Chapter 7 – His Choice
Deino didn't move for a long time.
He stood where he'd stopped one step inside the room, head pointed at me, the trembling gone but the stillness that replaced it just as fragile. Like he was waiting for something to go wrong.
I stayed on one knee and didn't push it.
The room was quiet around us. Rowan hadn't moved. The researcher in the doorway had gone very still. Somewhere in the main lab someone had paused whatever they were doing and hadn't started again.
Then Deino took another step.
And another.
Slow and deliberate, reading the floor with each placement, crossing the remaining distance in the careful way of something that had made a decision and wasn't going back on it. He stopped directly in front of me, close enough that I could feel the warmth coming off him.
I raised one hand. Slowly. Open, held at his level — not reaching, just there.
His nostrils worked. His head dipped toward my hand, pulled back, dipped again. Then he pressed his nose against my knuckles just briefly and I moved my hand slow and careful and rested it along the side of his neck.
For one second he went completely rigid.
Then the sound came. Low and soft, rumbling up from somewhere deep in his chest. His whole body loosened with it, the last of the tension leaving him between one breath and the next.
The room came back to life around us. Someone in the main lab started moving again. Rowan unclasped his hands from behind his back.
"What is it?" the researcher in the doorway asked. "I've never seen anything like it."
"You wouldn't have," Rowan said, moving to stand beside me. "It's called a Deino. Dragon type Dark as well when it matures. It's from Unova, a region far from here. Information about it rarely reaches Sinnoh."
More researchers had appeared in the doorway, all of them watching. Deino ignored every single one of them.
"How did it end up here?" someone asked.
"Wild Pokémon don't follow border agreements," Rowan said simply. "They go where they go." He left it at that.
He looked back at Deino. Then at me.
"The more relevant question is what we do now." He picked up the list from the table, looked at it for a moment, and set it back down. "This Pokémon has no registered trainer." He looked at me. "Do you want him?"
Deino pressed slightly closer to my leg.
"Yes," I said.
Rowan nodded once. He turned to one of the researchers. "Start the registration. Dragon type, juvenile, unknown origin. Assigned to Ryan." Then he set a Pokéball on the table between us. Plain, standard, nothing special. "You'll need this."
I looked at it. Then at Deino.
I picked it up and held it down at his level without pressing it against him. Just held it there close enough that he could smell it, read it, decide what he thought about it.
Deino went still. Head angled toward the ball. A long moment passed.
Then he touched his nose to it.
The ball clicked open, the light took him, and it wobbled once in my hand — twice — and clicked shut.
I stood up.
Rowan handed me my trainer ID without ceremony. Small and plain, my name on it in clean letters. "Come back tomorrow. We have things to discuss."
I nodded and turned toward the door.
Mara was in the doorway to the main lab. She stepped aside to let me pass without saying anything.
I stopped on the front step and stood there for a second.
Trainer ID. A Pokémon. The clothes I was wearing and nothing else.
Right.
I started walking not toward anything specific, just moving while I thought. Sandgem was small enough that I could see most of it from the main street. The Pokémon Center to my left with its red roof. The trainer's lodge further down where room four was technically still mine until tomorrow morning. The berry market from this morning already packing up for the day.
Money. That was the most immediate problem. The lodge wasn't free, I had no idea what Deino ate or how much of it he needed, and everything in this world apparently cost something.
The Pokémon Center was the obvious first stop.
I pushed through the automatic doors. Clean, brightly lit, the low hum of machinery somewhere in the back. A Chansey moved between stations behind the main desk. A few trainers sat in the waiting area one with a Starly on his knee, another with a Budew asleep in her lap.
At the far wall, half hidden between a vending machine and a noticeboard, was a jobs board.
I walked over to it.
Small printed notices, some overlapping, pinned at angles like they'd been added in a hurry. I scanned through them.
Pokémon Center general assistance, flexible hours, meals included, ask at front desk.
Route 202 survey researcher looking for someone to catalogue wild Pokémon sightings along the northern stretch, two days, reasonable pay.
Delivery three packages to Jubilife City, urgency low, pay on completion, ask for Henrika at the berry market.
Lost Shinx last seen near the eastern edge of town, reward offered, description attached.
I read through it twice. The survey job was the most interesting two days on Route 202 meant two days of actually learning the terrain, seeing what was out there. It also meant pay. But Route 202 meant leaving Sandgem, and Rowan had said come back tomorrow.
The delivery to Jubilife could wait a day. The Pokémon Center job was immediate and local. The survey I could ask about timing.
I turned toward the front desk.
One step at a time.