I blinked up at the wooden planks a couple feet above my head.

“An unfamiliar ceiling.” I muttered to myself, trying to figure out where I was.

After all, I was pretty sure that I had gone to sleep in my tent, not… in a cabin?

The events of the night before came flooding back. The emergency Ranger call, meeting all the other Trainers, the fight with the Dusclops, and the long walk back. It almost felt like a dream, except for the obviously very real Ranger’s cabin.

I groaned and sat up on the small cot that had been my bed for the night. Venus opened one eye and growled cutely at me for disturbing her, before going back to sleep. Zetian’s three mouths yawned in unison, then she began flying around, curious at her new surroundings in the daylight.

“Oh, hey.” A vaguely familiar voice called, and I looked over to see Ted sitting at a rough wooden table glancing up from a Rotom phone. “You’re finally awake.”

“Wazzat?” I said around a yawn.

“You are awake.” He enunciated. “We were wondering when you were going to get up today.”

I blinked owlishly at him, then looked around the otherwise empty cabin.

“Ah, they had to go, unlike us, they actually have jobs they have to do.” Ted explained, closing a thin book of some kind and pocketing his phone.

“I have a job.” I said, still a bit asleep. “So do you if I remember right.”

Ted shrugged. “Yeah, but we get to travel and challenge the gyms, most Rangers have routes that they patrol.”

I stared for a long minute at nothing in particular, then shook my head.

“It’s too early in the morning for this.”

A gesture from my fellow Lab Trainer drew my eyes towards a glass pot full of black gold.

“We do have some coffee left, if you drink it.”

I groaned, and shuffled like a zombie over to the pot, pouring the wonderful elixir into a small enamel mug. Unfortunately, the cabin didn’t have any of the liquid creamer that I liked, just having some sugar and some powdered flavoring.

An unhealthy amount of the flavor powder and the sugar went into the mug, and while it wasn’t tasty by any definition of the word, after a couple minutes of sipping the drink I was starting to feel more human again.

Zetian even buzzed down to smell the sickeningly sweet brew, although she turned away after a single sip, all three faces twisted with disgust.

I finished the one mug, and considered the pot of coffee again. There was still just a little bit left, and my sleep had been very disturbed last night.

Venus eventually came over and hopped up on my lap as I sat down with my second mug before falling asleep again, obviously annoyed about the fact that her favorite pillow had abandoned her.

“So,” I said, stroking the sleeping Eevee in my lap. “Everybody else left?”

“Yup.” Ted said after taking a sip of his own drink.

It wasn’t coffee, but tea of some kind. “Ranger O’Rourke went back to check out the clearing where they fought the Dusknoir, along with Ranger Vicky.”

I furrowed my brows.

“The one with the red hair.”

“Ah, right.”

“Apparently something weird was going on with the Duskull, but it's none of our business anymore, the Rangers are looking into it. Ranger Crespin, he was the tired looking one, left to go back on his normal Route patrol. Apparently he’s based out of Floaroma and was just finishing up responding to another call when O’Rourke asked for help.”

I winced. “Ouch, long night then.”

“No kidding. Anyways, we’re all free to go, there’s nothing that the Rangers have for us right now. I was just waiting around until either you woke up, or Ranger O’Rourke came back. Didn’t want you waking up all alone in a strange place.”

I narrowed my eyes, but he seemed genuine enough.

“Well, thank you, I appreciate that, but I’m sure it would have been fine.”

He shrugged and took another sip of his tea. “Us Lab Trainers have to stick together, so it’s not a big deal.”

“Hm.” I said noncommittally, and sipped at my coffee.

It was a little too sweet, maybe Zetian had been right about that.

The cabin was silent for another few minutes as the both of us finished our respective drinks.

“Say,” Ted said after setting down his empty mug. “If you don’t mind me asking, which way were you traveling?”

I hesitated. Ted seemed like a nice enough person, but I didn’t really know him all that well. Professor Rowan seemed friendly towards him, and I hadn’t gotten any obvious vibes that this guy was bad news.

My eyes cut up towards Zetian, who was buzzing around behind the other Trainer. The bottom face, the one that seemed a bit more mature than the other two, eyed Ted’s back speculatively.

After a moment’s consideration, she turned back to me and bounced up and down in her approximation of a nod.

“I was heading towards Floaroma.” I said.

Ted either didn’t pick up on my silent conversation with my Pokémon, or was politely ignoring it as he smiled.

“Same here, as a matter of fact. I’m making my way up towards Eterna City, apparently there’s an entrance into the Underground there and I was looking to access it.”

“Huh.” This was the second time the Underground had come up since I had arrived in this world.

Lucas had apparently gotten the fossil for his Cranidos there, on an assignment for Professor Rowan. I wondered if Ted was looking to do something similar.

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“If it’s alright with you, I’d like to travel together.” Ted continued, holding up his hands. “You don’t have to, but I was hoping you’d let me be a little selfish.”

My eyes narrowed again, and were mirrored three times over by Zetian as she stilled in mid-air. “And how is that?”

“Well you obviously know about Switchback, and I’d like to go over anything you can remember about the other Hisuian Pokémon. Like I said last night, Professor Rowan gave me a copy of what looks like an old PokéDex, but the book was old and some pages are missing.”

“Oh,” That was much better than I had been imagining. “I suppose we could travel together for a little bit if that’s what you’re interested in.”

He smiled. “Anything you can tell me would be a huge help. Let me just finish getting my stuff together, and we can set out!”

I took a look at my watch, and nearly groaned. It wasn’t even nine o’clock yet, and we still had a long day of travel ahead of us.

/^\

“Sneasler, huh?” Ted said with a smile as he looked down at Switchback, who was sitting in his lap.

“Mmhm.” I agreed, around a mouthful of sandwich.

We had stopped for a bit of a late lunch on our way to Floaroma, and I finally had a chance to give my voice a break.

Ted was a nice enough guy, but his appetite for knowledge about the Hisuian forms was insatiable, and it had been a non-stop barrage of questions all day long. He had even pulled out a notebook and a pen at one point, jotting down notes as we walked.

“A Razor Claw is going to be a little tough to find, but it’s good to know that the evolution method is the same between Johtonian and Hisuian Sneasel.”

“Not quite.” I said after swallowing my bite of food. “Hisuian Sneasel evolves in the day, not at night.”

“Ah, right.”

Ted peered down at his Pokémon, who was currently messily devouring a plate of mostly-cooked meat that Switchback had cut into small cubes with his claws.

“So that’s why you’re always so tired at night.” Ted said. “You’re not a Dark-type like we thought.”

“Why did you and Birch think that?” I asked.

He shrugged. “We didn’t really have a reason not to. He picked up Taunt fast enough, and he instinctively knew Night Slash when he hatched. I figured out he was a Fighting-type early on, since I don’t know of any other Sneasel that can learn Rock Smash, but we always thought he was a Dark-type.”

Huh. So that’s one way they figure out Pokémon typing.

The other way I could think of checking was to throw a bunch of attacks at a Pokémon, and see which ones were more effective than the others. That way didn’t seem very humane to me.

Ted brightened, then stood up, causing Switchback to yelp in concern and scramble to hold its plate.

“Just a second.” He told our small group, then disappeared into the woods.

I blinked and shared a look with Zetian, who was my traveling partner for the day. Both of our gazes then turned to Switchback, who looked just as startled as we felt.

A few minutes later, Ted emerged from the bushes, a cloth carefully held in both hands. When he got back, he laid it down on the ground in front of Switchback, and opened it up to reveal a bunch of berries.

Not Berries like the game items, which were really closer to actual fruits like an apple. Then again, I also vaguely remembered that some fruits were a kind of berry, like bananas.

I frowned in confusion as Ted started placing the berries in two small piles, one for himself, and one for Switchback.

Had I learned that in high school? I had a vivid memory of our science teacher, a very strange man who drank too much coffee and wore those weird shoes with the toes, ranting about it at length once. Despite the memory, I couldn’t actually remember what was a berry, and what was a fruit.

Regardless, these were small, white and red berries that looked… kinda unhealthy.

“Wait.” I said, pulling out a small handbook that I had purchased in Jubilife, flipping through the glossy pages until I landed on a familiar looking berry.

Fruit. Whatever.

“Aren’t those Pokéweed berries?”

They had gotten their name from the fact that there were two different kinds of bushes, one that produced red berries, and one that produced white berries.

The connection wasn’t hard to make.

“Yup, they sure are!” Ted said with a grin, and showed Switchback that he should eat the berries by popping one into his mouth and chewing with gusto.

“Aren’t they poisonous?”

“Yup!” Ted popped another one into his mouth.

Switchback gingerly picked up one of the berries, sniffed it a couple of times, then daintily bite into it. His pupils dilated, and a second later the little Sneasel was shoveling great handfuls of the berries into his mouth.

“I figured he would like them.” Ted said, casually eating a couple more berries. “Most Poison-types do like plants and berries that are poisonous in nature, so I thought that it would be a good supplement to his diet.”

“No, I mean-” I resisted the urge to facepalm. “Yes, Switchback’s a Poison-type, but you’re not.”

Ted stopped chewing, looking down at his fingers which were stained red with berry juice.

“Ah.” He said, and swallowed. “Oops.”

/^\

We didn’t end up traveling for the rest of the day, and instead set up our camp off the road.

It was weird, camping with another person. Ted had a much larger tent than I did, and it took me a couple of tries to figure out what was making it look weird to me.

The cloth was made out of some kind of fabric that subtly shifted colors every time you looked at it. It wasn’t bright and colorful, instead it neatly blended into the background. If I hadn’t known that it was there, it would have taken me a while to find the tent at all.

“It’s derived from a Kecleon’s color changing.” Ted said, when I asked him about it.

“Devon Corp. likes to do things like that, using Pokémon traits in their products.”

It would have been a lot cooler if I didn’t have to help set up his tent. The Pokéberries were only somewhat poisonous to humans, so Ted had some severe stomach cramps after eating a Pecha Berry instead of dying or something equally dramatic.

Ted still wasn’t happy about it, but even he recognized that it was better than the alternative.

Eventually as night started to fall, he was feeling well enough to get down some soup.

Venus was chowing down on a mixture of Berries, fish, and some grains that I had picked up in Jubilife, while Zetian was thoroughly demolishing a bowl of simple syrup that I had put some protein powder into. I thought it smelled disgusting, but she couldn’t get enough of the stuff.

For his own team, Ted had managed to produce a gigantic bowl of meat and Berries for his Flygon Rakkyo, while Switchback was having another plate of the Pokéberries that had caused this whole mess to begin with.

Interestingly enough, Ted’s third Pokémon was a Scyther who had been introduced as “Mayfly,” which was currently messily gnawing on a Berry the size of my head.

“So,” He said, blowing gently on his hot bowl. “Why are you going to Eterna?”

I shrugged as I took a sip of my own soup. “I told a friend I would watch them do the Quadrathlon.”

“Oh wow, that’s impressive. The Quadrathlon isn’t something that you take lightly.”

“Have you ever seen one?”

He shrugged. “Once, in Hoenn. A long, long time ago though.”

“What’s it like there?” I asked leaning forwards, soup forgotten.

I’d played the Hoenn games, of course. Both the originals and the remakes. Platinum had been my favorite, of course, but Emerald was a close second.

“It’s hot.” Ted said with a chuckle. “And humid! You can’t even imagine how humid it gets in the summer.”

He gestured towards his glasses. “There were days when I’d walk outside, out of the air-conditioned parts of the lab, and my glasses would instantly fog up. Couldn’t see anything for minutes!”

I shuddered. “I’m glad I’m in Sinnoh then.”

“Oh you get used to it. For the most part, anyways. If it’s too hot of a day, your boss will often just call everybody off of work, and we’d all go down to the beach. That’s what Sinnoh is missing, good beaches. All of the ones here are rocky and cold, there’s no warm sand. And in the forests, really they’re closer to jungles, but you can feel how alive they are. Pokémon are everywhere, you can’t swing a Meowth without hitting a Seedot, or a Wurmple! And in the late spring and early summer, all the Nincada will come out and sing.”

His smile turned sad, and his eyes glazed over as he stared out into his memories.

“And the people! Oh you’ll never meet kinder or more friendly people in the world. One time I was hiking…”

The soup and the stomach pains were forgotten as we talked and laughed, sharing stories long into the night.