This was born out of an obsession that I could not put out of my mind until I wrote. In fact, I already have 15k written for this story. I couldn't not write it, but for a while I was too nervous to publish, but it's about to be my 8th anniversary on fanfic and well, I couldn't imagine that milestone without my latest project.

EDIT 2020: Welcome! PSA: Every 20 chapters of this story features a recap to keep relevant plot information fresh.

So without further ado, please enjoy.

The small, blue and cream shrew took tentative steps across the gangplank, stopping halfway to sniff the air. Safe. He scurried across the rest of the distance, keenly aware of the lapping water below him, onto the pirate ship. The deck was empty, so the large, rodent-like creature followed the scent of fruit into the storage area, gnawing hunger fueling him. Island life had never been easy for the poor creature, especially after he'd been on his own.

Usually, the small fire type wouldn't approach a human construct like this without the shade of night, but he was particularly desperate, and he'd seen a few pirates leave the ship earlier.

Quickly, Cyndaquil was able to nose the ajar door open, and hone in on the sweet fragrance of apples and maybe oranges, biscuits and salted meats. He wasted no time in diving in the first burlap sack he saw, and pushed his front paws against it until the sack fell over, scattering a few apples on the ground. He picked them up one by one and started munching on them, then started on the ones on the bag. He couldn't remember the last time he'd had a piece fresh fruit without having to run for his life to avoid an angry shopkeeper. Most of his meals were scraps from the trash, that was the only thing he could do to limit the injuries he took from townspeople.

Cyndaquil kept polishing off the apples, one after another, until his head, then shoulders were in the bag, and then until he was swallowed up by the bag, not remembering a time where he had eaten so much, even when he still had his mother. He blinked slowly a few times, let out a sigh, and his eyes fully closed for sleep.

Suddenly, Cyndaquil was aware of movement, tiny trembles across the new floorboards, sending his shrew instincts on tense alert. He'd fallen asleep. And during that time, humans had boarded. He had no way of knowing how many, either, there were so many vibrations and slight movements, it almost made him sick when he tried to parse them out.

His only choice was to wait until he could take a carefully calculated risk in escaping. Hope surprise was on his side, and that they weren't hunters, or that there weren't dogs on their side. His heart beat frantically in his chest.

Several minutes went by, with impacts hitting somewhere outside, and the boat rocking, and Cyndaquil rolled up into a ball and waited it out.

Eventually, the impacts stopped and the fire type was pulled out of his instinct to stay hidden and quiet as he felt the unmistakable taps of human footsteps approaching. The Cyndaquil tensed and peeked out a hole in the burlap at a woman with orange hair, carrying a box of freshly picked limes.

For the eighth time, Cyndaquil lamented that no matter how hungry he had been, he'd been truly foolish to try something so risky.

The woman set down the citrus and headed back to the door. Cyndaquil let out a nearly inaudible sigh. But when she was at the door, she abruptly turned around as if double-taking, then walked over, examining the large hole in the now-more-empty bag.

"Huh?" She stopped in front of the shrew pokemon unknowingly. "What hap-Ahhhh!" The redhead jumped back in surprise as Cyndaquil jumped out of the bag, charging blindly across the room in a panic.

"A rat!" I heard behind me. That's a familiar call, I thought, and it never ends well!

I skirted past her easily with my dash and made my way back to the deck.

"Catch that blue thing!" The girl screeched behind me. On deck I realized there were three more startled humans, as I hurtled up, looking for somewhere to go. Back the way I came, I thought.

"I got it!" said one, running towards me, I sharply turned before his reaching hands could reach me, making to escape, but when I jumped onto the railing, I stopped dead when I realized that we were in the middle of the ocean, a mass of land already a distance away. The tan human took advantage of my distraction and tried to grab me, I squealed loudly and slipped out of his hands, charging the opposite direction at full speed as he tripped and fell behind me. I could find a new place to hide, maybe they would give up and—yet another pair of hands caught me, but this time, the calloused hands held fast around my stomach, as I struggled ineffectually. The one holding me was a strong green-haired man with curious yet terrifying eyes. I stopped struggling—it was hurting me more than him at this point— and shivered nervously in his grip. They caught me, now they were gonna cook me up or throw me overboard! No matter how hungry I was, I should have known not to try to steal from a ship!

The orange haired girl had come out on the deck and now the others were coming around too. They were all so giant.

"What is this thing?" The green-haired man said.

Orange came up to me with a hand thoughtfully under her chin. "It was in the storage room so I thought it was a rat, but it doesn't look like anything I've seen before."

"It's way bigger, and a weird color, but it kind of looks like a mouse or shrew. Maybe it's mutated?" the tan man wondered.

"Hey Zoro, can we eat it?" The black-haired boy asked, looking bored now that the chase was done. My shaking got a little worse. I was too young to die, I was only six months old and I still had someone to find! That's it, I thought, steeling myself. My last hope!

"QUIIIIILLLLL!" I wailed, igniting and combusting the flames on my back with all the energy I had. They were strong enough that the green haired man, Zoro, grunted and dropped me. I corrected my fall on the way down, gleeful of a chance to hide—when the black haired boy's arms seemed to stretch just a little too far, and before I knew it, I was being held by him and closely inspected.

"Whoa! Did you just use fire? I know someone with a devil fruit power like that? Did you eat the Flare-Flare fruit too?" He asked. I ignited my back again but he was holding me around the arms and shoulders and I wasn't able to hit him.

"I-it did it again, it shot fire…out of it's back…" Nami said in a daze.

Zoro frowned, patting his hands against his obi. "Cute trick."

"Luffy, there's only one of each type of devil fruit, so that's not a possibility, so it's either another, similar one, or it's a weird animal we don't know about." The tan boy pointed out.

I'm not an animal! I groused, trying to pry myself out of the boy's grip, though he didn't seem to notice, just grinned toward the redhead who had come over to get a closer look as well.

"Actually it's kind of cute, in a strange way…" Orange trailed off. On the ground, the top of my head would probably reach Green's knee, if I stretched to my full height; I am blue-green and cream with three red spots on my back for my fire and large, perpetually squinted eyes and a narrow, soft muzzle.

I have not been called "cute" before. I protest weakly.

Tan boy spoke up again, "It looks scared, I think it may have stowed away, not realizing we were going to sail away."

So he wasn't as dumb as he looked. I nodded eagerly before going back to being terrified.

"Huh? You can understand us?" Orange asked.

"Cyn!" Yes! Don't eat me!

"How cool!" Black said, his eyes lighting up. "And you can shoot fire so you must be a baby dragon!"
The girl, Nami, raised an eyebrow skeptically at Black, then looked at me. "You didn't mean to jump abroad, huh? I bet you were just looking for food and got stuck, right?"

I nodded again.

"Do you live on that island back there?" Black said. I nodded again. I flinched as his eyes hardened and he crouched to set me down, free, on the floor. Not that escape was possible at the moment. No, my best bet would be to listen to them. "And we took you from your home."

Nami seemed to know where he was going with his idea, even if I didn't. "Luffy, those people were firing cannons at us. We can't go back!"

Luffy stared at me, not acknowledging the girl's words, still waiting for my answer.

I was hesitant because while I did live on the island, it wasn't really home to me, I didn't know anyone well on that island anymore. He seemed to understand my resistance because after a moment he gave me a nod and reached out a hand to my head. I flinched again, but the hand didn't touch me immediately, just stopped above me. When I looked up and gave it a slight sniff, the calloused hand gave my head a surprisingly gentle pat. "Alright then, it's settled! We won't eat you and we'll bring you to another island—that's a promise! What's your name?"

"Cyndaquil?" I hadn't been called anything in a long time so I just looked up at him.

"Ah, so your name is Cyndaquil," Black confirmed.

"Uh, Luffy, I think that's all it can say, I don't know if it's its name," Longnose said.

"Well, my name's Luffy and this is Zoro, Usopp, and Nami. We're the Strawhat Pirates. Now that that's settled, let's eat!"

Ten minutes later, the humans were sitting at the table in the kitchen eating smoked fish. Long nose—Usopp—had given me some dehydrated fruit, which I was working on by the door. I certainly wasn't that hungry, but I couldn't pass up the fruit; peeling off chunks of the vile skin and sticking my snout in the fruit to eat the sweet inside.

The crew were quick to laugh, or threaten, as Nami did when Luffy put his hands too close to her food, and soon they were done. Zoro looked back at me, again making me feel uncomfortable under his glare. Then, I realized that the conversation had moved on to talking about me again. I put more effort into looking busy while I listened in.

"—actually not uncommon for sailors, or pirates, to have a pet on board to catch vermin and some are even said to bring sailors good luck," Nami was saying.

"I think they got cats to prevent mice, it's crazy to keep a rodent on board," pointed out Usopp.

"I'm estimating we're about five days from the next island, so how about you just focus on not letting it chew through anything, alright Usopp?" Nami asked sweetly, while Usopp started to sweat thinking about that problem.

"Shihihihi!"

After that, it was getting late, and Zoro stayed to clean up the dishes, Luffy watched the sun set from the bow, Nami left downstairs somewhere and Usopp climbed up to the Crow's Nest for the night shift.

I hesitated, not sure what to do. I would have retreated back into the storage room but someone had fully shut the door so I couldn't slide in. I didn't want to spend the night out in the open and it was getting kind of chilly. As I wallowed, Luffy walked by me. "Come on, blue rat thing. Time to go to sleep," he said if it were the most natural thing in the world. Having no other options, I reluctantly followed the boy down the hatch, which brought us to a decent sized room with five hammocks, that smelled vaguely of snacks and old socks. Luffy hummed thoughtfully as he looked around for something. Finally, he decided to pull out a shirt, that looked a lot like the shirt he was currently wearing, folded it once and set on the ground near his hammock. "Here, mousie," he said, picking me up before I could back away and placing me on the shirt, "stay, go to sleep."

I stared at him incredulously for a minute as he changed into a nightie, yawned loudly and climbed into his hammock and instantly started snoring. Still, I sensed none of the predator drive I sensed in the swordsman, so I laid down and gradually let my defenses lower enough for sleep. Still, I stayed alert and woke up many times; when Zoro came in sweaty holding three long sticks, and when Usopp came in much later in the night.

The next day, after Nami brought an apple and water out to the deck for me, my initial trepidation was beginning to wear off. I think I could trust Luffy and his friends to drop me off safely at the next island. Around midday, Luffy was groaning about being bored and started playing with anything he saw—the small machine Usopp was messing with, a calcified piece of bread, finally a big bouncy ball, which rolled down the deck past me. My senses were on alert as I felt the vibrations across the floor. It hit the stairs and started bouncing down and I couldn't help myself anymore—I spun around charged after it. My acute spacial senses had already accurately located it, so once I was on the move, it was easy to hone in on. I leaped off the bottom few steps and trapped the bouncy ball under my paws just as it was approaching the side of the ship.

Luffy whooped and clapped, "Nice catch, fire-guy!" He quickly made a game of throwing the ball and catching it, but I found it hard to not get enthusiastic about the game. Luffy seemed to intrinsically understand how I was finding the ball (Cyndaquil aren't known for their superb vision) and kept adding new challenges, such as slapping the ground after he'd thrown it to try to throw me off. But as I kept catching up to the ball eventually, his distractions became too effective.

"Look, it's a giant bird!" He yelled once and in an instant, I was curled up in a ball, arching flames from my back. Luffy gave out a cheerful laugh and went off to distract himself with trying to raid the storage room.

Exhausted, I found a corner away from the water to take a nap in. That day, I occupied myself with watching Usopp tinker. Nami gave me a gentle pat on the head as she walked by the make dinner and I was given a piece of hardtack and that night, I slept on Luffy's shirt again.

The pirates, it seemed, must be the best of the humans.

1. I really wanted to explore 'are pokemon more like people or animals?' dynamic that a misplaced pokemon would have, and make a seemingly simple character with many facets of personality, and I really love him. And it's currently not in the crossover page because it's a lil concerning how little I look for things there.

2. EDIT: Sorry, the POV may shift to 1st person in the first 6 chapters. After then, coast should be clear.

3. And oh my god, was it difficult to pick a pokemon for this story. I know this is already being done, but I felt I had a very different story to be told, and honestly, longer stories like this are great novel writing practice. Anyway, originally, this story was about a Shinx, but I realized the electric-type story has already been told in The Smallest Strawhat. So yeah, I wrote probably 9k of that before I realized that just wouldn't work. So I needed another pokemon. One as cool as Shinx, but how would that be possible? It had to have cool evolves (sorry Litten), preferably several, to space out the story, had to be distinctly animal-like to be different from the crew (sorry my OG, Riolu/Lucario). I considered, strangely enough, Fletchling, which would have been very different, but just kind of hard to do (Fletchling was BFFs with Usopp), I considered Rockruff, but I don't know how to write rock types (Rockruff was BFFs with Nami, Shinx was BFFs with Zoro), and even Litleo, because it's just a fire Shinx, but it was a little too plain and its evolution is only so-so. In the end, only cyndaquil would do.