A Moemon Fanfic, unrelated to the Pokegirl setting. As such, expect NSFW content. I have no idea how often this will update, since it's mostly just something I'm writing for fun. But since I wrote it, please enjoy~. There's actually quite a bit more content already written, so it'll probably get added sooner or later if you guys like what I've got so far. If you have questions and such, feel free to ask. I might not answer some of them, though, since they may come up in the plot later
Needless to say, I don't own Pokemon or any of the related intellectual properties. Nor is this for profit.
And now, let the story begin~
Wandering Hearts
A Tale of Tails andTravels
[Rats in the Walls]
It hurts.
That’s the first thing that I know.
It hurts.
I can feel dark shapes moving over me, tearing at the flesh on my arms and legs, digging into my body. Sharp things are digging into me.
It hurts.
But I can’t move.
My body won’t move and they keep tearing my flesh. I want to scream, but even that won’t come. I can feel hot tears running down my cheeks, washing furrows in the days of dirt caked on my face.
I’m so tired. So weak I can’t even move.
And it hurts.
I can only look up at the moon with blurry eyes, half hidden behind a great veil of leaves.
I don’t know how long I’ve been alone on this mountain. I don’t know how long. I can’t remember how long it’s been since my food ran out, since my water ran out. How long did I walk before I fell? How long before I fell again?
How long before I fell and couldn’t stand up again?
I rolled over to rest, thinking it would get better. I slept, thinking it would get better. But when I woke up, it was dark, and I couldn’t move, and these things were here.
I groan, and they don’t care, they just look up at me with red eyes and red-stained teeth and go back to their meal. They’re people like rats, or rats like people. Monsters that lived on the mountain. Even a childlike me knows them. Ratatta. Small, harmless. Like children themselves.
I want to scream, but my voice won’t come out. So I cry.
Because I’m being eaten alive.
I’m being eaten alive. I’m being eaten alive. I’m being eaten alive!
Things that people keep as pets are eating me alive!
I cry and scream and rage inside, but my body won’t move no matter what I do.
So all I can do is stare up at the moon through tear-filled eyes as they tear through my skin with their sharp teeth.
It’s so sudden I don’t realize it at first.
Their movements stop. The creatures turn, dark shadows beneath the moon.
There is a light. There are two moons in the heavens.
No, a reflection of the moon in heaven is upon the earth.
The gnawing children hiss and cower, their movements shifting my broken body.
My crying eyes fall on it.
A woman who is the moon. As if wrapped silver, as if clothed in water, she is there, a woman carved from the moon. Her eyes are as cold as a distant mountain peak. My breath mists in the air, shallow as it is.
She says nothing. She does nothing. She merely stands.
My eyes close to the distant sound of a man’s voice.
And then, there is only darkness.
I jolt awake with a start, gasping. I can still feel the pain of sharp teeth digging into me. I can feel my heart pounding in my chest as I press my right hand to my head.
It’s been a long time since I had that dream. A long time.
It’s something I don’t want to remember, something I can never forget. My body, marked by the scars, won’t allow it. My world, filled with monsters, won’t allow it.
I throw back the sheets to a hot spring day. An unseasonably warm day, like that night so long ago. Though, then, that night had become as cold as ice, too.
Shit. No wonder it’s hot. The AC’s out again. I sigh as I take in the situation. It’s another hot spring day and the AC’s out. And here I am roasting, with nothing to do about it but all the repairman again.
It’s not like this is an unusual thing. There’ve been a lot of electrical problems in the neighborhood lately. Yew’s Market down the road had all of their refrigerators go out last week.
Dad loved it, since they put all the beer on discount.
A couple of days ago, Mrs. Marker next door had the power go out, too. When the repairman looked into it, he said it looked like the wires had been cut or gnawed on, and he asked if she’d seen anything strange in the neighborhood.
But in my case, I’m betting on it just being this AC. It was a window mounted unit old enough that my dad had used it in college. It broke down.
A lot.
So I’d have to have someone fix it or I’ll melt.
I pulled on the sweatpants I used as lounge wear, something Imust have pulled off in my sleep, and flipped the light switch.
Nothing.
No light.
“Shit.” So whatever was wrong, it wasn’t the AC. Or at least not just the AC. Silently, I wished it was something I could hit with a baseball bat. Heat like this always makes me angry. I can already feel the sweat dripping.
I sigh again.
This was no way to be spending spring break. And besides that, I’m supposed to do something today. Today…
Today I’m supposed to start my Quest.
It was a big deal, really. A big coming of age ritual. Not that everyone did it, but since it let you skip a big section of your school career, well… Yeah, a whole lot of people did. It was your senior year, after all. If you had all of your credits, all you really had to worry about was your attendance, and the School Board excused absences like that for cultural or religious reasons.
Basically, if you did everything right, you could completely skip the last few months of school entirely. But beyond that, it was kind of like social suicide not to do it. Everyone inevitably found out if you skipped it, and since it was the “rite of passage into adulthood,” you were labeled as a late-bloomer, childish, a kid, etc… In other words, it took a long-ass time to live it down.
But beyond that, I have my own reasons.
There’s something I have to overcome. A fear that’s had too much control of my life.
And there’s something I promised myself I would find, something I have to see no matter what.
“I should get going already.” It’s kind of sad, talking to myself so early in the morning.
I dig out a pair of carpenter jeans, sturdy but worn in. Besides that is a simple t-shirt, an undershirt, a fresh pair of boxers, and some new boot socks. Laying all that out, I start to get ready.
As I brush my teeth in front of the bathroom mirror, I can still see the faint scars on my arms, stomach, chest. Bite marks that look almost human, the edges torn. It was a long time ago, when that happened. The soft body of a child has filled out into something that I think is probably a little above average. I’m pretty athletic. But even then, the scars are still visible.
I spit the foam in my mouth out and rinse my toothbrush and gargle some mouthwash.
And now for a shower.
Stripped down, I climb in, turn on the water and…
“HOLY SHIIIIIIIIIIIT!?!?” Almost fall out of the tub. Oh my god that’s cold!
Shit, I forgot. The power’s out.
Damn electric water heater.
Short cold shower is short.
I am officially awake now.
It doesn’t take long to want to get back into clothes after that experience.
Nor does it take long to do so.
“Today is not my day.” I can feel bad luck brewing. If I could, I would skip this whole day and start my Quest tomorrow, but delaying too much can be bad. It’s sometimes hard to find enough “Starters,” these ridiculous things called “Moemon” that are supposed to be your companions and bodyguards as you complete the ritual pilgrimage. They say that if you take too long on the first day of Spring Break, you can miss out and end up delayed for weeks or even months just because they don’t have any Starters trained. The Starters are supposed to be ranch-raised or have a special provision, since they have to understand their “Trainer,” know how to act around people, and be trustworthy and reliable even in dangerous situations.
I’m not exactly the only person to be attacked by these things in the wild, after all.
Which is kind of why I need to go through this in the first place, but…
Shit. I have panic attacks around the damn things. It’s not so bad with my friends’ pets, but when it comes down to it, it’s just really embarrassing. I just lock up when I see one I don’t know, and, well… Yeah.
I wanted to go on this Quest, more than anything else, sot hat I can get used to seeing and dealing with these things. I’ve spent a lot of my life avoiding them, but that’s really hard to do. You’d be amazed at how often people will pick on you for something like that, even if there’s a good reason. Though I guess that’s why I learned how to beat the crap out of people?
Fully clothed, I head downstairs to see if I can scrounge some food before everything in the fridge goes bad.
“What was that sound just now?” My mom asks as I step intothe kitchen.
“Ah, sorry. I forgot the water would be cold.”
“No, not you screaming. Do you hear it? Sounds like scratching.” Eh? Hey, wait. I think I can hear it.
“Sounds like it’s coming from under the house.”
“Do we have mice? Or rats?” Ugh. That would be bad. Though maybe that’s why the power’s out.
“Think maybe they chewed the wires or something?” It would explain the thing with Mrs. Marker. Mice and rats chew on things. Though we hadn’t seen any inside the house, so…
“I’ll check it out. Ah, what are you doing, anyway?” She’s been working away at something the whole time we’ve been talking, but I can’t see just what from here.
“Hmm? Your starting your Pilgrimage today~! It’s been such along time since I packed your lunch that I thought I could get away with it this time.” She says something embarrassing with a smile too bright to deny.
“…” What am I supposed to say to this? “Thanks…” Somehow, I know this is going to look very cutesy. I’m slightly scared. Why? Why does my mother insist on making everything she does… cute. Is it because she’s from the illustrious Joy family, known for their widespread influence in the medical and veterinary fields? Almost everything that family does is in shades of pink.
Including my lunch, I’m sure.
Right, then. I guess I need to check out this mess with the wiring first. Otherwise I’ll forget it. I head back up to my room, grab thef lashlight from the travel gear I prepped over the past week, my pocketknife, wallet, phone, and keys. And on the way out, I grab one of my bats.
Yes. I have multiple baseball bats. Aluminum, with nice rubber grips.
Why?
I’m a guy that got picked on a lot when I was younger because of a certain aforementioned problem. I did mention I learned how to beat the crap out of people, right? A baseball bat makes a nice club, and people generally don’t bother you too much if you carry one, so long as you also have a ball and a glove.
It also makes a nice tool to prod critters that are in places they shouldn’t be.
Thusly armed, I strap on the hiking boots I planned to start my journey in, and proceed to head around back to the maintenance entrance under the house. The sun’s already high in the sky, and I can see clouds looming in the distance over the woods.
I wonder what time it is, exactly. Looks like around noon. If it is, I slept really late. That’s not such a good thing. Not a lot I can do, though. I’ll have to head out right after I finish this up.
Huh? That…
It’s open. The maintenance door is unlatched. Maybe it came open in the last storm? We did have a strong one not too long ago. Or some kids have been messing around in there. That must be how the mice got in. It wasn’t chewed at all, it was just left hanging open.
Even so… Why do I have a bad premonition?
Ah! There it is! I can hear scratching to my left as I duck through the low door and stand under the house.
Hell, there’re spider webs everywhere down here. And it smells musty.
I heft the flashlight, a heavy one sturdy enough to be used as a club in a pinch, and waterproofed, too.
The lamp lights up the darkness with the flick of a switch, and I sweep it around the space. I can see bits of torn paper and cloth, like some kind of nest. Shit. There’s nothing I can see moving over there. But holy crap that’s a big nest! Then again, I’ve never really seen a rat’s nest or anything, so maybe this thing is normal sized? How many rats could fit in that?
I almost don’t want to know, my imagination filling the almost bathtub sized pile of junk with an equal volume of rats.
I shudder involuntarily. Rats… Yeah, I don’t like mice or rats so much. Not as bad as an actual Ratatta or Raticate, or Moemon, really, but yeah. Bad memories.
I make my way over to the nest, sweeping the light to help look for anything out of place. I don’t see anything but more junk that looks like it was dragged here.
No. Wait. Some of this stuff is pretty big. Can rats really move this much cloth? Now that I look at it, what seemed like cloth torn into little bits are actually blankets and sheets that have had holes torn in them. Is it possible for rats to drag an entire blanket down here?
Am I going to find a homeless person living under my house? This could be really bad.
This is seriously not my day.
Something catches my eye. A spark of light that’s not my flashlight, near the back of the house and right under the floorboards.
“What the hell…” I turn my flashlight upwards. There…There’s a cluster of what looks like thin black threads, wires pulled out from a metal cover. No, there are red ones, green ones, black ones, blue ones, and every so often I can see a little spark jump from one to another.
“Damnit.” So something really was down here chewing on thewires. Though… With that blanket… Am I going to find some dead loon under my house?
Wait! Something just moved! Oh shit!
I swing the light trying to track it, but I lose sight ofit.
Oh god. This is like a scene from a bad horror movie.There’s seriously going to be some crazy ax murderer down here or something.
This is so fucking not my day.
“Chu.” Eh? Behind!
I swing around, the light sweeping over a shape. My bat’s already raised by the time I register unholy glowing eyes and dancing sparks.
It’s fucking charging me!
“CHUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
“Oh SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT! !!”The darkness turns into pure white in a blinding flash as a shape hurtles atme. I can’t tell what it is, but I can feel my hands go numb. My hair’s standing on end, but I grip the rubber wrapped handle of the bat and swing it on reflex.
There’s a dull sound and my arm jolts, and then it’s on top of me. My mind’s blanked out as it just lays there.
There is no way in hell this thing is a fucking rat. A heavy body like a person’s is laying on top of me, and even through my clothes I can tell it’s soft.
“D-did I just kill someone?” Oh god.
Oh shit.
I fumble around for the flashlight I dropped in the confusion. My hand closes on the comfortable weight and I turn the beam on myself.
Pale skin. Bare skin. Lots of it.
The soft curves of a feminine body. There’s a naked girl ont op of me. A part of my mind thinks I just ascended to heaven, another that I’m already in hell. Then I see it, around the curve of slender hips, there is something that should not be there.
A tail.
The beam travels up the body of the thing that is definitely not a girl. Long ears, like a rabbit's, something that could have been confusedfor a hairstyle at first glance stick out of the top of her head. The skin on her forehead is cut from where I hit her, a big bruise already forming, blood trickling out. I can see her eyes twitch beneath her tightly closed lids. It seems like she’s breathing, but her body’s as limp as a sack of rice.
“Shit.”
It’s clearly not human. Yet it looks human. This is really awkward. It’s a Moemon.
As I think that, I remember that night long ago. The things eating me. And yet… As I sit here with this girl sprawled on top of me, inspite of that memory, I can feel my body reacting to it. There’s a naked girl on top of me in a dark place. A girl that’s definitely not human. A girl that just attacked me.
“Shit.” I say it again because I don’t know what to say. What to do. My mind is telling me I should kill it, or get it out of here and dump it somewhere, or take it to see the Professor. My mind is telling me I should have it checked to see if it’s alright, or if it’s safe to move it after hitting it in the head.
My body’s telling me something different.
It’s a damn monster, so why does it smell nice?
Damnit, I don’t know how to deal with this kind of thing.
Calm down. Calm down. Deep breaths. I haven’t locked up in fear this time, but that’s probably because I just knocked her senseless. And adrenaline. That too.
The girl makes a soft noise as I move under her. Damnit, don’t make noises like that.
I decide the first thing I need to do is get this girl off of me. If she wakes up, and I’m pinned like this… Yeah, bat does no good. Besides, I think she tried to hit me with electricity or something. I quietly give thanks that my bat has a rubber handle. Otherwise, I’d probably be dead.
Getting her off of me is harder than I expected, but not impossible. She lays in the dirt, her eyes fluttering. Damnit, the only things I can do here are to just drag her out of here and leave her alone, or take her in the house.
This is going to be trouble either way. If I leave her, she’s probably just going to come back in here. If I take her inside and she wakes up… Or no, even if I take her inside, how will mom react? Hi mom, I found this naked monster girl under the house. What do? Shit.
Time to swallow awkwardness.
“Damnit, where do I look?” This girl is completely naked. She’s small. Slender. Almost like a little kid, but definitely not completely.There are little hills, and a patch of hair, or, well, I guess it’s fur in this case. She looks like she might be fourteen at most. At least, if she were a human.
I have no idea how these things age.
I try to distract myself from looking at her by thinking about what I know about Moemon. Honestly, I don’t know a lot, so it’s not working too well. Most of the ones I’m used to seeing wear clothes, but in hindsight I realize that that’s probably a matter of human preference. The wild ones… They wouldn’t wear clothes, would they? Well, they might, I guess. Shit, I don’t know.
“Damnit.” Nothing left to do. I pick the girl up, trying to support her head and her knees. I’m carrying her like a groom would his bride. Somehow, this fact disturbs me greatly. Why the hell should I be carrying a monster like this before I carry a woman? No, not even that, why should the first time I see a girl like this, naked and on top of me, be a monster and nota human?
I make myself angry to help block out what I’m doing. I carry the girl, whose eyes are shifting under her lids still, out of the dark and into the slowly darkening sky. I don’t know how long I was down there. It seems like an eternity, but it might have been a half hour at most. At least, that’s what I think. Tension makes time seem to flow strangely.
I hurry around to the back door and take her inside before the neighbors can see. The first words out of my mouth as that door opens are“Mom! Trouble!”
She looks out of the kitchen with a dangerously pink thermos in hand. Why is she still in the kitchen? Shouldn’t she have finished making lunch a long time ago?
“Oh no…” Her eyes widen as she sees what’s in my arms. “What happened!?”
“She was under the house. She jumped at me and I just swung on reflex!” I feel guilty already. Looking at her in the light, it’s hard for me to dismiss the fact that I hit something that looks so much like a young girl in the head with a baseball bat. Even if it is a monster.
To her credit, my mom knows her way around people and Moemon. As I said, she’s from the Joy family, one of the largest and most influential families in the medical world. She has me prop the girl up on the side of the bathtub and, using my flashlight, we check her eyes, prying them open. Pulse, breathing, pupil dilation, she seems to be fine.
Except that her head is bleeding and she doesn’t seem to be either fully conscious or unconscious.
“She might be mildly concussed. It’s hard to tell. Moemon weren’t my specialty in school… Haah… You should probably take her to see Professor Sequoia. He can probably treat her there, since the actual clinic is further away. Really Aurum, did you have to hit her that hard?”
“She jumped me!” What’s with that withering look?
“You should hurry up and take her to see the Professor. After all, you had to see him today anyway. We can put her in one of your sister’s old dresses, since she’s off at that camp… thing. Whatever it was.”I t’s not that my mother has a bad memory. It’s that she didn’t find out about it until after it had already been approved by my dad. She’s away on some week-long club thing from school. She doesn’t really talk about it much, but at least it keeps her out of trouble.
She used to shoplift when she was bored, as embarrassing as that is.
After we manage to get the little naked girl to stop being naked, I suddenly find myself in an unpleasant situation…
She’s conscious.
And not happy.
We’d dug up an old leash that we used to use for our dog before he ran away, and put that on her to make sure she didn’t bolt, and mom found some old rubber gloves in the shed, but still. I have a small electric girl on a rope, basically.
And I am now expected to walk this unhappy child to the Research Lab on the outskirts of town. Okay, sure, it’s only a few miles.
But that’s a few miles attached to a living lightning bolt. At least if my heart stops, they won’t have to look for a defibrillator.
So, armed with the bat that served me well in the last hour, I finally set out for what should have been the only thing I had to do today.
And of course, it now looks like it will rain soon.
I really don’t want to be attached to this girl if it starts to rain. I really might die.
This… This just isn’t my day.
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Originally Posted by hayate
