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MEW-CHILD: Ch.8: Interlude - Remnants of the Old Road

by NonAnalogue

NonAnalogue A wholly average child hears a pleading call from below the viaduct.
In a different time, in a different place, there was a child.

This was not, on the surface, unusual. After all, at most points in history, there tended to be a non-zero number of children.

The child mostly kept to herself. She was shy, and even when she did speak, her voice was timorous and quiet, so much so that the people around her rarely even heard her.

This, too, was not unusual. Shy children were never unheard of, even if they were unheard from.

The child was small for her age and she had thick raven-black hair. She preferred the darkness to the light – the light always hurt her eyes, especially with the thick glasses she had to wear. She loved to sneak out of her home after the sun had set and explore the town when nobody else was around – when streetlights cast a pallid glow across the roads, barely holding back the darkness of the sky. The other children gave her the nickname 'Moon' as a result.

None of this was unusual, at least not in the grand scheme of things. Her peers certainly thought Moon was strange, but then children were never exceptional at taking a good look at the big picture. Moon was, on the whole, average, not that this provided any comfort to her.

It was midnight. A cold breeze sauntered through the empty streets, not strong enough to be upgraded to 'bracing' but still just the right temperature to sting the cheeks. Snowflakes danced in the air, diamond dust that only added to the inches of accumulation on the ground.

Moon was outside.

Again, not unusual. Nighttime was perfect for the moon to be out.

She stuck her tongue out, catching ephemeral flakes that became drops of water in the blink of an eye. Winter was her favorite season. The battle between light and dark at nighttime was all the more stark during the coldest months, with the pure white snow pushing up against the pitch black sky. She loved the sensation of feeling warm-yet-cold: bundled up to her ears in coats, hats, mittens, and boots, and still feeling the bite of the frigid air on her face.

A bag hung from Moon's shoulders, its weight so familiar that she had to check occasionally that it was still there. Mostly, it was filled with knickknacks that she'd picked up while wandering – interestingly-shaped rocks, soda can tabs, coins that had long since lost their luster. The prize of her collection was a single Pokeball, unused, as pristine as the ones they sold in stores, as long as she ignored the chips and scrapes. She'd found it one rainy night, gently floating down a makeshift stream towards the gutter. She'd snatched it up mere moments before it would have disappeared forever into the sewers.

The only sound in the night was the crunch, crunch of Moon's boots, two sizes too big for her, through the snow. On winter nights, Moon's favorite route to take led her down the remnants of what she called the 'old road' – a winding path that led down to the abandoned viaduct over the lake. The old road was overgrown with weeds and ivy during the rest of the year, but during the winter the plant life receded, leaving only a walkway littered with rocks.

Moon sat at the edge of the viaduct, looking down at the gleaming surface of the lake. It had been frozen over for a few days, and snow had collected on the surface in some places so thickly that it looked just as solid as the ground. Around the edges of the lake, where the forest sprung up, Moon could see quick flashes of motion, doubtless some nocturnal Pokemon going about its business.

Then, a noise. A soft, urgent trilling from below her. Moon craned her head down, straining to hear it more clearly. It had the cadence of a Pokemon cry, but it wasn't one she recognized, and it was coming from the snow drifts piled up on the ice.

Moon jumped to her feet and took off running along the viaduct back to solid land. She slid down the slope towards the lake, boots skidding through the snow, as the plaintive crying grew ever louder. Her pace slowed as she approached the shoreline itself; she knew better than to take unnecessary risks around a frozen-over lake, not after what had happened the year before.

She extended a foot, setting it gently on the ice. No cracking noises. The second foot followed, also with no warning signs. Moon let out a breath and took step after plodding step until she reached the snowdrift emitting the noise. She dug through the snow, powder sticking to her fuzzy gloves and moisture seeping in to her hands, until she found…

A Ditto.

Moon had seen pictures of Ditto before and knew what they were supposed to look like, but this one's normal pink coloration had faded away; it was nearly blue with cold. It was covered in scrapes and bruises, and it struggled anemically in the snow pile, barely able to move.

"It went this way!" came a call from the road. "Don't let it escape!"

Moon's ears perked up. She didn't know what was going on, but she knew that whoever the voice belonged to wasn't happy. "Are they looking for you?" she asked in a whisper.

The Ditto didn't respond, its shivering growing too strong for it to do anything else.

"Don't worry," Moon said. "I'll keep you safe." She unzipped her coat and drew one arm up through her sleeve; with her other hand, she tenderly lifted the Ditto from the snow. She cradled it against her chest, then zipped her coat back up and tucked the end of the empty sleeve into a pocket. It was a trick she'd learned out of necessity – she could hide things in her coat safely, while from the outside, nothing looked out of the ordinary.

An adult appeared at the top of the hill as Moon began the climb back up. "Hey, kid," he said, his voice as sharp and as cutting as a razor's edge. "You see a Pokemon come this way? Small. Pink."

"No, sir," Moon said, her words nearly lost in the wind as it picked up.

"Speak up. Don't mumble."

The command was a refrain Moon knew well. "No, sir," she said, louder this time, as she felt the Ditto trembling in her arm.

The adult examined Moon's face. Moon didn't know him, but she knew what he was doing. Everyone assumed she was lying all the time, and they thought that if they watched her, if they looked really close, they could catch her. The problem, of course, was that Moon rarely lied. She hadn't seen the money that had gone missing – she'd only seen the person running away from the store. She didn't know what happened to someone's lost bottle cap collection – she only knew about the bottle caps in her bag, but those were hardly lost, since she knew exactly where they were.

Nobody ever asked Moon what they actually wanted to know, which bothered Moon to no end. The man in front of her was no exception – the Pokemon she held in her arm wasn't pink, not after so long in the cold, and she certainly hadn't seen it come that way. Even if he had asked the right question, though, Moon wouldn't have answered it, not this time.

Moon always gave what she thought was the honest answer. This time, though, was different. She would have lied.

The man backed up, a scowl crinkling his marred features. "Well, if you see it," he said, off his stride, "you come and let me know." He left her and rejoined the trio he'd split off from, making it once more a quartet before disappearing into the night.

Moon watched him go, then began following the old road back to town.

The Pokemon Center nurse was in the middle of a yawn as Moon entered. "Evening, and welcome to the Pokemon Center," she said, adding something under her breath that sounded like "now make this quick."

Moon unzipped her coat and held the Ditto up to the nurse's eye level. "Can you help it?" she asked, her voice, though quiet as always, cutting through the Center's relative silence. The Ditto still shivered, albeit not as strongly as before, and every so often a whimper escaped its mouth.

"What happened to it?" the nurse asked, all traces of sarcasm gone from her words as her training kicked in. Without waiting for an answer, she gingerly took the Ditto from Moon and opened a door leading to the Center's back room, then motioned for Moon to follow.

"I don't know," Moon said, which was the truth. "I found it like that."

"Hm." The nurse placed the Ditto on a cushion atop an examination bed, then draped an appropriately-sized blanket around it. Only its eyes were visible from the gap in the folds. "Without knowing what it went through, our best course of action is to see how it reacts to some medicine and go from there." She snapped her fingers and suddenly a Chansey was there, right beside Moon, setting down a tray stacked with Super Potions and Hyper Potions. "Thanks, Lucky," the nurse said; the Chansey disappeared from the room just as quickly as it had appeared.

The medicine did the trick, and soon the Ditto was sleeping soundly, swaddled in its blanket. "You don't have to worry," the nurse said to Moon. "It's in good hands."

"I'm not worried," said Moon. She remembered a time when she opened her eyes in a hospital, with no familiar faces anywhere to be seen. She remembered what it felt like. "I just want to be here when it wakes up."

The rest of the night quickly gave way to day, and as the morning light peeked in through the Pokemon Center's windows, the huddled mass under the blanket began to stir. Moon leaned against the examination bed and stroked the blanket with one hand; the blanket began falling away, revealing the Ditto's briefly-befuddled face. It plainly didn't know where it was at first, but upon seeing Moon, its expression softened and it let out a chirp.

"Good morning, little one," Moon said, smiling. "Are you feeling okay now?"

The Ditto chirped again and pushed its head-analogue against her hand.

Moon didn't understand what it was saying, but the intent was clear. "You're welcome. I'm glad you're feeling better." With a squeak, the Ditto hoisted itself onto her arm and climbed up to Moon's shoulder, prompting a fit of giggles. "What are you doing?" she asked. "Do you want to come with me? I was just going to find a place to let you go…"

The Ditto hugged the side of her head, which told her everything she needed to know.

"Well, okay then!" Moon slid her backpack off and dug through it until she came up with the dinged, damaged, pristine Pokeball and tapped the Ditto with it.

Nothing happened.

After another moment of nothing happening, the Pokeball creaked open, revealing inner mechanisms that had long since been torn apart.

Moon's face fell. "It's busted? Aw, that's no good," she said, carefully picking the Pokeball back up and trying to close it without hurting it more. She slipped it back into her backpack. "I guess you and I can still hang out together, even if I can't catch you, right?"

The Ditto shifted up and down in a crude approximation of a nod.

Moon clapped her hands together. "Yay! Okay, then you'll need a name!" she said, looking up towards the ceiling as thoughts rushed through her head. "Um… Ditto uses Transform… they copy other things… Copy… Co-py… Co-py, py, py, I got it! I'll call you Pete!"

The Ditto squeaked and nuzzled up against her.

"Yeah, that'll work. Pete," Moon continued. "Then if I ever catch another Ditto, I can name it… well, you know."

The Ditto didn't know, but it didn't mind.