Revised 6/27/20

Something strange was definitely going on, Leita concluded.

While Loki dried out his fur, Leita blinked several times at the flashing behind her eyes.

Reaching up a hand to push the damp strands of copper hair out of her face, Leita squinted as the movement left an odd trail behind it.

"Loki..." the female said slowly, drawing the attention of her zoroark. "Are you seeing this or am I just batshit crazy?"

The dark type peeked over her bare shoulder, tilting his head in sheer confusion. "Is that what I think it is?"

Leita wasn't sure what he was thinking, but whatever it was was probably right. Her entire arm was surrounded with an odd dark energy.

"Do me a favor," Loki began, sounding excited. "And think of an everyday object. A pen, a piece of paper, a toothbrush."

Confused but compliant, Leita furrowed her brows and closed her eyes. When she flexed her fingers, thinking of a glass mug, she felt an odd tingling in her spine.

"Holy shit."

Taking that as a cue to open her eyes, Leita did so and nearly fainted with shock. A glass mug was in her hand. With a startled yelp and a jump of surprise, the cup dropped to the tiled floor.

Instead of shattering, it dissipated into thin air.

"What the fuck what the fuck what the fu-"

"Leili!" Loki interrupted. "That was an illusion!"

"Illusion?" She turned her green eyes to the dark type. "Like... the ones you do?"

"The exact same," the Pokemon confirmed. Then he looked down, then away, as if ashamed of himself for looking. "You should probably, uh... get dressed, so we can try and figure this out."

She paid no mind to Loki's shy behavior, too eager to get some answers to really take note of it. Leita snatched her preselected outfit from the bed and hurried into the bathroom, shutting the door behind her.

"I hope you two losers aren't actually abductors and are in fact luring me into a false sense of security so you can trap me in your basement and harvest my organs," Volcan said casually, all in one breath.

Ven stopped walking, but Shiro pushed him along. "That sounds oddly specific." The combusken just shrugged.

"So, do either of you have names or should I just continue to refer to you as 'Idiot One' and 'Idiot Two'?" Volcan asked conversationally.

Ven frowned. "You haven't called us that yet."

The fire bird scoffed. "Not out loud, you mean."

Not giving Ven the chance to process what he'd said, Volcan paused and squinted at something in the distance, saying, "Huh, won't you look at that. Rockets."

Shiro followed his gaze and cocked his head to the side in decidedly canine fashion. "Rockets? As in the criminal organization or the astronaut organization?"

"If you look close enough you might just notice the giant red 'R' across the backs of their uniforms," the fire type responded sarcastically.

Ven, although entirely clueless about who the hell his companions were talking about, also looked towards the humans they were referring to. There were only two of them, both males with imposing figures leaning against the brick wall of a nearby bike shop. Sure enough, a bright red 'R' was emblazoned across their black uniform tops. "They seem shady," he said lamely in an attempt to add something to the conversation.

"Weren't they supposedly disbanded a few years back?" Shiro asked Volcan.

He shrugged. "Supposedly, yeah, but they've been hanging around the city for the past six months or so. I've caught them intimidating citizens on numerous equations, but they're just too slippery for any of the Jennies to really get a solid lead on."

Ven suddenly began bouncing excitedly. "Does that mean they're free game?" His terrifying crimson eyes sparkled as he looked up at his lucario companion. "I've always wanted to be an ass-kicking detective-"

Shiro just facepalmed and grabbed the absol by the horn to drag him away. After observing the two Rockets for a few moments longer- they seemed to just be having an innocent discussion-, Volcan followed.

Without a doubt, Haru's trainer was a weird human.

Iyoku knew, of course, that humans were not supposed to have a sparkly aura- and that they were not supposed to be terrorizing small children alongside their braviary.

They're also certainly not supposed to fuck their Pokémon, Haru's voice responded to the current thoughts in his head. But they do it anyway.

Successfully humbled, Iyoku paused unsurely by the doorway leading to the opposite deck, the one located at the back end of the ship.

Before he could do anything, the green espeon sidled up to the female human, stopping her in the middle of her maniacal laughter.

"Haru," she greeted, a wide smile on her face. She had unnaturally white teeth, Iyoku noted. She must have had a great dentist. "I haven't seen you since we first boarded this ship. If I didn't know any better, I'd say that you've been fucking avoiding me."

There was a brief pause, and Iyoku assumed that Haru was communicating telepathically. The braviary from before was still dive bombing the remaining kids on deck, unperturbed by his trainers lack of participation.

Then the human looked in Iyoku's direction, and the purple cat prepared himself to experience his first human contact since the lab.

"Ah, so this is your friend," the female said to Haru. She started walking over, only stopping to whistle sharply. The braviary stopped what he was doing, allowing the last child to run off in terror, and switched to lazily gliding around overhead.

She stopped in front of Iyoku, and he was forced to look up at her.

She was what humans would consider attractive, with hair a pale shade of pink that he recalled was known as 'rose pink,' eyes the color of dark green moss, and a light cinnamon complexion. There was a red rose patterned short black scarf tied around her neck. She wore a solid, tight dark gray tank that stopped just above her navel, and the glint of silver on her toned, flat stomach simply baffled Iyoku. He had no idea why humans liked to attach metal to obscure body parts. She also wore a short dark green skirt, which matched her eyes, and had ripped black leggings on underneath. A shrunken luxury ball hung from a small gold chain wrapped around her wrist.

Finally, after a minute of sizing each other up, the girl introduced herself.

"The name's Tasmyn," she said. Her voice had a very slight scratchiness to it. Iyoku didn't find it entirely unpleasant at all. She tilted her head, light pink mouth twisting into a smirk. "You must be the fucker who kept my Haru busy all weekend."

Iyoku had no response. He couldn't bring himself to look away from her incredibly long, toned legs, her firm thighs...

Suddenly, Tasmyn stumbled to the side, and Iyoku found himself able to think properly again, as if a cloud had been unceremoniously lifted from his brain. Tasmyn doubled over laughing, and Iyoku looked at Haru for an explanation.

He shook his head, and Iyoku came to the conclusion that the espeon had used psychic force to push his trainer, in order to stop her from doing whatever voodoo shit she'd just attempted.

"C'mon, Haru," Tasmyn said through cackles. "Let a girl have some fucking fun for once, will ya?" She quickly added under her breath, "since you refuse to have fun with me..."

Haru flicked his tail and Iyoku knew that he was conversating telepathically once more.

Tasmyn sobered up. "Yeah, yeah, I fucking hear you... but honestly, who the fuck is he gonna tell?"

More silence. Iyoku was completely lost. If he were a real espeon, he'd be able to read their minds to find out what he was missing, he noted with slight bitterness. Tasmyn pouted. "Whatever."

His trainer successfully subdued, Haru finally spoke aloud. "Sorry about that," he apologized smoothly. "Sometimes she just gets out of hand."

"Whatever the fuck he's telling you, it's a fucking lie," Tasmyn interjected loudly. "We should get off this ship before I lose my Arceus-damned mind. It's been way too long since my last land-kissing experience."

And sure enough, the ship had just about reached land.

Lycanroc stretched out his limbs, eyes closed, thoroughly enjoying the feeling of the his hard skin soaking up the heat of the sun like a sponge. If he had any choice in the matter, this was how he'd choose to spend the rest of his short life- splayed out on a particularly sunny patch of dry, cracked earth, listening to the gentle swaying of foliage overhead.

'Man, what I wouldn't give to go back to when life was always like this,' he thought somberly. 'I wonder what my siblings are up to these days. They were pretty distraught over leaving me behind in that ursaring trap to be captured.'

Maybe they were still free and wild, spending their days patrolling the pack lands and lazing around the den and bickering over who gets what organ out of the sawsbuck carcass.

They'd also give him a thorough ass kicking if they learned he was rolling over and playing fetch with humans.

The more he thought, the angrier Lycanroc grew. That bastard of a human had found him with his leg snagged in a hunting trap and, instead of freeing him and letting him go, took advantage of his weakened state to trap him inside of one of those stupid slave capsules. He had taken him from his rightful habitat, the deep forests of Alola, all the way to an unfamiliar region and had the audacity to leave him in a daycare when his 'behavior issues' had gotten 'out of hand'.

Bryan had fancied himself an alpha male and thought he could handle a fully grown feral Pokémon, born and raised in the wilds with minimal direct human contact. Bryan thought he could tame Lycanroc down, and to an extent, he succeeded- only because the lycan figured the best way to not end up euthanized for being too 'aggressive' was to just be chilled out to the point where he provided absolutely zero use to any human trainer worth their salt.

This strategy had unforeseen consequences, namely getting dumped at a daycare.

With a heavy sigh, Lycanroc lumbered to his paws and surveyed his options.

The backyard of the daycare was huge, several acres if what he had heard the humans say served to be accurate. Granted, he had no way of knowing how large an acre was either way so that knowledge was useless.

The fences were tall- far too tall for him to just jump over, or at least not without a little extra assistance. He looked around some more, noticing a few things; he was in the desert biome section of the yard, so there were rocks, some patches of yellowing grass, and more rocks-

That's when he saw her.

A human female was standing over by the water dishes, refilling them using a hose. His eyes zeroed in on the purple apron- something only newbie workers wore. He didn't really care to observe the test of her appearance, as the only thing that mattered was what she could do for him.

Putting on his friendliest panting face and happy tail wag, Lycanroc padded over to the woman.

"Oh, hello there!" She, as predicted, immediately descended upon the rock type canine with positive attention. He'd heard somewhere that humans loved tail wagging and responded to it by doing the tail-wagger's bidding without question. "Aren't you absolutely adorable! What can I do for you, sweetie?"

Internally grimacing at what he was about to do, Lycanroc gave a high pitched yip and spun around, encouraging the human to follow him.

The woman did indeed follow him. "Do you need help getting into somewhere?"

He yipped again, leading her directly to the gate leading into the breeding pastures and hopped up to place his front paws on the gate door, tail wagging and tongue lolling.

The woman raised an eyebrow. "Do you have a pup in there that you want to see?"

He barked in affirmative. She smiled and reached for the latch. "Okay, but I definitely want to see your pups. I bet they're super cute."

The breeding pastures were, as the name suggests, where Pokémon authorized for breeding went to mate and give birth. A little birdy (quite literally, in fact. He'd played a pidgey to case the full area) informed Lycanroc that the fences surrounding the pastures were significantly lower than the ones everywhere else.

As soon as the gate was open, Lycanroc darted inside, easily leaving the worker in the dust. He circled the area and found the perfect spot to make his getaway without being spotted.

Lycanroc stood several yards back, stretched his legs out, and dropped into a sprint position.

He started up a brief Sandstorm, feeling his ability activate as soon as the grainy bits of earth began swirling around his body. Eyes on the prize, Lycanroc took off like a bullet, running for the fence and clearing the it in one clean leap. He was glad that his species had such long legs; this would've been way more difficult without them.

He dropped the Sandstorm and shook his fur out. Without a second glance at the place he had been all but abandoned at, Lycanroc sniffed the air and padded off in a not-so-random direction.