Sentimental

when the shiny eevee met the girl, he couldn't yet think. just ideas in the form of an animal, made to go through the motions and put right where she'd find him.

her name was Beth. she named him Moony. all it took was a name to make him exist.

he was instantly her favorite, rare in appearance and skilled in battle. she valued him even over her starter and any other pokemon she ever caught. he was a symbol of incredible luck (despite being meant to be found by her from the start) and a whirlwind of destruction on the battlefield (he never understood the numbers which comprised his strength, but she barely understood either.)

she spoke to him often. about battles and adventure, praises and love, family troubles and sorrow. over time, he became both a valued battler and a shoulder to cry on. he didn't, wouldn't, couldn't judge her. she talked about things he didn't understand, like car crashes or parental divorces. sometimes she would express it as a deep anger, venting the words she wished to say to those around her with Moony as her silent audience. it seemed like something she did without even thinking. it wasn't something he could help her with, so all he could do was strive to be his best in battle.

there was something primal in the way he fought. begging, pleading to be brought out, scratching at the surface of his soul and crying that it was a part of who he was. it powered his every blow, always but not quite drawing blood from those he faced. it was an intoxicating sort of feeling, though, and that's what scared him.

the world he was in had a name, or so he had overheard from her. "Pokemon Murky Sapphire," some sort of derivation of another world so much like it but with little differences here and there. she had gotten it from another human who had given it away for free with little explanation. she was quite pleased with it, albeit suprised that it had yet to turn out "creepy" like she had expected. Moony didn't know why she had expected it to.

Beth poured her sentiments into the game, and Moony soaked them up like moonbeams. he managed to speak for the first time upon evolving into an umbreon - though the rings upon his body were silver instead of blue, shining like his celestial namesake. his first words were "Thank you, Beth. I love you." Beth didn't really look happy. Moony didn't understand.

"Oh, I know how this is going to end now," Beth had said then. he wished she had explained. he wished he had asked her to explain.

all the feelings she had poured into the game, good and bad, were a part of him and oh-so-confusing; he felt them as needles in his skin, warmth crackling through his fur, noise pulsing in his head. he wondered if all pokemon felt this way.

once he asked a shiftry he was up against. it stared right through him, blank-eyed. he crept closer to ask again, and it didn't say a word as it attacked him thoughtlessly.

that was the first time his predestined nature took the reigns from him.

he stood, trembling, in the blood and what else was left of the shiftry for what must have been several minutes, unable to process what had happened.

Beth was startled, but seemingly nothing more. the battle ended unceremoniously, and she commented that she was wondering when this would happen. she moved on, the shiftry's trainer mourning in a plastic manner.

there had always been something more detached about the way she acted to him after he had killed the shiftry. she wouldn't share parts of her life anymore, or talk to him in the same way she used to. Moony feared she hated him now.

but when he thought about the way she spoke to and looked at him now, he realized it was something far worse.

she saw him as a novelty, now.

waiting expectantly for the next time he'd talk, or the next pokemon he'd kill. just any way he'd go off the rails she thought he had been set to at first.

so he gave himself over to his programming. he would tear apart foes instantly, leaving their bodies in increasingly gruesome and gory heaps. the more he did, the more it took for her to react to his actions. he had to wonder how the bodies looked on her side, because on his he felt so sick he wanted to throw up.

but Beth grew bored.

"Is this all it's gonna be now?" she had said after a battle in which Moony had left half the route stained with blood. "Might as well just put you in the PC, then."

Moony had never been in the PC before. he wasn't sure he wanted to be.

"Please don't put me in there." he had said. the game presented his voice in a sickly scarlet. "I'm sorry. I'll try to be more exciting for you."

she had only been encouraged by this. she stuffed him in an empty box and left him alone.

it was quiet and dark there, but he found that he didn't mind. he could think about things other than the way flesh tore under his claws or how easy it was to live on a murderous autopilot or the way all the same feelings that gave him thought muddled with his head. but... while he didn't know what Beth wanted from him, he could sleep now.

he went sleepwalking.

he awoke to find more gore. even now, he wasn't quite desensitized to it. in front of him stood a decapitated human, who he knew to represent Beth in the world of the game. he prayed he hadn't somehow killed her real self.

"THIS IS WHAT YOU GET FOR ABANDONING ME." words that weren't his own came out of his mouth, running on the script he was born to follow.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Please." he talked over his own voice, text boxes full of red words overlapping each other.

"NOW YOU'LL HAVE TO LOVE ME FOREVER." the other part of him, the part that couldn't think, continued on its prelaid path, unable to comprehend that it was being interrupted.

"That's the world talking. Not me." he tried to clarify over himself. in a way, it both was and wasn't true, as he was a piece of the game.

the text garbled together into something nobody could hope to read, least of all Beth.

the figurative curtain closed as the screen faded to black, Moony still begging to be heard as the story ended.

he was left alone in the black. it was like the box, but... it felt colder in a way he couldn't describe. he couldn't bring himself to sleep.

he wondered what tale his life - the version where he didn't truly think, before Beth talking to him like he was real made it almost true, at least to his own mind - was supposed to tell. he wondered if he was the villain of a horror meant to illustrate cruelty on a level his mind couldn't understand. he wondered why someone would have created him for a story like that.

and most of all, he wondered if there were any others like him.

the save was wiped, and with it, so was Moony.