“Why did… Yuji… have to… leave?” I huffed, straining as Hana used my arm to help pull herself up the cliffside. She had both feet tapped into small crevices in the rock face, standing almost ten feet off the ground.
“If we were here later in the season,” Hana reasoned between heavy breaths, her mouth pouring out facts to help her body function. She reached up and gripped the ledge with her other arm. “Then the normal path would be cleared by the rangers, and we wouldn’t have to climb so many ledges.”
“Yeah… yeah… I’mgoingtopulluponthree,” I released my last sentence in a single breath. “One… two… three!”
I threw my body weight backward, lifting and pulling with all of my might. Hana’s feet scrambled against the rock as she pushed up at the same time. Our combined efforts launched her up, pulling her over the edge and flopping both of us backward onto the stone. Hana landed on my chest but had the presence of mind to roll to the side, hastily avoiding knocking the last of the wind from my lungs. She didn’t avoid crushing my arm, but it was better than the alternative.
We both laid there for a moment, catching our breaths. The stone was warm from the sun, which didn’t help the fatigue, but we were too tired to care. A fresh breeze carried the smell of fresh underbrush and soil from the canyon below us.
A shadow fell over my face as Wisp peeked over my head. She was upside down, relative to me, and her yellow-red eyes glittered in amusement. She chuckled at us.
“Uh-uh,” I shook my head before reaching for my water bottle. I’d tossed both of our bags up here first, so they were only a few feet away. “No smugness from you, little lady. It’s not my fault I can’t levitate.”
“That would be awesome, though,” Hana groaned. She sat up, cupping her temples between her hands. Her already tan face was dark across the nose and brow ridge from the constant sun. “Imagine just floating anywhere you wanted to. It would be amazing.”
“Mis,” Wisp said simply, bobbing her head from side to side. Obviously, she agreed that it was pretty awesome.
“Well, that’s the plan,” I handed my water bottle off to Hana, which she took gratefully. “That’s one of the reasons I want a Flygon so bad. People make saddles for them all the time back home.”
Hana chugged my water but still managed to roll her eyes while drinking. “That’s not what I’m talking about,” she said when she came back up for air. “Imagine getting to fly without relying on a Pokemon. I’ve heard that some of the very powerful psychics can accomplish that on their own, though that research is almost purely anecdotal.”
“Nah, that’s not for me,” I shook my head, feeling my hair sweep the gravel underneath it. I couldn’t find the strength to lift my head, so I just stared up at the clouds. The sky was so blue today. “Give me a partner in the sky any day of the week. If it was just me up there, I’d probably get hit by lightning or swallowed by a cloud or something.”
Hana shrugged, crossing her arms over her chest and looking up to the clouds. “Knowing you? That’s probably not far off.”
I sat up, giving her a playful shove. “You’re not supposed to agree with me!”
“We have empirical evidence to suggest that you can’t be trusted on your own,” Hana chuckled. “If it wasn’t for Wisp and I, well, it’s a good thing that we’re here to guide you.”
“Wisp!” I turned to my Pokemon. “Put this blaspheme in her place! Tell her that I’d be fine-”
“Drea mis,” Wisp shook her head, floating over to Hana’s shoulder. Both of them stuck their tongues out at me.
I scoffed in mock betrayal. “Fine then,” I stood up. “Both of you can go camp on your own, since I’m only around as a burden.” I scooped my pack and my egg incubator and started walking along the rocky ridge that we’d climbed up to. It would lead us further down Route 09 than the road could take us.
Hana shrugged again, not yet getting up. “Alright, send me a call when you get lost. We have enough food to last us several weeks out here.”
Wisp glanced between the two of us, not quite understanding that we were doing a bit. She mostly just looked confused. She stayed floating near Hana, though.
I smirked. “Food? Yes, we have food. But, if you remember who’s carrying the larger weight load, which just happens to include both the majority of the food and the tent, well, I think that I might be more than a burden out here. But, hey, have fun sleeping outside. I hear there are lots of Ekans on this route. They should keep you company.”
Hana gave me a dry side-eye. She cracked a grin, and I felt my smug expression waver to the chuckle that was behind it.
We both started laughing.
Travel had been hard the last two days. Route 09 was no joke. It was a curving series of cliffs and ravines that crisscrossed and collided in seemingly random intervals. The main road that crossed the bottom of the ravine was overgrown and blocked off from disuse, meaning that we had to take the road less traveled by climbing over the plateaus and ridges that dotted the route. The Nav was keeping us on track, but we were slow going. It was grueling work, so we needed these little morality breaks to keep us going.
I helped Hana to her feet and held up her pack to let her slide her arms in. Since we were now carrying the essentials for camping across two people rather than four, our packs were making full use of their backpacking frames.
“You know,” Hana muttered as she clipped her pack buckle across her chest. “One of these days, we need to invest in a digital compression bag. It would save us so much weight.”
I raised an eyebrow. “And how would we afford one of those magic bags of holding? Those things are, like, tens of thousands of Poke. Between the two of us, we probably didn’t even have that much after selling those Pokemon and winning the Cerulean badge.”
“If we budget properly and catch another rare Pokemon or two, we could probably afford one by Saffron.” Hana turned around and faced me, her lime green eyes giving me a curious look. “Also, aren’t you sponsored by the Oak Lab? Did they not offer you a stipend or anything for your supplies?”
I tilted my head to the side. “I don’t think so? I mean, the Professor and I never talked about anything like that. I guess I could look over my paperwork tonight when we camp…” I slid the Nav out from my belt holster on a whim. “Oh, sweet, I have a signal!”
Hana perked up. We hadn’t had one on the Nav for almost a day, and her phone had lost signal almost immediately after leaving Cerulean. “Check your messages! Is there anything from Amy and Yuji?”
“Yup! Nothing big, they just sent us an update saying that they got halfway there- Oh wait, it just refreshed. Holy crap!”
“What?” Hana craned her neck over my shoulder. “What happened?”
A wide smile split my face. “Yuji already caught another teammate,” I said quietly, turning the Nav to show Hana the photo they’d sent. Yuji stood proudly next to a small bipedal simian with a big pink nose. “His Mankey is named ‘Wukong’. Talk about basic,” I muttered with a chuckle.
“It’s on brand, though,” Hana said. Her smile was sweet and genuine, but it had become small and fragile. She gently took the Nav from me, staring down at our friend and his new Pokemon.
My own smile wavered. It was obviously hurting Hana to not be around the other two. The fact that she was missing out on celebrating a new teammate was hard on her.
I gently placed a hand on her shoulder, and Hana jumped a little. “We’ll have to go shopping before we meet back up with them,” I said.
That seemed to pull Hana out of her funk. Hana’s smile softened. “Yes, Yuji’s going to need a whole suite of accessories for his new teammate, as well as training supplies and supplements. Oh, and think of the outfits! Neither Despereaux or Achilles could fit into human clothing, but Mankey is almost human-shaped, kind of.”
It had taken me a while to figure out why Hana liked shopping so much, given that people who were more academically minded like her often didn’t have an affinity toward fashion, but it had long since started to make perfect sense to me. Shopping was problem-solving for Hana. She had set limitations, like cost and weight, and she had to work within a defined medium to achieve her goals. It was calming for her, the same way that spouting random facts during stressful situations was calming for her.
“-and, if we can get that bag- Oh!” Hana’s eyes widened and she shoved the Nav back into my hands. “The Professor sent you back a response, look at the subject line! It probably has to do with your Beldum.”
“Nice!” I grinned, flipping through the email. I very quickly realized that it was longer than I was used to getting from the Professor, so I slowed down to read the whole thing carefully.
[[08:01, Professor Oak]] - RE: Pokemon Sponsorship
Dear Derek,
I hope that I am among the first to congratulate you on your victory in the Cerulean Gym. Having given the match a view myself, I am quite proud to say that your progress as a trainer is progressing positively. I hope that your training in Lavender Town will be as fruitful as the training that you accomplished in Cerulean.
Now, as for your requested Pokemon, I have begun the paperwork and acquiring process for a Beldum from a colony in Hoenn. I must say, I was quite interested in your final choice, as it was counter to the issues that you’d raised previously in our discussions. It is an accomplishment that you were able to develop your feelings and make a truly inspirational choice. I will keep you updated on its progress as the colony caretaker becomes closer to having the Pokemon ready.
A small note and reminder from our previous discussions: I would remind you that Beldum is one of very few Pokemon that require others of its kind to merge with it in order to evolve. When you have completed the requisite training and bonding with your Beldum, I can connect you with the colony to attempt to earn more members of their brood, though that will be a long and expensive process.
As overjoyed as I am that your journey is continuing, I fear that I have a task to ask of you on your travels. Now that you have made me aware that you are traveling Route 09, I ask that you keep an eye out for another of our sponsored trainers in that part of the world. Red is a talented young man, though he often vanishes into the wilderness for weeks at a time. His most recent disappearance should put him somewhere in your path between Cerulean and Lavender. While I doubt he is in any danger, I ask that you attempt to find him and, if possible, get him to phone his home. His mother is extremely worried.
I trust that you will do your utmost to complete this task and treat it with the urgency and respect it deserves. You are a talented trainer in your own right, Derek, and you have the full support of the Oak Pokemon Research Laboratory behind you.
Thank you for your time and effort,
Samuel Oak,
PhD. in Pokezoology,
Professor of Pokemon.
“Oh, shit,” I muttered. I handed the Nav off to Hana, since her reading abilities far outstripped my talking speed. “I guess I have a new task?”
Hana squinted at the message, only taking a second to absorb it in its entirety. “I guess we do. Though, you’d think the Professor would send you an identifying photo or even a last name for this person? Also, what kind of name is ‘Red’?”
A memory scratched its way to the surface, a detail Daisy had given me about her family almost weeks ago.
“It’s a nickname. Daisy said her brother goes by Blue, so I figure this guy is probably the other half of that, right? And it’s not like we’re going to run into anybody else out here,” I gestured to the empty canyons around us, “Right? Like, I’m more surprised that somebody else is on the route than anything else.”
Hana conceded the point by bobbing her head, still looking through the Nav. “We’re about halfway done with Route 09, but there’s still two days of travel to get to Route 10, then another day to get to Rock Tunnel. Even assuming he’s not in the tunnel itself, which we can’t, that’s a lot of ground to cover if we’re trying to find one person.”
I looked east. The half of Route 09 that we hadn’t done yet was still stretched in front of us. The road was choked with trees and fallen boulders, and large swaths of the trail were masked in shadow from the narrow canyon walls that kept out the sun. Far above all the rocky structures were flying Pokemon, probably Fearow, that circled slowly, using the spinning thermals of hot air to take them farther into the sky.
My heart started beating a little faster. The route had already been difficult, but now it was a challenge. I grinned.
“Well, then. We better get started.”
----------------------------------------
From our vantage point on the cliffside, Hana and I mapped out a path that would give us the most view of the route with as little difficulty as possible, given that we had been locked out of using the main road. Even though Artis had been able to clear it for us to travel here initially, it just wasn’t a good use of his time or energy to keep breaking through. However, the same could be said about constantly climbing up and down each butte, cliff, and ridge on the route. Since we wanted to avoid the road and changes in elevation as much as possible, it led to some precarious situations.
“Look, I trust your math and I trust Paige and I trust Wisp, but I don’t trust that. I’m not climbing across it,” I made an X with my hands. “Nope, not doing it.”
Hana rolled her eyes. “Derek, those vines can hold four times your body weight and they’re tied off to a boulder bigger than a car. As long as we hook you in, even if you fall, nothing bad will happen.”
We’d managed to keep our altitude over the canyon by sticking to ledges and bouldering across the ridges between the plateaus, but that strategy had finally run its course. Between us and the other side of the route was a sheer cliff drop to the bottom of the canyon. Suspended across the forty-foot gap to the next plateau was a crisscrossing vine ladder that Paige had painstakingly crafted and Wisp had floated to the other side. Even with no slack, the line wobbled and flapped in the updraft from the bottom of the canyon, the hot air rising from the increasing sunlight. I glanced over the edge and, hundreds of feet below, I could see the intended road for the route. The choking thornbushes looked like grass from up here.
“Listen, I’m not scared of heights, but that’s crazy,” I said, feeling nauseous. “We don’t even have a flier to catch us.”
“Drea!” Wisp took offense to that comment. Even with no arms, she harrumphed her shoulders and turned away from me.
“Okay, yes, you can technically fly, but are you going to catch me if I fall? Using Confusion on living creatures is still hard for you, right?”
Wisp let her head sink, though she still didn’t turn around.
“Actually,” Hana rested her chin on her hand, looking over my Pokemon. “If that’s the issue, then I have a solution.”
Wisp and I both looked at her. Hana stepped forward, getting close to me, and then pulled on the shoulder strap of my pack, tightening it down. I winced in discomfort, but Hana ignored me and buckled the two buckles that connect the straps across my chest, then tightened both of those too. She pulled the incubator off of my hip, wrapping it in my sleeping bag and shoving it deep into my pack. When she was finished, she nodded and looked at Wisp.
“Wisp, can you grab his pack? I don’t know how good your control is,” she admitted.
My ghost type looked intrigued. Her yellow-red eyes glowed blue and I immediately felt an upward tug from my pack, like it was being yanked up by a stunt line.
My feet started leaving the ground. “Hey, hey, hey!” I kicked my legs, the nauseous feeling in my gut dropping through the soles of my feet. “This is not what I meant!”
Hana chuckled. “Alright, you can let him down now.”
The blue energy faded and my feet slowly touched back down on the ground. I let out a long breath, glancing between Hana and Wisp. Both of them looked amused, though Wisp was concerningly out of breath, which was funny when you factored in that she didn’t need to breathe. It was probably still hard to grab something in such close proximity to a living being, though this was a way better result than our previous tests.
I sighed. “Fuck it, I’ll climb across the death bridge.”
They cheered.
Hana looped a rope and a carabiner into one of the harnesses that we’d bought to cross Mt. Moon and tied me into her line. I didn’t have any gloves, but I wanted something to be able to protect my hands from the vine-rope cutting into them. I slid Daisy’s handkerchief from my wrist to cover one of my palms and pulled out a thin tank top to wrap around my other hand.
With my climbing equipment set up, I let out a long breath. This was hardly the most dangerous thing that I’d ever done- Well, no, actually. Most of the crazy crap that we’d done over the last month had been reactionary and stupid, but the threat of death was usually at least a few steps away. During the museum and Mt. Moon fights, I’d always had an opportunity to come out severely injured, not dead. If the safety steps here didn’t work, there was no living through this.
If.
I swallowed, the feeling of a cold chain around my throat. That phantom sensation made me feel a bit better. If I was going to drown, it probably wasn’t going to happen a thousand feet in the air.
I glanced back at Hana. She’d released both Paige and Rafflesia and all of them were clutching one end of the rope she’d connected to my harness. Hana looked up at me, her lime-green eyes shining. She didn’t look nervous at all. Hana smiled at me.
I took a step onto the vine-rope ladder. There was less give than I thought there would be, but it still bounced and wobbled under my weight, bucking against my foot.
“Okay, fuck that…”
I dropped down to my knees, grasping the ladder with both hands and shuffling one knee at a time onto the ladder. Even if it looked stupid, I could already feel the difference in my weight distribution.
I slid one knee forward and took a step.
Then I took another.
The wind from the gorge below was hot as it rose around me. It took my hair up and dried out my eyes. I had to squint to see the next rung of vines. Bits of rock and dust would occasionally pop up and flick across my face, and all I could smell was dry dirt and old vegetation.
I glanced off to the side as I crawled, desperate not to look past the ladder at the ground below. I could see those Fearow that I’d spotted earlier, still spiraling into the air with the same thermals that bounced me up and down on my ladder.
“It’s a damn shame that those aren’t Pidgeot,” I muttered, trying to distract myself. “Fearow are so violent that they’d peck my eyes out if I tried to bribe them. Not like a good Pidgeot. Pidgeot would fly me across. Then I wouldn’t have to walk on this stupid ladder over this stupid gorge.”
A stronger wind whipped up from below. It swept the bridge up, lifting the entire thing into an arc. The gust slammed into me from below, catching on my hoodie and pack. Feeling my entire body weight shift, I clamped down on the rope with both of my hands. My midsection started to lift from the rope ladder.
“Fuuuuuuuck….!” I turned my head over my shoulder to shout. “A little help here!”
A heavy weight pressed down on my back. The psychic force on my pack pushed me down, directly counter to the wind, and shoved the bridge back down into position. With the added weight, I scrabbled forward, hand over hand pulling myself across the gap. The rope bridge wiggled and swayed, but no more gusts as strong as that one came through.
Solid ground was under me in almost no time. My knees and palms scratched and scuffed on the rock, but I couldn’t find it in me to care. I laid out on the ground, letting the warmth from the solid surface soak into my limbs. My heartbeat was going a mile a minute. It only started to slow when I let my breath catch up.
The Nav started to buzz in my pocket.
I sighed, pushing myself into a sitting position. From here, I could see Hana and our Pokemon still on the other side. She had her phone against her ear.
I clicked the ‘accept call’ button.
“So….” Hana’s voice was a little echoey from the poor call quality. “You didn’t die.”
I glared at her across the ravine. The glint of her perfect white smile sparkled in the sun, and I could hear her stifling her giggles.
“Well, even if you’re not talking to me right now, could you do me a favor and tie off the safety line? I’m going to use it to cross.”
I flipped her off, but I stood up and unhooked the line from my belt. I looped it around the large boulder that Wisp and Paige had attached the vines to earlier, double-checking the knots. At some point in my tying process, Wisp drifted across the gap, though she gave me a wide berth when I sent her a long stare. When it was done, I gave Hana a thumbs up. She flashed one back to me.
Any slight glee I’d had in the name of her being just as humiliated disappeared when Hana didn’t get in the same crawling position that I’d taken. Instead, she leaned against the safety line, having clipped it into her harness, and she checked her weight. When it didn’t budge, she returned both of her Pokemon and dangled both of her legs over the cliff.
Then, she jumped.
“Holy shit!” I yelled, stepping forward, but my panic disappeared when Hana’s harness caught on the carabiner and started to slide across the gap.
Hana beamed as she slid across her homemade zipline. Since she wasn’t moving from an elevated position, she slowed down pretty quickly, but she would reach up and grab Paige’s vine-ladder to push herself along in a monkey-bar-like motion. When she finally reached the end, she caught he foot on a small ledge and hauled herself up onto the cliffside.
Hana stood up and dusted herself off. Even though she had a wide smile on her face, she’d gone sheet white. “See,” she said shakily. “That wasn’t so hard.”
I stared at her. She stared back at me.
“What the hell was that?”
Hana shrugged. “There was a ropes course that I used to go to with my dad on Three Island.”
“And I didn’t get to do that because…?”
“If you want total honesty, I didn’t think about it until you were halfway across,” Hana admitted, a bit of amused guilt crossing her face. “The math worked both ways, but I figured this would be faster.”
I didn’t have an answer for that. Instead, I sighed. “Well, I guess we didn’t die,” I finally conceded.
Hana grinned. “Not yet!”
“Drea!” Wisp picked that moment to chime in, cheering with Hana. I gave her a withering look, and she backed up with wide eyes.
I couldn’t keep up the angry face at Wisp. I sighed, reaching out my hand. “Thank you for not letting me die,” I said, petting Wisp’s head. “Even if you helped talk me into walking off a cliff.”
Wisp purred under my hand. It was markedly unfair that I had a Pokemon as cute as her because I couldn’t stay annoyed at her. To be fair, Artis was just as cute and I probably couldn’t stay mad at him, either. And then Hana had that mischievous glint in her eyes that I couldn’t be annoyed at for too long, so that was out the window. My shoulders fell as I realized that the egg in my pack was going to be just as cute when he hatched, so that just meant I was boned.
Hana glanced over from where she was wrapping up the safety line when she heard me sigh. “What’s up?”
“It’s nothing,” I shook my head. “Just thinking about stuff.”
Hana’s smile dipped for a moment, but when I didn’t seem actually upset about anything, it turned gentle with just a hint of sarcasm. “Well, don’t do that too hard. I wouldn’t want to bring Yuji and Amy back a vegetable.”
“Oh, hush,” I groaned, rolling my eyes. “When did this become ‘bully Derek’ day?”
The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
“It isn’t,” Hana giggled. “No, I’m sorry, I guess I’ve just channeled all our normal smack-talk down to just being at you, since the others aren’t here. I’ll cool it.”
I was right. I could not stay mad at her. She sent me one side eye with her lime-green gaze and I instinctively cracked a grin. Hana grinned back at me. I rolled my eyes and kneeled to help her coil up our rope.
We worked in silence and had our stuff rearranged and packed within a few minutes. From the part of the plateau that we’d climbed across to, it was only a short climb up to the actual top of the plateau. When we crested the last ridge, the flat mountain opened up in front of us, showing off miles of walkable stone in our path. We weren’t going to have to cross and more gorge for a long time.
Hana inhaled quickly. “Do you see that?” She pointed in the direction that I’d been looking earlier.
“Yeah,” I frowned. “Those are just some Fearow, no big deal. They look like they’re a couple of miles off, at least.”
“No, not them,” Hana shook her head. She grabbed my hand, quickly pointing it where she’d been looking. “There, just due east of them.”
I squinted. I’d missed it on my first look, but one of the flying Pokemon was obviously a different shape and color than the others. Fearow’s brown feathers looked black at this distance, but this Pokemon was somewhere on the spectrum between yellow and red. Its blue wings were also a different shape than a bird’s, more draconic than avian.
My eyes widened. “Is that a Charizard… …or a Dragonite…?”
Either one would be an incredible sight to witness. Even if Dragonite was technically rarer as one of two dragon types in Kanto, Charizard was a fire type regional starter and was rarely seen in the wild. Both dragons had orange scales and blue wings, which made it hard to make out at this distance.
“I can’t tell,” Hana sounded breathless. “Both have been spotted on this route, though I didn’t think we’d see either one. We could get closer…?”
I nodded slowly. We’d been planning on putting down camp soon, but a Pokemon on either of their calibers was too tempting to pass it up. I wasn’t under any illusion that I’d be able to defeat a fully grown Dragonite or Charizard, but Pokemon were people too. They didn’t often live in isolation, and sometimes they chose to accompany trainers without being subdued. Even if I didn’t catch one, the idea of seeing one in person completely revitalized me.
I glanced over at Hana, and she was just as excited as I was. Her eyes were pulled into a fierce smile. She tilted her head toward the mystery Pokemon and I nodded back to her. She gripped my hand and started to run across the plateau, dragging me with her. She didn’t have to pull very hard, because I was in step with her in seconds.
There was no way we were letting this Pokemon get away.
----------------------------------------
“I can’t believe we let it get away,” I whined, flopping down on a rock. “That was like a once-in-a-lifetime shot.”
“I… …know…” Hana groaned in response, heaving for breath. She pulled out her water bottle and started to chug it. “But it’s dark now…”
“Yeah, we’ll have to look tomorrow,” I sighed, pulling our tent off of my pack. “Damn.”
Hana and I had run for almost an hour and a half across the top of the plateau, eyes intent on the horizon where we had spotted the orange-scaled dragon. It had been mostly east, which was good for our overall travel time, but the plateau itself was far larger than we thought it had been. Without easy reference points like trees, our brains had no ability to tell any kind of scale on the flat rocky terrain. We’d easily traveled several miles at this point, and we were only now getting close to the other edge of the plateau. Big rocky spires surrounded the plateau’s edges, creating a rocky ridge that kept us from seeing the rest of the horizon. We’d lost sight of the dragon behind that ridge, but given that the sun was quickly sinking in the sky, we’d decided to call it quits for the night. The clearing that we’d decided to stop at was right at the base of the largest of the stone spires.
While Hana got to work building us a fire pit, I laid out the tarp for our tent. Since we’d split up with the other two, the tent that I’d started my journey with came out of retirement for the first time since the Viridian Forest. It wasn’t going to be big enough for our Pokemon, since I’d bought it for me as a single traveler, but it was just big enough for two sleeping pads.
The both of us also went ahead and released our Pokemon, letting the majority of them out for the first time since we’d stopped for lunch. Since Wisp was pretty much the only Pokemon that could keep up with our walking pace and climbing, the others unfortunately had been relegated to digital travel. Artis happily rolled over to me, rubbing his whiskered face against my leg.
I scrunched the sides of his ears. “Yeah, I know, buddy,” I said, a small smile forming on my face. Having my lil’ guy out helped drain the disappointment out of me. “I missed you, too.”
“Seal leo,” he grumbled, nosing my thigh. He was not happy about being left in his ball all day.
“I know, bud. I know,” I slid the Nav off of my belt and flipped over to the regional map. “And it’s only going to be for another day or so. Once we get to Route 10, the road is on the bank of a river, so you’ll get to travel with us.”
Artis chuffed, excitement lighting up his face. “Leo!” He barked, slapping his flippers together.
I grinned and stretched him under his chin. Yeah, having this guy around really made me not care about seeing a dragon.
Hana sat up from the fire, having successfully started a small pot boiling on a flat rock that she’d leaned over the flames. She pulled a packet of dried soup and rice from her pouch and poured it in, then left it covered. Hana then turned, putting both her hands on her hips and giving me a look.
“Alright, scoot over,” she said, her voice playful, and shouldered her way onto my rock. A quick glance around showed that I had, in fact, taken the only good seat in our camp, so I couldn’t blame her. On her other side, Paige and Rafflesia curled into little balls by her feet. Hana let out a content breath and leaned back against the cliffside. “Today was a long day,” she said absentmindedly.
“Yeah, but hopefully that’s the worst of it.” I titled the Nav her direction. “We can spend a bit of the morning looking for Red and that dragon, but after that, it’s just scaling down the cliff and clearing out the last of the road to Route 10. We save a lot of time by bypassing the road.”
Hana glanced at the Nav and nodded. She slid her gaze back to the sky. The stars were out in full force tonight. This far east, we were probably as far from a city as you could get out here, so there was almost no light pollution. Hundreds of millions of white specks of light filled the sky, glittering and twinkling, and all of them surrounded the sliver of the moon that was shining almost as bright as a full moon in the city. With my friend against my shoulder and my starter nuzzling into my leg, even on the uncomfortable-ass rock, I couldn’t think of a much better way to spend my evening.
Wisp drifted into the firelight from the edge of camp. I hadn’t even noticed she’d wandered off. Her eyes glowed blue and floating behind her was the subject of her Confusion. My sleeping bag emanated a dim light that seemed like it was trying to unroll it, though Hana had tightly bound it earlier.
I smiled, realizing what she wanted. “Bring it here,” I said quietly, holding out my hands.
Wisp floated the parcel over to me, and I got to work untying Hana’s knots. When I couldn’t do it on the first try, Hana snorted and pushed my hands to the side. Within a few seconds, she had my bag open and had retrieved the incubator from within.
All of us let out a small gasp as the egg was unveiled. Under the bright moonlight, Cleffa’s pink and white egg was glowing. It had a pearlescent sheen to it, and the pink stars that decorated the sides almost looked metallic.
Wisp squealed, instantly forcing herself into my lap and nuzzling her face against the incubator. Artis, not to be outdone, slapped his heavy head onto my knee and pressed his own nose against the glass. Hana met my eyes and we both chuckled. If there was one thing that my Pokemon agreed on, they both loved this egg.
“So,” Hana said quietly, bringing her hand to the incubator’s glass. “When are they going to hatch?”
I shrugged, joining everyone else in putting my hand on the incubator. “A week ago, Nurse Joy said anywhere between now and six weeks, but she genuinely didn’t know. When we found him, well, he was cold to the touch. That completely messed up his egg cycle, according to her.”
Hana stared at the egg intently, as if she was trying to figure out a particularly tough puzzle. After a moment, she sighed, gently pulling her hand away.
It didn’t take a genius to know what she was thinking. “Hey,” I said softly, getting her attention without disturbing my Pokemon. “You know, even if you’re against how I got him, you don’t have to pull back. I promise.”
Hana tilted her head to the side. She didn’t look convinced. “Derek…” she started slowly.
“I’m serious,” I didn’t raise my voice, but I did put conviction into my words. “I think you were right. I shouldn’t have gone after the Clefairy. Sure, this little guy was a happy accident, but that doesn’t make you less right for thinking that it was dangerous. Don’t feel guilty for being right.”
Hana looked at me, really looked. Her lime-green eyes looked amber in the firelight. She searched for something in my gaze, so I didn’t let it waver. After a moment, she nodded.
“Okay,” Hana said simply. She brought her hand back to the glass. This time, she leaned her head on my shoulder, resting her chin against my collarbone.
Something passed between us after that. Whatever part of our friendship that had broken in Mt. Moon, it made a real step toward repair there. Hana and I hadn’t been this close since the night before the mountain, when she’d had a real heart-to-heart with me in our Pokemon Center room.
A distant boom echoed through the night.
All of us shot to our feet, eyes searching every direction for where that had come from. Every sound on this route echoed, so the direction was a hard thing to determine. My head whipped to the east while Hana checked the west. There was only a dark canyon gorge in that direction, and the moonlight didn’t betray any more motion than the Fearow that continued to fly through the night. I looked back at Hana and she shook her head. There was nothing to the west.
It was only when another boom echoed around us that I looked up. “Fuck,” I murmured, grabbing Hana’s hand and pointing toward the form that glowed orange above us.
Almost four stories above us, a distant orange-scaled form gripped the side of one of the stone pillars at the edge of the plateau. This wasn’t the dragon that we’d seen earlier, it was too short and lacked wings, but there was no mistaking that fiery orange tail as it lit up the night.
“Charmeleon…” Hana breathed. “It’s fighting something.”
“Dragons are territorial…”
Hana and I locked eyes. If that Charmeleon was fighting what we’d seen earlier, whether it was a Charizard or a Dragonite, things could get messy, especially for the trainers camped at the base of the mountain where they were fighting. Our best bet would be to tip the fight in one direction to make it end early.
The two of us snapped into motion. Hana flipped our dinner over, dousing the fire in a single motion, and quickly returned both of her Pokemon. I did the same for Artis, though I had the extra step of latching the incubator to my belt loop. Wisp disappeared into my shadow and Hana and I were sprinting out of camp in fewer than ten seconds. I spared a glance up the mountain to see Charmeleon’s flaming tail disappear over the edge of a ledge. Booms continued to echo through the night and yellow and red flashes of light streaked across the sky. The battle was getting nasty.
I paused, stopping for only a moment, but it was enough for Hana to look my way. She jolted to a stop, panic in her eyes. “Derek, what are you doing?”
“Should we be running away?” My question was blunt, but I needed to know. “Is this the Clefairy all over again?”
Hana’s eyes widened. She looked up at the battle, then down to our camp, and finally back at me. She hadn’t realized the parallels until I’d pointed them out. We had heard a sound in the night. We were running into a situation where we didn’t know all the variables. If we got injured, no help was coming anytime soon.
What made this different?
Hana clenched her jaw, her eyes narrowing into a determined look. She shook her head, forcing a smile to her lips. “No, this isn’t the same,” she said, yelling over the booms. “This time, we’re doing it as a group. This time, we’re doing it together.”
I couldn’t help it. Even with the seriousness of two dragons fighting above us, I cracked a grin. Of course that was her answer. What had her real issue been when I’d gone after the Clefairy with Lester?
“You chose not to trust me.”
Hana’s words echoed in my ears, even though it had been weeks since they’d been spoken. I nodded, accepting her answer. As many flaws as I could find nitpicking through her reasoning, it was good enough for me. We were a team. Everything was okay as long as we acted like we were a team.
Hana and I started sprinting up the side of the ridge, crawling and pushing as quickly as we could. There was a battle happening up there. Even if we couldn’t stop it, there was no way we were going to miss what happened.
----------------------------------------
I took one step onto the top of the mountain and realized that we’d been completely wrong. This wasn’t a territorial dispute between two dragons at all. Standing in the center of the mountain clearing was a bulky, two-meter-tall orange dragon with a rounded nose and large gut, but the Dragonite wasn’t just fighting against a Charmeleon.
In the light of the burning bushes that surrounded the edge of the rocky clearing, three Pokemon traded blows with the massive dragon. Thrusting its shining claws forward was the Charmeleon that we’d seen before. The claw attack glanced off of Dragonite’s shining chest scales, the rebound of the strike forcing Charmelon to step back with a resounding clang of metal on scales. It hissed as Dragonite’s tail swung over its head, narrowly missing the Charmeleon’s open maw.
A bright yellow tail slapped across Dragonite’s face, sparking with electricity. It didn’t succeed in even causing the hulking dragon to flinch, but Dragonite roared as the tendrils of yellow electricity arced across its facial scales and Pikachu leaped backward over its head. The yellow rat dashed away from the center of the fight, barely swerving under Dragonite’s massive muscled leg as it slammed down behind it.
Two heavy white fists delivered quick jabs to Dragonite’s back, striking it right around where the kidneys should be. That would have been a debilitating blow for most Pokemon, but Dragonite shrugged off the hits from the Poliwhirl that had delivered them. The spiral-stomached tadpole narrowed its eyes, anger seeping from its expression. It lifted both of its fists above its head, ready to slam them down with its full body weight, but Dragonite’s eyes glanced back, eyes glaring.
Dragonite’s tail whipped around in a circle. It first collided with Poliwhirl’s shoulder with a resounding slap, throwing the water type back almost five meters onto its back, but the swing continued through, carrying its momentum into Charmeleon. The fire lizard took the blow directly to the chest, but its form held firm. Charmeleon lashed its claws around the tail and muscled into the blow. Its claws dug into the stone ground, creating an awful screeching noise as it brought the hit to a stop.
Droplets of rain started to fall from a previously cloudless sky.
Charmeleon glared at Dragonite.
Dragonite growled at Chameleon.
Yellow lightning seared across Dragonite’s back as Pikachu interrupted the standoff. “Chu!” Pikachu yelled as it attacked, surprisingly, the yell was directed at Charmeleon, and it sounded like a scolding. The yellow mouse’s cheeks sparked and popped with electricity, and each of its steps was quicker than the last. It weaved around and over Charmeleon, leaping at Dragonite’s face.
Dragonite wiped its face with one hand and punched Pikachu out of the air with the other. The electric mouse took the hit head-on, bouncing backward and skipping across the stone floor. Charmeleon roared, tugging Dragonite’s tail with as much strength as it could muster. The dragon lurched, stumbling in surprise at its involuntary movement, but Dragonite planted its right foot back and held firm. It threw its weight backward, wrenching back its tail and throwing Charmeleon off balance.
Charmeleon stumbled. It looked like it was about to dive back in with another claw attack, but a “Whirl!” from behind it stopped Charmeleon in its tracks. The fire lizard leaped backward, leaped back, propelled by its strong legs to the edge of the clearing.
Poliwhirl took its spot with two fast uppercuts. Dragonite caught both hits in the flats of its palms. Water splattered in all directions, both from Poliwhirls already-soaked fists and the now downpouring rain. The impacts barely caused Dragonite to move. It clenched its claws down around Poliwhirl’s fists, anchoring it in place. The water type flinched in pain, but it bared its head down, waiting for something for only a split second.
Its stance was answered as a yellow form sprinted from behind, running up Poliwhirl’s back and launching itself into the air. Pikachu flipped through the sky above them, cheeks sparking. A burst of burning embers smacked into the side of Dragonite’s face from the retreated Charmeleon. The dragon blinked from the heat and that was enough for Poliwhirl to rip both of its fists from Dragonite’s grip.
“Pika!” Pikachu yelled. It was a warning.
Poliwhirl dropped to the ground and rolled forward, through Dragonite’s legs. The dragon glanced away from Pikachu for a brief second, distracted by the Poliwhirl jumping into a dead sprint to get away from it, but that was a second too late.
The air tasted like ozone.
The Rain-Danced clouds above the mountaintop split and electric light poured down, all channeled through the electric rat. Pikachu’s Thunder created a pillar of lightning that completely enveloped both it and the Dragonite. The heat seared across the clearing, instantly evaporating the accumulated rainwater and creating a dense layer of steam. The burning bushes that had provided much of the light to the clearing were already sputtering from the rain, but this massive attack extinguished them. The clearing was obscured by steam and could only be studied by the light of the moon.
Hana’s hand gripped my forearm. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the steam cloud to see her expression, but I knew that it mirrored my manic grin.
My heart thrummed with excitement. We’d only been here for a minute at most, and I already knew that my Pokemon wouldn’t have lasted thirty seconds in that intense of a fight.
A single wingbeat blasted hot air across the mountain, instantly clearing the steam and dispersing the rain. Moonlight spilled over the battlefield. Dragonite still stood in the center of the clearing, but it was now crusted in a thick layer of black soot. Its blue eyes glared out from their scum-darkened scales. The scorch mark around it stretched for almost two meters in every direction, and the stone under its feet had melted into a thick glassy slag.
Dragonite’s form jolted, moving fast enough that my eye couldn’t track it. It now stood in the same place that it had before, but the soot coating its body had almost all been thrown off of it in a single motion. Even now I could see chunks flying away from it, not yet having hit the ground by the time Dragonite had completed moving into a new stance. It stood with one hand outstretched, clutching a yellow form in its fist.
Pikachu, either from the Thunder or whatever Dragonite had just done, was unconscious. Its limp furry form dangled from Dragonite’s grip. The dragon lowered Pikachu to its eyeline. It huffed and tossed the electric rat to the edge of the clearing.
Then, it lowered its gaze to the other two.
Charmeleon and Poliwhirl lowered their stances, flexing their legs to sprint toward the dragon. All parties prepared to resume the bout-
A whistle rang out from the opposite side of the clearing.
All eyes present snapped to the source. Standing near the smoldering black bushes was a trainer. Under the moonlight, I could only make out his red cap, dark hair, and the Pokeball belt on his waist.
The trainer leaned down over Pikachu’s unconscious form, gently lifting the Pokemon with both hands, making sure to support its head. He glanced up at Charmeleon and Poliwhirl, who I presumed were his Pokemon, and shook his head.
Without missing a beat, both Pokemon dropped their stances. They walked away from Dragonite, returning to the trainer’s side with no more aggression, other than the quick glare that Charmeleon shot Dragonite.
Dragonite didn’t respond to the smaller dragon, and it made no move to stop them. The hulking orange monster instead crossed his arms, continuing to stand in the center of the clearing. It looked at the trainer expectantly.
The trainer stepped toward the dragon and I almost bolted forward.
From its power to its demeanor, this Dragonite was obviously a wild Pokemon, and since it was a fully evolved dragon type, it was the highest classification of ‘do not approach or it will maim and eat you’ that you could get. This trainer, whom there was no real question as to who he was, had dismissed both of his still-conscious Pokemon to the edge of the clearing, leaving no one to step between him and the Pokemon that had just obliterated his team.
One thing stopped me in my tracks.
The Dragonite’s shoulders had begun to move up and down, and a deep chuffing noise had started to emanate from the dragon.
It was laughing.
The anger in Dragonite’s gaze had vanished. Instead, with its powerful gut and generally round face, the dragon actually looked kind of goofy. It continued to chuckle as the trainer walked up to it, though it quieted itself when the trainer bowed his head in respect.
Dragonite inclined its head, bowing back to the trainer.
A small smile appeared on the trainer’s face. He held out his hand. In his palm were four Oran Berries. Dragonite gently raised his clawed hand and plucked them from the trainer’s hand, nodding once more in thanks. It then beat its wings one more time, and the dragon disappeared into the night sky.
I couldn’t help the words that tumbled from my mouth. “Holy shit…”
Three sets of eyes whipped around at the sound. Charmeleon’s tail flared with fresh fire and Poliwrath’s fist jolted into a fighting stance, but the trainer held up his hand to stop them from acting on their surprise. He tilted his head to the side and took a step forward.
With him now turned toward us, I could make out more of the trainer’s face in the moonlight. His dark hair was wild and spiky, and it framed an angular face that was about my age. He had pale skin and dark brown eyes that looked at the two of us with no suspicion, only curiosity. He wore a red vest that matched his hat over a dark t-shirt and a set of weathered jeans, and on his waist was a holster for a Pokedex next to his Pokeballs.
If his aesthetic hadn’t told me who he was, or the fact that he was the only other person on his route, then the newest model of Pokedex on his waist did. There were only four trainers in the region who had one of those right now, and I was one of them.
I stepped forward, gently pulling my forearm out of Hana’s grip. She was still staring transfixed at the sky, glancing around for any sign that Dragonite would come back. I raised my hand, waving at the trainer.
“So, uh,” I said slowly. “I guess, you’re Red, huh? Nice to meet you, I’m Derek Tracy.”