Waking in a bed to the ever-present white noise of machine beeps and far away doors opening and closing as well as the sterile scent of disinfectant was somehow far more alien than waking in the wilderness.

I’d never spent any significant amount of time in a hospital in my previous life.

And that thought forced me to consider something I’d been avoiding thinking about – that previous life.

I couldn’t remember dying. I couldn’t remember any ‘last day’. There was no memory of what I’d been doing the last few weeks, or the last month. The closest thing to a ‘most recent’ memory I had was remembering I’d started a new job as a sort of online teaching assistant, but that was as specific a recent event as I could remember.

“Oh good, you’re awake.”

I turned my head to look at the rotund pink pokemon in a nurse cap. Chansey.

“The trainer that brought you in was right to be worried; while you weren’t showing any warning signs yet, you had been exposed to a pokemon with rabies and it’s likely you would have been infected without immediate preventative care. You may be fine to leave today, in fact.”

I processed that slowly. I could vaguely remember rabies being generally dangerous in humans, but couldn’t remember if it was fatal.

“Now, we do need to do a few final tests. Can you speak for me?”

“Oh,” I said, my own voice still striking me as thin and odd-sounding, “um, hi. Thank you.”

The chansey nodded and made a note on a clipboard. I stared at its paws, trying to discern how it was holding the clipboard or the pen without thumbs, but failing to come up with an answer.

“What’s the last thing you can remember?”

I frowned, my thoughts drifting to my failure to remember how my previous life had ended, but I pulled them forward again.

“I was in the forest. I found some berries, then I was attacked by something. I ran away, but not before it got a good bite in.”

The Chansey nodded. “That’d be the Houndour that was brought in. That one wasn’t as lucky for you, and she’ll be here for some time while we do what we can.”

I grimaced. As much as I didn’t have any reason to feel sympathy for what was probably a natural predator to my new species, I didn’t exactly wish what I suspected was a kind of virus-borne madness upon anything.

“Are you in any active pain at the moment?”

I tentatively moved my limbs, then stretched.

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“I’m a little sore, but no pain.”

More clipboard scribbling.

“Well, as I said, you’re free to go. That said, the trainer that brought you in did want to speak with you if you agree to it. Our policy is that free pokemon caught under significant duress, such as in your case, may opt to go with the trainer that caught them or return to the wild at their choice.”

That gave me pause. I’d been caught. In a pokeball. There was a spike of fear as the significance of that arose in my mind. I thought about the trainer who’d caught me, but there was no feeling of devotion there, and I relaxed.

No brainwashing pokeballs then.

I did feel a sense of safety and comradery, however.

Minor brainwashing, I amended mentally, but that’s manageable.

I nodded at the Chansey. “Okay. I’ll see him.”

She smiled. “Please follow me then.”

I was surprised to find that making the short jump to the floor wasn’t as difficult as I’d expected, although the hard tile was jarring to land on. We navigated down a few hallways, and the clinical look of the rooms slowly transformed into something more casual until we were in a sort of lobby.

The young man from before stood from one of the seats at the edge of the room to approach us and his Charmander – Bert, I remembered – followed behind.

“So then,” he said, “I guess Chansey here already explained how all this works, right?”

I nodded.

“You’ve got a choice then. You can go back to the wilds, or you can come with me. I’m not really anyone special, but Bert and I have got along so far, and…”

He looked dubious for a moment before shrugging.

I studied him for a moment. He couldn’t be older than 15, though he looked earnest enough. Slightly shaggy dark brown hair suggested he hasn’t gotten a haircut recently, but his light blue eyes were piercing and aware.

And being a trainer’s pokemon meant I would probably be safe from natural predators. The all-too-recent experience with flashing jaws and pain could certainly attest to the realness of that danger.

Bert looked somewhere between bored and uncertain.

“How is he?” I said, and the Charmander gave a shrug that mirrored his trainer’s only moments ago.

“Decent. A little too naive sometimes, but he’s got a good heart.”

I blinked at the fire lizard which stood hardly a few inches taller than myself, but talked like he was as old as I felt.

“He’s not taking the Houndour too, is he?”

Bert shook his head. “Nah, the nurse said it could be a few months before they can fully treat her. We won’t stick around that long. Bad business anyway, putting predator and prey on the same team. Doesn’t work out usually.”

I tried not to let it show as the Charmander neatly vocalized my own worries.

During all of this, though, the trainer was looking back and forth between us with an increasingly worried look on his face.

I squinted up at the boy.

“...he can’t understand us, can he?”

“Not a word,” Bert confirmed with a smug grin, crossing his arms.

I laughed, and the sound came out as a stuttering almost-cluck.

“Yeah sure,” I said, “I’ll join the team I guess.”

The message must have gotten through well enough, because the trainer visibly relaxed.

“Well, good to have you then. Speaking of which, you can call me ‘Mete.’ Nice to ‘mete’ you,” he said, smiling and extending a hand in which I placed a paw.