!”

“Oh, it’s in that drawer over there. Don’t take too long, I’ve planned a bit of a special treat for dinner tonight!” Oak said before turning back to his paperwork.

Professors had to file a lot of paperwork and fill out a lot of forms to requisition Starter Pokemon for everyone who’d passed the qualifications.

Starters were too rare to just fork one out to every single bright-eyed ten year old that started out on their journeys that year, so aspiring Trainers had to pass a series of exams to be granted the privilege of one of the three Regional Starters.

Honestly, the tests were piss-easy by Lilith’s standards, but Lilith was a twenty-five year old stuck in a Zorua’s body pretending to be a ten year old, so her standards for difficulty were a lot higher than her classmates’.

She had actually helped tutor a couple of kids who’d been struggling. Ash and Gary had both refused her help, like typical ten year old boys who thought girls had cooties still, which pissed her off quite a bit.

Lilith would admit she probably felt a bit too smug at seeing both boy’s barely-passing scores, compared to her 110%. She’d aced the regular portion as well as the ‘extra-hard’ bonus questions. 

Everyone was given an hour and a half to complete the test, which included both multiple choice and a few short answer and essay questions. Lilith had only needed twenty minutes for the whole thing before she waltzed outta the test room, smirking at everyone else’s annoyed looks.

She was a nerd and proud of it. Who needed brawn when you had brains? Iron man was a vanilla human and he used his massive galaxy-brain to go toe-to-toe with actual gods by inventing his own brawn.

At any rate, she’d yet again proved her superiority in academia, and Oak had rewarded her outstanding score with a collection of samples of fancy cheeses from different regions. Samuel Oak was the fucking best.

The man did his best to be a good parental figure, and Lilith appreciated that. She just wished Gary did too. Disrespect was one of the things that would piss her off the fastest, especially if it was people Lilith respected being mistreated by others.

She was determined to absolutely destroy Gary and to a lesser extent, Ash, in a Pokemon battle as soon as they got their first Pokemon. They both needed to eat a slice of humble pie. Or three.

At any rate, Lilith was pretty sure she’d successfully secured Sky-Splitter’s eternal loyalty after giving him a thorough grooming session. He’d thought it was a bit weird at first, given he knew that Lilith was also a Pokemon, but he’d gone along with it after the other Pokemon all vouched for Lilith’s amazing skills and magic fingers.

The proud Pikachu had swiftly been reduced to a puddle of happy goo at the pampering. Lilith had given him a nice warm bath, blow-dried and brushed his fur, trimmed and sharpened his claws, and a gentle massage/petting session after he was clean, ending with a poffin for his good behavior.

Lilith enjoyed making poffins. She found they were sort of like berry-infused shortbread cookies, kind of. Whatever they really were, they were fucking delicous, and Lilith had experimented greatly with flavors and berry combinations and had stumbled upon a winning combo that most Pokemon couldn’t resist.

Sky-Splitter practically sparkled in the setting sun, his fur was so sleek and glossy. Lilith, knowing how much he hated Pokeballs, and finding the concept to be unnerving herself, decided to smuggle him into her room later that night, but left him at the ranch for the time being. He was busy chatting up the other lab Pokemon last Lilith saw him.

Oak’s surprise turned out to be taking both Lilith and Gary out for pizza, followed by a trip to the 24-hour Pokemart to shop for supplies for their upcoming journeys. Lilith immediately whipped out a wishlist she’d prepared weeks in advance. 

Lilith had done extensive research about minimalistic camping practices and what traveling Trainers should always have on hand. She chose products that were good quality but didn’t break the bank.

She researched the shit out of everything. The right gear could very well save her life or the lives of her Pokemon, so she made sure she was prepared for damn-near everything.

Oak was impressed at her preparedness, and exasperated at Gary’s insistence that he have the coolest-looking gear, no matter if it was practical or not. Lilith didn’t give two shits about aesthetic at this point, she’d take function over form, any day.

Thankfully, being one of the few Pokemon Professors, as well as the most famous one, paid quite well. Lilith was even able to splurge on a couple of things, considering most of her supplies were very sensible and affordable. One of those things was a portable radio, and she had big plans for that radio.

Gary mocked her a bit for her comparatively frumpy traveling clothes and militaristic-looking supplies, but she’d end up getting the last laugh, she knew. All her supplies were built to last and take a beating, unlike Gary’s flashy but less well-made gear.

More days passed, and Lilith bonded more with Sky-Splitter. Every night she managed to smuggle him out of the lab so he wouldn’t have to sleep in his Pokeball, a thing that he appreciated very much.

Lilith considered it as a win-win, since she got to snuggle up with him on the bed every night. While Pikachus weren’t quite as fluffy as the Detective Pikachu movie made it seem, they were still hella soft and cuddly. 

Honestly he reminded her a bit of her beloved guinea pig, rest her tiny soul. She’d been such a good pet and Lilith missed her fiercely. Sky-Splitter wasn’t a replacement, but he brought back memories all the same.

Lilith often wondered if he ever forgot she was actually a Pokemon too, and if that made her touchy-feely-ness more or less awkward. She still considered herself human in mind, so she didn’t really find any of it that weird, but she knew others probably would, if they knew the truth.

Not that she was planning on telling anyone else the truth, other than maybe her future team. Once they accepted her as a competent Trainer, she’d think more about letting them in on her biggest secret.

If they liked and respected her, they’d be less likely to bail when they found out she was also a Pokemon. It would help that she’d reveal the truth on her own terms too, instead of continuing to lie to them all.

Her team would be her closest friends and confidants, and while she didn’t mind tricking the whole of the human race into thinking she was one of them, that was absolutely non-negotiable,  but she didn’t like lying to people she considered her friends.

Pokemon were people too, and she would absolutely throw hands at anyone she discovered being an abusive dickhole to their Pokemon.

Like that rat-bastard, Damien. He’s the asshole that left poor Charmander out in the rain to die of exposure. He was SO getting drop-kicked in the nuts if she ever got half the chance. She’d rescue Charmander and raise him into a Charizard, but this time he’d actually respect her.

None of that disobedience bullshit. Not on her watch. If he wanted to look down on her after she’s the one who saved his life, made him strong, and treated him with love and kindness, she’d trade him away for a team member that actually wanted to be part of the team.

She understood not wanting to listen to Ash though. He was a dumbass who refused to learn from his mistakes most of the time, and also obnoxious. She was not a dumbass, and also not obnoxious, so she and Charizard should get along much better. She hoped that's how it would work out at any rate.

Finally, after what seemed like forever, the big day finally arrived. Lilith woke up early, just like she did every day, and hurried to the lab to put Sky-Splitter back before anyone noticed he was missing.

She apologized for having to put him back in his Pokeball, but it was necessary. Sky-Splitter understood, but wasn’t happy about it. She promised to let him out the second she was able.

She scurried back to the house and snuck back in through her window by using Extrasensory to levitate herself slowly into the house.

Honestly, she practiced that move so much, she wondered if it hadn’t become full-blown Psychic, even if Zoroark couldn’t learn that move in-game. It certainly seemed powerful enough to qualify. She’d lifted huge boulders with it during some of her secret training sessions in the woods!

At any rate, she got ready for the day, triple-checking her pack and marveling at the weird, wonderful world of space-capsule technology. It allowed her to carry much more than the bag should logically be able to hold. It was basically a bag of holding from something out of Harry Potter or DnD.

She donned her sensible hiking clothes, a set of black cargo pants, red sleeveless shirt, a black windbreaker jacket currently tied around her waist, and a pair of red and black steel-toed boots, perfect for kicking people’s shit in if they tried anything funny, and a pair of black fingerless gloves.

She also wore a vibrantly aqua hair scrunchie to hold her long hair away from her face, like Zoroark had, and a pair of red-tinted goggles with black rubber padding and strap to protect her eyes.

She had eventually grown curious as to whether or not being poked in the eye would be her give-away trigger, like pulling Zorua’s tail was in the movie, and as it turns out, it was.

Since then she had almost obsessively worn goggles everywhere. Her normal ones weren’t tinted, they were clear, but her travel clothes had a color motif going, dammit.

Most people thought her habit of constantly wearing goggles everywhere was strange, and a few kids at school had tried to bully her for it, but she’d quickly set them straight by verbally destroying anyone who tried messing with her eye protection.

She’d actually made the school bully cry once from the absolutely vicious roasting she gave him. Nothing was sacred, and she played dirty pool. That kid and his fragile self esteem never stood a chance.

After that, no one dared to so much as mention her goggles. Funny, that.

Anyway, both she and Gary were basically vibrating in excitement during breakfast. Gary had his heart set on a Squirtle and kept pestering her as to what her choice was. She said she’d wait to see them all first before deciding.

When they got to the lab, there was already a small crowd of eager ten-year-olds waiting for them. Ash was conspicuously absent. Lilith cackled internally and didn’t say a word. Gary was too excited about receiving a Pokemon to notice Ash’s absence, and Oak was busy trying to control a bunch of excitable pre-teens.

The way Starters were distributed was a bit strange. Depending on how many people passed the test, the local Pokemon League sent out the typical trio of elemental Starter Pokemon, along with enough other Pokemon to allow everyone to receive something, but everything was first-come, first-serve, with the local Professor holding veto power on who got what.

Surprisingly, there was actually a bit of a stigma with Starter Pokemon. Those who chose them were often seen as taking the ‘easy way out’ or having an unfair advantage, as Starters always evolved into formidable Pokemon species. 

The other Pokemon the League sent tended to be more varied and were still around the same level of power, although usually slightly weaker in the beginning. It was up to the Professor to choose who got what if there was an argument and two people wanted the same Pokemon.

Obviously, Gary chose Squirtle and nobody questioned him. He was popular at school, and to a lesser extent, so was she, but for different reasons. The shyer kids liked her because she was calm and kind and was always willing to tutor struggling students with their Pokemon studies, and the meaner kids feared her, because she’d tear them a new asshole if she caught them picking on other kids.

She insisted that everyone else go first in choosing their Pokemon, since she wanted Pikachu, and he wasn’t actually being offered as a starter.

Much to her surprise, the only one left was Charmander. She supposed they had a bit of an intimidating reputation as being slightly difficult to raise due to their temperament, but Charizards were some of the coolest Pokemon ever! Who wouldn’t want a giant fire-breathing dragon that you could ride?!

The weenies in Pallet Town, apparently. 

All the other kids besides Gary soon cleared off, and it was just her, Gary, and Professor Oak left in the lab. Ash still wasn’t there, and she made her move.

“Mr. Oak, I know he’s not being offered as an official starter, but could I start my journey with Pikachu? We’ve grown really close and I love him a whole lot, could I have him?” Lilith asked, busting out her secret weapon. She hadn’t yet donned her goggles, they were still hanging around her neck for this very reason.

She made the biggest, cutest, most sincere eyes at Professor Oak, “Pretty please? I promise I’ll take good care of him, and we already get along great!” She pleaded, pursing her lips just a little and puffing out her cheeks in a way she knew made her look adorable.

Oak looked like a deer in the headlights, like he never expected to hear those words come out of her mouth. “Oh! Er, well...I know you like him, but the rules…”

Looks like the Celebi time travel bullshit is totally canon, then. Oak normally doesn’t care about protocol this much, and he knows how much I like Pikachu.

“Oh, come off it Gramps, we both know those rules are bogus anyways! You’ve seen her plush collection, just let her have the thing!” Gary said, rolling his eyes while he pet his Squirtle.

Gary, I take back every bad thing about you I’ve said so far! You may be an annoying pest most of the time, but you really do care, don’t you?

Oak looked between her, Charmander, and Gary, and seemed to age five years in the span of a few seconds.

“Oh, very well, I’ll allow it...but are you sure you don’t want Charmander? I know you like Charizards as well,” Oak tried, but the second he gave permission she was already bolting to the table in the back that held Sky-Splitter’s Pokeball.

She enthusiastically threw the ball in the air and expertly caught Sky-Splitter as he materialized in mid-air. He let out a joyous, “Chaaa!” as she hugged him and spun around, sharing the good news that he was officially hers.

She placed him on her shoulder, right where he belonged, and practically skipped to the front of the lab, just in time to see Ash burst through the front doors in his pajamas.

“I’m here! I’m here!” He panted, “I’m here to get my Pokemon, please tell me there’s some left!” Ash said frantically. Lilith rolled her eyes and began laying into him.

“Well, today’s your lucky day then, since I chose Pikachu instead of any of the regular Starters. Charmander’s the only one left,” Lilith said, “Honestly Ash, you couldn’t be bothered to show up on time for the most important day of your life? I kinda feel bad for Charmander now, if this is how seriously you’re gonna take being a Trainer,” She said scathingly, glaring at him a little. Her efforts to make him suck less had failed, it seemed.

“I am taking it seriously! My alarm clock broke! I’m gonna be a Pokemon Master and the Champion of Kanto, just you watch!” Ash said passionately.

“Whatever you say, Ashy-boy. I’m going to get started on my journey now, smell you all later!” Gary laughed before recalling his Squirtle and sauntering out the door.

Professor Oak sighed heavily, “That boy...well, at any rate, you’ve got a Pokemon, why don’t you introduce yourself to Charmander over there while I get all the paperwork filled out for Pikachu? Lilith, you should stay, I need your signature on some of these forms.”

Ash talked a bit with Charmander, but it seems the flaming lizard was a bit angry at being picked last, and by someone who was late of all things, and blasted Ash with fire, much like the other Charmander used to do, or how Pikachu would shock him in the show.

Lilith meanwhile, was thinking deeply about things. She really, really didn’t want to travel with anyone, especially not Ash, but she also really, really wanted to meet Mewtwo.

Then she remembered something. 

Ash and co got invited to New Island, ostensibly to challenge an anonymous strong Trainer, but it was really a ploy by Mewtwo to get a variety of Pokemon to clone to add to his clone army.

Lilith had access to maps and could locate New Island easily. Then, she just had to hang around the area until there was a big storm, and bish bash bosh, there’s Mewtwo. She wasn’t worried about confronting him very much, since she was a Dark Type and thus immune to Psychic Type energies completely.

He wouldn’t be able to read her mind or attack her with his most powerful moves, a fact that would probably catch him completely off-guard, considering that season of the anime was made before Dark Types were introduced.

Kanto was notable for its absolute lack of Dark Type Pokemon, and only having a few Steel Types as evolutions, aside from the Magnemite line. As Mewtwo had decided to take his revenge against humanity relatively soon after his emergence, he likely wouldn’t have encountered a single Dark Type Pokemon, if he even knew that they existed in the first place.

So, it looks like she didn’t have to travel with Ash after all! She knew the plots of most of the major movies and could probably figure out where she needed to be and when in order to meet various Legendaries and save the day, thus negating the need for Ash at all!

With a newfound spring in her step, she followed Oak to the back of the lab to fill out forms to get Sky-Splitter the Pikachu registered as her first Pokemon and transfer ownership of him from Oak to herself.

Such things were usually done in advance with the starters so that all the new Trainers had to do was sign their names on a single form before taking off on their journeys. Since Pikachu wasn’t registered as a starter, there was paperwork to be done.

Or there would have been, if Oak hadn’t already filled all the registration paperwork out in anticipation of Ash getting Pikachu. Lilith decided to not comment on the suspiciously completed forms and gleefully signed on the dotted line.

When she looked up, Oak looked grim, but she pretended not to notice.

You can kiss my fucking ass, canon, you sucked anyways.

Ash was unsuccessfully trying to get Charmander to cooperate with him, and Lilith laughed in the privacy of her mind. She had her own Charmander to track down, but first it was off to Viridian City.

There were some Rockets that needed to blast off.

Chapter Text

Lilith quietly talked with Sky-Splitter as they made their way down the road. She wanted to catch a Pidgey at some point, and also a Magikarp. She was hoping to run into Misty at some point, just to say she met her, and maybe do a spot of fishing with her.

Well, that and she also wanted to ask Misty’s opinion on how to train a Magikarp into a Gyarados, since the few online sources she found basically boiled down to ‘make sure it knows you’re the boss when it’s a Magikarp, and then wait until it gets angry enough to evolve, then reinforce your dominance’.

That can’t be right...it’s basically saying to abuse your Magikarp until it evolves and then bully it more into obeying you! That’s just abuse! I won’t stand for it! I know Gyarados are classified as the ‘atrocious’ Pokemon, but that’s no excuse to be an asshole! Why would anyone be mean to a Pokemon world-renowned for causing massive amounts of destruction?! People here are fucking morons!

If I ever get a Magikarp, imma love and appreciate the shit outta it, because no one deserves to be thought of as worthless! Everyone has worth, and everyone deserves to be treated with kindness and respect unless they prove themselves to be unrepentant assholes!

Lilith fumed at the injustice of it all.

When I take over the world, shit like that is gonna stop! I will fucking destroy the kneecaps of assholes who abuse their Pokemon, mafia-Don-you-owe-me-fucking-money-style. Be the goddamn boogieman for people like that so they don’t dare to try anything!

Besides, she thought Gyarados were majestic as fuck, and she wanted to ride one across the sea and off into a sunset at some point, just to say that she did it. Also, why were they classified as part Flying Type? Gen 8 Gyarados could learn all of two Flying-Type moves, Bounce and Hurricane. Which was some bullshit if she’d ever heard it.

Gyarados and Magikarp were based on the ancient Japanese myth that if a carp swam up a waterfall and passed under a dragon gate, it would turn into a dragon, and Eastern-style dragons can fly without wings, so if anything I think it was granted Flying-Type on that alone. So, why the hell can’t Gyarados fly?!

If I can teach a Pikachu to fly when they’re not even Flying-Types, then I can get a Gyarados to soar, goddammit! I don’t care if I have to strap fucking rockets to the thing, I WILL get a Gyarados to fly!

She was broken out of her internal rant upon spotting a familiar head of orange hair.

Well hello there, side-character!

Misty was relaxing by the edge of a river, fishing. Her infamous bike lay resting against a tree. Lilith wondered if it would survive this time around.

“Hey there! You doing a bit of fishing?” Lilith asked, acting like a typical ten year old and stating the blindingly obvious.

“Huh? Oh, hello! Yeah, I love fishing for new Water-Type Pokemon! The name’s Misty, what’s yours?” Misty asked.

“I go by Lilith, and this here is Sky-Splitter!” Lilith introduced her friend.

“Oh, a Pikachu! He’s adorable! Interesting nickname, too. It’s nice to meet you Lilith, did you come from Pallet Town too? A very rude boy passed by here earlier. He wanted to battle but I was kinda in the middle of something and he only had a single, brand-new Pokemon at that, so I said no.”

“Oh, geez, that was probably Gary Oak. I’m sorta his adopted sister. I know how he gets, sorry you had to deal with him,” Lilith apologized on his behalf.

“Really? Man, glad to know I’m not the only one with obnoxious siblings.”

“I’m pretty sure it's a universal constant that siblings are annoying. Anyway, do you know anything about raising or training Magikarp or Gyarados? You seem like you know your way around Water-Types, and I wanna get a second opinion. I found some training guides online, but I wanna know what a real Trainer has to say on the matter,” Lilith said, sprinkling in a few compliments to butter Misty up. Ten year olds were too easy to manipulate with just a few words.

Sure enough, Misty seemed to puff up at the praise. “Well, you came to the right girl, since I’m going to be the world’s best expert on Water-Type Pokemon one day! See, Gyarados can be a bit tricky to control, so it's best to start out with a Magikarp and then…” And off Misty went, telling her the same drivel that the internet had. Lilith could hardly believe her ears.

How does nobody see how disgusting this treatment of sapient creatures is?! Whelp, there goes any fondness I had for Misty’s character, not that I had a lot of it to begin with, mind you, but still!

Lilith politely nodded along and asked a few basic questions before thanking her for the advice and moving on, absolutely fuming mad with indignity. Once she was sure nobody was around, she began ranting to Sky-Splitter about it all.

“Seriously Sky, how can people treat Pokemon like that! I don’t care if that’s always been how it’s done, that shit is fucked! That’s it!”

“What’s it?” Sky-Splitter asked, a little off-kilter by how strongly she felt about the subject.

“I’m sitting on this riverbank and catching a Magikarp and proving all those idiots wrong! I’m going to treat my Magikarp with love and kindness and let it know that it’s worth something more than just what it evolves into! If everyone else turns out to be right and my Magikarp never evolves, then so be it! I refuse to treat any living thing with less than the utmost respect it deserves! Fuck what anyone else says! Their abusive asses can all go take a fucking hike!”

Lilith angrily set her pack down and began pulling all her fishing gear out of it. Sky-Splitter sat off to the side, eyes wide. Lilith planted her ass on that riverbank and began fishing, absolutely fed up with anime coo-coo land, and all of its human inhabitants.

Little did Lilith know, a Magikarp hidden in the shade of a bush that had grown over the water heard every word of her passionate rant. 

The elders of the school she had been born in had always warned her of the perils of Trainers.

‘They’ll make you strong, perhaps they’ll even grant you the honor of a name, but you won’t ever be happy in the end. To have a Trainer is to be both blessed and cursed. Remember that.’

She didn’t really know what the elders had meant back then, but she had a better idea about it now.

While not always the most intelligent of Pokemon, she knew that this human was a rare breed. She’d never heard of a human that spoke like a Pokemon did, after all. She weighed the potential risks, and decided to take a leap of faith.

She was the best jumper in her school, after all.

Lilith had barely been fishing for ten minutes when she got a bite.

“Sky! Sky! I got a bite, get ready to battle if it’s hostile!” Lilith commanded. Sky-Splitter jumped to his feet and his cheeks sparked in anticipation.

Lilith employed all the fishing techniques she knew and soon reeled her catch in, and when she did, she could hardly believe her eyes.

No way. No FUCKING way did I just get this lucky. Holy shit!

There, on the end of her lure, was a gleaming, golden Magikarp.

“Ohmygod, you’re gorgeous!” Lilith exclaimed, absolutely over the moon.

No way am I letting this one get away! A Shiny Pokemon as my first catch! That’s gotta be some kinda record!

The Magikarp gave only a token protest to being pulled ashore. Lilith had learned that aquatic Pokemon were a bit weird in that they could also breathe air just fine, which made some amount of sense when she considered the anime and all it’s literal fish-out-of-water moments.

Once out of the water, the Magikarp flopped around a bit before propping itself up on its front fins in a way that looked very uncomfortable to Lilith. She noted it’s white barbels, meaning this Magikarp was female.

“Did you mean it?” The Magikarp asked her. 

“Mean what?” Lilith asked, a bit confused.

“When you said you would be kind? That everyone had worth?” The Magikarp clarified. Lilith’s heart fucking broke at hearing its quiet, defeated tone, containing just the smallest bit of hope.

“Of course I did! Oh sweetie, you deserve just as much love and care as anyone else,” Lilith declared. “Here, that can’t possibly be comfortable, let’s get you back in the water where you belong,” Lilith said, making her movements very slow and deliberate so she didn’t scare the poor dear.

She gently slipped her arms around the bulky fish and gently placed it back into the stream, not giving a single fuck about her wet clothes.

The Magikarp stayed in the shallows next to the bank, watching her. That had to be a good sign.

“I’m just starting out as a Trainer, but I can promise you that if you come with me, you’ll want for nothing. I promise to treat you with kindness and respect, and I only ask that in return, you do the same, and try your very hardest, okay? I won’t withhold food from you, I won’t yell at you, and I certainly won’t ever hit you, no matter how angry or upset I am,” Lilith said resolutely, and she meant every single word. “With that said, would you like to come with me? I don’t know quite where we’re going, but there’s always room for another lonely soul,” Lilith said with a smile.

“Alright. I’ll go with you. Does this mean I can have a name?” The Magikarp asked, what looked like hope shining in its big eyes.

“What do you mean?” Lilith asked, confused.

“Magikarp don’t get names until we evolve. Only the strongest of us get the honor of a name, unless we get caught by a Trainer and they give us a name. It’s why so many of us join up with Trainers in the first place, despite how we’re normally treated as worthless.”

Oh, my fucking heart, I swear to god..!

“Of course you can have a name, sweetheart. Do you want me to pick or did you have something in mind?” Lilith asked.

“Can you pick? Any name at all is fine with me…I honestly never thought I’d make it this far…”

I will not cry, I will NOT cry, I will not FUCKING cry like a BITCH, THIS FISH NEEDS ME! 

“Well, you did, and you should be damn proud. What you did takes a lot of courage, it sounds like...hmm...you know, the concepts of courage, bravery, and honor are often associated with the color red, and sometimes gold...how about Carmine? If you don’t like it I can pick something else,” Lilith said.

“No...no I love it! Thank you! No one’s ever called me brave before!” The newly-named Carmine said, little happy, fishy tears in her eyes.

Oh fucking goddammit. Yep, here come the waterworks.

“Then it’s lovely to meet you, Carmine, welcome to the team!” Lilith announced, barely holding back tears herself. She brought out a Poke Ball, and gently touched Carmine with the capture device. The golden fish was sucked inside and the capture noise sounded without a single shake.

Lilith immediately fished out a tissue and wiped her eyes and blew her nose.

“Not one fucking word, Sky. I’m a sympathetic crier and that’s it.”

“Suuuure...sympathetic crier, of course,” Sky-Splitter said with a grin, absolutely knowing she was full of bullshit.

Lilith packed up her gear and continued on her way for a bit before deciding to stop for lunch. She pulled out her basic cooking gear and a small plastic pool that folded up for easy storage. She’d bought it in case she caught any aquatic Pokemon, so that they could be comfortable during mealtimes. She used a bucket to fill it up with water from the river and called forth her newest team member.

“Alright Carmine, it’s lunchtime! After we eat and chat a bit more, we can go over a training plan for you after a grooming session. I’ve groomed other fish-like Pokemon before so no worries about that.”

Sky-Splitter cheered at the announcement of a grooming session.

Spoiled little mouse, she thought fondly.

“What’s a ‘grooming session’?” Carmine asked.

“Only like the best thing ever!” Sky-Splitter announced. “Lilith’s got magic fingers, it’s awesome! She basically gets you really, really clean, but it feels so relaxing! Oh, and the poffin after is so good too!”

“Poffin?”

“Oh man, you’ve been missing out! Lilith makes the best poffins and...”

Lilith smiled fondly and got to work making lunch. Turns out most Pokemon could eat people food no problem, with a few exceptions for certain species, of course, and certain foods weren’t healthy at all. But, if you were careful and knew what you were doing, you could easily make healthy meals that a person and a Pokemon could both enjoy. Lilith refused to make her Pokemon eat Poke food out of a dog bowl while she got to eat like a person when they could all be eating like equals. 

Sky-Splitter ate off of a plate, and though he didn’t use utensils, he got to eat all the same food that Lilith did. It was only fair. Of course, Carmine didn’t have hands or even paws, but it turns out that the barbels on Magikarp and Gyarados were very dextrous, so Lilith just set up Carmine’s plate on the rim of the pool and she ate off of it that way.

Soon after lunch it was grooming time, and Sky-Splitter all but threw himself into her lap. She laughed and got to work brushing him and cleaning all the dirt out from underneath his tiny claws, ending it off with a short massage and gave him a poffin as a reward for not being squirmy.

She then busted out her brand new scale-cleaning kit and extra-soft pumice stones for the first time and gently walked Carmine through the process, and if fish could purr, Carmine would have been rumbling like a well-tuned engine.

If Lilith thought Carmine was pretty before, what she looked like now blew Lilith away. Carmine had actually been fairly dirty before, which made sense considering she’d been in the wild her whole life and had never been groomed before. Lilith changed the water for the pool twice before she was done. There was a lot of gunk under the edges of Carmine’s scales and around the base of her fins.

Carmine now had a beautiful metallic sheen and her fins and barbels were a snow white that sparkled in the sun. An extremely subtle pattern became apparent on her scales, almost looking like tiger stripes that you could only see when the sun hit them just right.

“Oh honey, you look absolutely dashing! Look at that shine!” Lilith declared proudly, not minding the grossness all over her hands at all. She cleaned her arms off some in the river and patted dry with a towel. She could wait for the Viridian City Pokemon Center to bathe. She was not doing so in a cold-ass river.

Lilith spent the next several minutes going over a basic training regimen with Carmine while Sky-Splitter did his own some ways away. He was currently practicing his agility and speed by weaving between trees and using Quick Attack and Agility whenever he could.

Pikachu were the glassiest of glass cannons, so Lilith wanted to make sure that getting a solid hit on him was next to impossible. She could work on powering up his electric attacks later. Right now, survivability was her main concern. Couldn’t beat what you couldn’t hit, after all.

As for Carmine, one of Magikarp’s only strengths was its defense and speed stats in the games, so Lilith took that into account and had Carmine swim against the current as fast as she could for as long as she could before taking small breaks in between to recover some stamina before going at it again. 

Carmine didn’t actually know any moves yet, so Lilith decided to work on her maneuverability in the water first before working their way up to Tackle.

After two hours, Lilith called the training session to a close and gave them each a few poffins as a reward, offering praise where it was due, and advice for improvements next time.

Lilith felt like Pokemon Training was fairly simple in concept and didn’t understand why so many people seemed so shit at it.

She arrived in Viridian City just as the sun started to set and went inside to reserve a room and get both of her Pokemon a full checkup to make sure they were both healthy. As her Pokemon were getting checked out by Nurse Joy, Lilith decided to video-call Professor Oak and tell him about her journey so far.

She idly wondered if she’d run into Ash before she left.

“Oh, Lilith, lovely to hear from you! Are you in Viridian City already?”

“Yup! And I added a new member to my team!” Lilith said excitedly, plugging her Pokedex into the port to send him the info.

Pokedexes were almost like smartphones from her old world, in that they did like a million different things besides record Pokemon data.

“Oh, a Magikarp. Well, I suppose everyone has to start somewhe--oh my! Look at that unusual coloring!”

“Yep! Isn’t she gorgeous? She’s such a sweetheart too, gave it her all today during training!”

“Lilith I do believe you’ve stumbled across a Shiny Pokemon! Not much is known about the Shiny phenomenon or what causes it, as it’s exceedingly rare, and I’d love to examine her in the lab whenever you decide to visit next!”

“Sure thing Prof!” Lilith heard her name called up at the front desk. “Oops, gotta go, talk to you later, Mr. Oak!”

They said their goodbyes and Lilith collected her Pokemon and checked into her room.

“Your Pokemon are in excellent health, despite your Magikarp’s unusual coloring. I noticed how well-groomed they were, keep up the good work. So few Trainers seem to realize that their Pokemon need cleaning just like people do.”

“Don’t worry about that, I love spoiling them.” Lilith said with a smile.

She checked into her dormitory-style room and curled up with Sky-Splitter on the bed and was quickly inducted into dreamland.

She woke up somewhat later the next day, but allowed herself the indulgence. Yesterday had been extremely jam-packed with stuff, so perhaps she could spend the day getting to know her Pokemon better.

The check-out time for her room was 11 AM, so she took her time with a luxuriously hot shower before going back out to the lobby.

Sky-Splitter was perched on her shoulder as usual. Lilith never forced him back into his Pokeball, knowing he hated the thing with the fiery, burning passion of a thousand suns and only put up with it when there was literally no other option.

She was just minding her own business, quietly chatting with her first real friend, when the wall of the Pokecenter exploded in a cloud of black smog. People stumbled and screamed in fright.

Familiar voices started saying a very familiar intro. Familiar silhouettes were becoming visible in the smoke.

Lilith was caught off-guard for only the barest of seconds before calmly whispering, “Sky, use Thunderbolt in the center of the cloud, now. They’re in the middle of monologuing and everyone is just standing around and letting them do it. If they’re still moving afterwards, use Agility and Quick Attack and aim for the back of the knees before going for the face. I’ll use some subtle illusions to cover you.”

“But Koffing and Ekans don’t have legs…?”

“Not the Pokemon, the humans! And the Meowth,” She whispered back. “They’re criminals who just destroyed public property and have verbally announced their intention to commit Pokemon theft, they don’t get the privilege of a fair fight,” She said, glaring at familiar heads of blue and magenta hair. “Non est misericordia et non est indulgentiae. Si manet invictus,” She whispered to herself, reciting her battle code. It was a latin phrase that meant ‘No mercy, no forgiveness. We remain unconquered.’

Sky-Splitter, bless him, didn’t ask further questions and simply did as instructed. With a fierce battle cry of his own, he darted straight past the confused Koffing and Ekans, ignoring them utterly, to blast the three stooges with a fierce Thunderbolt attack. Despite being mostly untrained, Sky-Splitter had enough raw power to knock out an entire flock of angry Spearow with a single attack.

The idiots jerked and twitched, screaming as they inexplicably exploded somehow, sending them flying through the air to disappear over the horizon before they even finished their stupidly long intro.

Somehow, magically, the Ekans and Koffing were swept up in the blast and sent flying as well, despite being rather far away from the epicenter.

Fucking coo-coo anime land, I swear to god.

Lilith spent the next hour giving her eyewitness account to the Officer Jenny that arrived on scene mere minutes later. Lilith remained calm and collected, idly petting Sky-Splitter, gently massaging his ears. Officer Jenny was impressed by her fortitude and calm demeanor in the face of danger, even if she seemed a little unnerved by how Lilith had decided to go right for the humans instead of the Pokemon with zero hesitation.

Apparently, that just wasn’t done except in the most dire of circumstances. Like, life-or-death type circumstances.

“They were armed criminals who were threatening my person. I had the means to defend myself and my Pokemon, and I did so,” Was all she had to say on the matter.

“Wait, they were armed?!” Jenny asked, shocked.

Firearms existed in the Pokemon universe, but were extremely restricted and super rare among the general public. Lilith planned on using them extensively. 

Let’s see you try to storm my lair with Pokemon when I can snipe your asses from 500 meters out. Pokemon are powerful, but only if you know how to utilize them effectively, and they die to bullets just the same as everything else.

“Yes. They had a Koffing and an Ekans. Koffing are an explosive hazard, as well as highly toxic. Ekans, while their bites are not fatal, are still extremely painful. So yes. Armed.”

Officer Jenny didn’t seem to know how to take that declaration, her years of being indoctrinated with coo-coo anime land logic warring with the undeniably fact Lilith had just laid out.

“Right…” She said, scribbling something down on a notepad before declaring Lilith free to go. Her guardians were not contacted nor were any other police protocols she remembered from her first life used.

God, how does this place even fucking function? Jesus Christ, this is going to be even easier than I thought…

Lilith breathed in and out in a calculated rhythm. It was finally time for her first Gym  battle against Brock. Getting through Viridian forest had been nerve-wracking, due to the presence of all the Bug-Types, but she’d kept her head on a swivel and gone in the exact opposite direction whenever she detected even the slightest hint of buzzing.

It took probably longer than it should’ve, and she absolutely demolished the delusional samurai-kid in the forest as well.

Sky-Splitter flash-fried all his stupid bugs with blinding speed and they were soon able to put the bug-infested forest behind them.

While she’d not caught anything new, she’d made excellent progress with both Sky-Splitter and Carmine. She’d managed to teach Sky-Splitter Iron Tail along with a special move and was planning on using it to win the Gym Battle against Brock.

She’d already come up with several move combos to utterly wipe the floor with him. If all else failed, she had the old sprinkler-system trick to fall back on.

As for Carmine, she’d fucking showered the literal goldfish with praise and worked on building her self-esteem up more than anything, but she had once again proven her superiority as an amazing Trainer by teaching Carmine Bounce. It wouldn't be very helpful during the Brock fight though, so Carmine was acting as the reserve.

She was currently trying to teach her Water Gun. As of Gen 8, Magikarp could learn Hydro Pump from a TR, so Water Gun, as a very basic version of Hydro Pump, should be well within Carmine’s grasp. Progress was slow, but it was there, which meant something.

“The battle between Challenger Lilith and Gym Leader Brock will now begin! This is a two-on-two battle with only the Challenger allowed to make substitutions! Begin!” A young boy said, acting as the official referee. 

Clearly Brock was allowing one of his siblings to officiate, though whether that was out of necessity or choice, Lilith didn’t know. At least the kid seemed to know what he was doing for the most part.

“Geodude, I choose you!” Brock cried, tossing a Pokeball into the air. It spat out a Geodude in short order. The floating rock-ball looked a lot more intimidating in real life, but Lilith didn’t let that get to her.

Lilith said nothing. Half the battle was physiological warfare, and she had one hell of a pair of aces up her sleeves.

Sky-Splitter leapt off her shoulder to take to the rocky battlefield.

“A Pikachu eh? Don’t you know that my Pokemon are immune to all Electric-Type attacks?” Brock said, almost taunting.

Lilith said only a couple of sentances, in a monotone that sounded like she was dead inside. Her utterly blank expression and unblinking eyes only added to the creep-factor. A simple illusion projected everything Lilith wanted it to.

“Sky-Splitter, pattern of the Flying Thunder God. Crack that rock like an egg.”

Pikachu immediately followed orders, blitzing off in a zig-zag pattern almost faster than the eye could follow, thanks to a combination of stacking multiple instances of Agility and using Quick Attack.

Although Lilith’s illusion had hid it, Sky-Splitter had been channeling Agility since the second they walked through the Gym’s doors, and by the time the battle started, he was juiced to all hell. He’d be tired and sore as fuck once the fight was over, but he only needed to last two battles.

As Sky-Splitter neared his target, his tail shone a bright silver, and he pivoted on his front paws at the last second to spin his entire body sideways to bring the thin edge of his steel-hard tail directly across the face of the Geodude before it even had time to react.

The poor thing went rocketing across the battlefield to impact the metal wall of the gym not three feet from where Brock stood. It hit the wall so hard it got stuck there, embedded into the metal, out cold from a single hit.

“Next,” Lilith droned like an automaton.

Clearly shaken, Brock recalled his unconscious boulder from the wall.

“G-geodude is unable to battle! The Gym Leader has one Pokemon remaining!” Brock's little brother called out.

“You may have bested my Geodude, but you don’t stand a chance against my ace! Onix, I choose you!”

Onix were fuck-off enormous, Lilith knew, but it was nothing compared to seeing one in real life.

The rock snake Pokemon nearly filled Brock’s half of the battlefield, stretching up towards the ceiling.

Another interesting fact Lilith learned is that trade Evolutions were bogus and Pokemon that Evolved and gained a new Typing usually carried traces of that Typing even prior to Evolving, almost like having a tertiary Type. 

Thus, Onix had traces of Steel-Type energies in its body, along with minute particles of actual steel in its rocky composition.

In other words, Onix were capable of being magnetized.

“Sky-Splitter, Magneto this bitch.” Lilith said, allowing a smirk to crawl across her features.

Sky-Splitter roared with exertion and showed off his electro-magnetic prowess by using a heavily modified and slapdash version of Magnet Rise to magnetize the particles of steel in Onix’s body to another convenient source of metal.

Mainly, the ceiling of the gym.

Onix as well as everyone, besides Lilith and Sky-Splitter, gasped or cursed in surprise as Onix’s immensely heavy form was violently yanked into the air to impact the ceiling of the Gym and stick there.

Of course, Onix thrashed around in surprise, accidentally activating Lilith’s fallback plan.

The thrashing of a multi-ton rock serpent damaged various structures on the ceiling, mainly lights, and the emergency water supply for the sprinkler system as well.

Lilith barely had to order Sky-Splitter to do anything else as the Onix assured its own destruction by getting itself doused with water and then electrocuted from the damaged light fixtures.

Brock was crying out in despair, but everything was almost drowned out by the volume of Onix’s screeching.

“Alright, you’ve played with your food enough. Drop it.”

Sky-Splitter abruptly reversed the polarity of the magnetization and the Onix was sent rocketing into the floor, also knocked out cold with an enormous crash of stone against stone. Sky-Splitter didn’t even have to touch the rock snake at all, and the whole battle was over in under five minutes.

“O-onix is unable to battle! The winner is Challenger Lilith from Pallet Town!” Brock’s sibling announced, shell-shocked.

Lilith ignored the fact that she was getting drenched from the broken sprinkler system to walk into the middle of the battle field to pick up her exhausted Pikachu and cradle him like a baby, praising him.

“Oh, look at you go! Who’s my precious little murder-baby? Extra ketchup for you tonight, and I just purchased a new grooming kit with a premium shampoo just for Electric Types,” She cooed, petting him in all the spots she knew he liked best. She utterly ignored Brock recalling his unconscious Onix and coming to stand across from her.

“That was extremely impressive. Your Pikachu is very powerful; how long have you been a Trainer?”

“A month,” She answered, still not looking at him, totally absorbed in gently rubbing at baby-soft red cheeks that tickled her fingers with harmless static.

“Bull. There’s no way you’ve only been at this for a month. I’ve battled people who’ve been in the game for years that aren’t half as good,” Brock said, frowning.

“Sucks to suck then, doesn’t it? Now, did I earn my badge or do I have to beat your ass again with my Magikarp to prove how utterly outclassed you are?” She asked in a voice sweeter than sugar, gazing up at him with an innocent smile that didn’t reach her eyes.

Brock frowned harder but said nothing.

She merely held out a hand, but not to shake. A brown, rock-shaped Badge was rather begrudgingly placed in it and she dropped it carelessly into a pocket of her cargo pants before turning around to make her dramatic exit.

“C’mon Sky, let’s go get some frozen yogurt to celebrate. And Brock? Your dad Flint is a deadbeat coward too scared to show his face, and he spends his time near the Viridian Forest entrance to Pewter City trying to con people into buying rocks as souvenirs. Just thought you might want to know. Ta!” She said as she sashayed out the Gym doors, laughing.

Behind her, several jaws were hitting the floor as several people’s brains smoked as they tried to make sense of all the chaos and destruction, social and otherwise, that Lilith had left in her wake.

Lilith chuckled to herself in remembrance as she took a bite of frozen yogurt before taking a spoon from a separate dish of dessert to feed to Carmine. Even if she didn’t actually end up being needed to battle, there was no reason she couldn’t enjoy frozen yogurt too.

Sky-Splitter had topped his with ketchup and Lilith tried not to wrinkle her nose too much. The mouse put the stuff on everything.

The faintly audible sounds of Flint getting his ass chewed out by his eldest son from across town added an extra lovely bit of ambiance in Lilith’s opinion. She loved the smell of chaos and her enemy’s despair at any time of day.

Life is good when you’ve got all the cheat codes, she thought in contentment.