Crazy's what they called me, from the moment I was born.

They knew something was wrong with me because my body didn't try to shift into the first Pokémon that I saw. Usually that's how my species imprints; it's the "natural" thing to do.

Yeah, right— as if anything about my species is "natural." Of course, no other Pokémon I knew was brave enough to admit that, let alone look into the matter. "Leave the detective work to the humans," I remember a particularly sassy Tsereena telling me once, after catching me eavesdropping on a couple of scientists who were discussing the strange genetic makeup of Ditto. I wasn't trying to do detective work, I was just trying to figure out who I was. But that comment is probably what kicked off the chain of events which followed soon after that fateful day.

Crazy's what they called me, when I refused my trainer's orders.

It isn't unusual to disobey a trainer; I don't mean to imply that at all. Peaceful Pokémon who don't want to battle, lazy Pokémon who don't want to work, pious Pokémon who don't want to commit crimes— these are all normal, re-occuring bits of gossip that find their way into the wild. But a Ditto who refuses to mate with anything thrown in the day care? Now that was crazy— and that little juicy tidbit spread like a fire spin on a grove of Trevenant.

"Ain't that the ornery, rebellious one?"

I'd hear whispers as I uncomfortably backed away from whatever partner my trainer had decided to try his luck with today. I wasn't ornery— not on purpose, anyway. I wasn't trying to rebel; I actually happened to respect my trainer (if he wasn't my favorite human in the region). I'd always been drawn to humans, and I willingly let myself get captured when my now-trainer first approached me. I'd never fit in the wild, and thought having a human partner would be the solution. But…

"Yup, that's the one. Won't breed with anything offered to it, not even that Machamp that was here last week. Hoo-wee! I dunno what it's waitin' for, but it's gonna get abandoned if it keeps refusing to do its job."

Deep down, I knew that was true.

Crazy's what they called me, when I decided to move to Rhyme City.

"It's a creepy place," a Froakie snapped when I first announced my decision. (I'd use names if I could, instead of lumping all Pokémon in with the rest of their species as if we're all the same, but Pokémon names don't translate well to human speech.) "People and Pokémon living side-by-side? Unnatural. I don't trust it."

"It seems more natural than locking us up in balls all the time," a Marowak mused, tapping her bone-club against her other hand. "Personally, I think we deserve more respect than that." I'd known the Marowak for a while; she had been released by her trainer for poor behavior, just like me. She was probably the only other Pokémon I'd ever considered a friend.

"If you do leave," a Glameow of particular annoyance purred, "don't bother trying to run back to us when you realize what a dump that place is. I give it two weeks before the humans realize it's a stupid idea and leave it to the homeless."

I worried about that Glameow's words from the moment I arrived on the train. It was as much a surprise to me as it was to her when, six months later, it was named one of the top three places to live in the entire region.

Crazy's what they called me, the first time I snuck into an elementary school.

I never heard anyone's full remarks, because they stopped talking when they noticed me nearby, but I heard snippets. Whispers. Quiet remarks about the Ditto who tried to learn how to speak.

The rumors that I was following a fairy tale about a Meowth who learned how to talk may not have been entirely unfounded, but one couldn't blame me for trying. The complicated patterns of shapes, numbers, especially words— they intrigued me. The human world was strange and impossibly intricate; it excited me in a way no partner had ever been able to. For weeks after that first day I'd sneak into the classroom: a Rattata in the corner, a Pidgey on the windowsill, a Growlithe passing by. The children never noticed me. This was Rhyme City, after all, the freely wandering Pokémon were kind of the whole gimmick.

But my efforts were always in vain. As much as I learned, I could never get my vocal chords to mimic those of a human. Even trying to mimic the legendaries— who were rumored to have some special abilities akin to human speech— yielded no results. How was that fair? I asked myself that question every night when I went to sleep. How was it fair, that humans should be born with such abilities and I could not? That I was allowed such a flexible genetic makeup, but that the one thing I aspired to always alluded me?

Crazy's what they called him. And that was when everything changed.

I first heard the scientists talking near the school. It was a typical human conversation at first: the boss is an egotistic cheese-butt, have you ever seen such a ridiculous timetable, gosh-how-I-wish-I-had-a-raise. But just as I was about to leave, one of them lowered their voice and uttered the word that made me stay.

"I think he's crazy."

I froze from the inside the trashcan I was starting to climb out. I was currently practicing the form of a Garbodor, so neither human payed me much mind.

"Don't talk so loud, someone might hear you!"

"But don't you think it's strange? I mean, the experiments, they always seemed a little off, but, all this new stuff about Ditto genetics—"

Ditto?

There was a human out there researching us, too?

"Like I said, keep your voice down! I'm not disagreeing with you, but I don't wanna be the one who gets my skin flayed for saying it! Let's just get back before our break ends and the supervisor docks us for being late again."

The scientists scuffled away, changing the topic to the weather (why did humans always default to talking about the weather?) as they scurried to their car, completely unaware of the dot-eyed Ekans slithering behind them.

"Crazy's what they called me."

A wheelchair-bound man squeezed a single drop of purple liquid into a jar.

"And yet here I am, talking to a Pokémon who's volunteered itself to my research!" The man— Howard Clifford was his name— paused to laugh at the irony of his own good luck. "You know, I always tell my subordinates that Pokémon are smarter than they let on. They never believe me."

I circled around in my chair, shifting back and forth between a Growlithe and Poochyena. The man rambled on for a little bit about how wonderful Pokémon were, and how excited he was to use me for research.

"Of course, some of the testing might be painful at first," he droned on. "But I only hire the best of the best, so you're not in any danger… most likely. We'll have to do some basic testing on your DNA first, and then we can begin experiments regarding its fluidity…"

I don't remember exactly how long he droned on for, but when he was done I was escorted— escorted, like a human!— to my chamber. All the experimental Pokémon stayed in chambers, although I never talked to any of the others during my first year at the lab. I was placed under rigorous testing the very first day, and every waking moment of the first few months I was supervised. Meals, tests, and sleep were all according to strict schedule.

Then, things started changing.

Crazy's what they called me, but the way they said it was different.

"Crazy," one very attractive female scientist whispered under her breath as she furiously jotted something on a notepad. "It's crazy that it lets us take samples of its body."

I hid a painful grimace as another scientist used a machine on me that apparently doubled as a way to suck up amounts of human blood. Mr. Clifford had explained it to me once, how humans could transfer their blood into certain other humans, but I was a bit drugged at the time and couldn't fully understand him. I think he used a metaphor about a Spearow feeder…?

"This one is a special case," was all the other scientist said, as she checked the bag filling with my pink, jelly-like substance. She turned back to me without emotion. "You're done."

I wriggled my way off of the sampling table and transformed into a Houndoom, licking the pain off my front paw. I liked walking around as something scary; it frightened the newcomers. There were lots of newcomers, since lots of the old staff had been fired (including both scientists whose conversation had first led me to the lab). And I was basically free to roam around until it was time for my next test, so I had plenty of prank time.

Sometimes I thought about the wild Pokémon I'd left way back when I moved to Rhyme City. Boy, would they call me crazy if they saw what I was doing now. Every morning I willingly submitted myself to all sorts of gloved hands rubbing and prodding my body, sticking me with needles, ordering me to transform into this Pokémon or that. Measuring me with little sticky cups that were attached to wires, putting me through scanners, vaccinating me with small shots of Pokémon DNA to see if they couldn't fix my eyes to be able to transform as well. (So far, there hadn't been any progress on that last part.)

Yeah, they would call me crazy.

But they wouldn't say it like the scientists.

Crazy's what they called me… but they'd never call me that again.

It took years before Mr. Clifford even mentioned the concept of transforming me into a human. He brought it up in the middle of talking about the weather, which is how I knew it was a subject he was nervous about. I don't think even he expected me to be so fully on-board with his genius program.

He'd then gone on another one of his long tangential rambles about "evolving humanity" or something, but I wasn't even half-listening. My childhood troubles, my lifelong dream— this was the answer. To deny the state of my birth and evolve into the best version of myself; the human version of myself.

Of course, it took many more years after that— and literally thousands of tests, if you included all the "mandatory checkup" samples as tests— before such a thing was possible. Human DNA was injected carefully into my own, and I spent hours at a time wriggling on the ground, forcing my body to accept it. The first time I emulated a human, I practiced with the image of the scientist who called me "crazy" in such an affectionate manner. I think she was unnerved (humans were unnerved by the strangest things), but I was ecstatic beyond measurement. I eventually learned to imitate every single one of the workers at the facility, although they never were able to fix my defunct eyes. That was— ironically— a genetic disorder which couldn't be repaired. Vocal recreation was also a bust, which frustrated me to no end and eventually caused me to play several spiteful pranks which I almost got in trouble for. (One I was particularly proud of involved turning into a Dewgong and freezing the microwave in a block of ice... while there was still food inside.)

But then the day came when I was given the ultimate opportunity. Mr. Clifford actually approached me in my own chamber, in the middle of the night— he had clearly woken up from his brilliant idea, and now wouldn't sleep until it was carried out— and handed me a yellow notepad and a pink no. 2 pencil that looked like it might've belonged to his son when he was little.

"If you could design for yourself any human body of your choosing, what would it look like?"

Crazy's what they called me.

I held the rough sketch up— I say "sketch" because it couldn't really be called a "memo" without sounding ironic— to my boss. My handwriting still looked like a kindergartener's at best, and at this late stage in the game there were quite a few staff members who didn't even know my identity, so my communication via writing was restricted to one person and one person alone.

"Crazy, huh?" Mr. Clifford tapped his fingers thoughtfully. "I've definitely been labeled that once or twice. Only ever by people who were too stuck on the past to consider their future evolutions." He waved off the words dismissively, and I felt a faint glow of pride thinking about him waving off all the Pokémon who had disrespected me before. "Don't pay them any mind."

There was a knock at the door, and it opened before Mr. Clifford had the chance to respond.

"M-M-Mr. Clifford, sir? Y-your son sent me, he s-said to say—"

"Do you not understand the purpose of knocking?!" Mr. Clifford snapped. "Ms. Norman and I are in the middle of a very important meeting, as you can clearly see."

The boy— he was hardly old enough to be called a man— shifted nervously in his spot. I spun my chair around to face him and pushed my sunglasses up threateningly. The boy squeaked like a newborn Pichu and bowed profusely.

"I-I'm sorry! I'm sorry, sir! I won't interrupt you next time, promise! I'll tell your son you're busy, sir!"

I smirked as the boy ran off, shutting the door behind me. He was new blood and— not knowing my identity or why everybody else was so jittery in my presence— he was incredibly afraid of me. Mr. Clifford chortled, seeming to get as much of a kick out of his fear as I was.

"Hah! Young ones today, so inconsiderate…" He took the memo I'd written and studied it for a moment. Just briefly, his expression changed to something unreadable. I resisted the urge to transform into a Psychic-type and try to read his mind.

"You wrote your z backwards. Start working on your penmanship in your free time," he said after a pause. "Now I have to be getting over to the press conference or Roger will have my head."

I shifted into a stronger-looking human and helped wheel my boss downstairs, ignoring the confused double-take that I got from the staff member I happened to be imitating.

"Now remember," he whispered as I wheeled him into his car, "we don't say a word about the festival yet. We won't be releasing the 'good news' until we're positive that the rest of the operation is running smoothly, which should be happening whenever Laurent decides to get off her lazy…"

I smiled quietly to myself as he started grumbling about how long the research facility in the Torterra Garden was taking. When he made his second comment about keeping the company plans top-secret, I got a brilliantly snarky idea and set about the laborious task of writing down another memo on the legal pad he'd given me as a gift so long ago. I finished just as we drove to our destination.

"…and then that brat Keith said he wasn't going to help with the distribution under his current pay, so I'm stuck between firing him and having another witness to silence, or acting like some ninny who doesn't know how to keep his subordinates under contr— Oh, did you have something for me?"

I handed Mr. Clifford the note, written painstakingly with my own pink no. 2 pencil. A smile slowly spread across his face as he read it.

My lips are sealed, sir.

He handed the paper back to me.

"And that is why you are my favorite."

It took a bit more willpower than usual to keep a smile from ruining my cold, hard, bad-girl-who-will-kick-your-butt-and-look-great-while-doing-it expression. All my life I had been a misfit.

Crazy's what they called me.

But favorite is what I'd chosen to become.

(A/N: If you liked this fic, please leave a review! Even a few short words encourage me to keep writing way more than a favorite or a follow! Once a Guest left a review that said "so cute! Thank you for writing this!" and it was adorable and made me so happy ^^)