Red was the definition of quiet and reserved. He raised his hand hesitantly, giving me a shallow wave. His eyes very much conveyed the message of ‘go on…’.
I cleared my throat, glancing past him at Charmeleon and Poliwhirl. Neither of them had dropped their fighting stances and they both gave me cautious glares.
“Oh, uh,” I scratched my neck, realizing that I hadn’t actually explained anything. “I’m also one of Professor Oak’s sponsored trainers. Since I was already traveling this way, he asked me to keep an eye out for you to tell you to call home.”
Red’s face flashed through a few different emotions, though his confusion seemed to deepen. He looked skeptical at best, and he placed his hand on his chin, looking at me intently.
“Oh, Derek,” Hana whispered to me, exasperated. “If Red’s been out here for weeks, he probably doesn’t know that Professor Oak brought you on. It’s bizarre for the Lab to sponsor more than three people a season and all three were from Pallet Town this year.”
“Oh!” I scrambled to pull both my Pokedex and the Nav from my pocket. “Here, this should help!”
Red took a look at the blue Pokedex in my hand, a color-shifted version of his own, and squinted at the message that I’d received from Professor Oak on my Nav. I’d scrolled to only show the final paragraph since the beginning was about my future Beldum and I wanted to keep that to myself. As Red got near the end of the message, his dark eyes widened and looked more than a little guilty. He must’ve seen the bit about his mom being worried.
He took a step back from us and nodded, waving his Pokemon over. Charmeleon still looked skeptical, but Poliwhirl’s face lost all of its aggression immediately. It jaunted over to us, waving its large white hand happily. As he did, I caught the slightest motion out of the corner of my eye. Red’s hands had moved, subtly making a two-fisted motion at his sides. Charmeleon saw this as well, and the fire-lizard’s eyes lost their suspicious edge.
I crinkled my eyebrows. I recognized that motion from somewhere.
“Oh!” Several dots connected at once. Red hadn’t said anything to us during our interaction, yet, and I’d assumed that had been out of some sort of introverted instinct, but seeing him make that motion made me reconsider. Both of my fellow trainers gave an odd look to my outburst, but I took a chance.
I pushed both my wrists together and made loose fists. I pulled them apart in a slow motion while giving a small nod.
Red’s face lit up, but Hana continued to give me a confused stare. “Derek,” she murmured, though the clearing was a bit too quiet for her voice to not carry. “What are you doing?”
I shrugged, smiling as Red’s hands moved in front of him, forming a quick series of motions that I had to concentrate to track. I was a bit rusty, after all.
“It’s sign,” I said. “Red signed that we were ‘safe’. I was just confirming that we were.”
Hana’s eyes went wide, and she turned to look at the motions that Red was making. He was a lot faster than I’d ever been, since I’d only taken it for a year, but I was getting every other word and I could fill in the gaps with context clues.
“I. Can see. Why. The Professor. Sponsored you,” Red signed, a large grin forming on his face. “Very few. Trainers. Know. Sign language.”
I smiled, though I tilted my head to the side. I wasn’t sure that had actually ever come up in one of our discussions. It would have been listed in my transcripts, but he’d never brought it up.
“It counted toward my ‘foreign language’ requirement and it looked easier than Kalosian,” I admitted. “I’ve never had a reason to use it, though.”
Both Red and Hana gave me an odd look.
“Where. Are you. From?” Red looked genuinely curious. “We don’t. Have. That requirement. Here.”
“You had a foreign language requirement?” Hana said, not understanding that Red was asking a similar question. “We didn’t have that on the Sevii Islands.”
It was my turn to frown. “You didn’t? That’s, like, one of the big requirements you need to graduate-” I snapped my fingers. “Gotchya. This is Kanto. If there was any region that didn’t require its students to learn about other regions, it would be this one.”
All three of us nodded at once, firm in that logic, and then our expressions turned dour. That was an alarming thing to accept about a region that you lived in, especially because none of us doubted it.
Red gave me another look. “Where?” He made the same sign again, since I hadn’t answered his question yet.
“Ah, yeah, sorry.” I bowed my head in a semi-formal fashion. “As I said, my name is Derek Tracy and I come from Lilycove in the Hoenn region. I’m doing my rookie year over here and Professor Oak offered me a sponsorship. This is…” I held up my hand, letting Hana do her own introductions.
“I’m Hana Kanael, from One Island,” she said with her own bow.
Red nodded, seeming to accept our answers. He sent me another curious glance, but I wasn’t sure that it had to do with my qualifications.
“It is nice. To meet. You,” Red signed, with me quietly translating to Hana. “I would. Introduce. Myself. But. You. Already seem. To know. Me.” He then did a quick finger spelling of the letters ‘h’ and ‘a’ and I realized he was signing a chuckle.
That might have been the funniest thing that I’d ever heard- no, seen. This guy wasn’t quiet or reserved, at least not when he knew that I could understand him. Red’s face had completely shifted from a careful introvert to that of a cheerful and expressive person. He seemed like a great time.
“Well,” I sent Hana a glance. She seemed a little lost in Red’s signing, but she seemed comfortable now. That was pretty crazy, given that we’d walked up here minutes ago with the intention of fighting a dragon. I turned back to Red. “I don’t know if you have a camp already set up or anything, but our tent is pitched at the bottom of this-” I gestured to the rocky spire we were standing on, “thing.”
Hana nodded. “I'm also not sure if you’re worried about the wild Pokemon around here,” both of us glanced at the spot of formerly molten stone behind Red, “but it is always safer to camp in numbers. We’d be happy to let you set up in our campsite.”
Red followed our eyeline. A smug smile crept up on his face. “We. Didn’t. Win. That.” Red’s sign language had an almost sarcastic tone to it. “But. I. Appreciate. The confidence. I’d. Be happy. To stay. With you.”
“Sweet! Also though, like, what was that even about?” I glanced up at the sky, but there was no sign that Dragonite was coming back. “Did it attack you or something?”
Red vigorously shook his head. “I. Challenged. Him.”
My jaw dropped. When Hana nudged me, given that I was too shocked to translate, I stuttered. “H- he challenged that thing…”
“Why?” Hana’s shock was just as immediate as mine. “That’s the exact kind of Pokemon that rookies are told not to go near. Fairies, Ghosts, and Dragons.” Hana held up three fingers to emphasize her point. “Only an idiot-” Hana eye’s flicked to me and she stopped in her tracks with a sigh.
I chose not to react to that hurtful implication. Wisp snickered in my shadow.
Red shrugged. “My. Team. Trains. Through. Battle.”
His Charmeleon and Poliwhirl both let out confident breaths, almost posing behind him. The both of them had taken a few hard hits in that fight, but they didn’t look all that exhausted. I couldn’t knock what he was saying, not with the results that I’d seen during the actual fight. Red’s Pokemon had punched way above their weight in that fight, even if they had no real chance of winning. He didn’t battle like a rookie at all.
Hana also seemed to have a hard time refuting his methods. She’d already come around to my recklessness, so Red’s tactics couldn’t have seemed that farfetched. “Well,” Hana finally said, “I have some items at camp for your Pikachu, if you need them.”
Red’s expression sobered up. He looked down at his bag where he’d placed his Pikachu into its strap like a baby sling. He nodded, his fingers gently drifting over Pikachu’s head, brushing its fur.
I very much got the vibe that Pikachu going down was a rare occurrence. The little mouse had been in command during the battle, giving orders and timing to the other two. I didn’t think that was Red’s starter, since he was a sponsored trainer and they almost always got the regional starters, but Pikachu was definitely the leader of his team.
I pointed my head in the direction of the way we came. “Come on. We’ll get them patched up in no time.”
Red smiled softly, looking up from his Pokemon. He nodded.
----------------------------------------
After I remade our dinner and Hana handed over a few of our potions over to Red, which he immediately paid us back for, Hana retreated into our tent for the night.
When I asked Red if he needed help setting up his tent, he shook his head, instead pulling out an all-weather sleeping mat from his small bag. I noted, with a small amount of jealousy, that the bag was far too small to hold his mat under the rules of regular physics.
With a single flourish of his wrist, the mat unrolled itself onto a flat spot by our fire. Charmelon and Poliwrath both laid out on the mat, and Red sat down with Pikachu in his lap, leaning against Charmeleon.
I frowned. “So what do you do if it rains?”
Red shrugged. “Tarp,” he signed. “Not. A lot. Of issues. Charmeleon. Keeps. Me. Warm.”
Knowing that we were talking about him, and I had confirmed that all three of Red’s Pokemon were male, Charmeleon stretched out behind Red with a smug look. His tail flared with fresh flames, almost dwarfing our campfire.
“Yeah,” I nodded, feeling wistful. I couldn’t help but think about the trouble we’d had at the start of the route. “Fire types are useful like that.”
“Very. Useful.” Red glanced over at me. “What about. You? Do you. Have. Any Pokemon. Other than. Your ghost?”
My eyebrows shot up. “You noticed her?”
My shadow rippled, Wisp’s head poking out from it. Her eyes were wide with disbelief, like she also couldn’t accept that her presence had been noticed. She was baffled and almost a little offended. Wisp puffed her cheeks out and disappeared back into my shadow, pouting.
Red signed his chuckle again, his face curling into a smile. “She’s. Not quiet. I. Heard. Her laugh.”
“Even so,” I let out a breath. “That’s pretty impressive.”
Red shook his head, one of his eyebrows going up. “No. What’s impressive. Is owning. A ghost. Even I. Don’t think. I. Could. Tame. A ghost.”
I chuckled. “Nah, it’s not that impressive. Wisp sought me out after I made her a promise, and we’ve been together ever since.”
“A promise?” Red’s eyebrow went further, so far that I thought it might escape his forehead. “That’s dangerous. With. A ghost. What. was-” Red stopped signing, his fingers hesitating. He shook his head. “Sorry. That’s. Personal.”
“You’re good. And it’s not actually all that personal. I was kind of in a tough spot at the time, so I tossed out the idea of taking her to see the world. She seemed to like it, I guess, because she followed me to Pewter City.”
A pang of guilt went through my heart. I hadn’t thought that much about my promise to Wisp since I’d made it, and I realized that I wasn’t positive that I’d been keeping up my end of the bargain. Sure, I’d been traveling, but I hadn’t gone out of my way to see incredible sights like I’d promised. I’d even had the thought when we were leaving Cerulean that we hadn’t explored the city at all.
I silently promised that I was going to milk the rest of our detour through Lavender for as many touristy sites as I could find. Wisp had more than earned it.
Red was deep in thought when I glanced back up at him. The guy had a hell of a concentration face, silently staring into the mid-distance with a gaze that could sear through stone. I wasn’t sure how to break him out of it, or if I even wanted to, but I realized that I hadn’t answered his initial question.
I popped Artis’ ball off of my belt and released him. He materialized an inch above the ground, flopping down with a heavy thump that caused his blubber to vibrate. Artis took a deep sniff, his mustache vibrating with the motion, and his face broke out into a slow grin.
“Seaaaaleo,” he warbled, his dark eyes happily looking around the camp at our visitors. Charmeleon snorted at him but didn’t say anything, and Poliwhirl waved from his sitting position.
Red glanced up from his thoughts and his face lit up again. He leaned forward, offering his palm to my Sealeo. Artis wasted no time placing his chin on Red’s palm. Red scritched my boy at the edges of his jaw, with just the right pressure that Artis liked. He slumped to his side, his big flipper kicked out to the side as he enjoyed the attention.
Red looked up at me, his eyes asking an obvious question.
“His name is Artis,” I said with a smile. My respect for Red had just rocketed from seeing him interact with my boy. “He’s my starter and the only other current member of my team. I have my egg,” I gestured to where I’d set the incubator next to me, “but he’s not going to hatch for a while. Probably.”
Red nodded and happily went back to scratching Artis. My boy started to snore in seconds. Red sat back, pleased with his work. He glanced over at me and raised his hand to sign something, but he hesitated. I tilted my head questioningly and he shrugged.
Red only signed one word. “Thanks.”
I raised an eyebrow. “No problem, but… …what for?”
“I-” Red shifted his weight, glancing away from me. “I. Don’t often. Get to. Talk to people. Like this. Thank you. For your conversation.”
That genuine emotion took me aback. I thought about it for a moment, and my stomach plummeted.
“Oh,” I said quietly. “I guess there probably aren’t too many people who sign here, huh?”
Red shook his head.
I had been in Kanto for over two months and I hadn’t seen a single person use sign in that time, to the point where I hadn’t thought to use my skill in it at all. In fact, I hadn’t seen a whole lot of disability support anywhere in the region. It was painfully obvious that Kanto’s strength-first approach left a lot of people behind.
“I. Have. Some friends. I. Grew up with. They. Know.” Red’s face took on a nostalgic vibe. “The other. Sponsored. Rookies. Other than. Them. My mom. A family friend. And. The Professor…”
Red shrugged. It was a motion I’d seen him make several times now, and I realized that he was probably used to doing it a lot.
“Well,” I swallowed, carefully trying not to let the pity that I was feeling show. “If you ever want a conversation, I’m told that I talk too much.”
“He does!” Hana’s muffled voice came from inside the tent.
Red and I blinked, glancing at the tent and then back to each other. We both laughed, though his were signed.
“Tell me about your journey so far, then,” I said when I finally stopped laughing, wiping a tear from my eye. “You’re the number-two-ranked rookie, right?”
Red’s eyes went wide. “Still?” He considered it for a moment. “I didn’t. Realize that you. Knew.”
“Yeah,” I laughed. “I mean, obviously your real name is on the listing, but all three of you are in the top ten. Since I know you’re not Blue and you’re not a girl, you had to be number two.”
I hadn’t spent too long thinking about it, but after seeing him battle his rank made a lot of sense. Red was listed as Satoshi Ketchum in the rookie rankings, second only to Gary Oak. He currently held the Boulder, Thunder, and Cascade badges, and even now the other top ten rankers were barely getting their third badges. He’d had his for weeks.
Red smiled. “My. Journey. Has been. Wild. It’s been. A lot.”
“Believe me, I get that,” I laughed. “Tell me about.”
The other trainer gave me a long look. Then, his hands started moving.
Red spent the next hour telling me about his journey. He had grown up in Pallet Town, which I’d known, but he also talked about the fact that his two fellow sponsored trainers were his lifelong friends Gary Oak and Carey Leaf. They’d spent all of their time as kids volunteering at Professor Oak’s lab, learning as much as they could about Pokemon. The three of them were thick as thieves, and they’d gone as far as giving each other color-coded nicknames that had just stuck, those being Red, Blue, and Green. When it had come time to get their starters, they'd decided who would get which one months in advance, and it had never been a question that Red would get Charmander.
The three of them had decided to travel separately for their journey. Red had gone north, skipping Giovanni in favor of challenging Brock. Once he arrived there, he captured a small Pikachu that was causing havoc in the local market. Red and Blue reunited in front of the Pewter Gym and did a rock-paper-scissors game to determine who would fight Brock first. Blue had won. They both succeeded on their first tries.
From there, they split ways again with Blue traveling through Mt. Moon and Red going through Diglett Cave to Vermillion City. Red had then challenged Lt. Surge to a battle, gaining his second badge only a day after Blue had challenged the Sensational Sisters. He’d gone on to travel past Saffron to Cerulean in an attempt to swap gym victories with Blue. He’d won almost three weeks ago before coming out here.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
One of the things that Red was big on talking about was the difficult encounters that he sought out on each route. He seemed to believe in strengthening his Pokemon through battles, not drills or traditional training. He was quick to talk about the Pidgeot that Charmeleon had battled on Route 01 and the Heracross that he’d lost to in the Viridian Forest. That one gave me pause, but I chose not to say anything. The strongest Pokemon he’d fought so far were the Golduck on Route 07 and the Dragonite he’d fought today. Red talked about the routes more or less favorably based on how strong of a Pokemon he could match his team up against there.
Red’s signs came at a break-neck pace as he told me about his journey. It was like he hadn’t gotten to tell all of this to anyone, so he was finally venting months of travel to the first guy who could understand him in weeks. While Red could have used his text-to-speech function on his Pokedex, he thought it made the conversations more awkward and took longer than he wanted. He normally used nods and headshakes to get through everyday conversations, but you could only do so much with ‘yes’ and ‘no’ as your stock answers.
Eventually, though, as he was talking about scaling the Route 09 cliffs to find a Dragonite nest, Red’s signs finally slowed. His head drifted down, eyes lidding as his chin pressed against his chest. Red had fallen asleep halfway through a sentence.
I couldn’t stop the soft smile that took my face as I looked at the trainer on his pile of Pokemon. I’d known the guy for less than half an hour before he’d decided to spill his life story, all because my region was better about rounding out my education.
I stood up, feeling stiff and cold from the rock I’d been sitting on, and recalled a snoring Artis. I stepped through my tent flap to find Hana still awake. She was sitting cross-legged on her mat, casually typing away on her laptop.
Hana gave me a sleepy smile as I kicked off my boots and shuffled onto my own sleeping pad, only about half a foot away. “You guys talked for a while,” she said simply.
“Yeah. He had a long story to tell,” I said. After a moment, I bobbed my head sheepishly. “And he seemed a little lonely.”
Hana snickered. “And you were out collecting strays again?”
I rolled my eyes. “That’s hardly what I do. That happened one time with you guys-”
“And Terry and his group,” Hana pointed out. “And Daisy, and Lester and Ambrose, and somehow Gym Leader Misty.”
“Huh. That does happen more than I thought it did,” I admitted. “Though I hardly think that Daisy counts. She asked me out, not the other way around.”
Hana shifted in her seat. “Oh, hey,” she said quickly, sliding her laptop to the side and turning to face me. “Can I borrow the PokeNav?”
“Sure, were you wanting to double-check the route or something?”
Hana averted her eyes, looking oddly embarrassed. “No, that’s not it. My phone doesn’t have a signal right now and I…” She muttered the rest of her sentence so quietly that I couldn’t hear it. She held out her hand for the Nav, but I withdrew it, holding it away from her.
“What was that?” I said, a smirk creeping up my face. Anything that had Hana looking abashed was something I wanted to hear.
Hana rolled her eyes and straightened her back. In no world was she letting me get cocky, so she banished her shame. “I want to look up some beginner sign language,” Hana said with strength in her voice. She crossed her arms. “It’s a skill that seems useful, and you’re right that Kanto being in charge of my education robbed me of learning about groups outside of what they consider the norm.”
“Oh.” I was a little taken aback, but I could definitely see my knowledge-loving friend wanting to increase her skills. I didn’t hide my smirk when I raised an eyebrow to tease her, though. “And you’re feeling a little left out, right?”
“Yes.”
My eyebrows shot up at Hana’s straightforward answer. Heat dusted her cheeks, but she stared me down and held my gaze. She held out her hand for the Nav.
I offered her the Nav, but I didn’t relinquish it immediately. “You know, if you’re interested, I was actually planning on brushing up to talk to Red some more. I could just run you through some?”
It was Hana’s turn to look surprised. I could tell that the thought hadn’t even occurred to her. “Oh! Well, then. That would make more sense,” Hana nodded. She released her grip on the Nav, which I then set to the side. “What would you propose that we start with?”
I hesitated. I didn’t know why I’d suddenly offered to teach Hana sign language. I wasn’t the best teacher in the world, and Hana was one of the two smartest people I knew because it was normally her teaching me things. I definitely hadn’t expected her to agree so quickly. Hana was someone who spent all of her time gathering data on her own and making spreadsheets, so I hadn’t been present to watch her really learn anything before. It was weird.
“I- I guess we could start with fingerspelling?” I choked out. “That was kind of where they started in my class, and if you’re ever in a pinch when it comes to a complex word, you can just spell it out.”
Hana’s green-eyed gaze was attentive and intimidating. She nodded. “Okay, that sounds good to me.”
There was a pause as she continued to look at me expectantly.
“Oh! You meant right now?”
Hana shook her head as she smirked, exasperation clear on her face. “Yes, right now.”
“Okay, but I warn you, I only scored an A- in sign. I don’t know if that’s good enough for the great Hana.”
“It’ll have to do,” she rolled her eyes again.
“Okay, so the first letter we’re going to start with is this thing called an ‘A’. I know you might not be familiar with it-”
Hana leaned over and punched me in the arm. We both laughed.
----------------------------------------
When I woke up the next morning, I was not ready to be a person yet. I blinked my eyes multiple times, slowly ridding myself of the crustiness in the corners of my eyes. I went to move, but I found myself weighed down by a warm presence pushed up against my chest. Looking down to inspect the problem, I found only a tangled pile of golden-brown hair in the way. Hana had pushed her way half off of her sleeping mat and onto mine, hogging more than her fair share of my tent.
I chuckled to myself, stifling it a bit to not wake her up. She was always so demanding and in control when she was awake, but right now she was drooling. If I was a meaner friend, I would take a photo as later blackmail. We had been awake for an extra two hours at her demands, after all.
“Psst,” I said quietly. “Wisp! Help me without waking her up?”
Surprisingly, Wisp’s head didn’t pop out of my shadow. Her head instead peaked through from my tent flap, red-yellow eyes mischievous. Distantly, I could smell cooking food. That made my mission that much more urgent.
Between a subtle use of Confusion on Hana’s sleeping mat and a quick roll from me, I was able to sneak out of the tent without waking her. I slid out of my tent to find Red already awake. He, Charmeleon, and Poliwhirl all held metal roasting skewers with different bits of food on them. Our fire had gone out at some point in the night, but they’d solved this problem by roasting their food over Charmeleon’s tail.
I felt another twinge of jealousy at Red’s fire type.
“Good morning,” Red signed with one hand, giving me a sleepy grin. Apparently, he also wasn’t a morning person. “Did you sleep well?”
One of the upsides to watching Red sign for over an hour was that I could now read his signs pretty smoothly. It didn’t feel disjointed anymore, and I didn’t have to rely on context clues as much.
“I slept okay,” I said, still keeping my voice down. “What about you?”
He shrugged. “Not as bad as it’s been, but not as good as it could be. Do you want a breakfast sausage?”
I blinked, taking a deep inhale of the awesome fragrance of breakfast. “Oh, dude. If this is how you’re gonna greet me when I wake up, then we’re going to have to make this a regular thing.”
He signed a deep laugh, going as far as to slap his knee. “I’m not into that sort of thing, and you’re not single,” he joked.
I laughed at that, but I blinked. I didn’t think that I’d told him about Daisy, but I must’ve at some point.
“Speaking of that, though,” he continued, handing me a piece off of his breakfast skewer. “Are you headed toward Route 10? Pikachu was awake for a little bit earlier, thanks to your guys’ potions, but I want to get him checked out at the Pokemon Center. If you’re headed that way…” Red trailed off, trying to hide the hopefulness in his gaze.
I cracked him a smile. “Yeah, we’re heading that way. The goal is Lavender Town, so we’re heading through Rock Tunnel.”
Red’s eyes flickered with something, but it disappeared when his face broke into a smile. “Great! I took a trail up here from there. It’s not too difficult, and we should probably be able to make it in two-ish days, even if we take some breaks.”
I glanced back at my tent. “I’m not sure how long it’ll be till she wakes up, but I’m sure we can get out of here within the hour.”
Red nodded, sitting back against his Poliwhirl with a happy sigh. The two of us chewed through his food with gusto. It was kind of awesome, actually, how quickly this felt like a natural thing.
We ended up leaving right after breakfast, as it quickly became clear that Operation ‘Let Hana Sleep’ had been a failure. She’d emerged a few minutes after Red and I settled into our silence with a grumpy frown. Hana didn’t call me out for my load talking, though, since she’d only been up that late at her own request. We were able to coax some food into her and get the camp packed up in less than ten minutes.
The path down the plateau was exactly as Red had described it. We took a small trail around the edge of one of the stone pillars and hugged a ledge for half a mile, slowly winding our way down seventeen stories of stone. The cliffsides were cold and cloaked in shadow, since the sun wasn’t high enough yet to peek through them, but the cardio helped keep us warm. The trail deposited us at the end of Route 09 where it was clear that Red had already come through here, if the scorched bushes and thorns were anything to go by.
It was an hour later when I heard a sound that put a grin on my face.
“Artis!” I called, releasing him onto the path. “I hear a river!”
His eyes went wide. “Leo!” Artis barked, slumping forward into a roll. He quickly outpaced our entire group in favor of the rumble of white noise in front of us.
We sprinted over a ridge to find ourselves looking at the object of our interest. The cliffs of Route 09 widened out to reveal a flat grassland that stretched for almost a mile before hitting the banks of a narrow river that ribboned through another set of canyons. The air smelt fresh and cool, unlike the hot arid wasteland that we’d been hiking through. The grassland hugged the canyon wall to our right, eventually disappearing around a southern bend that carried it into Route 10 proper.
Artis could not be stopped when he saw the water. Our time in Cerulean had finally let his oceanic butt get regular access to swimming, and he’d been missing it. Artis tucked his head into a proper Rollout and zoomed across the grassland. I could see Rattata and Spearow scramble out of the way as my boy rocketed past. He left a trail of crushed grass and a spray of dirt in his wake, tearing up the surrounding area with almost gleeful disregard. Artis hit a ridge right before the river and ended up flying all the way over the beach, landing with one of the most disruptive splashes that I’d ever seen. River spray and several Magikarp went flying into the air.
Red and Hana both sent me disapproving looks, but I pushed back my sheepishness and cheered for my boy. “Let’s goooooo! Ten points!”
Artis popped his head from the river, barking in excitement. “Leo! Le!”
The rest of our party made our way to the beach and everyone else’s Pokemon were almost as shameless as Artis. Paige extended her vines onto Rafflesia’s back, catching a ride on the Ivysaur down to the water, and the two of them happily splashed in the current. Wisp drifted out of my shadow and into the water. Every once in a while, I would spot a red glow from her beads as she scared the crap out of a Magikarp or Goldeen. Poliwhirl also dove into the river, though he was significantly more refined than Artis’ big splash. Pikachu poked his head out of Red’s bag, wistfully watching the others while he rested. Charmeleon was the only one who seemed uninterested, for obvious reasons, and instead released a long Flamethrower into the beach sand, toasting himself a nice resting spot.
As for the trainers, we took after our Pokemon and enjoyed the water. Hana disappeared behind a rock and reappeared a few moments later in a bathing suit and a t-shirt, and Red and I followed suit and swapped into some swim trunks. Even though it was still mid-morning, the sun could actually get through to this area and the beach heated up pretty quickly, making the ice-cold river the best possible place to be. Rafflesia pulled off a neat trick and tightly wrapped some of the petals from her flower together, growing and releasing them into an airtight grassy ball. She slapped it over to Hana with one of her vines, but I was quick and jumped through to waves to intercept it.
And thus, ‘Beach Keep Away’ was born.
All of us, excluding Charmeleon, got into the game. We would select one member of the group, more often than not one of the trainers, and the rest of us would toss it from one to another to keep it out of their hands. Somewhere along the line, we added a rule about only using our heads or the backs of our hands to hit the ball and things got wild.
Maybe twenty minutes into this game, after I’d successfully hit the ball away from Artis and over to Poliwhirl, I paused, taking in what we were doing. All of our Pokemon were enjoying themselves and we were having fun. I couldn’t remember the last time that I’d just played, and honestly, I hadn’t. Not since I’d started my journey. I’d been ‘go-go-going’ since Viridian City. Now that Hana and I were back on track with our badge challenges, it was a weird experience to waste travel time on beach games.
As Wisp’s eyes glowed blue and she floated the ball to Hana, whose green eyes were glimmering like peridot in the sunlight and whose bright white teeth flashed a massive smile, I had to correct myself. This was not a waste of time.
I glanced around, suddenly realizing that I hadn’t seen Red in a few minutes. I suppressed my sudden panic, my intrusive thoughts pushing to my brain that he wouldn’t be able to yell at us if something had gone wrong, and I visually searched the beach.
I let out an audible sigh of relief as I spotted him. Red had walked downstream of us and had waded almost ten meters out into the center of the river. The water was only at chest height for him, so I assumed that this river didn’t get that deep.
I went to call out to Red, but I paused. He was standing with purpose. After a moment, he raised his hand above his head. In a single, solid motion, he brought his palm down flat onto the water's surface, creating a resounding slap. Red waited a second, then repeated the motion with his other hand.
I started walking toward him once he’d completed this cycle a few times. I wasn’t sure what his goal was, but he was going to end up upsetting something big-
When the water in front of him started to ripple, I realized that was his goal. Of course that was his goal. I’d seen what he’d done just yesterday. The sociopath was trying to wake something up.
He was more than trying. He’d succeeded.
The water ripples defined themselves as two teal-blue scaled bumps that drifted upward, poking themselves out of the water. The bumps grew and elongated into a pair of mighty horns, each thicker than my wrist and sharpened to deadly points. Those horns were connected to a massive spined blue head that was almost as large as Artis. A pair of red irate eyes stared across the water, flanking a jet-like snout that opened and contracted as the titanic creature breathed in and out.
A Kingdra stared out of the river at Red. He’d awoken a sea dragon with his water slapping.
My mouth was agape. Dragonite was the rarest dragon in Kanto, but Kingdra wasn’t far behind because people still didn’t know how they evolved in the wild. Twice now, this guy had managed to summon a fully-evolved dragon to his side. It wasn’t realistic. It wasn’t statistically probable. It wasn’t human.
Kingdra snorted, a fine watery mist leaving its snout and drawing the attention of everyone at the beach. All play stopped, and we stood in silence as a creature stronger than all of our Pokemon combined sized us up.
Red looked back at me, a glint in his eye. He didn’t need to search for me, so he’d noticed when I’d started toward him. He had been aware that I was behind him the whole time.
Slowly, he raised a hand. “Derek,” Red signed. “Do you want to try and train the way that I do?”
Behind him, Kingdra let out a low growl. It lowered its head and spat out a spray of water. The air around it began to whistle and spin, a sizable vortex of air threatening to turn into a water spout.
It was challenging us.