There was a light breeze that woke me from my less-than-luxurious slumber. Getting beauty sleep wasn’t an option anymore. Ever since that big incident back in Ponyville everything started going downhill for me especially with the loss of my wagon. I lost a sizeable stash of fireworks and I left that stupid town with nothing. I even left my favorite outfit, my cape and hat, which in my opinion makes me look much more professional. I’m not even sure why I’m thinking about that now of all times, but maybe it’s because of that failed attempt at getting some bits last night. Sure, I’d worked on that rock farm a while back, but I blew all my bits on that stupid amulet. Why’d I have to go and be so stupid, stupid, stupid! If only I hadn’t punctuated each ‘stupid’ with a resounding thud of my head against the tree I was leaning against.

“Ugh… stupid tree. Now my head hurts.”

A familiar sounding cracking sound resonated through the woods from across the road I had veered off from last night. And another one. And another. Each one sounded like it was getting closer and closer to my current position.

I shook my head back and forth rapidly to wake myself up to make sure I wasn’t hearing things. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not scared of some creepy knocking from the woods, that would be-

“Bouf, Bouf, Bouf, Bouf”

A buffalo with a crazy hairdo was charging right at me.

I didn’t scream like a little filly. That must have been somepony else who was being attacked by a rampaging lunatic.

I teleported out of the way at the last second, reappearing on the other side of the road, a good distance away from the crazed creature chasing me. I had never seen anything like it before, and I had never seen anypony charge head first into a tree at full speed and stay on their hooves either. It turned to face me, calling out that same vocalization it made before, and started charging me again. I teleported a short distance away again and it kept on running past me into another tree. It shook its head and came at me once again. Maybe I could wear it down like this?

A rustling in the forest behind me caught my attention before I teleported across the road again to dodge the buffalo-thing for the fourth time. It appears that this fellow isn’t all that bright.

“Grow, Growlithe Growl.”

“Sweet Celestia what in the hay is that?”

“Deme, no don’t attack it!” I shouted before he could unleash the Flamethrower attack he was undoubtedly about to unleash. “Maybe we can calm it down somehow.”

“This Bouffalant is acting on instinct right now," he snarled with flames threatening to break loose from his bared fangs, "this is typical behavior of a Bouffalant that’s defending its territory. The only way to calm it down is to assert dominance.”

“Deme, please let’s try for me, okay? I don’t want to use violence when we can avoid it. Worst case scenario, we take it down, alright?”

He nodded his head as he nimbly jumped clear over the charging Bouffalant, landing behind it as it smashed into another tree.

“Distract it while I get in close and try to talk to it.”

“Master, are you sure that’s a good-”

“Just do it!”

Deme took off to get close enough to the Bouffalant that it would go after him and him alone. I took a quick glance at the strange, slack-jawed Ponyta-like creature off to the side. Apparently this blue Ponyta was a victim of circumstance and the Bouffalant was crazy because it was trying to protect its territory, or at least what it thought was its territory.

“Don’t worry, we’re gonna take care of it.” Hopefully it could understand me.

Deme was standing in front of a tree nearby and I was off to the side of the charging Bouffalant. Deme easily dodged the Bouffalant, making it hit the tree, while I ran up from behind it. While it was recovering I jumped up onto it’s back and lunged for it’s horns before it could realize I was there.

“Stop this, right now! You’re putting others' lives in danger!” Please listen, please listen, please listen.

“Get out of my territory right now! You don’t have permission to be here!” The Bouffalant started bucking wildly in an effort to get me off, but I had a pretty good hold on its horn despite my new form.

“This isn’t your territory anymore, we’re not even in the same place!” Looking back, trying to explain the removal of it’s territory from our plane of existence probably wasn’t a good idea.

“How dare you claim my territory! Take this!” It kicked it’s frantic attempts at getting me off into overdrive as it charged straight at large boulder not too far away. The Bouffalant stopped once it hit the big rock, but I didn’t.

“Take it out,” I called out to Deme as my paws failed me, making me wish I had hands once again, “it’s no use!” That was the last thing I remembered before my head made contact with a tree branch.

Why didn’t we just attack it in the first place… what a stupid, stupid plan. Once Cypher was no longer hanging on for his life on the back of the rampaging beast, I unleashed a Flamethrower at point blank to the back of the Bouffalant, knocking it out instantly. Normally it wouldn’t have taken it down in one shot, but using Nasty Plot a couple of times while Master was putting his life in danger gave it enough power to make the opponent faint. Make me the distraction… genius.

I strode up to the creature that looked like how a Ponyta might look if they were a water type Pokemon. I bowed my head slightly, speaking softly since it looked frightened for some reason, “I hope that Bouffalant didn’t harm you, they can be really aggressive sometimes.”

“A-are you g-going to eat m-me?” The blue Ponyta almost whispered. Well, now I know its a she, based on the feminine voice at least.

“No.” I’m going to assume she can’t understand me since she didn’t make a response that made sense contextually, seeing as to how me eating

“Oh Celestia help me.”

“Oh Arceus help me, my head feels like I just got my mind shredded by a Psychic.” Oh great, Cypher’s up. “Oh hey Deme, did we win?”

“Yes Master, the all-powerful Bouffalant has fallen,” I yawned before nodding my head towards the cowering Ponyta behind me, “but we have a new problem. We can’t communicate with what I’m guessing is a local, since I’ve never seen a Pokemon like her.”

“Her? You know its gender?” He took a seat next to me on the ground right in front of the native.

“Feminine voice, irrational fear of me, it all checks out.”

“Deme, I think everyone’s a bit scared of you when they first meet you, especially after you got those, eh, scars a while back.”

“Oh Celestia, they’re planning out how they’re going to eat me.” We both ignored her for the time being, still not sure how to explain to her that she wasn’t on the menu.

“Don’t bring the scars up again.” Cypher gulped nervously before shifting the topic away from me.

“So, we can understand her, but she can’t understand us?”

“Yeah, can you think of any way to let her know we’re intelligent and capable of understanding her without scaring her?”

“Hmm, aside from acting like a pet or begging for treats, I got nothing.” Genius.

“Well that hel-”

“No wait, I got it!”

He trotted up to her and sat in front of her with his back turned, scratching something on the ground. He took no more than a minute to finish, catching the shivering Ponyta’s attention, and carefully walked around the words he wrote without messing up the dirt. He took a seat on the opposite side of the sentence and looked up at her expectantly, probably not even realizing he was panting.

The Ponyta got up carefully and inched towards Cypher’s work. She followed suit and took a seat, taking in the sentence before her. “We… can… understand you…” She took five seconds to digest the information she had just received before falling face first into the dirty words.

“I think you broke her,” I snickered in amusement.

“What a horrible, horrible dream that was. There was some crazy buffalo trying to kill me and then this dog straight from the depths of Tartarus tried to eat me with it’s orange puppy friend. I must really be-”

“Growlithe, growl.”

“Oh Celestia… it wasn’t a dream.” And they can understand me... “But I can’t understand you two…”

The two dog-like creatures turned to each other, making their strange noises again, clearly bickering back and forth if the tone was any indication. How can I make it so that I can understand them? Trixie, you’re a genius.

“Okay, don’t freak out or anything, demon dogs. I’m going to try to make it so that I can understand you.” I lit up my horn, preparing the translation spell I had learned a long time ago, but had only recently perfected a few months back when I was legitimately contemplating leaving Equestria behind for good. As I was almost prepared to cast the spell I prayed to Celestia that I wasn’t dragged to the depths of Tartarus. Why else would this demon come after me?

The two of them were still bickering back and forth, having completely ignored me when I warned them I was going to be using the spell when I released the magic, completing the spell.

“Doom, hound, Houndoom.”

“Grow, growl, Growlithe- and I said, oatmeal, are you crazy?”

Being as diplomatic as possible was really my only option at this point, so I took a deep breath and ignored his last sentence before adopting a much more upbeat tone compared to how I had talked to them before I knew they were sapient. “Greetings, weird fire breathing dog and companion. My name is Trixie, what are your names?”

“Deme, she can’t understand us, right? So why is she-”

“If you were paying attention to me when I said I was going to try a translation spell, you would have known that already.” These imbeciles need to learn to listen when a mare is talking. Can it, Trixie. Key word: diplomacy.

The little orange one took the lead for whatever reason, which didn’t really make too much sense, since the bigger creature being in charge was more logical taking into account the size difference as well as their little display earlier. “Oh, well in that case Trixie, my name is Cypher and this is my partner-"

"Boufalant!"

"Let's save introductions for after we get away from that... thing. Run!"

We took off down the path heading to the right of the forest we woke up in. I wasn't sure of the exact direction since the sun was directly above us and I couldn't determine East from West or North from South, but Deme said we were heading East and I trust his senses. I still didn't have a hold on just how powerful my senses were now that I was a Pokémon and I hadn't had enough time to experiment and compare with my normal body.

We made it a decent enough distance from the semiconscious Bouffalant that we were safe unless it decided it wanted to exact its revenge, but that was highly unlikely considering it was probably wounded in some way or another. We would have left some Sitrus berries behind if we had any and foraging for them in a new world was out of the question.

We had traveled quickly and quietly, making no more noise than was necessary, omitting the heavy breathing and panting as we slowed to a stop and took shelter past the treeline on the side of the path.

"Alright, now that we're safe from the buffalo-"

"Bouffalant."

"Whatever, how about you two tell me what in the hay is going on and where you came from."

"Well we're not too sure ourselves," I made an awkward attempt at a shrug as I told her what I had pieced together so far.

"So you don't know how you got here and that you were in this Kanto place just last night, but you woke up here in the woods. You think this is a different world entirely since the concept of these Pokemon creatures is foreign to me and you have more of your group that might be here too?"

I yawned in a bored manner at her restatement of my thoughts. "That pretty much sums it up, anything to add Deme?"

"No."

Hmm, he only gets like that when something's bothering him. "You sure? I know from that look you're giving me something's on your mind."

"I just don't understand how we got here or even why we're here, it's the only missing link in your explanation. Who would just transport us somewhere foreign and what would they gain from it?"

"No one I know is capable of such magic that could bring beings from another world entirely and the strongest magic-wielders would be the princesses in Canterlot."

Magic? A question for another time.

"Well we should go ask them to make sure since that's our only real lead right now."

"Wait, we? I don't have any affiliation with you two."

"Well, we do need someone to show us the way..."

"Trixie is not going to go out of her way to help some vile creatures straight from the depths of Tartarus. I have places to do and things to see."

Dramatic much? And what's up with switching to third person all of a sudden? "We did kind of save your life you know."

"I was fine on my own, thank you very much. I was more than capable of teleporting away at any time I pleased."

Clearly a bluff. "Then why didn't you?" I smirked realizing I'd won. Trixie had trapped herself in her own words.

"Fine, Trixie shall go with you. Trixie was going that way anyways," she huffed as she cantered off towards Canterlot, "Come on, Trixie has a schedule to keep."

Author's Note

Sorry for the wait, life caught up with me. As an apology, have a chapter. I promise I'll spend more school time writing so that I can do weekly updates and spend less time learning things that won't help me in life whatsoever. Also, that was your first look into the inner-workings of Deme's brain. Hope you enjoyed!

P.S.- I might be able to double upload today since I have nothing better to do and I'm on a roll. This could be highly beneficial to me if I want to be relevant in the original story, since I'm playing a game of ketchup right now. I have a party to get to!

Ponyta
Bouffalant