The second day passed much the same as the first, although Wound-Seeker pulled me off of log-hauling fairly early.

Aside from the sandshrews still going strong, I had expected him to have me restart move practice, but he didn’t, just letting me catch my breath again. My muscles were already sore from the previous day, and just hauling my log around the hill once was enough to set them on fire once more.

“So,” I said after I felt solid enough to make conversation and finding watching the sandshrews hault around the hill somewhat boring, “this is endurance training I guess?”

The sandslash made an oddly human gesture with his claw, tilting it back and forth. “A little of that. Mostly it's to bleed off the ridiculous energy the younglings have. Calms them down, makes them more willing to learn. And you’re never going to be in prime form when your moves matter most. You’re always gonna be beaten down, tired. That’s where practice keeps you standing. Keeps you moving forward.”

I nodded, his words making a surprising amount of sense. We sat for some time in the silence then, as I digested the wisdom before my mind began to ponder once more over the fact that I could use Scratch, a move definitely not in the Nidoran learnset.

Then it was Wound-Seeker’s turn to break the quiet interim.

“You’re a long way from home,” he said casually, “not many Nidoran around here.”

I eyed him uncertainly. He glanced my way, shrugged, then turned back to the sandshrews to yell at one that was taking a shortcut inside the ring he had made sure we all knew were the inner bounds of the route.

I wasn’t totally sure what to say. While it hadn’t come up, I knew these were wild pokemon, and technically I wasn’t anymore. I didn’t know whether there might be a kind of animosity or stigma there.

There was also the matter that I wasn’t totally sure if the sandslash was still sour over having to train me in addition to the sandshrews. He went back and forth between easy conversation and dismissive comments or yelling with no pattern I could discern. Not to mention clocking me over the head any time I got distracted or lost in my own thoughts during training.

He called in the rest of the sandshrews shortly, and set us training again. After only a little while practicing Scratch with the sandshrews who were polishing up Defense Curl, he pulled me and a few of them over to the Sand-Attack group.

Sand-Attack was another move that hadn’t been listed in the pokedex entry, and which I couldn't recall Nidoran having in the games either.

“I’ll say this again for those just joining us,” the sandslash said, “Sand-Attack is a little more difficult than Scratch and Defense Curl, because you need to tap into your ground-type roots for it. It’s not going to come naturally like the first two did. You can’t just go through the motions until it clicks. You have to push your own energy into it to really make the sand move right. Once you’ve got it down, you won’t even need sand on the ground.. You’ll make your own sand. But that’ll come later.”

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He looked around at each of us, then took what looked like a practiced step towards the gap in the rough semicircle. He turned his body just as his other foot landed to spin just as his arm moved out to orbit his body, parallel to the ground. Sand leapt up under his claw as he did so, then shot out in a wide spray into the gap like an almost solid fan.

Even the sandshrews who had been already practicing the move previously looked on with appreciation at his form, though I suspected they were able to pick out details I couldn’t based upon their own existing understanding of the move.

Those who had been there previously set back to practicing on their own, while the newcomers he took turns with to get them started. Some of the sandshrews got it almost immediately, while others took a few attempts.

It took me nineteen attempts before I got something that I was certain had been perfect form, yet the sand never once leapt up to spray out as it had for Wound-Seeker. The sandslash was watching that time and crossed his arms in annoyance as he frowned, mumbling something I didn’t quite catch.

Maybe I’m missing something, I thought, as my eyes roved over the sandshrews practicing the move. Tree-Climber and I were a show of opposites. Where I had to struggle just to get the movements right, she seemed to flow through things as gracefully as Wound-Seeker had.

Something felt off, however, and it took a solid minute for me to figure out what.

Every so often, a sandshrew would glance off towards an outcropping not far from us, though they were quick about it. Wound-Seeker never looked, but then he was standing with his back to it as he observed us.

I squinted at it, my eyesight not as good as the sandshrews and was surprised by what I saw. A black and red line peeked out from the side of a boulder unsteadily, and after a moment it peeked out further, until I could make it out as the rim of a cap on a human looking around the edge of the rock at us before they slid back out of view. Halfway to the ground, I got just the slightest look at what I assumed to be the edge of a pokeball or maybe a pokedex at what would be about waist-height.

What is a trainer doing here? I thought.

“Don’t look at it,” was the sandslash’s low warning. I blinked at him.

He didn’t look pleased. In fact, when I really scrutinized him, he looked downright angry.

“If it thinks we know it’s there, it’ll try to catch one of us. Probably send out a trained pokemon to knock us about first, making the catch more certain,” he said, “but as long as we don’t know they’re there, they can observe and might decide to try another day, and retain the element of surprise.”

“You don’t think you can win?” I asked, and the sandslash scoffed.

“Doesn’t matter if I can win,” he said, “it matters how roughed up we get in the process. If a trainer wants to catch one of us, there’s not much we can do about it. There will always be the young, the weak, who are easily caught. And if I do win, what do you think comes next? I’ll tell you what - Rangers, to cull the dangerous group of aggressive pokemon, that’s what.”

He spat, but kept his eyes carefully away from the rock where the trainer hid.

“We’re too few as is.”

We were all tense, but eventually the nameless trainer retreated, their scent on the wind dying to nothing when they were far enough away.

“That’s enough for today,” Wound-Seeker said, “go rest up for tomorrow.”

I looked up at where the sun sat, not yet touching the horizon, then down at the sandslash’s slowly retreating form.

Who hurt you?