N stared at the paper, reading the words over and over again, hoping that he had simply misheard Mimikyu, but no matter how many times he read it, the message stayed the same.

  Human.

  Mimikyu was claiming he used to be human.

  That….

  Closing his eyes, he let out a deep sigh.

  “You know, Mimikyu, that’s not a very funny joke. I want answers. Real answers.”

  N bit back the anger, the annoyance. He should have known better. Mimikyu had always been evasive, always danced around saying things he didn’t want to, so why would this be any different? Yes, pretending to get all serious first, making them swear to take it to their graves, it was a new approach, a new method to his little games, but….

  Did Mimikyu really think now was the time for jokes? Did Mimikyu really trust him so little that even now he’d refuse to give answers he’d waited so long for?

  “That is the real answer, N.” Mimikyu responded, deathly serious. “I used to be human. That’s not a joke.”

  N rolled his eyes. “And I used to be a Snivy.”

  “If ya’d said Zorua I might’ve bought it for a sec, but….” Mimikyu let out an awkward half chuckle, half frustrated sigh.

  Whatever tense, awkward silence might have built up between the two was halted immediately by Marowak leaning forward, tilting his head back and forth to inspect Mimikyu from up close. “You… used to be human?”

  Mimikyu exhaled slowly, letting some of the tension leave him. “That’s what I said, yeah.”

  “Are we really going to play this game, Mimikyu? Really?” N urged him to give it up.

  “Well ya wanted the truth, so I’m givin’ ya the truth. It ain’ my fault yer refusin’ ta believe me.”

  Lucas had wandered off for a moment while Marowak continued his inspection, returning with a Pokedex in hand that he held up to identify Mimikyu.

  “Mimikyu, the disguise Pokemon. Data on this Pokemon is incomplete. Displaying incomplete data.”

  Lucas squinted down at Mimikyu before turning the device on N.

  N scowled at the boy, doubly so when Lucas seemed to sag in relief when nothing came up. “Seriously, Lucas?”

  The boy shrugged, turning back to Mimikyu.

  “...I’ve heard stories before,” Marowak whispered.

  Mimikyu jumped on the opportunity in an instant. “There we go! See? Marowak believes me. What story ‘ave ya heard then? Maybe ya heard about Fallers but by a diff’ren’ name?”

  N’s resolve cracked, just a bit. Marowak didn’t seem the type to lie about something like this.

  “Well, I don’t think so?” the little Fire type responded. “It’s just… well… before I became one, I’d only heard stories about Ghost types here and there, but a lot of them had something in common. Before they were Pokemon… they were dead humans.”

  Mimikyu groaned, slapping a clawed shadow against where his face might be beneath the disguise. “Not the-” he let out a frustrated sigh, “jus’- no. I’m not some dead human, reincarnated into a Ghost type or whatever. I guess I should’ve expected that sorta thing…. Though I s’pose I’m s’prised it wasn’ you that suggested it, N….”

  N frowned. “Why in the world would I suggest something like that?”

  “Cuz one of the most prominent stories like that is from Unova? There’s talk ‘bout how those masks that Yamask carry are their faces when they were human. How they look at ‘em ‘n’ cry.”

  N pinched the bridge of his nose. “Are you perhaps forgetting the part where I can both talk to Pokemon and am from Unova? I’ve met Yamask before, Mimikyu. Those stories aren’t true. They’re born from eggs just like any other Pokemon.”

  Mimikyu paused, considering that. “Huh. Fair point.”

  “Look,” N demanded. “If you really refuse to tell me anything about yourself that’s… I won’t say it’s fine, because honestly I’m getting annoyed at this point, but it’s understandable.” It’s not like he was being entirely forthcoming with his life story either, he couldn’t be too hypocritical about this. “I would have accepted that you just weren’t ready to share. I’ve waited this long, haven’t I?” Not that he was entirely certain how long it had even been. Days blended into weeks blended into months when you were out on the road. “But instead, you decide that you have to start spouting off a lie like this? That’s… that’s just insulting, Mimikyu.”

  “‘Cept the part where it ain’ a lie,” Mimikyu countered. “I realize that it’s… a bit difficult ta swallow a pill like that, given the whole…” he gestured vaguely at himself,” but it is true. I… what would it take ta prove it to ya?”

  They were really still doing this. That was fine! It was totally fine. Maybe… maybe Mimikyu genuinely did believe what he was saying. Maybe it wasn’t a lie. Maybe Mimikyu was just wrong. If most of humanity could believe the lie that it was okay to force Pokemon to fight, why couldn’t a single Mimikyu somehow come to believe that he’d once been human? People lied to themselves all the time. He just… he just needed to poke holes in his story!

  Looking down at Mimikyu, he stared directly into those little eye slits. “Well, for starters, how exactly did you end up as a Mimikyu, if you really were a human before?”

  That gave Mimikyu some pause, and his pause brought doubt to the expressions of Lucas and Marowak.

  “...I don’ know.”

  N let out a breath, let those words hang in the air for a moment. “You don’t know. Now, Mimikyu, work with me for a moment here. Obviously I can’t speak from experience with this,” given that it was impossible, “but I would think that being transformed into an entirely different species would be an event that you would remember. Do you have any explanation for how you ended up like this?”

  Maybe this would work. Maybe if N could get Mimikyu to explain the lie that he told himself, they could get to work slowly extracting him from that lie. It still wouldn’t answer all of the questions that had been posed to Mimikyu before this little sidetrack, but they could always come back to those things.

  “I have…. A few ideas… I s’pose….” Mimikyu slowly came up with.

  Marowak interrupted, however. “If you don’t know that, then what do you know? What was the change like? Did you evolve into a Mimikyu?”

  Mimikyu sighed, turning back to his writings once more. This wasn’t the path N had wanted to lead them down, but letting up the pressure might make Mimikyu more open afterwards…? At a time like this, he really wished that he’d paid more attention to those lessons growing up….

  Mimikyu pressed the pen against the paper. “I s’pose we could start at the beginnin’....”

  I was surprised when I woke up to sunlight in my eyes.

  I’d specifically arranged the furniture in my room to avoid that very thing, and it’d been that way for years.

  You know how it goes, though. You’re half awake, groggy, wondering what time it is, if you’re late for work, had you set your alarm correctly? Maybe the power went out.

  Or maybe you don’t know that feeling, but I digress. The point I’m trying to make is that I was disorientated, especially when I realized that instead of being in the bed that I knew I’d gone to sleep in, I found myself in the middle of a forest.

  I panicked a bit, I’ll admit. That was a reasonable reaction. It’s not like I had prankster friends who would have moved me in my sleep, planning to record and put it up online.

  I had a passing thought that someone had kidnapped me or something, but I wasn’t restrained. Perhaps I had sleepwalked, but I’d never done that before and I thought skipping straight to wandering into a nearby forest was a bit of an advanced step.

  But, of course, the panicked thoughts of where exactly I was and how I’d ended up there were less pressing than the fact that I was experiencing… I suppose you could call it a form of body dysmorphia? Or maybe it was something like phantom limb syndrome, or…. Well, I’m no doctor, but everything felt wrong.

  When I tried to sit up, nothing happened. When I tried to reach up to take the blanket off my face, nothing happened. When I tried rolling over, nothing happened.

  I’m not entirely sure of how long I was there, entirely helpless and unable to move. Long enough for my initial panic to subside, I suppose. Tens of minutes, maybe? Perhaps an hour or two?

  Anyway, I eventually got my body to move the way I wanted it to. Or maybe “my body” is a bit of a misnomer, because it definitely wasn’t my body, despite the fact that it now acted as mine.

  I’m not sure that I fully realized what had happened to me until I reached forward, and instead of a human limb I saw the shadowy claws. That sent me into another round of panic.

  I slowly came to realize that I didn’t have limbs as I had once known them. That the “arm” came and went when I willed it to. That I could “walk” when I willed myself to walk, even if I didn’t think very hard about what I might be using to propel myself. Trying to move like that sent me through another round of dysphoria. It wasn’t how I used my limbs. These were someone else’s, stolen or borrowed or something. Even without that, I was just too low to the ground. I’d been considered tall for a human, and to go from that to having my eyeline be a few inches off the ground…

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

  When I eventually got movement down, I came to realize that the “blanket” on my face was actually some sort of mask or something, and moving to remove it gave me a sense of discomfort. Now, looking back, I’m not sure if that was the instincts I’d gained as a Mimikyu telling me not to hurt anyone around me by taking it off, or if I was just too scared to see for myself what lay beneath.

  By that point most of the day had passed. The sun was setting, dark was settling in, and I was still in those damn woods I didn’t even recognize. I didn’t know what was going on, how I’d gotten there, what had happened to me… so obviously I was terrified. I started hearing strange sounds in the distance, and I wasn’t sure if it was someone or something that might try to attack or kill me, so I ended up not sleeping at all that night, pressing myself against a tree trunk and jumping at every little noise.

  I did a lot of thinking that night. About where I might be. About what had happened to my body. About how I was meant to get out of the situation.

  It wasn’t until the sun started to rise again and I saw a Tranquill flying above me that I realized I had somehow ended up in….

  …I ended up in Unova.

  I felt… well, mostly confused as to how I had managed that, but there was also a bit of relief. I knew that… Unova was a fairly safe place. I realized that waiting for every bump in the night had been a bit silly, that it would probably be a good idea to explore my surroundings a bit, get a lay of the land and whatnot.

  It wasn’t until I stumbled upon the river running through the forest that I saw my reflection, that I realized what I’d become. I mean, I’m sure I confused a lot of people and Pokemon, being a Mimikyu in the middle of Unova, but I at least knew for myself at that point.

  Some things started to make more sense to me at that point, even if most everything about the situation confused me. Having a bit of knowledge helped me calm down a bit. Let me look at things in a more practical view.

  Shelter, food, and water. Those are the basics for survival, or at least what I’d been told as a human. I figured life as a Mimikyu would be much the same. The river solved the issue of water, and I found a log that was mostly hollowed out not too far from there that I could use for shelter, but when it came to food…

  I knew that Pokemon ate berries, out in the wild. So I looked for some. I looked and looked and looked and found a whole lot of nothing. I started thinking about… other options. I’d never seen it happen myself, but I’d heard that some Pokemon eat others, and… well, honestly I was scared that I’d have to resort to that. I told myself I wouldn’t do it unless I was starving, and lucky me, it turns out that I don’t actually need to eat. It wasn’t until just a few hours before N found me that I realized that I’d never felt hungry…

  I didn’t realize that at the time, though. I told myself that I’d need to… practice my combat skills if I was going to have to hunt for food.

  That was when I realized that I didn’t know how to use any moves. I spent a few hours trying to figure it out on my own, to no avail, and then realized I could probably ask for help from some of the locals. I’d seen that Tranquill earlier, so there were clearly Pokemon around, even if I hadn’t seen any others up to that point.

  Except that no matter how much I explored that stupid forest, I couldn’t find anyone. I looked and looked, and there wasn’t a Petilil or an Audino or anything else that might help me out. Eventually I spotted something out of the corner of my eye, a Venipede hiding itself behind a bush in the distance. I thought to myself “Finally! Someone who can help me out!”

  But as I approached, it moved away. It was like a game of keep away, but eventually I just completely lost sight of it.

  That was when I pieced together that I hadn’t found anyone because they’d been avoiding me.

  That sucked. It really did. The thought crossed my mind that because they hated me or whatever their problem was, I was going to starve to death. Even if I could figure out the move aspect on my own, I couldn’t hunt something I couldn’t find.

  I was exhausted at that point. Trudged back to my little hollow, feeling depressed and honestly pretty hopeless. Slept better than I have in years, clear through to the next day even though the sun hadn’t even started to fall when I fell asleep.

  Despite my attitude, I couldn’t bring myself to just give up like that. I told myself I had to try and figure out some moves anyway. Went over my little mental list of moves I should be able to use as a Mimikyu. Shadow Sneak, Wood Hammer, I think when N stumbled upon me I was trying and failing to use Hone Claws.

  Nothing worked. I could tear up trees like nothing else, just with my base strength and my claws, but as far as actually moves went? Nothing.

  I kept trying, but I tried not to think about it too much. Instead, I started thinking about how I could get myself fixed. Being a Mimikyu was an… interesting experience, if you subtract all the fear and the loneliness and the.. Well, you get it. But I wanted to go back to being human.

  It felt like an exercise in futility, thinking of ways to fix myself, but I forced myself to do it anyway just so I couldn’t focus on how hopeless it all felt. I’d heard a few stories about people being turned into Pokemon, after all, and if I was living proof of that stuff being real, then surely one of the methods for fixing it would work as well.

  To me, as crazy as it might sound, the easiest method was probably going to be finding my way here. To Sinnoh. I knew about all sorts of Legends, but Palkia and Arceus and maybe Dialga seemed like my best bet. Palkia controls space. Matter. I told myself that if the fucker can alter space as it pleases, that it could alter me back into my natural state. Dialga’s ability to alter time might be able to send me back to before this had happened to me… though I wasn’t sure on the details there. For all I knew it’d just happen again if I used that method. And Arceus… well, it’s Arceus, of course he’d be able to fix me.

  I had nothing to do but think and attack defenseless trees. Did that for a few days, I think. Coming up with plans, and back up plans, and back up plans for those back up plans… Of course, all of them sounded just about impossible. Not completely, but… you know. Highly improbable, let’s say.

  And then you found me, N. A human who could understand me. A human who cared. And suddenly… it felt like it wasn’t some distant dream. That I wasn’t destined to be stuck in those stupid woods, trapped as a Mimikyu forever. That’s why I was so quick to latch onto you. Why I didn’t care that we’d only just met before I was acting as your little tagalong.

  In a way… you sort of saved me. I’m not sure if I ever thanked you for that.

  So, thanks, N.

  For saving me.

  A lot of that had, frankly, been a bit disturbing to hear. N knew that Mimikyu had been in the Lostlorn forest for a bit before he’d found him. Thinking about him not being able to move his body, worrying about what lengths he’d have to go to in order to avoid starvation, left hopeless and without companionship…. Calling it upsetting would be an understatement.

  And yet, how much of it could he believe? Were those bits about him being human sprinkled throughout the story his attempt at trying to cement his lie? Or was it his genuine experience, with memories that weren’t exactly real haunting him the entire time?

  Mimikyu was never human.

  It wasn’t true.

  It couldn’t be true.

  N refused to accept something so ridiculous. A human becoming a Pokemon…

  “So, wait…” Marowak spoke up, ignoring the way that Lucas was sorting through page after page of poorly written League, trying to make sense of Mimikyu’s story, “you really just woke up like that?”

  Mimikyu sighed. “Yep.”

  Marowak thought for a moment. “Where were you before?”

  Mimikyu paused. “What do ya mean? I told ya, I went ta sleep in my bed. Next thing I know I’m in a forest.”

  “No, no, I got that part. But where are you from? You’re not from Sinnoh like me, or Unova like N, right? And that lady that talked to us, she was from Alola, right? But she didn’t talk like you do, so you must not come from there either, right?”

  N blinked. That was true… he hadn’t paid much attention to it because Olivia had brought all sorts of other things to his attention, but her accent really wasn’t anything like Mimikyu’s. He vaguely recalled talking to Mimikyu about just that at one point, how Mimikyu had said something about how the accents were different on different islands…

  Mimikyu sighed. “Look. I am from a very, very far away place. Ya ‘aven’ heard of it. Seems most people who live in the League ain’ very familiar with places outside of it, barrin’ a few cases like previous war enemies….”

  N frowned. Was Mimikyu changing his story now?

  …not that it particularly mattered. It wasn’t like Mimikyu was wrong about that. Keeping up with every region all over the world was… a lot. Especially when most of them wouldn’t be of any importance to the average person in their entire lives.

  Where Mimikyu lived before didn’t matter. The lie about being human didn’t matter. This had all just been a distraction, hadn’t it? Just a sidetrack in the conversation.

  “I’m sorry that you had to go through all of that Mimikyu,” N spoke up, capturing their attention, “but I’m afraid that I’m a bit lost, still. How exactly does your…” lie. False memories. Whatever they were. “... situation equate to you knowing all the things you do? There are plenty of humans out there. I doubt the teenager working at the local Pokemart knows the things you do.”

  “Ah.” That seemed to jog Mimikyu’s memory as to how the conversation had reached this point. “Right, the bit ‘bout me bein’ human was jus’ so that would make sense.” Even then,however, he paused, having to think things out. “Ya could call me a bit of a researcher, I s’pose.”

  “A researcher? What do you mean by that?” It could mean plenty of things after all. Anything from a junior assistant for Professor Rowan to someone doing product development at a snack company.

  “You know, like how Cynthia likes ta research archeology ‘n’ Steven Stone likes ‘is rare stones ‘n’ fossils. It ain’ their main gig, I had ta pay the bills still, but I had a… a bit of a research hobby, where I’d look into stuff like Legendary Pokemon, the Fairy type, any sorta rare or strange phenomena that ‘appened ta catch my eye. The League might try ‘n’ hide info on that sorta thing, but they ‘ave ta know a post exists before they can take it down, plus me bein’ so far from ‘ere…. Well, findin’ that sorta info was a lot easier for me. I keep up with Legend stuff as it happens, that makes it obvious that Ash is a bit of magnet for the stuff, an’ I keep track of Ash as well, if to a lesser extent, and if yer keepin’ track of ‘im ya know that Sinnoh was the last region of the League he hadn’t been to ‘n’ was within a reasonable distance. At that point it’s a matter of deductive reasonin’, ya know? Someone visitin’ a new region for battle is gonna pop in ta see the professor, ‘n’ if yer travellin’ on foot the path to the first gym is pretty obvious….”

  That… made a certain level of sense, N could admit. He could have done all of that as a Mimikyu though, couldn’t he? N had seen him use a computer before. And making some sense didn’t mean that he could so easily accept it anyway.

  “You know all of this… because of a hobby. Because you happen to enjoy researching things. You weren’t an intelligence agent from another region, you weren’t a spy for a criminal organization, you just… liked to look things up?”

  The Mime Jr. head bobbed back and forth as Mimikyu nodded in agreement.

  “Then why was Cynthia so shocked? If you and she are so similar in that regard, why did you revealing what you did set her on edge so much?”

  “If ya might recall, Cynthia was jus’ sorta surprised ‘n’ maybe a bit impressed at first. She even went so far as ta entertain my suggestion for joint research into Spear Pillar, remember? She only got all cagey after I mentioned the thing about Deoxys, ‘n’ that’s probably ‘cuz she was part of the group censorin’ that event. If you were hidin’ somethin’, ‘n’ someone jus’ up and mentioned that info like it was nothin’ special, wouldn’t that leave ya a bit surprised? She’s used ta citizens of the League not knowin’ stuff she don’ want ‘em to, so ‘avin’ an outsider show up was somethin’ she ain’ used to.”

  That… had that been how it happened? It was so long ago now that N struggled to remember specific details…

  As N thought that over, Lucas seemed to have finally caught up with the conversation, his eyes wide as he hastily scribbled, like he finally understood.

  He had a smug look on his face as he showed it to Mimikyu.

  “わかったよ。オタクだね！”

  Though they couldn’t see it, N was fairly certain that they could all feel the scowl beneath Mimikyu’s disguise. “Seriously? That’s what ya got outta that? Ya think I’m some sorta nerd jus’ cuz I enjoy doin’ a bit of research?”

  Lucas nodded, Marowak laughed, and N sighed.

  This… all of this was just… a lot.

  He’d need to think it over some, try to come up with ways to make Mimikyu see the truth…

  Because no matter how much he asserted it, N refused to believe it.

  Mimikyu had never been human.

  He couldn’t be.

  Translations:

  わかったよ。オタクだね！= I get it. You’re a nerd! I’m not sure if it’s true but I’ve heard that the “だね” ending is from the hokkaido dialect which would be perfect for someone from Sinnoh.

  As always, feedback is appreciated. (If you’re actually looking for a response, discord is the place to be)