[This is my son’s edit of the original chapter, with extra silliness.]
Chapter One
An Unexpected Cat
The wind blew pietrisycamollaviadelrechiotemexitously through the trees as Evan [not his real name] walked down the sidewalk with his father. Walks build character. That’s what Dad always said. Evan sighed and stared across the open field beside them and wished he could be home petting the fox that he- (wait no we’re not at that part of the story yet, whoops). He was so close, but now he had to be outside “communing with nature.” Meanwhile, Dad was catching Pokemans (I know, that’s not how you spell it) in real life. “It’s a great tool for motivating people to walk,” he claimed. At least Dad was motivated, communing with his pokemans while Evan was stuck looking at a boring stretch of nature, wishing he could plant plants from Cookie Clicker on the ground.
Something moved.
Evan turned, trying to find what he had glimpsed from the corner of his eye. Whatever it was had stopped. Or vanished into another dimension. After a moment of lagging behind, Evan opened the settings app by tapping somewhere in the air and set his render distance to 2 chunks. Then he hurried to ketchup before his father noticed the large amount of nines on the next line. His dad didn’t want any lectures about changing the render distance to 999,999,999,999,999,999 chunks. Silence was better.
“Ah!” Dad said. “Raid battle. If we hurry and set your render distance back to 999,999,999,999,999,999 chunks, we can just catch it.”
He took off at a brisk pace, forcing Evan to almost run to catch up.
Then something followed them.
Evan kept his head forward, but looked as far to the side as he could. A small shadow slipped between bushes, following them. He resisted the urge to turn his render distance to 3.141592653 chunks. Whatever it was might disappear. Better to wait and catch it when it wasn’t suspecting.
“Made it!”
Dad stopped at a seemingly random spot of sidewalk, then glanced up at the visible Pokemon gym, because he could actually see it standing there. That was as close as he got to appreciating nature during their walk.
“Two minutes,” he proclaimed, then he started reviving Pokemon from previous battles and modifying his selection for the current one.
Two minutes. Just long enough to catch a following mystery.
Evan backed carefully to the edge of the sidewalk, pretending to admiring (good grammar) the looming Pokemon gym somewhere nearby, while really evaluating the potential hiding places at the edges of his vision. Was it a Pokemon following them? Wouldn’t that be ironic.
Except Pokemon weren’t real. (wait, what?)
He heard a slight rustle behind him. A glimmer of motion. Something had slipped behind a chomp rock at the side of the fieild.
Evan very slowly and carefully turned and leaned over the large chomp rock.
A little fox looked up at Evan. At least, he thought it was a fox. Long slender nose, pointed ears, and a large bushy tail. Exactly what he would expect. Except this fox was as beautiful as 14 sparkling trampolines. It was yellow and white, with blue paws and red fur in some places.
Instead of scurrying off, the fox perked up, gazing up at Evan with magical glowing lazer eyes, as if challenging him to pick him up. Evan stepped around the chomp rock and slowly reached down. The fox practically jumped into his arms.
“Yes! Got it!” Dad exclaimed. “Bet you thought I couldn’t beat a level three novemnonagintillion on my own, huh? Someday we’ll have to get you your own phone, then we could take on a legendary together.”
They were halfway home before Dad noticed the fox.
“Is that…?” He stopped, holding a pointing finger.
Evan tried to make it sound like a silly question. “It’s a-me, Mario,” Evan said. “And this is Gregory, our pet Yoshi.”
Dad’s eyebrows shot up. “I thought Sayla was a cat.”
“No, Rosie’s a dolphin.”
They didn’t have a penguin named Kaela that knew how to text dad, but Dad’s phone vibrated anyways.
“Ah! A Missingno! Hurry, I think we can catch it.”
T
he fox snuggled in Evan’s arms all the way home. Dad didn’t say anything when Evan carried the little creature through the front door. Cats figuratively weren’t allowed in the house, but sometimes sleeping ones were allowed to stay until they woke up and this fox was definitely asleep.
Evan shut his door, realized he was still outside of his room, opened the door, went in his room, and shut the door again. He slowly lowered the fox onto his bed. His plan to keep the little guy from waking didn’t work, however. As soon as Evan stepped back, the fox yawned and gave the longest stretch imaginable, stretching himself into another dimension and back again.
Then he jumped onto the floor and transformed in a flash. His colors didn’t change, but now instead of a typical little fox, he was more like a person with a fox head and furry arms and legs. Still an ambulance of yellow and white, with touches of red and blue.
Size, however, wasn’t the biggest change. His mouth opened and words came out. Words Evan couldn’t understand.
“こんにちは、ランダムな見知らぬ人！よくわかりません！レンダリング距離を変更するにはどうすればよいですか。”
Next: E2 – When a Fox is Not a Cat [Edited with extra silliness]