Groggy. Casey had never felt this groggy in her life. Awareness came gradually to the Alolan Rattata, but with great effort. Just her eyelids felt like they bore the weight of boulders. She was aware of a dull pain in the side of her neck, but she couldn’t lift her arms up to massage the source of the pain. They were still asleep, the same as her legs, tail, and the rest of her body. She was flat on her back with no way to move yet. As Casey’s surroundings came into view, she quickly parsed that she had no idea where this was or how she got here. It was a lab with almost pristine white tiles – that much was clear – though Casey could make out faint splotches of bleached red, like wine on a white shirt after several failed runs through the washing machine. A pit formed in her stomach as she thought of what those splotches might entail. “I gotta get out of here,” was her immediate instinct. The Rattata felt a lot more awake than a minute ago, but she still couldn’t move. If she had just woken up from a restless, dreamless sleep in an unfamiliar place and had a pain in her neck, then she reasoned she’d been drugged before being dragged here. Maybe that was why her limbs were taking so long to come back. Feeling returned to her body bit by bit, but her limbs still wouldn’t move, and the idea of some drug being the sole cause started to make less sense. She willed her head to look downward, and her eyes went wide from what she saw. Shackles. Her arms, legs, and tail were all bound to some kind of table by metal shackles, rendering her in an A-pose with her tail pointed straight down. Whoever brought Casey here wanted to make sure she didn’t move once she came to. She began thrashing against the restraints with newfound vigor, but it was no use. They were made from a thick metal – she probably couldn’t even chew through them if she could reach in the first place. After a minute of her fruitless struggle, Casey felt the table jolt slightly beneath her before it began slowly tilting forward. The restraints were tight enough to keep her from falling out of her current position, even when the table finally stopped a few degrees shy of upright. “W-what’s going on?” she whimpered in a hoarse voice. It wasn’t until she tried talking that she registered her dry throat. Was she out long enough to get dehydrated? A side-effect of the drug she was given, perhaps? “I kn-know you’re here! Let me go, plea-!” Her voice caught in her throat as something cold suddenly prodded against her chest. She looked down to see a metal claw gently caress her midsection, followed by a second claw. Both came from behind the table, each with five flexible fingers that ended at sharp points. “You want me to let you go, ah?” a sinister robotic voice spoke from behind Casey, the claws gently feeling along the Rattata’s midsection with their cold metal tips. They felt ready to slice her open with the slightest bit of force, but their touch was hauntingly gentle, almost sensual. “But you only just woke up, my dear Casey. Why don’t we enjoy each other’s company for a bit?” Casey trembled all over. It wasn’t just from how cold the claws were, They made slow, deliberate movements, and that voice sounded almost like it was flirting with her. Her pounding heart threatened to beat right out of her chest. “Who… who are you?” the Rattata asked with a shaky voice. In response, one of the claws retreated back behind the table. The other one traced a line from her midsection all the way up her neck, stopping just under her chin. Casey tilted her head up to try and get as far away from the claw as possible, but it was to no avail. The claw rotated against her chin. Whoever this was, they were walking around the table, and they were soon in full view: A Synth, covered in bronze-colored plating, a silver underbelly, and fierce red eyes on their visor. Their smirk was unnatural, even for a machine. They eyed the Rattata up and down while keeping their claw perfectly still. Out of the corner of her eye, Casey saw a long tail whip back and forth behind them, but she couldn’t get a good look, especially not while transfixed on the rest of the Synth’s form. “I suppose you deserve to know that much,” the Synth finally replied. “My name is Lancaster, though you’d remember that if it wasn’t for that little gift I gave you.” Lancaster’s claw once again slid gracefully over Casey’s neck, stopping to massage the spot where she felt that pain earlier. She was indeed drugged, and this Synth was the one who did it. “You’d also remember we’ve already met, but I suppose that’s neither here nor there.” “What do you want from me…?” Casey whimpered. Lancaster’s words cut through her like their claws threatened to. According to this stranger, the two had already met, and they drugged her to the point she forgot their meeting. Did they meet at a bar, maybe? She wasn’t a heavy drinker, but she did hang out at a local spot every so often. That neck pain was hardly from a spiked drink, though. The Synth injected her with something. Maybe she was drunk enough to leave alone with them…? “Oh, I just brought you here for a little bit of fun~” Lancaster teased in a sing-song voice, snapping Casey back from her thoughts. They drew their claw back from her neck, allowing her to move her head back down and breathe, as trembling and rapid as her breaths were. She had a clearer view of Lancaster’s tail whipping back and forth behind them. It was long and serpentine, culminating in a point that seemed to resemble a syringe. “You’re curious about this, are you?” Lancaster brought their tail up in front of her face so she could get a closer look at it. That was, indeed, some type of syringe on the tip. Casey gulped, a feeling of dread washing over her. “Custom built by my own hands. I can use it for administering anything I care to load myself up with… or extract anything I need from my prey.” Casey couldn’t tell exactly what Lancaster was planning, but the way they said that sent her into full panic mode. She began frantically struggling against her binds, whipping her head back and forth as it was the only part of her body she could realistically move. “Let me go! Please let me go!” she pleaded, rational thought completely supplanted by her fight-flight-freeze instinct. She knew all her life that Rattata were low on the food chain in the wild – prey for anything that could catch up to them – but she was born and raised in a society that eschewed the notion of predator-prey relationships, where Pokemon lived in harmony with other Anthros, with barely any species barrier to speak of. The language Lancaster just used… it evoked a primal fear she’d never felt before, and it felt unnatural even by those standards. Lancaster clicked their metallic tongue and reached up to forcefully grip Casey’s neck, their claws digging into the metal table to stop her flailing in her tracks. She could feel the tiniest drop of blood start to dribble from the scratch of a near-miss on the side of her neck, testament both to the power Lancaster could potentially exude on her and their precision in toying with her. If a hair out of place with their movement was enough to draw blood, why were they holding back? Either way, Casey couldn’t move an inch anymore, and her airway was partially constricted. Her eyes locked onto Lancaster’s tail as it hovered menacingly in front of her face. “You might think I’m cruel,” they sneered. “But what I’m about to do will hurt infinitely more if you keep flailing around like that. If you just be a good girl and calm down for me, all you’ll feel is a little poke.” Tears began to well up in Casey’s eyes from fear. “Wh-what are you going to do…?” she choked out, on the verge of sobbing. “I don’t feel like foreplay today, so I’ll cut to the chase…” Lancaster reached up with their free hand and gently stroked the top of Casey’s head… before gripping it firmly to make sure she was held completely in place. “You’re here to give me your brain.” Without wasting a second, Lancaster’s tail shot forward, piercing Casey’s forehead in a single, fluid motion. Neither skin nor skull were a match for the metallic syringe gliding cleanly through like butter before stabbing directly into her gray matter, the source of her very consciousness. She wanted to scream. She wanted to flail. She wanted to close her eyes and wake up in her bed from a nightmare… but none of that happened. The stab was almost painless from how fast it was, yet the sudden impact to her brain left both her body and her thoughts paralyzed. Gulp. Casey’s mind blanked for an instant. What was she doing here? It took her half a moment to register Lancaster right in front of her. Another half-moment to remember she was being held in place by two claws and shackles. A trickle of blood starting to run down her face reminded her of- Gulp. Casey’s mind blanked again. She could taste blood. Her mouth was agape, letting the trickle from her forehead drip inside and onto her tongue. She tried to close her mouth or spit the blood out, but her lips weren’t responding to- Gulp. Gulp. Gulp. Each gulp from Lancaster’s tail caused Casey to fall into and wake up from a trance in less than a second. Her thoughts were quickly growing quiet, abstract shapes and colorless clouds dancing in her eyes as her very being was drained out of her. G u l p If she could still grasp the concept, she’d realize she was in the middle of an orgasm. If she could still grasp the concept, she’d forget about it in the next instant – with the next gulp – and find herself in a new kind of euphoria all over again. Gulp. And again… Gulp. And again… Gulp. … .. . Lancaster finally whipped their tail back from the hole in Casey’s forehead. They pulled both their claws back and her head sagged forward limp. Blood dribbled from the wound, her eyes were rolled far back into her head, and her mouth hung open, that same dribble of blood dripping off from her tongue. She was motionless, and with her brain devoured as humble sustenance, her body would never move again, save for a few last twitches of her fingers and tail. “Truly exquisite,” Lancaster teased with a smirk as they brought their tail up to their mouth and slowly licked the blood off. “I do wish I was able to play with you more, my dear Casey, but perhaps tonight simply was not your lucky night.” Lancaster’s visor flashed with some UI elements for a brief moment before the shackles holding Casey’s body released all at once, causing her to unceremoniously fall to the floor with a dull thud. The Synth picked her up, their claws carelessly digging into her flesh now that she’d feel no pain, and dragged her towards a heavy door on the side of the lab, unlocking and opening it with another flash of their visor. Inside that next room, several rows of capsules stood – totaling two dozen – each one with an Alolan Rattata held asleep behind a pane of glass. Some slept almost peacefully, with a display above them reading “READY,” while others lay in various states of disfigurement, with the display above those reading “REGROWING…” One common factor united each one of those, and that was the syringe-sized hole somewhere on their heads. Lancaster carelessly heaved their latest corpse into an empty capsule and sealed it shut, where a tube extended from the inside of the capsule and jabbed a syringe into her neck, beginning an exchange of fluids and information between body and machine. With an indifferent turn, the Synth moved onto the next capsule with an intact body. The door to this one opened, and the tube extending from inside the capsule retracted from Casey’s neck, causing her to stir, but not yet awaken. “Let’s see…” Lancaster mused as they gently lifted the new Rattata. “How do we want to treat you this time…?” … Groggy. Casey had never felt this groggy in her life. Awareness came gradually to the Alolan Rattata, but with great effort. Just her eyelids felt like they bore the weight of boulders. She was aware of a dull pain in the side of her neck, but moving an arm up to massage it was a herculean effort. They both felt like she’d slept directly on them for an entire night – same with her legs and tail – but she was able to get them moving after a short while. Casey struggled a little longer before willing herself to sit upright. She slowly parsed where she was – an unfamiliar laboratory decorated with almost pristine white tiles, though there were some faint splotches of bleached red, like wine on a white shirt after several failed runs through the washing machine. A pit formed in her stomach as she thought of what those splotches might entail. “I gotta get out of here,” was her immediate instinct. She scrambled to her feet, stumbling from the lingering effects of her sleep and almost hitting her head on a table in the middle of the room, before turning around and finding two doors on perpendicular walls. One looked heavy and locked, but the other seemed far lighter, and a different source of light trickled in from underneath that one. Without wasting a second, Casey rushed towards the lighter door and threw it wide open, thankful it was unlocked. She started to run, but almost immediately hit something and tumbled backwards. Shaking herself off, she looked up at the obstacle she hit: A Synth, covered in bronze-colored plating, a silver underbelly, and fierce red eyes on their visor. Their smirk was unnatural, even for a machine. They eyed the Rattata up and down, bringing a five-fingered claw to their mouth and licking it slowly, almost like they were putting on a show for her. Their tail whipped back and forth behind them, serpentine and with what looked like a metallic syringe at the end. “Leaving so soon?” the Synth teased, their voice sinister and robotic, but with the terrifying undertone of… were they flirting with her? “But you only just woke up, my dear Casey. Why don’t we enjoy each other’s company for a bit?”