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Kael padded into the living room and found Earl already awake.
The boy sat curled on the sofa with his arms wrapped around his knees, staring through the far wall as if the world on the other side might be kinder than the one he'd left behind.
The night had carved a new line into his expression thin and sharp, like the first etch of a scar.
What comfort could Kael offer? None that would matter. Time, he knew, was the only antidote that ever truly worked.
Earl flinched at the soft scrape of Kael's footfall. He turned, pale hair falling across his brow, and somehow managed a small, gentle smile for the strange Machop who had saved him.
Kael nodded back and sat nearby, thoughts already moving. He needed a human settlement somewhere fortified, somewhere organized. Without a base, everything else was risk and drift. He could fight, yes, but fighting without a plan was just another way to die.
And he needed a guide.
Whiteleaf Town was gone. As far as Kael could tell, Earl was the only survivor. That made the boy precious in more ways than one.
He exhaled slowly. No assumptions, he told himself test it.
"Ah-hem."
Earl looked over, wary but curious, green eyes bright despite the grief.
"Hello," Kael said.
What Kael heard was his own voice quiet, careful, almost formal. What Earl heard should have been a low, resonant growl: the Machop line's timbre sat oddly between a young man's and a baritone, deepening further with each evolution.
To most humans, Pokémon speech blurred into species calls and tone shifts, little more than music without subtitles.
Pokémon could parse human languages; after enough time, the patterns made sense. But the reverse? Rare. Human ears missed too many frequencies; human brains filed too much nuance into the same drawer. Even among trainers, true comprehension was a gift earned through long years or granted at birth.
So when Kael tried this, he expected confusion.
Instead, Earl tilted his head, blinking once. He didn't scramble for meaning or flinch from the sound.
He simply listened.
Silence stretched.
"…Right," Kael murmured to himself. "That's a no."
He'd guessed last night that the boy might be gifted; now he prepared to write the idea off as wishful thinking.
Then Earl raised his small right hand and gave a tentative little wave.
"Hi."
Kael stared. For a beat, the sunrise might as well have been a spotlight.
"You… understand me?" Kael asked, pointing at himself.
"Yeah." Earl nodded, faintly puzzled by the question. "Why wouldn't I?"
Kael blinked.
Once.
Twice.
A laugh wanted to break loose. He swallowed it, and it came out as a stunned exhale instead. "Huh."
For Earl, this was normal; he had never held a full conversation with a Pokémon before, but the words he heard now slid into his mind with the same clarity as any human sentence. To him, the idea that someone couldn't understand a Pokémon seemed almost silly like forgetting how to read a smile.
For Kael, it was something else entirely.
A windfall from nowhere. A door, opening.
He gathered himself, the sly grin that lived somewhere in his bones threatening to show. He let it fade and kept his tone level.
"Earl," he said, "I need your help."
The boy straightened a little, that small, automatic kindness flickering in his eyes again. "Okay."
"I'm looking for other people," Kael said. "A city. Fortresses. Outposts. Anything safe."
Earl's smile dimmed, but he nodded. "There's a big city northwest of here. We call it Ignis City." He paused. "It's far. And there are patrols sometimes, but… the roads are dangerous now."
"How far?" Kael asked.
Earl looked down, thinking. "Two days for caravans. Faster if you're strong. The League keeps routes open when they can." He swallowed. "Sometimes they can't."
Kael filed the facts away. Two days by caravan, which meant less than a day if he pushed it if it were just him. With Earl, he'd move more slowly. He'd also be alive to ask questions when he got there.
"Trainers in Ignis?" Kael asked. "The League still holds it?"
Earl nodded. "The League… and the Guard. Not like before, my dad said but strong." The name Dad scraped something raw. He pressed his lips together, and the moment passed.
Kael inclined his head. "Then that's our heading."
He stood, crossed to the front window, and parted the curtain with two fingers. Morning poured in golden and cold. The street lay silent, cleaned by wind and indifferent sun.
No carrion birds. No scavengers. The Mightyena had taken what they wanted and left the rest to time.
"We'll need supplies," Kael said. "Water. Bandages. Anything you can carry."
Earl slid off the sofa. "I… I can help. I know which houses had stores."
"Good," Kael said. "But first eat something real. And rest for ten minutes. We move light, but we move ready."
Earl nodded again obedient by necessity, not fear. He paused, then ventured: "Can I ask you something?"
"Ask."
"Are you… normal?" Earl said, his cheeks coloring. "For a Machop, I mean. You're different."
Kael thought of the way electricity had flashed inside a Mightyena's mouth, of the way its jaw had slammed shut on his knee and detonated itself.
He thought of the chill that ran beneath his skin when he called up Ghost-type energy, the wrongness that felt more and more like home.
"No," he said simply. "I'm not."
Earl accepted that with a small, solemn nod, as if he had expected no other answer. "Okay."
Kael almost smiled. "Does that scare you?"
Earl's eyes flicked toward the door, toward the street where his world had ended. When he looked back, something steadier had taken root.
"A little," he admitted. "But you saved me."
"That's enough," Kael said. "For now."
They worked quietly for a while Earl checking cupboards and closets with the practised hands of a child who'd been asked to help more often than he should have had to, Kael folding what was useful into a scavenged pack: two canteens; a roll of gauze; a threadbare blanket; a dented pan; three wrapped ration blocks past the date but edible; a knife whose weight balanced sweetly in his palm.
He set the knife aside and found a coil of cord, a flint, and a length of cloth strong enough for a sling. He eyed Earl, small, wiry, resilient, and pieced the future together step by step.
A day's march, Shade at noon, Water by twilight. Watch shifts he would not trust the boy to keep.
At the door, Earl hesitated. "Will there be… more of the red-eyed ones?"
"Yes," Kael said. "But fewer in daylight. We'll keep moving. We won't give them time to circle."
Earl breathed in, then out. "Okay."
Kael turned the latch and stopped. "One more thing," he said, looking back at the boy. "Hearing me as you do that isn't common. Don't tell people unless you trust them."
"Why?" Earl asked.
"Because gifts make you valuable," Kael said. "And sometimes 'valuable' is just another word for 'owned.'"
Earl absorbed that with a seriousness beyond his years. "I won't tell."
"Good."
They stepped out into the morning. The air smelled of dust and something faintly sweet flowers, maybe, bravely blooming somewhere no one would see.
Kael led, Earl a pace behind, both of them shadows stitched to the ragged edge of a ruined town.
At the crossroads, Earl tugged Kael's arm and pointed northwest. "That way."
Kael nodded and set off.
They hadn't gone far before Earl spoke again, voice small but clear. "Kael?"
"Yes."
"Thank you," he said, without looking up. "For yesterday. And… for today."
Kael let the silence answer and kept walking. Gratitude was a weight he didn't know how to carry anymore. Better to keep his hands free.
They passed the last house and came to the low fence where Whiteleaf ended and the Koron Plains began an ocean of tawny grass, bright with dew and edged in wind. The world opened. The horizon sharpened.
Kael paused. The old, familiar ache of memory brushed him fizzing soda, late-night barbecue, friends' laughter rippling like heat over concrete. He let the ache pass through him and away.
"Forward," he said.
They took their first steps into the long grass.
Somewhere far to the southwest, a blond man in polished shoes chose a direction at random and by mercy or malice of fate, chose correctly.
And between those two points on the map, the threads began to pull tight.
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