Filly Anon Catches a Pokemon
Admiral Biscuit
Home is where the heart is.
It is also where a certain green filly is. Why she's at your house is a question that nobody—especially you—can answer. She just is, and that's something that you have to live with.
You juggle the key in the lock, which has never been quite right despite several applications of graphite spray, and then open your door, fully anticipating being surrounded by the familiar comforts of home.
Instead, your living room looks like a war zone. While it's unlikely that everything is destroyed, at first glance everything certainly appears to be.
It's not a robbery—nothing appears to be missing. Your flatscreen television is still there, although now it’s facedown on the floor and probably broken. They just don't build TVs like they used to. The couch appears to have been attacked by a horde of Mongols, your curtains look as if they were put through a paper shredder and then hung back up, and even your fake ficus is in flinders. The floor, which is allegedly some kind of wear-resistant composite, also did not survive unscathed. Long scratches are scattered hither and yon, seemingly without reason.
You're still trying to process the extent of the destruction when you suddenly remember Filly Anon. She can't be responsible for this; the damage looks like something Wolverine might do, not a little filly with hooves. But at the same time, you're sure it's her fault.
Somehow.
Hopefully she's okay.
You close the door behind you, lift the TV far enough to verify that it has a long crack across the screen, and then start calling for her.
“I'm in the bathroom,” she says, her voice oddly muffled.
“Are you alright?”
“Just a little bit cut up.”
That doesn't sound ominous at all.
You race towards the bathroom, idly noting that the trail of destruction continues up the walls quite some ways and that there are occasional smears of blood on the wall.
It's looking more and more like you're somehow trapped in a horror movie and you decide that if the lights suddenly go out, you're making a beeline for the front door.
The lights stay on.
The bathroom has avoided most of the carnage. Maybe that's because there's less in there to destroy. Bathtubs and toilets and tiles are surprisingly robust.
Filly Anon is sitting on the floor amidst a pile of empty Band-Aid wrappers. Your formerly fully-stocked first aid kit has suffered mightily at her hooves. Bloodstained towels on the sink complete the picture.
She looks up at your hopefully when you enter, perhaps expecting some sympathy. And that might come, once you've determined what happened.
One hind leg is wrapped in gauze all the way up to her barrel, and she's peppered with bandages. Assuming that she's accurately sticking them on wounds, it looks for all the world like she got in a fight with a woodchipper. She's even got a Band-Aid on her tail.
“What happened to you?”
There’s a note of pride in her voice. You suppose Evel Knievel would have sound the same as he was carried off on a stretcher. “I caught a Mightyena!”
Your mind works on that and comes up blank. You're not quite sure if that's actually a word, but it seems like it should be. Maybe it's a pony thing.
“A . . . mighty hyena?” That would explain why everything is destroyed.
“Mightyena. You know? A Pokemon?”
“A Pokemon?”
“Geez, Anon, how do you not know what they are? Do you live under a rock or something?”
“I know what Pokemon are,” you say. “I'm just trying to figure out how this relates to that.”
“He was angry, and my Pokeball wasn’t strong enough. I didn't have the right kind so I made one out of cardboard and then I went out looking 'cause you've gotta catch them all to be the best there ever was. And I found one!”
“Did you.”
“I guess I'm not a very good trainer, though. He got out of the Pokeball, and—“ A crash from the kitchen interrupts her. “That's where he went!” Her injuries temporarily forgotten, she gets to her hooves and heads into the kitchen; you follow.
You've seen what raccoons can do to garbage, and you've heard what bears can do. This is a full order of magnitude worse. The only small consolation is that whatever is in your cupboards can't be all that big. Although Filly Anon is living proof that big trouble can come in tiny packages.
“I hope there are some bandages left,” you mutter and yank open the cupboard door.
Angry coal-black eyes stare back at you. They’re attached to a demonspawn creature that is nothing but teeth and claws and pure hatred, and you slam the cupboard door back shut before it has a chance to get out and gore you.
“That's a badger.”
“Nuh-uh, it's a Mightyena.”
“No, it isn't. It is an actual fucking badger, and it is pissed.” How do you get a badger out of a house, anyways? The only solution that comes to mind is burn the place down, and that's not ideal. Although since most of your belongings are already destroyed, it might actually be a reasonable option.
“It looks like a Mightyena,” she says defensively.
“Well, it might just a little bit, I don't know.” There are a zillion different Pokemon, and while you've played the game you sure as hell can't identify them all. “But Pokemon aren't real, and badgers are. Unfortunately.”
“If they're not real, how come people can go around and catch them, huh?”
“Because the game is an augmented reality app for a cell phone. It uses GPS and an overlay to the camera to make the Pokemon appear as if they were really there, but they're not.
“Look.” You tug your phone out of your pants pocket and begin frantically typing. It doesn't take too long to find a picture of a Mightyena, which you have to admit, does look much like an angry badger. “They're nothing alike.”
She stares at the phone screen and then over at the cabinets where an ominous clanking suggests that the badger is fortifying its encampment in preparation for a long siege.
“Well, how was I supposed to know?” Her ears droop down. “I'm colorblind.”
“That's—” Your brain screeches to a halt at the sudden cognitive dissonance. “THEY'RE BOTH BLACK AND WHITE! HOW IN THE HELL DOES IT EVEN MATTER THAT YOU'RE COLORBLIND?”
Author's Note
Special thanks to my buddy (who would probably prefer to remain nameless) for suggesting a Mightyena. I'd've been scrolling through Pokemon pictures forever trying to find something suitable . . . I'm not the best there ever was.
