"I wanna be, the very best,

Like no one ever was.

To catch them all, is my test,

To train them is my caaaaauuussee..."

I quietly sang under my breath. It was a song that had been stuck in my head for the last three years and was unlikely to leave anytime soon -- a song that no one else in this world would recognize.

"I will travel, across the land,

training far and wide.

Duh da duh duhh, duh da duh dah,

the power that's insiiiidddeee!"

Unfortunately, my memory wasn't the best, and I was forced to hum some of the words. Oh well -- it wasn't like anyone could call me out on it.

"Mi! Mi mi!"

I sighed, then turned to what looked like a poorly constructed animated pokedoll that trailed behind me. "I know, I know. But I don't hear you singing. You can't criticize if you aren't willing to give it a shot yourself."

The doll puffed up as if affronted before the head flopped to the side, the crudely drawn-on eyes staring soullessly at me.

"Mii mii mi, mimic mii,

mii mii mimic miii.

Mimic mimic, mimic mii,

mii mi mimikyu!"

I nodded, rubbing my chin after the small pokemon finished his performance. "A bit pitchy in the middle there. Seven out of ten."

"Mi miI!" the mimikyu responded angrily, a shadowy tendril reaching out from under the doll to pinch my ankle, which I only barely managed to dodge by skipping backward.

"Hah! You'll have to be faster than that to catch..." my voice trailed off as I saw darkness gathering around the pokemon, a sure sign that it was preparing to use shadow sneak, and I got ready to run for my life.

Only to be interrupted by a new voice.

"Hey you! With the green hair! I challenge you!"

I sighed as mimikyu's arms retracted back under its cloth and turned to face the challenger. He was close to my own age -- fifteen -- and had likely just started his pokemon journey. Unlike what I'd learned from watching the anime, people here didn't typically leave on their pokemon journey until age fifteen, or even older in the cases of those with more protective parents. Technically, I hadn't started my own journey yet, and so had no obligation to accept his challenge. Even more technically, contrary to popular belief, I was under no obligation to accept the challenge even if I had been on my journey. That was one of the benefits of having the mind of someone out of their teens -- unlike most new trainers, I sat down a read through the full fine print of the pokemon league's rules and regulations for trainers.

But, having not started my journey, I had a justification to reject the challenge that even a novice trainer would recognize.

"No thanks. Not on my journey, yet," I said simply. Then, after waiting for mimikyu to catch up and press against the side of my leg, I turned to walk away.

"What?! I see that pokemon. You can battle! Are you scared? Are you just a little chicken?!"

"Nope," I said simply as we passed by the boy, fully intending on ignoring the rest of his provocations and walking away.

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"Bah, you're just scared! You know your pokemon's too weak to win, so you're running! What kind of ridiculous fusion is that, anyway? I can't believe it's still alive -- it's so ugly!"

"Mi..." I heard the quiet squeak in response to the cruel boy's words. And I stopped my walk.

Taunts, I could take. Jabs against our experience or power? I couldn't care less. But my mimikyu was sensitive about how he looked. Insults to his appearance...well, everyone had to draw the line somewhere.

Very deliberately, I reached up and turned my hat around backward before turning and facing the boy. "You want a battle? Fine. I accept," I said flatly.

"Whoo!" the boy yelled out in excitement, not knowing what he was in for, before backing up to make some space. We were in an empty stretch of trail near the forest, and there wasn't anyone else coming toward us from either direction, so the path would work as a perfectly serviceable battlefield. Neither of us was at a level of power where our pokemon would destroy the environment when battling. "One versus one! First to feint! I wager forty-six poke-dollars!"

I paused, surprised at such a specific amount, before shrugging and nodding my agreement. If he was foolish enough to wager everything he had, then it was probably for the best that his journey ended sooner rather than later.

The boy was a few inches shorter than me with black, spikey hair that made him look like an anime antagonist -- which I supposed in this moment he kind of was. With a confident sneer, he pulled a pokeball from his belt, which enlarged within his hand. "Go! Rattatey!"

"Ra! Tey!" The brown and grey chimeric fusion of the common rat and bird pokemon appeared in a flash of white light, snarling and calling its own name in challenge.

My eyes widened in surprise.

No wonder the kid was so cocky. A fused pokemon as his starter -- he had to have either gotten extremely lucky with the compatibility of his first two pokemon, or he had found the rattatey in the wild as already fused. I was leaning toward the latter. While fused wild pokemon weren't the most common, neither were they especially rare, and the odds of two random starter pokemon being compatible for fusing were much lower. Pidgey and rattata, being of similar size and both primarily normal types, were more compatible than most, but that didn't guarantee a successful fusion. And attempting a fusion when you had only two pokemon to your name? That was extremely risky.

So I guessed he found and somehow caught the rattatey in the wild as his starter. Which explained why he was so confident -- fused pokemon were naturally more powerful than their unfused counterparts. A successful fusion gave the pokemon the best of both merged pokemon, combining their typings, movesets, and abilities into an amalgamation of the two that was more powerful than either individually. The general rule of thumb was that a fused pokemon was as powerful as the evolved form of either of the two originals. So, in this case, either a pidgeotto or raticate. Which would make it stronger than the starter pokemon of ninety-nine percent of kids just setting out on their pokemon journey.

Unfortunately for him, I wasn't one of them.

"Hobbes! Go!" I called, and my mimikyu lept forward with a cry of 'mii', the drawn-on eyes of the doll staring down his opponent.

There was a tense moment of silence as we both watched, waiting for the other to move first. If this was a more official match, the moment would typically be filled with the referee counting down until the start. But as it was, we had to figure it out for ourselves, a silent game of watching and waiting for the opponent to flinch.

The other boy flinched first.

"Rattatey! Quick attack!" he called, and his rattatey nodded before blurring forward in a quick attack, wings flapping for some extra speed.

So that's how he wanted to play it. I hid my smirk.

He could've used sand attack or tail whip to play the long game and give him a better chance of winning, common moves in both the rattata and pidgey lines. But he chose to run straight in with a quick attack, assuming that he could crush my mimikyu with pure power. It was time for me to crush that assumption.

"Hobbes, mimic."

Hobbes didn't waste the time or motion on nodding or otherwise confirming he'd heard my order, instead directly blurring into his own mimicked quick attack, shadowy legs carrying him forward -- this one visibly faster than that of the rattatey. In a flash, they ran past each other and stopped, back to back with a few feet of space in between. I waited, one, two, three breaths, until finally...rattatey collapsed in a heap.

My opponent stared in stunned silence at the sudden and unexpected end to the battle, while hobbes turned to face me, the head of his cloth 'body' flopping cutely to the side.

"Mi!"