You have to eat. You hop down from the tree. You sneak close and hide in a bush. You can see from the bush the campsite. You look around until you are certain no one is around. You make your move but immediately trip on something. Before you get your bearings you realize you are being dragged away from the campsite deeper into the woods.
"What do we have here?" A female voice says. "A thief?" It's an ekans, this is bad. It's coils are wrapped tight around your back leg.
You try and Thundershock, "pika-CHu," but are still too tired. It drags you closer.
"Trying to sneak some dinner from the nice trainer? Do you want to know what I do to food thieves? Turn them into the thing they were seeking." The ekans pulls you under the weight of all her coils. She is so heavy and you feel so tiny under her. She works the coils around your soft body squeezing you tenderly until you are wrapped up. Your head pokes out from the coils and is the only thing visible.
"Let me go!" You shout.
The coils tighten around you. "I've been stalking that eevee for a few days now. She likes to come to the stream in the morning. She was going to be my breakfast but it looks like I've had a change of plans. A pika inside my coils is hard to pass up. It's never disappointed before."
You scream for help but before you can the coils tighten, robbing you of air. You let out a quiet "chaaaa."
"Hushhh now dear, let's get you relaxed," the ekans squeezes hard and you hear four pops in the space of a few seconds. It has dislocated your shoulders and your hips. It could easily crush your bones and end you right there but it relaxes it's coils to let you breathe then tightens to prevent you from calling for help. The ekans is playing with you. You are so weak and helpless. Thunder Mountain seems so far away now. It opens its mouth and its fangs appear. It comes closer. It's breath smells of rot. You think this is it but the ekans pokes one of its fangs into your neck. Poison floods your veins. The pain is excruciating at first but turns into a nice warm feeling all over. She holds in her coils as the poison takes hold. You go limp.
"Feels nice? Good." She relaxes the coils and lays you on your back.
You are too weak to move. You try and scream but all that comes out is a pathetic, "pika-pi."
The ekans lays out straight and slithers up to your back legs. She rises up and flicks you with her tongue starting at your tail. She takes her time working her way up your body flicking every inch of you. She is taste testing you and judging by the look on her face she likes what she tastes.
You don't even have the energy to cry. You lie there helpless. After she's done enjoying your scent she slithers over your body between your legs and over your face. She stops about a third of the way down her coils.
"Your body will rest right about here. You will be a squirming meatball as my acids break your tender meat down." She continues to slither up your body, "your nutritious soup will travel through me and your journey will end here." She stops where her sphincter is right over your face. She slithers off you. Is this really going to be your fate? It feels so wrong. You set out to be an adventurer not a dinner but it looks like you don't have much say in the matter. The will of the more powerful snake is now the only thing determining your destiny and her will is to claim a pikachu for her dinner.
The end of her tail flips you over on your stomach. You look up to see the ekans slithering towards you. She opens her maw wide. Her jaws crack as she dislocates them to accommodate a big pikachu head. The pinkish red gullet drips with strands of saliva, preparing to welcome a pikachu dinner. A site for many a pikachu that was their last and now, yours too. You enter her maw head first. It is clammy on the inside and cool like the night air. Your head smacks into the back of the throat, everything goes dark. She rotates her head around trying to get a better grip, taking you in slowly. She takes the back of her coil and drapes it over your back, anchoring you in place.
Soon, enough of the circumference of the head is in the gullet that powerful slimy muscles can get a good grip and start easily pulling you deeper. Adrenaline fills you and you muster all your strength to struggle. You squirm but to no use. *glp-glp-glp* Each gulp takes more of you into the tight tomb. Every inch taken makes it easier to swallow as more muscles can work together. Before long the ekans is to your mid section. Your legs dangling outside of your predator's maw. You can feel her pick her head up and tilt it to the sky. With the path to the gut now straight, she gulps powerfully. Your hips bend back unnaturally and crackle. The rest slides down the gullet fast.
The ekans stops its meal's descent and lowers her head, parallel to the ground. Now in the tight throat, you can hear the ekans cold blooded heart beating calmly. All that is left in her mouth are two twitching pika-paws and a yellow heart tipped tail. The ekans flicks her tongue over your paws, tickling them. She smacks her lips savoring your flavor. She shuts her mouth for good and gulps one last time. The rings of muscles tighten and contract, pulling their yellow victim deeper towards its final resting place. You struggle as hard as you can, but between the poison and the dislocated joints, you just make little ripples in her coils.
Like a wave, the coils tighten behind you, quickly forcing you down the tight slimy tunnel. After only a few seconds you come to a stop. You're in the stomach of a predator. Your journey now over, no Thunder Stone here, just a cold squishy grave. Something scratches your side, probably a claw or tooth of a previous resident. It smells so bad that you throw up and your acids join the ekans' in helping break you down. However, the stomach barely moves and only a small pool of acid burns your belly. It's not digesting you, yet. Out of options, defeated and demoralized, you cry one tear. It is all the energy you have left to do.
You can hear the ekans' coils slide across the grass and with it, your body swishes back and forth, flowing in tandem with the graceful movements of your devourer. She crosses the stream and then back on to grass. Soon, the sounds of moving grass are replaced by the gripping of a ruff woody surface. You are pushed face first against the tight end of the stomach. She must be climbing a tree to digest her meal in peace. You slosh back to the center of the gut as she slithers on to a branch. She starts spiraling around a limb making you nauseous. She comes to a halt suddenly and then you free fall for a couple feet then are stopped, suspended in air. You are being cradled in a U shape. A force begins rocking you back and forth gently.
A voice rings from within the snake's gut, "good, my little Meatball. Right where you should be. Up high in a tree where we can spend some intimate quality time. A perfect place for an impeccable pikachu picnic." She giggles at her own self indulgent alliteration, squeezing the stomach around you. "Does it feel nice to be wrapped up tight in your hammock?"
To be honest, it kind of does. It reminds you of how your mother would swaddle you after you first hatched but instead of warm and loving, it's cold and killing. It's a veritable living hell in the ekans gut. Most of the air swallowed with you is used up and reeks of previously melted guests. The poison makes you feel ill, like you have the flu. To make matters worse, it's so cold in the snake's gut, you might as well be sleeping outside covered in slimy water. Each beat of the ekans heart whisks away her blood that stole your heat and brings in new cold blood for you to warm. You shiver trying to heat your dying body. The combination of these horrible factors means you only have a few miserable minutes left in this world.
The ekans continues to taunt its catch, "I'm sorry Meatball, I can't start turning you into goop yet. It's too cold out tonight. I usually like meals to have a gurgly death but you'll have to wait till the morning to become ekans meat. You'll be dead long before then but let's enjoy your last moments together, huh? I like to spend this time getting to know my prey. Tell me, did you have friends and family that cared for you?"
"Pika-pi-pika," you babble nonsense. You've completely gone feral. Something about your fate has made you crazy. Maybe it's the lack of fresh air, the poison eating holes in your brain, or your body going into hypothermia from the cold. Or, worse yet, maybe it's your mind, once stripped of your identity, of hope, reverting back to a primal state, accepting its role as snake food. Whatever it is, your mind, drenched in the acids of despair, is melting long before your body will succumb to the acid of a stomach.
"What was that, my sweet little Meatball? Did you say something? All I heard was muffled rambling. To be fair, it doesn't matter what food has to say anyways. If you had friends or family they wrote you off as dead as soon as you stepped outside their little territory. They'll forget about you as soon as I will. Nothing but another lost kin to them and nothing but another simple meal to me. You're not the first. How do you think we ekans got this long? It wasn't just from eating rattata. Plenty of adventurous pikachu have ended their journey nestled snugly in a sinewy tube. I don't know why you thought you would be any different. In fact, you were much easier than the other's. They shocked me at least once but you went down so easily, a nice little meatball. Adventurers always taste better too. You can almost taste their dreams being suddenly crushed by the cold hard reality that they are just weak flesh, meant to be extracted for nourishment then excreted to make room for the next worthless meat bag."
"Pi-pika-pi." You are so weak now your eyelids start to close. Cold, so cold, you shiver harder. All you can do is focus on trying to get warm. Her mocking is just background noise.
"Cold, little Meatball? If it makes you feel better, you're heating my cold blood nicely, such a good little gut warmer. And so tender and young, just the way I like them. I'm lucky to have gotten a hold of such a plump little rodent before some other predator did. Don't worry, I'll put your energy to better use than you would have. Maybe that eevee will get squeezed by the same muscle that you'll help power."
"Piiii..." Your eyes close and you start to shiver less. You begin to accept your fleshy prison as your new home. The ekans' will and yours are melding together and soon so will your bodies. These are your final moments.
"Awww, It's okay, my tasty Meatball. Snake eats mouse, it's a tale as old as time. Out there right now, in this big ole world, is another ekans and its pikachu meatball having the same conversation we are. It's only natural, our relationship. They say there's no shame in being eaten. It's only right that weak Pokémon, like yourself, feed the better. Me, I try to avoid it, but you seem to embrace it with open arms. Don't lie to yourself, no point this close to death. If you didn't want to get turned into belly mush, why did you leave your tribe?" She's waiting for you to respond. "Meatball? ... Meatball?"
You don't say anything, you can't anymore. Long gone are your faculties for speech. Your body gives up trying to keep its core organs warm and instead floods your extremities with intense warmth. It feels so good to go from freezing to warm that you start drifting off to sleep, this time for good. Something is rocking you back and forth gently. Now, with your senses dulled, the ekans swaddling coils do feel like your mother's embrace, so warm and loving. The coils do love you, even if for all the wrong reasons but you're just glad something is as you approach death. Before it seemed so wrong to be eaten, to have your life cut short in such a degrading manner, but now you're okay with it. Like the ekans said, there's no shame in becoming food for a more powerful Pokémon. It's only natural. As you fade, a peace washes over you.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Meatball? ... Meatball?" The ekans is wrapped tight around a limb of her favorite tree. Her center hangs down in a U shape and at the bottom a prey's impression. She pokes the tiny bulge with her tail. The pika-meal swings gently locked tight in its soon to be liquefier. The lump is still and silent. Looks like the pikachu finally died, shame. She can tell by the warmth radiating from the warm blooded dinner. When prey dies, especially on cold nights like tonight, their little bodies release all their heat at death. Feels good but it won't last long, the pikachu is already growing cold.
The ekans sighs. It was too easy, but it was still delicious. She likes when she has to stalk the prey for days, learning their routines, their weaknesses and when they are alone. Then setting up in the perfect spot and striking. Makes it more of a challenge but sometimes the tastiest snacks come easy. As the night cools and so the pikachu, the ekans metabolic rate slows to a point of near hibernation. She lays her head down on the limb and quickly falls into a slumber.
The lethargic snake wakes up the next morning. Groggy from the cold night and a full stomach, she yawns. She smacks her lips and the rich savory flavor of a former adventurer is brought back to the tongue, reminding her of last night's yummy grub. Pikachu are always fun to eat. Definitely worth a shock or two and even better when they are too tired to fight, like this little one. Eating rattata and pidgey gets tiresome but a pikachu is a nice reprieve from the normal belly warmers. They are so fat and tender and they way they melt in the stomach, amazing. Sometimes a tiny electrical shock tickles the stomach as their cheeks turn into mush.
However, the best part of eating a pikachu, by far, is putting them in their place. They are so fun to tease. She doesn't even bother talking to rattata and pidgey. It's in the coils, in the mouth then to the stomach. A very professional exchange. Everyday of their lives are on the edge, never but one misstep from death. They know a maw is likely their end and when they see one coming to finish them, they've already made their peace. Pikachu, however, think themselves above the gut. Maybe it's their relatively low number of deaths. They stick together, form tribes and patrol their territory. No ekans with half a brain would go near a pikachu's territory. That doesn't mean a pikachu won't end up in an ekans' coils. The safety of their territory breeds complacency. Then stupid little pikachu leave, not realizing how dangerous it is out in the wild. Maybe they leave because they were exiled, looking for a mate or trying to find a Thunder Stone. It Doesn't matter, they all end the same. It's just a question of which predator gets the honor of teaching them where they belong on the food chain.
The ekans is under no hypocritical delusions of where she is on the food chain. She is much wiser than an average pikachu. She spends most of her days looking up, making sure not to be in the open if a pidgeotto is nearby. One day, hopefully far in the future, one will catch her and it will be her turn to be the digested. That is the way of the forest, no sense of trying to deny it. She lives for the moment and this moment, she's enjoying an easy come pika filled stomach.
The ekans picks up her head and looks at the little motionless lump and gives it a poke. It's softened a little but only due to the poison breaking down the meat. The ekans' gut will have to do the rest of the work. The stomach hasn't even started the process of making it pudge. The ekans can't wait till summer gets here. That way she can hunt and digest all night long. This was probably one of the last cool spring nights of the season.
The sun is starting to rise. The ekans looks across the stream and sees the eevee come down to watch the sunrise. She's lucky it's the pikachu that is inside her right now and not it. If she's still around in a few days, after the pikachu is digested, she will be the next victim. After her? Maybe the human girl she's with. Talk about meat that doesn't know their place, humans. No claws, no talons, no fangs, just fleshy meat bags begging to be eaten. They rely on their intelligence and their numbers to not become prey, a lot like the pikachu in that regard. The ekans has always dreamed of teaching a human the same lesson she taught this pikachu. She's probably just big enough to swallow the girl. The ekans imagines slithering into the warm tent then, about a half hour later, slithering back into the forest with a full shapely belly. A meal like that would last a week.
A sun beam peaks over a far away hill and lands right on the ekans stomach. She's digested many prey, including quite a few pikachu, on this very branch and knows exactly where the warm sunlight hits.
*grrrrrr-GRMP*
"Sssssss..." she lets out a hiss in pleasure. So the meal starts. The warmth activates her metabolism and the stomach churns and fills with bone melting acids. Time to turn this worthless electric rodent into breakfast. She looks down at the lump, it's pushed and pulled by powerful muscles up and down in the U shape. She opens her maw wide. "URRRP..." the contracting stomach forces a large amount of air out of the gut, flying with it strands of saliva and yellow fur. It taste strongly of dead pikachu, yummy. She giggles, "excuse me, Meatball. I swallowed a lot of air to make sure you lived as long as possible." She wishes the pikachu was still alive to be apart of this process but the ekans takes her victories as they come. She yawns again. Meals make her sleepy. Catching them is easy, it's all that hard work breaking them down that really saps the energy. She'll remain in the tree until she's free of her extra weight. She lays her head back down and dozes off, listening to the pleasant gurgles of a pikachu's digestion dance. Always a welcomed sound to an ekans.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Thus ending your story. You are a softening sack of meat inside a ekans. A classic way to go for a pikachu. Over the next two days, your lump is turned to mush and absorbed by the ekans. You helped her add about one one-hundredth of an inch to her length. You become just another tiny notch in the burgeoning evidence of her hunting prowess. Like the ekans mentioned, you are forgotten by the tribe and even by her as just another easy meal.You leave no legacy, but hey, at least you learned an important lesson about just where you belong on the food chain.
