Leaping from treetop to treetop, I followed along after the fluttering figure of Pidgey higher in the sky. Physically, it wasn't a struggle to keep up. I was easily able to go faster, even, if I didn't have to rely on Pidgey's additional altitude to be able to see the correct direction to travel. Mentally though, I was struggling not to dwell on what had just happened. Now that the sheer panic of the moment had passed and the adrenaline was leaving my body, my emotions were weighing on me.

The fear of that initial stare, of being thrust into an unwilling battle that was no longer about competition or growing stronger, but a fight for survival. That feeling lingered in the back of my mind. Was I really cut out for this? This was what an adventure that I thought I craved was going to be facing. There were wonderful things to find out there, I was sure of it, but how many terrible things were going to be standing in my way? Is that something I can really handle?

Of course, I could have run away. I have little doubt that the Noctowl would be able to keep up with me, even injured as I was, with the fastest transformations I had available to me already. I could have transformed into a rock again and made it lose track of me, too. Plenty of ways I could have tried to escape danger. But Pidgey was with me, and she had been the first target, not me. What if I hadn't responded to the screaming warning of my instincts in time? What if I wasn't able to push her out of the way? She could have been more seriously injured, or worse.

She was only even out here in these woods because of my encouragement. I was the one who sparred with her, helping to build her confidence in battle, and then invited her out on a 'trial run' to practice for a proper adventure. If anything happened to her, it was on my head. Without me around, she would be safe and stable back on Mable's pasture. Honestly, I felt like she was one of the closest friends I had made so far in this new life, and realizing that I had all but dragged her into mortal peril chilled me to my core. I kept second guessing myself, wondering if she really wanted to go out and take these sorts of risks, or if I had somehow coerced her into following me due to our growing friendship.

I wanted to say something about the subject to her, flying high overhead, but the distance didn't allow us to easily converse. I worried that there was going to be more than just a physical distance between us, going forward. Was she angry with me? Resentful that my idea led to such a risk? Or maybe I was overthinking it, and everything would be the same as it had always been between us. Banter and sparring, as always. Damn it, I never was good at socializing or reading others in the past. How were you supposed to start a conversation after something like this happened?

Lacking a solution, we proceeded in silence. In time, I was no longer running on treetops, but taking flying leaps upward over fields of tall grasses. A few startled Pokémon reacted to my passage, but I simply moved on faster than they could raise an issue with my presence. The last thing I needed was to get tangled in any more fights on the way home.

… Huh, I really thought that, didn't I? On the way home. That's really how I thought of Mable's pasture. I had grown so attached to the place in such a short time, more than I had honestly even wanted to. But the absolute chaos of events that had happened on my first real foray out only reinforced how amazing that little slice of peaceful haven really was. No matter what happened next, making sure that nothing affected them was surprisingly high on my list of priorities. A mysterious group gathering an intimidating Beedrill swarm? I didn't know what they were up to, but if they turned those Beedrill loose... let's just make sure it's dealt with before that can happen.

My leaping pace was slowing, and I could feel the tightness in my body that came along with the strain of holding a transformation. I had done a lot of shifting today, and alongside the travel and battling, I was wearing out fast. We were out of the woods, and most of the way across the grasslands that I knew had been near the start of our trip away from the pasture. Hang on just a little bit longer, and give Mable the information, and I can collapse and enjoy some nice sleep. Things will be taken out of my hands, and someone else can deal with the problems...

Eventually, the sight of the white picket fence barring off the pasture area drew a sigh of relief out of me. We made it, without anything else going wrong. Pidgey flew over the fence readily, while I had to fight the discomfort of merely leaping over the fence, the repellant on the wood still making my eyes sting and begin to water. If anything, it felt even more effective than it did last time I had gotten too close to it, perhaps something to do with the efficacy of the repellant on bug-type Pokémon. I crossed over near the back reaches of the pasture, in the wooded area the bug Pokémon preferred to dwell in.

A short figure dropped down before me as I leapt the fence, seeing the diminutive figure of Pansage posing in front of me, arms crossed over their chest and a firm confidence at dealing with an intruder emanating from them. "Who's there!?" Despite the challenge in his voice, I was delighted to see the broccoli-headed monkey. I just let go of the struggle to keep myself in Scyther's form and collapsed onto the grass as a puddle. The grass monkey's expression softened at the sight, recognizing me. "Ditto? What are you doing out and about at this time of night?" The concern in the voice felt pretty good, honestly, but I waved my arms to try and wave the question off.

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"I'll explain everything later, but I've gotta go wake up Mable and get her to call... I don't know, the police? The Pokémon Rangers? Hell, I'd settle for a gym leader." I dumped the words out in an exhausted, haphazard tumble. My thoughts weren't at their most clear state, and by now my eyelids felt like they had anchors attached to them, staying awake growing increasingly difficult. Now that I was in my usual small, blob-like state, I raised both arms upward like a child asking to be carried without a lick of shame. "Can you take me to the house? Please? I can barely move at this point..."

After a pause of just staring at me in surprise, Pansage nodded and picked me up, cradling my amorphous body. I was oozing downward slowly through the grip, and I felt like this was the least solid I had ever been. It might have something to do with how much I had overexerted myself today. "Alright, come on, let's get you to the house. I'm sure Mable won't mind getting woken up if it's important." Pansage darted across the wooded area at the back of the pasture, heading toward the back door of the house.

Pidgey had seemingly been one step ahead of me, as the lights were on in the windows as we hurried to approach. The back door of the kitchen was open, and a bleary-eyed Mable was standing in the doorframe with a night robe and slippers on, the most disheveled I'd seen her, her tangled hair looking like a bird had attempted to nest in it instead of her usual neat ponytail.

"Pansage? And Ditto? What's going on? Pidgey pecked my window and raised such a ruckus it'd wake the dead..." Mable noticed our approach, and then my decided lack of liveliness after Pansage put me down on the grass near the back door. "And are you alright? You look like you're barely holding yourself together, Ditto. What happened?"

Back when I first had the idea, I wanted to express an interest in writing and have Mable teach me about it in order to have some sort of cover story. But the times called for haste, and I didn't have a better idea on how to get the information across quickly. Slowly oozing forward, I glanced up at a calendar that hung on the wall next to the fridge, making pointing gestures at it, then grabbing gestures of pulling toward myself. Still looking puzzled, Mable took the calendar and set it down on the kitchen floor near me, pulling a chair over from the table to settle down into a seat. "Okay...? What do you need my calendar for?"

I just shook my head and reached for the pen that was clipped to the edge of the binding, clicked it, and flipped the calendar around to the blank space on the back of the page. I hadn't ever written with this blobby nub-hand I possessed, and even though the pen stuck readily to my appendage, it made any effort at writing shaky and unsteady. It looked like a child just learning their letters making a first attempt to write. Maybe that would help me come up with an excuse for knowing how to write later on, since it looked so rough and untidy. Slowly, steadily I forced the pen across the paper.

Mable stared intently at the page, reading off the words as I put them down. "Went to forest southwest. Lots of Kakuna." I underlined the word lots, then circled it several times for good measure before I continued by drawing an arrow from the word Kakuna connecting to the word Beedrill. Mable resumed reading along as I continued. "Strange trainers, uniforms, catch Beedrill. Lots Beedrill." Once again, I underlined and circled the word 'lots' for as much emphasis as I could manage. "Help!" I drew a circle around the arrow between Kakuna and Beedrill, slashing a line crossing over it in the universal 'not allowed' symbol.

"So there's a large amount of Kakuna that are going to evolve, and there's strange people catching that bunch of Beedrill?" Mable asked, though it sounded more like she was musing to herself than wanting me to answer it. Regardless, I nodded my head emphatically, and she glanced aside at the clock. It was showing that it was just slightly past midnight. "I better put on the coffee, this is going to be a long night. Alright, I'm going to put a call in to the ranger station in town. At the least, I can ask if they've seen anything unusual or had any other odd reports recently. I should at least be able to convince them that someone needs to be sent to check. We've already had a few calls in just a few days with the police, the police are going to start wondering if they need to build a station on my front lawn if I bother them any more… and things might not be serious enough that they're needed. Technically there's nothing illegal about catching a bunch of Beedrill, even if it's a little... unusual." The weak chuckle she offered tried to lighten the mood.

It wasn't exactly what I wanted, but it wasn't likely that a report made by one person on information discovered by a pair of Pokémon was going to be taken fully seriously without independent verification. If Mable was able to get the rangers take it seriously enough to investigate, that was enough of a win. There was no way anyone could see hundreds and hundreds of Kakuna and not be concerned about the impact it would have when they inevitably evolved. That, and just how unusual it was for them to show up in such numbers without warning in the first place.

A deep sense of relief washed over me as Mable took my warning seriously enough to report in the first place. I was worried that she might be convinced I was exaggerating, or that I couldn't know how many Pokémon would be abnormal because I was so young. She didn't even seem to consider that I was wrong, or lying, or even just making a mistake. She took what I said to heart and acted on it, and I couldn't begin to express how grateful I was for that. If she had needed more evidence from me, I wasn't sure what I could do to convince her other than try and drag her into the woods to show her.

Now that the tension mostly left my body and my worries were at least a little alleviated by the idea someone was going to investigate the strange goings-on in the forest, I wasn't able to fight against the weight of my eyelids pressing downward any longer. I slumped down further right there on the kitchen floor, my lower body oozing across the edges of the calendar I had been writing on, and promptly fell asleep.