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 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 him with calm yellow eyes that missed nothing.
Ryan was still breathing hard. His hands hadn't stopped shaking and he could feel his pulse in his throat, loud and too fast. He pressed one hand against his knee and tried to look like someone who had things under control.
He did not have things under control.
"That's what hit the Ursaring," he managed.
"Flash Cannon," she confirmed. "She'll be fine. Just enough to redirect her." A slight tilt of her head. "You're welcome, by the way."
"Right." He exhaled, long and unsteady. "Sorry. Thank you. That was yeah. Thank you."
She smiled warm, easy, the kind that made you not quite sure what to do with your hands. "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, hands on his knees, while his breathing came back down. Mara waited without making it weird, which he appreciated more than he could say.
"Okay," he said finally. "Ryan. That's me."
"Just Ryan?"
"...yeah."
She accepted that without pushing. Somehow that felt more unsettling than if she had. She gestured toward a narrow path 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 really did.
They walked in silence for a while, 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, voice light. "What brings you to Route 201 alone at night with no Pokémon and no gear?"
Ryan had been building his answer for the last five minutes.
"I don't really know," he said. Technically true. "I was somewhere else. Then I wasn't. I woke up in the forest and had no idea where I was."
Mara glanced at him. "Somewhere else."
"Yeah."
"And you don't know how you got from somewhere else to the middle of Route 201 after dark."
"No."
A moment of quiet. Then: "Are you hurt?"
"No."
"Hungry?"
He actually hadn't thought about that. "Not yet."
She nodded, the way someone nods when they're listening more carefully than they're letting on. "And before you woke up do you remember anything? Where you were, who you were with?"
The questions were reasonable. 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 a jacket pocket and pulled out a nutrition bar, held it out without breaking stride. "Eat this anyway. Shock does things even when you don't feel it."
Ryan took it. "Thanks."
The rest point was a small covered structure 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 on a route at night I have to report it."
"What does that mean?"
"Someone from Sandgem will want to ask you a few questions tomorrow. Nothing serious." She looked up. "Do you have somewhere to stay tonight?"
"No."
"Trainer's lodge in Sandgem has emergency beds. I can take you there." She wrote something 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 originally from? 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 a beat longer than felt natural. Then that smile again, warm and easy, and she let it go. "Okay. No pressure."
The Empoleon had settled at the edge of the rest point, facing outward into the dark. Completely still. Ryan found himself watching it.
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 on a path Mara clearly knew well enough to walk in the dark. Ryan kept pace and answered her questions small ones now, easy ones. What did he think of the forest, had he seen other Pokémon, 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 else.
Somewhere between one step and the next, he became aware of something. A feeling faint and directionless, like being watched without being able to find where from. He didn't stop walking. Didn't look around.
He had enough to deal with.
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 rain. He had been still in the long grass at the forest's edge, half-asleep, when it reached him. Not sound. Not scent. Something underneath both. A pull that moved through him the way cold moves, finding every hollow.
He was on his feet before he decided to move.
It came from deep in the forest. He followed it the way he followed everything by feel, by the vibration of the ground under his claws, by the texture of the air against the membranes around his face. He had learned this forest in the weeks since he'd been alone in it. Every root, every slope, every place where the ground went soft without warning.
He moved quietly. He'd learned that much.
The pull got stronger. Whatever had arrived was close now. Warm and steady, unlike anything else here. He slowed, stayed low, and waited.
Something large shifted nearby.
He knew its weight immediately. The female with the small one. He knew her territory, had stayed carefully outside it for weeks. He went still.
Then movement fast, panicked, crashing through undergrowth. Something running. Behind it, the female, heavy and furious, shaking the ground.
It was running wrong. Two legs, no claws, nothing that belonged in this forest.
Deino moved.
He cut parallel through the undergrowth, fast and low, tracking it by the vibration of its steps, the sound of its breathing ragged and desperate. The female was closing. He felt the gap shrinking with each second.
A sound split the air sharp and percussive, nothing natural. The female lurched and stopped.
Deino stopped too.
He crouched in the undergrowth and listened. Two sets of footsteps now, moving together, moving away. He waited until they turned toward the distant lights. Then he crept forward to 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, involuntary, older than thought.
Dark space. No light. Movement without asking. Vibrations of things he hadn't understood, hadn't seen, 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 didn't move.
Two things. Pulling in opposite directions.
His claws pressed into the ground.
He stayed where he was.