They spend another day walking. From the time the sun rises until it almost sets, and his feet are so raw they’re almost blue. The sand slowly gives way to the hard, rocky earth underneath, and sharp, weathered stone takes the place of the dunes. Out here in the middle of this craggy valley, Landon feels less a sailor and more a pioneer: with a zigzagoon in place of a horse, and a bag instead of a wagon.
Landon sighs. The shade feels nice, but removing his gear feels even better. He stops, crouches down, and fills Ziggy’s bowl before taking a deep swig of his own bottle. With one hand he rubs the soft, damp ground. With the other, he adjusts his cowboy hat.
Only the center of this dried riverbed has enough water flowing through it to wet the ground. It’s annoying, for sure. If it was just a little less dry, he’d be able to fill up his bottle. With it, the containers. ‘That’s life,’ he thinks. And while it might be a bother now, he’s sure that if they trek on for a couple more miles to the largest mountain that sits in the distance, it won’t be long before the water is deep enough for them to top off.
The tracks that follow the riverbed are just icing on the cake.
The man pauses, takes a second to consider his surroundings. At the moment, they find themselves in a valley pass between two mountains, but the river that cuts through the bottom has dried up. Whatever lived here previously seems to have left.
He assumes they moved to the source. Whether it’s a natural spring or a lake, he isn’t sure.
In some ways, the valley seems softer than the desert-turned-badlands. Even though most of the grass has died, there are more trees and vegetation here than anywhere else he’s seen since arriving. It’s a bit sad, to be honest, but it looks one storm away from booming again.
Landon breathes in. Counts to ten. Exhales.
“Well,” he begins, getting Ziggy’s attention. “I guess we’re getting close. Let’s have a snack, real quick.” He wipes some sweat away from his brow. “Hopefully, we’ll be able to go the rest of the way before sunset.”
He takes out some canned peaches before sitting down on a large rock. There isn’t much fanfare as he stabs the lid and splits the food between the two of them, though there is a little as Ziggy takes it from his hand.
Apparently, she loves peaches.
A smile pulls at his lips. Perhaps it’s a bit indulgent, but he doesn’t mind giving her some of his. He’s not the biggest fan of canned fruit anyways, and the way she lightens up and rolls on the ground more than makes up for it. Never let it be said that he doesn’t spoil his partner.
She stops. Her shift in focus is instant. Jarring. Within a second, she goes from rolling in the dirt to standing at attention and sniffing the air. She doesn’t growl, bark, or coil up like a spring, so he isn’t worried, but he hops down from the rock and tries to see if he can spot what has her worked up.
Ziggy moves. Landon follows. She jumps onto where the shore would be, points like a hound to a large rock, and with only a little trepidation, Landon checks it.
Lying face down in the dirt, passed out and barely breathing, he finds a small spinda.
‘Ah hell,’ he thinks as he scratches his chin. ‘What am I supposed to do with you?’
The man leans down, picks the spotted panda up. He side-eyes Ziggy, whose entire body wags back and forth. He can’t tell if it’s in acceptance or if it’s something else foreign that he doesn’t have the time to parse through right now.
He hopes it’s the former.
“You gotta be kidding me,” he says, grunts, and starts making his way back to their gear. Every fiber of his being screams at him, tells him he’s being stupid, and that he should leave the thing to die or cook it until it’s crispy. He wants to. Wants to cite a million different reasons --starting with the sun and ending with the water-- why that’s the right call.
But he can’t.
He has equally as many excuses. They’re good on water; the mountain shade takes the sting of the sun away; fuck, he isn’t even tired. Some of them are half-truths, some of them are more lies, and some of them are outright delusions -- but he thinks of the houndoom from the night before and how it listened to him, understood him, and stalked off into the night without much trouble. Maybe he’s paying it forward. Maybe he sees something dying, and he’s too soft to leave it there.
No matter how he slices, dices, and presents it -- all his thoughts are still excuses.
Landon breathes in. Counts to ten. Exhales.
Once they’re back at his gear, he lays the spinda flat against its back. After propping its legs up with some loose stone, Landon pulls out his own water bottle and places it near the pokemon before leafing through his bag. He settles on some nuts, raisins, and two slices of oran berry leftover from breakfast. Removing them, he puts everything into a container off to the side.
He slides down the stone and pulls his knees up to his chest. Leaning back, Landon stares out at the cloudless sky and waits. He closes his eyes and starts to count -- a dumb way for him to know exactly how much time he’s wasted -- and stops at a little over four hundred when the spinda lets out a noise.
“Hey, you awake?” He asks as he stands. It starts to cry, and he crouches back down, lowers his voice, and tries again. “None of that now. Calm down, I’m gonna get some water in you.”
It takes a bit, but when he pets its head softly, it starts to listen. “Can you understand me?” It nods. “Alright, I’ve got some water here. Drink slow so you don’t choke.”
The thing is so weak that it can’t lean forward and drink on its own. Damn, he can feel his bleeding heart squeeze. With one hand, he reaches out to help prop its neck up, and with the other, he fills up the lid of his bottle and holds it to its lips.
“Slowly,” he repeats when it gets a little aggressive, but the pokemon calms down and takes his advice. After it’s cleared the water out of the top, he offers the oran berries first, followed by the nuts and raisins.
It takes time, but the panda comes back to life.
The pokemon tries to stand --dance-- but it falls to its face and starts to cry instead. Landon glances at Ziggy, who looks as unapologetic as possible, before he reaches down and lifts the spinda up by under its arms.
“Hey, it’s okay,” he says, and fuck, he hopes he’s doing this right but he has major doubts when the thing’s head rolls around to stare up at the sky. “Why don’t you take it easy and try to tell us what’s happened.”
Spinda’s head snaps back up like a rubber band. Somehow, its eyes (are they eyes? He isn’t sure, but they’re staring at him and it’s a bit weird) start to droop, and tears roll down its cheeks. It makes a myriad of different noises and cries while throwing its arms around in large, sweeping gestures.
Landon understands none of it.
He sets the pokemon down, pats it on the head when it still seems upset, and turns to Ziggy. “Girl,” he says, voice frayed. “Please tell me you can point me in the direction that we need to go.” He’s pleading, almost groveling at this point.
Thankfully, his partner's eyes shine with an understanding that he lacks. She sweeps her tail and turns her head and points upstream with her entire body. It’s a touching performance, one he’ll make sure to bring up to her later after they’ve taken care of the spaz spinda.
Landon breathes in. Counts to ten. Exhales.
‘Little guy is lucky it’s cute,’ he thinks, stuffing the rest of his gear back into his pack. After he’s finished, he turns to the panda, and thinks for a second before stuffing its body in too, leaving its head out to spin around on a swivel. It doesn’t protest at all as he handles it like a teddy bear.
A small part of him whispers that it’s not his problem. He should ignore it.
He ignores that part of him instead.
“I’m not carrying you in my arms,” he says, hiking up his bag and placing it on his shoulders. “Don’t move around too much, and if you get thirsty, make some noise. But only if you’re thirsty, got it?”
It agrees, or he hopes it does, so he takes his hat and places it atop its head. “Don’t lose that,” he says. With one look at the sky to see the sun nearing the horizon, he’s more worried about the pokemon having a heatstroke than he is about some sunburn. It makes a sound, and he takes it for an affirmative.
So he straps up and nods to Ziggy. And before long, they’re back on the trail.
----------------------------------------
They find trees before they find water.
There’s small patches of them at the base of the mountain, where the riverbed magically begins, but they’ve all been chopped down. Only stumps remain. It looks like an abandoned construction project where everyone packed up after clearing the land and never returned. It’s bizarre. And he can’t help but think of home, where the small little town he’d grown up in had started to boom, and new neighborhoods sprung up like weeds.
He hates the reminder. He hates the way his eyes burn for a second, or the back of his throat catches on something he tries to say. But most of all, he hates how the first chance he has at finding something interesting died long before he got there, and the reminder of what it once was sits out in the sun to rot.
In its own way, it taunts him.
So he ignores it and keeps going. Landon spits on the ground, pokes Spinda for directions, and pushes on. From what he gathers, they seem to be getting closer to… whatever they’re looking for.
He only hopes it’s worth it.
Three hours pass like nothing. The sun sets, and the dim light of dusk makes navigating the mountain-side difficult. Landon knows he should stop and rest, maybe call it a night, but he’s far more focused on the path in front of him. Spinda leads them to a pass that’s almost a cave, accented by rocks rising out of the earth like cathedral spires, where the sharp cliffs are covered in moss.
“What the hell?” Landon whispers. He crouches down next to Ziggy, who has started sniffing the shit, and runs his hand against it. “ Yeah, that’s moss,” he says, almost too amazed to believe it. “It’s damp, too.” How? He glances back at Spinda, who practically vibrates.
“Well, time to see what’s down there.”
Ziggy agrees, hops down the uneven trail. Landon follows at a more sedate pace.
It’s hard to navigate in the already low light, but the pass makes it almost impossible. Landon walks forward, slow as he can, with one hand pressed against the wall to keep himself steady. With the darkness blanketing his sight, Landon focuses on other things: the earthy smell of the wet air, the feel of the damp wall and the greenery that covers it, and the sound of rushing water in the distance that has his heart hammering in his chest.
Landon licks his lips and follows Ziggy to the bottom of the path.
A new world opens up before him. It takes his eyes a second to adjust, and now all he sees is green. Tall grass covers the earth, dense brush and bushes break his vision -- preventing him from looking further in -- and trees that are almost too tall reach towards the sky.
Landon tries to think of something to say. He fails. He doesn’t want to take his eyes away from the secret grove that he’s somehow stumbled upon, but he turns to look at Ziggy who's rolling in the grass without a worry in the world. Spinda makes a noise as well, but Landon is too distracted to give it much mind.
Somehow, here in the middle of the Orre desert, an entire forest hides at the bottom of this hidden valley.
If he’d been confused before, he’s stupefied now.
After so much brown, the color green seems twice as vibrant. Landon pushes a branch out of his way, continues down the path, and stops to listen to the sound of running water. It’s close. So very close. As he steps over a fallen tree, he takes notice of Ziggy pushing through the brush and heading further in.
He follows. And all at once, the muted sounds of life become a deafening roar. Water pours into the canyon from the top of a twenty-foot waterfall; a large pond, filled and brimming, sits at the bottom; and life thrives, booms, ignores the cry of the desert not even a mile away. A grin pulls at his lips, and he ignores Ziggy’s excited barks as he walks forward, crouches, and dunks his head into the water.
‘Fuck,’ he thinks, coming up for air and raking a hand through his hair. ‘That’s just what I needed.’
He steals a glance at Ziggy, who looks equal parts unimpressed and amused, before she trots over and does the same exact thing. Landon snorts. “Hypocrite,” he says, tone soft and playful.
A noise comes from behind him, and he realizes that he hasn’t let Spinda out yet. He grins, removes his bag, and unzips it so the pokemon can tumble out on the ground. It lets out a noise as it tries to readjust itself and not fall into the water.
Landon laughs. It isn’t a soft chuckle or chortle, but a full, honest to god laugh. He keeps going, until his stomach starts to hurt and he’s gasping for air, and he lies on his back to stare up at the sky.
The tree canopy is dense, but the stars still peek through.
For the first time since his arrival, Landon thinks of Pokemon. Not as an individual species, or as a video game that he plays, but as an idea. A concept. Back home, it was a franchise that captivated the hearts of millions. And as he lays on the floor, more lost than he’s ever been, he starts to remember why he was one of those faceless fans in the first place.
It took finding a forest in the desert to remind him that as harsh as this place can be, it’s equally mystical.
Landon sits up. Leans against a tree. Listens.
For ten seconds he enjoys everything: the smell of the air, the way life buzzes around him, and the feel of his chest loosening up as the stress of the past days settles in the back of his mind -- not forgotten, but not a focus.
"Greetings, Sand-strider.’
Landon’s eyes snap open. He glances left, right, and center, looking for the voice but finding no one. There are some pokemon he spots out in the trees, and while some of them seem to watch him with a relatable weariness, there are equally as many that ignore him entirely. But out of all the pokemon he spots, none come forward to speak with him more.
‘Look up, young one.’ The voice responds, tone dry but still carrying some traces of mirth.
Landon does. And up in the trees, on a branch above the water, a large Native American totem turned bird stares at him.
“Howdy.” He’s clueless about what to say, and the word tumbles out of his lips before he can stop it. “You uh, need help with something?”
He waves. Fuck, why does he wave? The xatu waves back at him with an unfurled wing and he thinks he might shit. Its eyes crinkle in a facsimile of a smile, and it blinks away in a flash of light.
Now it’s standing a couple of feet in front of him.
Idly, he wonders if all fully evolved pokemon are this large. The thing has to be at least five feet tall, and while he can’t gauge its wingspan, he’s assuming that it matches. The pokemon holds out a wing like a hand, and Spinda -- stupid, beautiful Spinda -- runs up and starts to shake it.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
‘Need is such a strong word,’ the xatu says. Thinks? He isn’t sure, but he feels a tad stupid when he realizes that it’s speaking through its thoughts. ‘But I would like to offer you my thanks as guardian, Planes-walker. Without your help, I doubt that Spinda would’ve made it to the grove.’
‘So,’ it pauses, and its eyes smile once again, ‘thank you.’
“Huh?” It takes him a second to catch up. “Yeah, don’t worry about it.” He brings a hand up to rub at the back of his burning neck. “It was the right thing to do, I guess. It isn’t a big deal”
Xatu stares. It seems to look through him, and it goes on for just long enough for Landon to become a tad uncomfortable. ‘You’re welcome to stay as long as you need,’ it says as it turns away from him. ‘But be warned: pokemon congregate here from all over the sands during the peak of the dry season. Issue as many challenges as you wish, but you are a guest here.’
‘And if I find your decorum lacking, you will no longer be welcome.’
With its warning given, the xatu blinks away as quick as it came. “That wasn’t ominous at all,” Landon says, turns to Ziggy who's still watching the spot the pokemon had been only seconds prior.
He huffs, pushes himself up, and walks over to his friend. She seems a bit distracted but still leans into his touch when runs his palm over the back of her head. “Don’t worry about it too much, girl.” She looks up at him. “We’ll go ahead and call it a night, but in the morning--” he grins, smiles like a shark “-- we can cut our teeth.” She perks up.
Landon doesn’t go through the work of setting up a fire or building camp. They share an apple and have some sliced pepperoni for dinner, and when Landon beds down for the evening, both Ziggy and Spinda curl into his side.
----------------------------------------
It’s the smell of warm, wet dog breath that forces Landon awake.
Ziggy stares. Her eyes twinkle and catch in the dim morning light, and he laughs at the way she fails to hold herself back. “Calm down, girl.” He says. “Let’s have breakfast first, then we can look for a challenge.”
He leaves Spinda to sleep and starts to go through his bag. As much as he wants to make a fire and eat something warm, he decides against it. “Jerky it is.” He grabs a handful out of the bag, and then picks up a can of green beans. Not exactly the ideal meal, especially with cold beans, but it’s edible and he’s hungry.
Not like he hasn’t had worse.
Ziggy eats little. She’s still excited enough that her tail is hitting her own face. As funny as it is, Landon finds himself caught out.
Never in a million years would he have guessed that Ziggy loves battle. It hadn’t been this way when he’d gone over moves at the Libra, and she’s usually so docile. It’s shocking, but he can make an easy guess and say that she used to do this before her travels with Sam.
He decides not to dwell on it.
Landon picks one of the pieces of jerky up, throws it in his mouth, and takes a better survey of their surroundings. Outside of a couple basculin in the water, he doesn’t see much else. He thinks of challenging one of them for a second, but quickly dismisses the idea. As much as he wants to battle -- and fuck, he isn’t as bad as Ziggy, but he really does want to battle (the eight-year-old he used to be screams in protest as he ignores his desires) -- he isn’t sure that there’s much value in duking it out against a pair of waterbound piranhas.
“Ziggy,” he calls, and she stands at an attention so sharp it puts navy seals to shame. “Remember, if anyone declines the challenge, we have to respect that.” She nods. “Good. I’m gonna wake up Spinda, then we get to work.”
He taps Spinda twice on the nose. “C’mon, get up,” he says. “Day’s starting, and we need you.” The pokemon blinks, rubs some sand off its face, and looks up at him. He offers some beans and seeds that Spinda snatches from his hand. It gets up, he grabs his bag, and they leave the clearing to go pick a fight.
With Spinda as their guide, it doesn’t take long to find challengers.
Spinda knows the area, and it seems like the pokemon has at least passing familiarity with several different species the group encounters. Each and every pokemon he comes across doesn’t seem surprised to see him, though there are several that treat him with an uncomfortable weariness that he finds nostalgic.
It’s far more bitter than sweet. He can’t figure out why at first, but the longer he dwells on it, the more he gets it. Chances are, he’s the first human to step foot in this grove. Maybe ever. That makes it all click. The fatigued stares and cold shoulders remind him so much of his travels. People don’t like tourists unless they’re selling them something, and as far as he knows, there isn’t a posted memo about gimmick thrift stores.
It serves his purposes well enough.
When he’d been stuck in north Africa, bullying tourists was a fucking pasttime for the locals. Here, he doesn’t have to worry about militant police, and he has Xatu’s own rules to protect him from any bruised egos with ideas.
He glances at the litleo across from him. It’s not mad so much as it’s eager, and he respects that. Despite how easy it would have been, he tries his hardest not to be an asshole, and he thinks he’s been mostly fair in his requests.
The dozen or so pokemon ganged around the treeline like a fight ring seem to think otherwise.
‘They’re just vultures,’ he thinks. ‘If anything, it just means more battles if Ziggy wants them,’ He eyes his partner, crouched low and coiled, and thinks that it’s a safe bet.
Landon picks up a stick off the ground. “You ready?” The litleo nods. He doesn’t bother checking Ziggy. “Alright, the match starts when the stick hits the ground.”
He tosses it into the sky.
Landon breathes in. Counts to ten. Exhales.
It lands.
Litleo moves first. It tears at the ground and forces its way close. ‘Not yet,’ he thinks, brings his hand up, and chews on his thumbnail. It’s in peppering range now. ‘Almost there.’ When flecks of flame gather in its mouth, he makes his call.
“Sand-attack.”
In the games, the move lowers accuracy by one value. He’s only ever seen it in shitty fan installments where they use dumb gimmicks to aggravate the player and simulate difficulty. But when the wall of dirt hits litleo in the face mid-jump, it drops faster than a sack of potatoes.
Litleo backs away, tries to make distance to rub at its face. Landon takes his advantage.
“Snarl.”
Ziggy answers. She starts to growl, and all the shadows in the grove grow a little longer; she barks, and everything returns to normal except for the litleo who drops and folds and crumples like a used tissue. Landon whistles once, signaling the end of the match.
No one makes a sound.
Landon removes his gaiter mask from around his neck, dabs it with water from his bottle, and makes his way over to litleo with berry slices in hand. “I’m going to clean your face,” he says as he crouches down. “Don’t move too much.”
He’s gentle. Or, he tries to be. Despite his rough hands, he thinks he does a decent enough job, and the little lion enjoys the slivers of oran enough to whine for more. “Sorry little guy,” he laughs. “But that’s the last of it. You run along now, unless you want to watch the rest of this.”
The litleo nods and scampers off to who knows where. He looks at the rest of the gathered crowd, sees the sharp stares and eager faces, and he grins.
“Who’s next?”
----------------------------------------
Ziggy touts an impressive six-one record when he calls a break for lunch. She’s tired, plastered with sweat, and not even her swift defeat at the hands of a makuhita can take away her dazzling smile. Resting in the shade near the water, she preens at his attention while she picks at her food.
Landon stares out over the pond. Sunlight dances on its surface, but what has his attention are the three bibarel that take turns dragging entire trees under the water. They’ll disappear. And then after a couple of minutes, they resurface to take another log down.
He continues to work Ziggy’s back with one hand. With the other, he brings a knee up under his chin. It’s strange. Watching the bibarel work offers little insight, and he can’t help his gnawing curiosity.
‘You should already know the answer,’ a voice says. Landon looks up, offers a wave to Xatu.
The bird doesn’t spare him a glance.
‘When you traveled past the mouth of the river, you should’ve seen the trees.’ Xatu drones, eyes still elsewhere. ‘We dam it every dry season for the safety of the grove. If we did not, the earthshaker would not be able to maintain life.’
Landon blinks. Once. Twice before he understands. “You cut down the trees at the base of the mountain.” He pauses, scratches at his chin. “How’d you transport them up here?”
Xatu turns to look through him. ‘We have a family of gurdurr and timburr here. It is their responsibility to provide the lumber that we need if the times are dire.’
A hum leaves Landon’s lips. It’s still strange to him, how human Xatu can be yet how far it is from normal. “The dry season isn’t usual, then?” He reaches out to grab Spinda before it can fall into the pond. It smiles at him, goofy as can be, before it turns back towards the trees and starts to dance.
Xatu blinks once before looking back towards a bibarel that surfaces. ‘No, Soul-soother, it is not common.’ It pauses to unfurl its wings. ‘The last one was five years prior, and it came from man’s ambition to control flame, storm, and rain.’
‘I fear this drought is much the same.’
Xatu says no more. In a flash of blinding light, it’s gone as quickly as it came, leaving nothing but a cryptic message and a feather that fell from its wing.
“What do you think, girl?” He asks as he picks up the feather to look at it. It’s white, with just a hint of red peaking out at the very tip. “Still wanna go for round two?”
Ziggy perks up. She turns to him, yips once, and goes back to her food. Landon chuckles. “Yeah, go ahead and finish up lunch, I’m gonna have another look around.” He stands and stretches.
Walking into the treeline, his mind wanders. As great of an experience as this has been, he didn’t come all the way out here so that he could get away with some relatively safe battles. So far, the only pokemon he’s seen that gave him any interest was makuhita -- an idea that he strayed away from as soon as he’d had it. Landon steps through some brush. He stops, crouches down, and grabs one of the berries.
“A rawst?” he says. He brings the thing up to his nose and sniffs it. As great as the makuhita would’ve been for a traveling companion, it was large. The thing had to be at least two hundred pounds, and at its rather short stature, he imagines its food intake would’ve been too great.
Landon stares down at the berry in hand, watches the way the light that breaks through the canopy catches on its surface. ‘It makes sense,’ he thinks. ‘If a pokemon was hardy enough to call the desert home, it’s probably still out there.’ He pushes himself up off his knee.
‘Do rock and ground types even drink water?’
It’s an idle thought. A bit of an unnecessary one, but he supposes that some of them at least need water every once and a while. Species like onix, geodude, or even the pure ground types like hippopotas might not, but he isn’t a professor or an academic.
His interests are utilitarian.
Landon breathes through his nose in a slow, practiced motion. ‘Maybe I need to rethink my standards,’ His feet carry him back to the clearing, but that doesn’t stop him from taking in the sights and enjoying the light breeze against his face. ‘I don’t have time to jerk-off in these mountains.’
He breaches back into their little part of the grove. He expects to see Ziggy eating food, or Spinda face down in the dirt, or even Xatu, waiting on his return to spout more cryptic drivel.
Instead, he gets a mankey as mad as a bull around bees. It screeches. Loud. And without taking note of him, it continues to go back and forth with Ziggy.
“What the hell is going on here?” He doesn’t yell, but he takes the non-nonsense, loud talking voice that his step-father used with him when he was younger. “Do you need something, or are you just here to piss my partner off?”
It turns to him, and holy shit, he didn’t know that a monkey could get so mad. Its forehead bulges with tension, and it slams both of its hands down on the ground in quick succession. It points at him with one hand, accusation dripping off the gesture, and continues to slam the other hand down like a judge with a gavel.
“What, you wanna fight?” The theatrics cease. It nods. Landon sighs, turns to Ziggy, and looks her in the eye. “Well, girl? You up for it?” She scratches behind her ear with her hind leg before standing.
“Alright, alright.” He gestures with his hand. “Go ahead and set-up across the clearing. I’ll toss a stick for a neutral start.”
Landon makes his way over to Ziggy. “You sure you’re good, girl?” He asks as he rubs the top of her head. “That makuhita hit you pretty hard.” She gives him a look that screams ‘try and stop me’.
He shrugs, grabs a hefty tree branch off the ground, and flips it over in his hands a couple of times. He tosses it high into the sky.
They wait.
The stick lands.
Mankey rushes across the field, stance low and arms at its side. “Baby-doll eyes,” Landon calls. A grin pulls at his lips when he hears Ziggy sniffle, and the mankey stops in its tracks.
But it doesn’t last long. Not even three seconds pass before the mankey screams like a voice actor for Dragon Ball. It hops up, grabs a hold of a stray branch with its tail -- “Dodge this one!” Landon screams -- and launches itself down at Ziggy with its arms crossed.
She steps away. It’s close, but Mankey connects with nothing but the ground.
Until its foot lashes out. “Lick, Girl!” He gets the command out in time, but the trade is far from fair. Ziggy ends up halfway across the clearing, winded, nursing her fresh welt.
The mankey looks like it just finished a mid-morning stroll. It’d been apparent with the makuhita earlier, but the fighting type matchup is straight up trash. It stalks forward, falling back down on all fours, content to press its advantage.
Landon thinks about throwing in the towel. To them, this might be natural. But to him? There’s a disconnect between what he’s seen pokemon do, what they’re capable of, and watching it play out before him.
‘Ziggy would hate that.’
He waits. The mankey stalks closer. “Sand-attack!” He calls. It’s a bait, or at least, it’s intended to be one. But the mankey stutters, and Landon sees a jolt of lightning flash across its fur.
Lick pays off.
“Snarl, now, while it’s distracted!” Ziggy listens. The attack connects, but it doesn’t put the mankey down. With its eyes closed from the sand, it rushes forward and swipes at Ziggy.
“Wait for an opening,” he says. He’s loud enough to hear, but not enough to catch the monkey's attention. Landon cracks his first knuckle with his thumb and waits.
The first strike misses. The second one, too. On the third, she ducks down and springs up; the hardest part of her skull slams into its soft, pink nose, and Landon hears something crack.
The monkey falls.
“Holy shit.” It takes a second for him to whistle, but he does. It’s with sweating palms and shaking hands that he walks forward, crouches down, and takes stock of the massive purple welt on Ziggy’s side. “Now that’s a shiner.” She whines as he checks it. “Don’t worry, girl. We’ve got a potion to spare in the medkit. It’ll give me the chance to check and see how much of it we need to treat something like this.”
A hand strikes soft soil. Landon looks up from Ziggy to the mankey a couple of feet away. It glares down at the ground, and the rage that left it for such a brief time returns.
It cries and sobs and screams at the world.
Landon wants to say something. Honestly, he wants to say a lot of different things at once. Part of him wants to offer conciliation, another part of him wants to pat the thing on the shoulder -- but there’s a quiet part, too. A part that hates this. A part of him that recalls how it feels to have nothing.
And that situation plays on repeat before his eyes.
“Quit being a bitch.”
Its head swivels up to meet his stare. “You lost a single match, so what?” He walks forward and takes a knee in front of it. “You’re strong, yeah? Don’t cry about it. Stand up on your feet and push on.” God, he feels like a stupid anime character. “When you throw a fit like this, it makes you look weak as hell.”
For the first time, he sees its anger simmer instead of boil. It’s still there. Contained, pulled back, and handcuffed to the radiator, but he sees an almost calmness takeover.
The pokemon slams both hands onto the ground and bows its head.
‘Why’d I open my big mouth,’ Landon laments. The thing still refuses to meet its eyes, and the pause gets more awkward by the second. ‘I could’ve just grabbed Ziggy and walked away.’ Landon stands, starts to walk away with Ziggy at his heels.
A hand grabs his own.
Landon looks back at Mankey. With its other hand, it makes gestures that he doesn’t understand, and its eyes shine with unshed tears. He looks down to Ziggy for help, but she’s licking the fur around her wound so it’ll keep clear when he treats it in a second.
“I’m sorry, I don’t understand.” Mankey releases his hand, releases a noise halfway between a sob and a scream, and points at Ziggy. They talk for a second, and Ziggy reaches up to paw at his pocket.
The pocket he keeps their one, unused pokeball in.
Everything clicks into place. Landon takes a sharp breath and reaches into his pocket. “You want to come with me,” he says. It’s a statement, one that makes him focus on the creature in front of him.
It’s small. He doubts it’s even two feet tall. But it is a fighting type, and Landon knows that machop are known to literally throw around boulders. It’s a double-edged sword. Because it also means it’s not a water type. If he commits to Mankey, it’s a guarantee that he won’t be able to acquire a pokemon with rain dance for god knows how long.
But he looks at its face. It’s stupid, pig-nosed ugly face. “No wonder you’re so mad all the time,” he says, brings a hand up to scratch at his scruff. He doesn’t answer. At least, not at first. He makes his way over to their equipment, picks up his bag, and tosses it to Mankey. “Honest answers only.” He brings his arm up across his chest and grunts when it pops. “How long do you think you could carry that bag without stopping?”
Mankey picks it up with one hand. It thinks for a second before placing it back down on the ground. After a minute, it holds up four fingers -- three on one hand and one on the other. “Four hours?” Landon asks, and when he shakes its head, it takes him a moment.
“Four days?” He’s surprised, and he’s sure it bleeds over into his voice when the thing preens. He takes a second to ground himself. “I get that you want to come with me, but why? I’m traveling out there--” he gestures towards the sky, hopes his point is made “--and there’s a good fucking chance that I’m not going to make it to next week. We’re out there because we have to be. Right now, we’re just on a detour, but we’ve gotta make it south as fast as we can.”
“If we don’t, a friend will die.”
He thinks of Sam back at the Libra, of his bad leg and white hair. He’d yet to say this out-loud, but there’s a chance he can make it south to Phenac City before Cipher sacks it. And if he can’t… Well, he’ll cross that bridge when he gets to it. Hopefully, they’ll still be able to play dumb and catch a ride somewhere else.
Sam might not know where they’re at or what’s going on, but he does. At least a little. And if he plays his cards right, he’ll be able to return the favor of the man who gave him a fighting chance.
Mankey nods without a care in the world. “You’re sure?” The words taste like raw sage on his tongue. He wants Mankey, he realizes. And he thinks that if he can get it kitted right when they return to the Libra, their odds of survival skyrocket.
It nods again.
Landon doesn’t say another word. He reaches into his pocket, pulls out the shiny, new premier ball, and tosses it underhand at Mankey.
It shakes once before it stills.