Chapter 2 – The Wrong Kind of Lucky
Ryan turned around slowly.
She looked about twenty, maybe a little older. Dark hair pulled back practically, a field jacket , a worn leather bag slung over one shoulder. She was holding a small flashlight pointed slightly away from his face, which he appreciated. Beside her stood an Empoleon, easily as tall as she was, watching Ryan with calm yellow eyes that missed nothing.
Ryan was still breathing hard. His hands hadn't stopped shaking yet and he could feel his pulse in his throat, loud and too fast. He pressed one hand flat against his knee and tried to look like someone who had this under control.
He did not have this under control.
"That's what hit the Ursaring," he managed between breaths.
"Flash Cannon," she confirmed. "She'll be fine. Just enough to redirect her." She tilted her head slightly. "You're welcome, by the way."
"Right." He exhaled, long and unsteady. "Sorry. Thank you. That was yeah. Thank you."
She smiled, and it was the kind of smile that made you feel like you were the most interesting thing she'd seen all week. "Mara. Field researcher, based out of Sandgem. And you are?"
"Ryan." He straightened up slowly, ribs still aching from the sprint. "Sorry, I just give me a second."
"Take your time."
He did. Thirty seconds of just standing there with his hands on his knees while his breathing came back to something normal. Mara waited without making it weird, which he appreciated more than he could say.
"Okay," he said finally. "Okay. Ryan. That's me."
"Just Ryan?"
" yeah."
She accepted that without pushing, which somehow felt more unsettling than if she had pushed. She gestured toward a narrow path cutting through the trees to her left. "There's a rest point about ten minutes from here. You look like you need to sit down."
He did. He really did.
They walked in silence for a moment, the Empoleon moving beside Mara with the quiet confidence of something that had never once been afraid of anything. The forest felt different with a Flash Cannon user walking next to him. Less hostile. The sounds had settled back into something normal.
"So," Mara said, her voice light and conversational. "What brings you out to Route 201 alone at night with no Pokemon and no gear?"
Ryan had been expecting the question. He'd been building his answer for the last five minutes.
"I don't really know," he said. Which was technically true. "I was somewhere else. And then I wasn't. I woke up in the forest and had no idea where I was."
Mara glanced at him sideways. "Somewhere else."
"Yeah."
"And you have no idea how you got from somewhere else to the middle of Route 201 after dark."
"No."
She was quiet for a moment. Then: "Are you hurt?"
"No."
"Hungry?"
He actually hadn't thought about that. "Not yet."
She nodded slowly, like she was filing something away. "And before you woke up in the forest — do you remember anything? Where you were, who you were with?"
The questions were reasonable. They were exactly the questions anyone would ask. Ryan told himself that.
"Not really," he said. "It's blurry."
Mara made a small sound not disbelieving, not convinced either. She reached into one of her jacket pockets and pulled out a nutrition bar, holding it out to him without breaking stride. "Eat this anyway. Shock does things to your body even when you don't feel it."
Ryan took it. "Thanks."
The rest point was a small covered structure a wooden roof, a bench, a lamp running on something that hummed faintly. Mara set her bag down and pulled out a battered notebook, flipping to a fresh page with the ease of long habit.
"I'll need to log this," she said, almost apologetically. "Protocol. Someone found disoriented on a route at night I have to report it."
"What does that mean?"
"It means someone from Sandgem will want to ask you a few questions tomorrow. Nothing serious." She looked up from the notebook. "Do you have somewhere to stay tonight?"
"No."
"Trainer's lodge in Sandgem has emergency beds. I can take you there." She wrote something in the notebook — quick, practiced strokes, more than a name and a date would need. He caught a glimpse before she closed it. Not a log entry. Something that looked more like a list. "Where are you from originally? I can help contact someone if you have family."
Ryan looked at the nutrition bar in his hands. "It's fine. I don't need anyone contacted."
Mara watched him for just a moment longer than felt natural. Then she smiled again, warm and easy, and let it go. "Okay. No pressure."
The Empoleon had settled at the edge of the rest point, facing outward into the dark, completely still. Watching. Ryan found himself watching it back.
Something was off about the way it stood. Not wrong exactly. Just precise. Like it wasn't resting but positioned.
He filed that away and said nothing.
They left for Sandgem twenty minutes later, following a path that Mara clearly knew well enough to walk in the dark. Ryan kept pace beside her and answered the questions she asked small ones now, easy ones, what did he think of the forest, had he seen any other Pokemon, how long did he think he'd been walking before the Ursaring found him.
Normal questions. Reasonable questions.
He answered them and tried not to think about why they felt like something more.
At some point during the walk, between one step and the next, he became aware of something.
A feeling. Faint and directionless, like the sensation of being watched without being able to locate where from. He didn't stop walking. Didn't look around. He had enough to deal with already.
He let it go.
— Deino —
Something changed in the air.
He felt it before anything else a shift, distant and sourceless, like pressure dropping before a storm. He had been still in the long grass at the forest edge, half-asleep, when it reached him. Not sound. Not scent. Something underneath both, a pull that moved through him the way cold water moves, finding every hollow.
He was on his feet before he decided to move.
It came from deep inside the forest. He followed it the way he followed everything by feel, by the vibration of the ground beneath his claws, by the particular texture of the air moving against the membranes around his face. He had learned this forest in the weeks since he had been alone in it. Every root, every slope, every place where the ground went soft without warning.
He moved quietly. He had learned to move quietly.
The pull got stronger as he went deeper. Whatever had arrived, it was close now. Warm and steady and unlike anything else in this place. He slowed, staying low, and waited.
Something large shifted nearby.
He recognized the weight of it immediately. The female with the small one. He knew her territory, had been careful for weeks to stay outside it. He went completely still.
Then movement fast, panicked, crashing through the undergrowth. Something running. And behind it, the female, heavy and furious, shaking the ground with each stride.
It was running.
Deino moved.
He cut parallel through the undergrowth, fast and low, tracking it by the vibration of its footsteps, by the sound of its breathing ragged and desperate, two legs, no claws, completely wrong for this forest. The female was closing. He could feel the gap shrinking.
A sound split the air sharp and percussive, like nothing natural. The female lurched and stopped.
Deino stopped too.
He crouched in the undergrowth and listened. Two sets of footsteps now.He waited until they began to move toward the distant lights. Then he crept forward until he reached the place where it had stood.
He lowered his head and breathed in.
His whole body locked.
A sound scraped out of his throat before he could stop it low and involuntary, older than thought.
Dark space. No light. Movement without asking. Vibrations of things he hadn't understood and hadn't been able to see and hadn't been able to stop.
That.
This smelled like that.
Underneath it, something else. Warm. The Pull. Still there, moving away along the path, getting smaller.
Deino stood at the edge of the treeline and did not move.
Two things. Pulling in two directions.
His claws pressed into the ground.
He stayed where he was.