I groaned as I tried to sit up, failed, tried to raise my head, failed, tried to open my eyes, and failed.

I tried to say, ‘did someone get the number on that bus,’ but I was fairly certain what actually came out was incomprehensible gibberish and muttering.

“Shhh,” a voice said, “drink this.”

“..who?” I managed to get out, but stopped as I felt liquid against my lips.

“Less talking, more drinking,” that same voice said with a tinge of amusement.

The liquid wasn’t quite water. It was fruity, but the sweetness was very weak and it had the faintest tang of heat, which made it strange but not unpleasant. The closest thing I could compare it to was drinking very mild, very diluted pineapple salsa.

There was the faintest breeze, like a slow and steady wind. I could feel the heat of the sun, but it was indirect.

“Now, I don’t want you moving or talking just yet, but you’re allowed to open your eyes, hun.”

I tried again, and managed it.

I was laid out on a smooth stone in a sort of tunnel. The sun shone through holes here and there, creating pools of warmth every few feet though none of them were directly on me.

A large figure loomed over me with equally large claws, but my panic settled down as it made no move to harm me. A sandslash. It spoke.

“There we go. Now, if you’re feeling up to it, you can talk. But take it slow. Slow, short words. No need to push yourself.”

She spoke?

It wasn’t quite the voice itself, but something else that tipped me off that I couldn’t nail down.

“What happened?”

I barely made it through the second word before I found myself weakly coughing.

The sandslash hmm’d to herself and raised an earthenware jug to my lips, and I tasted the liquid from before.

“You fell out of the sky. Landed on an arbok. That arbok was about to make a meal of one of my little shrews. So I am thankful for your presence, though I doubt it was your intention.”

She worked silently for a time, her overlarge claws surprisingly dexterous as she removed a sort of leafy bandage from my torso, then poured water slowly over the parts of my hide that still stung and ached from where avian claws had pierced it.

“These wounds look like the work of a pidgeotto, or perhaps a younger pidgeot. And though it is healed over… there are the faint scars of a canine’s bite. You certainly seem to attract dangerous predators. You’ll either die young, or grow up into a truly terrifying warrior.”

She hummed a tuneless melody as she spread a yellow-green paste over new leaf-bandages, then applied them to the wounds. It stung like mint and smelled like ice.

I wanted to ask more questions, but she preemptively shushed me.

“Rest. Sleep, if it takes you. We will speak when you are healed.”

I was left to my thoughts and little else for the remainder of the day. I wondered how Mete’s scouting had went. I hoped that Rosa didn’t get too much flak over something she couldn’t have helped. I couldn’t imagine that a highly evolved flying type coming out of nowhere like that was a common occurrence.

And I itched to move. To get stronger. I had to wonder if this was what Mete had meant by having energy to burn.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

While I couldn’t really do anything which required movement, there wasn’t anything stopping me from mental pursuits.

Focus Energy. That’s what had been the next move in the list.

From my memory, I thought it was used to gather a kind of energy in order to increase critical hit rate… but what did that really mean? I pondered this question as time crawled by.

What was a ‘critical hit’ in any case? Was it an especially potent hit, or a hit which struck at the perfect spot? If it was the former, then Focus Energy must surely prepare potency in some way. If it was the latter, then what Focus Energy actually prepared was not energy, but focus.

I slipped into sleep, and by the time I woke again day had passed into evening.

There was far more activity. I could see sandshrews and the occasional sandslash moving to and fro through the open doorway, although few passed through the area where I had been placed. Sandshrews peered curiously at me as they passed, and the slashes snuck their own peeks when they thought no one was looking.

I was growing truly restless, and when one sandshrew snuck in to get a closer look at me I was thankful for the potential conversation partner.

“Hey,” was my articulate greeting.

“Uh… hello!” the sandshrew returned, “Are you well?”

I tried moving my body a bit, and found that while there was still an ache of a kind, it was a dull one. I felt a little stiff as well, but it was becoming a familiar sensation. I wasn’t sure if that was a good or bad thing.

“Well enough,” I decided.

The sandshrew pondered that for a moment, then bowed its head.

“I am Tree-Climber. You fell from the sky, and struck the arbok which was about to make a meal of me. I thank you.”

I fidgeted slightly under the sandshrew’s formal speech.

“You’re… welcome? Where is this anyway? Is it far from Hawthorne’s forest?”

The sandslash only gave a confused look.

“Hawthorne? Forest?”

I sighed. Of course I’d be too far for wild pokemon to have any idea what I was talking about.

“Well, there was a sandslash that helped heal me so… we’re even?”

“Oh!” the sandshrew said in surprise, “Elder Soft-Claws. She is a great healer. And one of the more personable elders.”

I could hear a note of fondness in Tree-Climber’s voice when she mentioned Soft-Claws, though I also got the impression she didn’t think as highly of the other ‘elders.’

“Personable, am I?”

Tree-Climber and I both jumped slightly as we realized we had company. Two of the sandslashes had approached from the other doorway while we’d been distracted.

One was obviously Soft-Claws, though the other I didn’t recognize. The unknown was scarred across the torso and face, the lighter markings giving them a dangerous look.

“This feeble thing?” they, he said, “You want me to train this?”

“Yes, esteemed Wound-Seeker,” the other elder sighed before turning to me.

“As I said before, I am thankful that you saved Tree-Climber.”

I glanced back to the sandshrew in question, who was fidgeting in place.

“It was nothing,” I replied, “a lucky accident at best.”

“Be that as it may,” Soft-Claw replied quickly, Wound-Seeker having opened his mouth but stopping short as the other elder spoke, “I believe there is more we could do for you, and more you could do for us. If you are willing to entertain an offer.”

Wound-Seeker crossed his arms and looked to the side, clearly not pleased with the whole affair.

“We find ourselves short of warriors, and the menace of the local predators grows by the day. We would have you trained in our ways, that you may help defend us for a season.”

“Just a season?” I asked, even as a part of me argued it was stupid to question the offer.

Wound-Seeker remained silent.

“After that,” Soft-Claw said, “the cold of winter will begin to settle in, and the predators will have less energy to spend on pursuing our tribe. And by the Spring, our own young will be old enough to fill the missing ranks. You will be welcome to stay, of course, should you continue to help defend us.”

“We’ll see about that,” the other elder snorted before fixing me with a look, “so what will it be? I’m telling you now, I won’t go easy on you.”

I considered it. I didn’t know where I was, or how to get back to Mete. I was probably better off staying. That’s what you were supposed to do when lost, right? And I had to admit, the idea of learning how to fight from the Sandslash had its own appeal.

“Sure,” I said, fairly confident I wouldn’t regret it.