I slept blissfully for several hours, lost to the world around me. At some point, though, I heard a rattling sound coming from nearby as I lay in the kitchen. Blinking the bleary sleepiness from my eyes, I lifted my head and glanced around the nearly pitch-black kitchen, the only light coming in from the windows cast by the porch light outside. Who was awake at this hour? I was able to see a silhouette through the glass in the door that led out to the pasture, a human silhouette. And it was one that definitely wasn't Mable. I jolted into high alert. A thief? It sure seemed like it. I didn't know the full layout of the house, and I didn't know where Mable's room was exactly, but I should be able to creep off and wake her, to warn her about what was going on. Having shifted back to my natural form during sleep, it shouldn't be too hard to sneak around without being noticed.
A sharp rapping on the window over the kitchen counter caught my attention, and I reflexively jerked my attention toward it. Backlit by the porch light, some sort of bird that looked like it was wearing a pointy hat, with a deep, glowing violet light emitting from the creature's eyes was in the window. I tried to flinch away, but it held me in its stare. An eerie malevolence coursed through me, rooting me in place, like I was being stared down by a giant. The sheer hostility in the stare all but dared me to try and take a single step away. Fighting down the intense sensation of terror, a rational voice in the back of my mind tried to scream at me that this had to be a Mean Look, it was just intimidation. It didn't want me to get away and raise a warning.
The bird seemed to respond to my terror-driven freeze, and it turned it's head aside to be further outlined by the light behind it, dramatically covering its mouth with one wing, pantomiming an exaggerated yawn and waving a wing at me in a dismissive shooing gesture. I felt the anger bubbling up inside me, as this cocky bird knew I couldn't leave and wanted to mock me. Alright then, jerk-beak. You don't want me to run? Let's see how you handle... handle...? I tried to focus, to push myself into a transformation to teach the bird a lesson, and I couldn't. The energy didn't respond. Instead of the normal white-hued course of energy running over my body, it was like I felt a sharp, jarring denial of energy in my body.
The sheer shock on my face must have been all the more amusing to what I had recognized was a Murkrow, as it actually cackled in a cawing laughter at me through the glass. The anger coursing through me redoubled, making it hard to assess things rationally. This stupid bird was taunting me, and I was going to find a way to teach it a lesson! Hold up, taunting me? It was using Taunt on me! I was being goaded into attacking it, but I couldn't even transform in order to do it! I hadn't even noticed the dark-type energy entering my body with the mocking shooing gesture, only when it was restricting how I used the energy inside me. But while other Pokémon still had means of attack... I was screwed!
'DITTOOOO!' "MAAAABLE!" All I could do was to shout at the top of my high-pitched voice, drawing a curse from the doorway that someone had still been desperately fiddling with. "Forget this!" A gruff male voice responded, and I saw them take a step back, raise a leg, and kick the door's latch. The impact sent the door rocketing inward, bashing off the wall and making even more noise than I had. A shrill beeping reacted to the forced entry, an alarm of some kind shrieking into the previously quiet night. "Shoot. I wanted time to see what else I could get. I suppose it's time to get the main course and jet."
The man stepped into the door, and even in the dim light I could recognize that same goggle-wearing jerk that had been hauled off earlier today. It was this guy!? "Stupid lady cost me a hell of an addition to my flying team. Good thing there's a substitute who can do the exact same job." He sneered, drawing a Pokéball and almost disdainfully lobbing it in an underhand throw at me. "I'm getting the Scyther I wanted, one way or another." The remark fell on my ears without really registering, and I felt the none-too-gentle impact of the Pokéball off my head before it recoiled away slightly, sucking me inward in a blinding flash of red.
No. No. No. No. NO. This isn't happening. I had flashbacks to my time in the darkness of the egg. It wasn't a physically unpleasant sensation, merely being suspended in nothingness, vaguely aware of the fact there were boundaries around me, but I flailed at them in a blind panic. I shoved myself against the walls, I screamed into the void. Wordless rage poured from me. Like this? Caught by some stupid wanna-be tough-guy punk who pushed around his weight? Not a chance.
The man stepped forward to pick up the rattling Pokéball, watching the light flash in indication of my struggling inside. "Time to bail. Murkrow, good job, return." He turned and ran outside as lights were coming on in the house, turning to a hulking eagle that was waiting outside. "Alright, Braviary, pick me up and let's get out of here. Wish that stupid bug hadn't wrecked my ride earlier." He seemed to be acting as if the catch was all but foregone, despite the continual struggling shake in his hand. "Come on, quit squirming you little pest. Give up already!"
For some reason, I could hear the voice despite being in the Pokéball, and it only goaded me on. Did he think I was going to just up and quit and go with him that easily? I'm not going to do it! You can't win! I'm going to have an adventure. My adventure. MINE. You can't take that from me! I could feel energy flowing through me again, an absurd amount. It dwarfed what I felt when I was transforming many times over. The light pressed back against the entrapping darkness in a very physical way, as if the phenomenon had weight and pressure.
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A crack in the darkness, slowly fracturing longer and longer. Like the ice over a lake being applied too much pressure, then more, and more. A small crack slowly grew into a jagged lightning bolt, then spiderwebbed all around the darkness around me. "Let me out. Let me OUT!" Harder. Harder. Shatter it, break out. It's just like the egg. Nothing's changed. Just keep pushing and it'll give.
Suddenly, a sharp crack made a jagged ridge along the outside of the Pokéball in the thief's hand, which cut into his palm and made him drop the ball with a sharp hiss of "What the hell was that!?" On the ground, the now-cracked Pokéball continued to fracture, showing off the red light within, shaking more and more violently. Glancing between the somehow malfunctioning Pokéball and the noises coming from the house, he swore under his breath, "Braviary, we're leaving, now!"
I could feel it. It was breaking. It wasn't going to trap me. I can beat this. Push more, more! And in the straining effort of that so-familiar darkness, I heard the faintest of words, like trying to listen to a whisper across a stadium. 'You shall have your guarantee of freedom, of choice, to have your journey as you see fit.' I had never before in either of my lives more emphatically praised a God than in that exact moment, and with one final surge of foreign-granted power, the darkness around me exploded.
Fragments of Pokéball scattered over the area, shattering the nearby windows and pelting small dings off the house itself. The man hissed as fragments pelted his legs and back, while his torso was protected by the Braviary latched onto his biceps and hauling him into the sky. It squawked in discomfort, but remained flying. Good, I hope that hurt, you stupid thief! The man vanished over the trees, and I lay there on the ground, panting heavily. I was able to feel my energy returning to normal and behaving properly, now that the Murkrow had been recalled, but the terror and blind-panic I had just been through was still enough to leave me rooted in place.
The chaos of the reverberating 'bang' that echoed through the night had awoken any Pokémon that might have not been awoken by the alarm, few as that may be. Bibarel burst out the kicked-in back door and growled into the night with surprising hostility, the kitchen light turning on behind him before Mable rushed out of the house in a nightgown. Spotting the fragments of Pokéball scattered around the area, and me lying in a heap, she carefully walked over to scoop me up, "What in the world!? Ditto, are you okay? What happened? Shh, shh, it's alright now. The police are already on their way again. Twice in one day, eh, Ditto?" She forced a weak laugh, the nervousness plain in her tone.
The Pidgey and the Fletchlings were circling overhead in a startled panic, but it seems like almost all the other Pokémon were hunkering down where they slept. It was probably safer that way. Bunnelby cautiously having one member of their group sticking their head out of a burrow hole to peer around inquisitively, the Bidoof gang timidly peeking out of the opening of the dam, with the Azurill twins timidly hiding in the mass of fluff, mere peeks of blue showing in the mass of brown fur.
The Pansage from the wooded corner rushed over and hugged against Mable's leg, staring upward as if wanting to ensure she was okay. I could see light glinting off the shells of Aron who lingered at the edge of the light, having toddled over from the rocky corner of the pasture. Only the Dunsparce didn't seem bothered in the slightest, the worm-snakes remaining buried in the dirt and out of sight.
"It's alright, Pansage, everything's alright now. Thanks for coming to check on me. Go and settle the bugs, please, we don't need them stress-evolving in the middle of the night. Grab a few berries to hand out if you need to."
'Saaage' "Alright..." He seemed reluctant to part with Mable, but still followed the order, grabbing a small bag of yet-to-be-sorted berries that had been left under the back counter in preparation for the next morning's breakfast, and moved back toward the trees.
In the meantime, I just nestled myself desperately into Mable's arms, slowly trying to calm down. I was crying, crying like a baby, burying my face against her arms. "Shh, shh... it's okay Ditto. Calm down, everything is going to be okay. It's fine. You can tell me all about it when you calm down, okay?" I took a deep breath, tears still rolling down my face, and slowly pointed at the windowsill, the glass having been broken out. With the kitchen light on, the dug-in claw marks of bird talons weren't hard to pick out, and I lifted my hands and drew circles around my eyes, to pantomime the goggles the man had been wearing.
"A bird and... glasses? No! Goggles! That fellow again!?" I could feel the anger radiating off Mable. "Don't you worry, the police will have him on record after his stunt earlier, and there's no way he's getting out of this with just a fine!" I felt her grip around me tighten slightly, and I slumped into her grasp, devolving back into desperate sniffling, trying to get myself composed. Mable was right, the police would be able to handle something like this, and the fellow wasn't going to be able to use so much as a Pokécenter in the region without showing up if they really wanted to track him down. But part of me, the angry part in the back of my mind, wanted him to get away. Maybe he'd sign up with one of the criminal organizations and slip their net, or perhaps he even already was one in disguise.
I wanted to get the chance to get even with him myself. I wanted to see the look on his face when he was brought down, personally. It was stupid. Of course it was. A rational person would leave it to the police, knowing the fellow was likely to end up in jail, lose his Pokémon, or both. Unfortunately, I wasn't a rational person. In fact, I was a very, very angry Pokémon. And as we've already seen earlier this very day, an angry enough Pokémon is something that you shouldn't take lightly.