“That has to be one of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever seen.”

“If it’s ridiculous and it works, is it still ridiculous?”

Ted gave me a side-eye from where we were camped for the night.

“Yes. Yes it is.”

Objectively speaking, Ted was right. The sight was ridiculous, but it was also one of the better methods Takeo and I had devised to help get Zetian accustomed to moving with the large weight of a Vespiquen’s abdomen.

Zetian was currently attempting to flit about the clearing we had decided to camp in with a heavy bag of rocks tied underneath her.

It was still relatively light right now, but Takeo had recommended that I gradually increase the weight as Zetian grew stronger, eventually getting up to a full Vespiquen’s weight of eighty pounds.

Ted sighed, shaking his head. “As ridiculous as it is… I can’t say I disapprove. One of the things that I had to learn starting out was that while evolution is generally good for Pokémon, it can take them a bit to actually get used to their new forms.”

He laid a hand on Rakkyo’s sleeping head, the giant Flygon curled up around him like a big bean bag chair.

“This one for instance had a Giratina of a time trying to actually fly when he evolved into a Vibrava. He was so bad at it that I thought he was never going to get it down.”

“Really? How’d you help him?”

“It took an old timer who had one of his own to help me figure out that Rakkyo was better suited to short hops than full flight, and that the more prey he dissolved with the juices, the faster his wings would grow.”

I paled, shuddering a little bit.

“Ah. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to that.”

“The digestive juices? Trust me, work with a Muk to help clean out a dump, and everything else will seem like a breeze.”

It was his turn to shudder.

“Listen, if you’re ever low on cash in LaRousse City, don’t answer a job listing by a guy named Dexter. It’s not worth it.”

“That’s… curiously specific.” I said. “But not really what I was talking about. I meant just more about Pokémon eating other Pokémon.”

Ted shrugged, but gave me a strange look. “It’s pretty normal, especially for the bigger Pokémon. The circle of life, you know? I guess you really haven’t had to experience it considering Eevee are mainly herbivorous, besides some fish, and Combee are… well… Combee. If you get any Pokémon that are more omnivorous, or even just a carnivore, you’re going to have to get used to it.”

“It’s just… they’re our partners, you know? Or wild Pokémon could be. They think and have feelings, and can understand us enough to follow orders- if not more. Would you be willing to feed a Gardevoir to one of your Pokémon?”

He was silent for a long moment, thinking about it.

“I guess it’s one of those things that I’ve never really spent a lot of time thinking about. No, I wouldn’t feed a Gardevoir to one of my Pokémon unless we were in a really dire situation and there were no other options. But something like a Tauros or one of the fish-like Pokémon… yeah. It’s just the way the world works.”

“Isn’t that hypocritical though? Why is one Pokémon more worthwhile to be eaten as opposed to another?”

I hadn’t been a vegetarian back on Earth, but here things were different. As much as I desperately craved a hamburger sometimes, I knew I couldn’t go through with it if I knew that a Tauros had to die for it. Perhaps it was a bit hypocritical of me to think that way, that a Tauros was worth more than a cow, but there was just some indescribable difference between the two, as if one was more aware and present than the other..

"It might be," Ted admitted, cutting through my thoughts. "But what's the alternative? Should we let our Pokémon starve due to our morals? Take Switchback, for example."

The small Pokémon in question looked over at the sound of his name, from where he was dodging Venus’ Quick Attacks.

"Sneasels are mainly carnivorous, so it would be cruel and inhumane to force them to eat only fruits, Berries, and vegetables. Would I eat some of the Pokémon meat that he does? No, but that’s because I don’t need it as much. Will I eat a Tauros burger though? Yeah. Because I know that the Tauros who gave the meat for it lived a healthy and fulfilled life."

It was my turn to be silent while I thought. He had a point. It would be cruel to force a Pokémon to eat the wrong food. And since carnivorous Pokémon existed, it would mean that other Pokémon would have to die to feed them.

It wasn’t pretty but nobody ever said life was pretty.

“I guess,” I eventually bit out. “I’m just not sure if I would be comfortable doing that.”

“And that’s fine,” Ted said. “There’s a lot of people like that. I don’t think there’s a right or wrong answer here.”

We were quiet for a long time, as our Pokémon continued to train. Zetian continued to try and fly at a consistent height with the heavy weight below her, and although I could tell she was getting frustrated with her lack of progress, she was still determined to keep going.

Venus and Switchback would trade dodging and attacking, getting used to fighting another Pokémon, and Ted’s Sycther Mayfly was practicing using her wings to make quick, fluttering hops.

“You know,” Ted said suddenly. “I don’t mean to be rude, but there are some things that confuse me about you.”

“Like?” I said, trying to ignore the flush of cold anxiety that ran down my spine.

“Pretty much everybody accepts that Pokémon will eat one another, but not you. You have strange gaps in your knowledge of Pokémon too, I have no doubt you could list off all the type matchups, but you don’t know much about the practical training of Pokémon, not even the stuff you would learn growing up at school. And the way you talk sometimes it’s… well it’s strange.”

I froze.

Did he know?

No, surely not. Ultra Wormholes and dimensional travelers weren’t common knowledge.

“I grew up on a small island.” I blurted out, trying frantically to recall my cover story. “We didn’t have a lot of Pokémon there, so it was basically all theoretical knowledge.”

“Hmm.” He hummed noncommittally. “What was that like?”

“It was…” Like a sailor who didn’t know how to swim, I floundered for a moment, trying to get my bearings and stay above water.

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

Although, maybe a little bit of truth in a lie would help ease his mind.

“It was like coming to another world.” I said, wincing at every word. “Things are so much more here in Sinnoh, there are Pokémon around every corner. All we really had were video games. And TV broadcasts from Unova, but that never really showed you what it was really like, you know?”

Now, I was just making stuff up on the spot.

“And every now and again a ship would come by and the sailors would have Pokémon that we could play with, but for the most part it was just humans.”

“Fascinating.” There was still a bit of a glimmer in Ted’s eyes, but whether that was from suspicion or from the idea of an island with no Pokémon, I wasn’t sure.

“What made you come here?”

I shrugged, feeling a bit more settled now. “Wasn’t my choice. I don’t know what happened exactly, but Professor Rowan thinks it was a long range Teleport or something. I got in some trouble when I arrived and he helped me out of a tough spot, so I decided to stick around and help out in return.”

Not entirely the truth, but not entirely a lie either.

“Besides, I met Venus, and I couldn’t just abandon her.”

“Well, that’s certainly a story.” Ted said, but scratched at the scales between Rakkyo’s red eye lenses. “But I know what you mean, I would be lost without Rakkyo here. I think I’d like to see your home one day, I can’t imagine a place without any Pokémon. You said it was near Unova?”

I shrugged. “It was a small island, I don’t even think most maps have it listed.”

“A shame then. Maybe someday.”

“Yeah, maybe.”

“Do you ever think you’ll go back?”

I frowned, and while I was technically looking at Venus and Switchback spar, my eyes were seeing a place far, far away.

“I’m not sure I would know how to get back there. Maybe if I find the right Pokémon to help take me there I could, but honestly? I’m happier here than I ever was there.”

“What about your family?”

“What about them?”

“Hm.”

That’s a fair response. I thought to myself. I wouldn’t know how to reply to that either.

“What about you?” I asked. “I know you’re from Hoenn, but where is home for you?”

“A small town near Mauville.”

“And will you go back?”

His smile turned brittle. “I’m afraid that’s not really an option for me anymore. It’s gone.”

“Gone?”

“There was a… natural disaster, and it was all I could do to escape. Luckily Professor Birch and all the others were happy to take me in and help, and I’ve settled in well.”

“Oh… I’m, I’m sorry.”

“It’s all good!” He said, with a smile that obviously meant it wasn’t fine at all.

We were quiet for a long while after that, neither of us quite sure what to say.

Eventually, Ted broke the silence. “It’s starting to get dark, but I think there’s enough light for a quick battle if you want to get some more exercise for our Pokémon in?”

“Oh, yes please.” I said eagerly, happy for the distraction.

I stood up and brushed off the dirt from my skirt and tights. Despite being made from Spinarak silk, they were still like magnets for small sticks and blades of grass.

As I was walking towards Zetian and Venus, however, I thought I heard Ted speaking quietly to Rakkyo behind me.

“Like coming to another world? Funny…”

/^\

The next few days blurred together as we settled into a new routine of travel. When it had just been Venus, Zetian, and I, our mornings had been relatively quiet, but now they were surprisingly hectic with four more traveling companions.

Miles passed under our feet as we hiked by flower fields and farms, each day getting closer and closer to Eterna City.

It was actually quite pleasant to be traveling with somebody else. I hadn’t realized how much I had missed talking with other people. Ted had a wealth of experience that he was happy to share with another Trainer, even if my team and I weren’t anywhere close to being on a level necessary enough to put it into practice.

I wasn’t the only one getting information out of traveling though, and Ted’s notebook quickly filled up with everything that I could remember from Pokémon Legends: Arceus about Hisui and its unique evolutions.

Thankfully he accepted my explanations of having studied it as part of my Lab Assistant work with Professor Rowan.Otherwise, I had no idea how to convince him of my knowledge.

I would sound like a crazy person to most people if I had told them I came from a world where this was all a game, after all.

Of course, PL:A didn’t have all the answers he was looking for, such as ‘why are these evolutions different in Hisui than they are in Sinnoh?’

As it turns out, there was a lot more going on underneath the hood of Pokémon evolution than I or Ted knew of. I knew for a fact that if a Quilava evolved in Hisui, the resulting Typhlosion would be a dual-type with Fire and Ghost. It was in the games after all, and in the scraps of the ancient Poké Dex that Professor Rowan had given Ted.

But there was also concrete proof, captured on camera, that if a Quilava evolved in modern-day Sinnoh, not Hisui, that it would evolve into a regular Typhlosion.

So whatever was governing Hisuian Pokémon’s evolutions wasn’t strictly environmental, or if it was, the effects had long since faded.

At the same time, there were obviously some Hisuian Pokémon still kicking around, as evidenced by Switchback.

It was a mystery, and one that was beginning to nag at me. There was something I was missing, I was sure of it, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.

More than anything else, my attempts to try and figure out what made Hisuian Pokémon appear was probably what had convinced Ted that I really was a researcher.

Besides our wild theories on the nature of evolution and our nightly Pokémon battles, the rest of the trip to Eterna passed without any major issues. There were no emergency Ranger alerts, no lightning strikes on Pokémon nests, barely any rain even.

Even Eterna Forest had been a disappointment.

“I’m still not sure why you’re so upset.” Ted said, as we left the last Ranger cabin in the forest.

They were small bunkhouses that the Rangers kept operating for travelers, consisting of little more than some beds and a kitchenette for anybody to use.

“I’m upset because it’s Eterna Forest!”

“You realize that’s not actually an answer.”

“It’s supposed to be a magical, ethereal place! Full of mist, fog, piano music, and a natural maze! A place where double battles are common, and you have to find a strong companion to help you survive!”

“Piano music? Anyways… I mean, maybe deeper in the forest it might be like that? But it’s also a major passage from Floaroma Town to Eterna City, they’re obviously going to make sure that it’s able to be easily walkable.”

“That doesn’t mean they needed to have a paved road.” I grumbled, although I wasn’t too upset.

Instead of the maze-like forest of the games, I had gotten a road that wouldn’t have looked out of place in rural New England. No, it was nicer than those roads had been since it had actual care put into it instead of the minimum amount of funding a state would allocate.

There had been Ranger cabins placed at regular intervals, and it had the air of a long hiking trail, not a wild forest.

“The rentable cars didn’t help either, did they?” He asked, a slight grin on his face.

I grumbled even more at the question.

“Although now that you mention it, there were a strange number of people who insisted on double battles,” Ted said with a slight frown. “Must be a regional thing.”

Zetian and Venus had both gotten good workouts in, but battles with other Trainers were a lot less intense than they were with wild Pokémon. There was an expectation that if something was to go wrong, the battle would stop, an expectation that wild Dusclops or Steelix most certainly didn’t have.

We hadn’t even been able to get into the Old Chateau, since the haunted building had been boarded up.

I had to reluctantly admit that was fair, since allowing people to just wander into a haven for Ghost-types probably wasn’t a good idea.

The good thing about Eterna Forest being made so accessible was that it was a lot faster to get through than I had been expecting however, and thankfully we were on track to making it to Eterna City several days before Rei’s Quadrathlon.

“Might have to stop for the night soon.” Ted said as we were approaching Eterna City, after checking his ringing Rotom Phone. “Apparently there’s a big storm coming in tonight.”

I nodded and looked towards the horizon. Sure enough, there was a dark line in the sky that was quickly approaching.

“Sure. Hey, did I ever tell you about that last storm I was in?”