Chapter Text
ii. An Evening's Rest
"Well, this is the spot!"
Rumi had to hand it to Zoey, it was a pretty good spot.
The forest gave way to a small, flat, grassy meadow nestled against the gravelly shoreline of a small river. The clear water of the river itself, tinged a brilliant orange now from the setting sun, meandered lazily by, fed by what sounded like a waterfall from further upstream. There was a sudden splash and a flash of fin, and Rumi caught a fleeting glimpse of a magikarp swimming upstream against the current. A multitude of tracks along the riverbank indicated that this was a popular destination among the local pokémon, though the lack of human footprints and its distance from the marked trails indicated that it was lesser known to passing travelers.
"How'd you know about this place?" Mira asked, echoing Rumi's train of thought
Zoey shrugged off her backpack, letting it hit the ground with a thud so loud it made Rumi wonder exactly what she had it there. "I told you, I have family in the area. I spent a lot of time when I was younger going back and forth between places."
"That sounds kind of nice," Rumi hazarded when Mira remained silent. "I haven't really traveled much, err…besides right now, I guess." She winced and looked to Mira for help only to find her frowning and tapping the fingers of one hand against her arm
"It was pretty fun," Zoey continued blithely, "but I, uh, kinda wandered off the trail and got a little lost this one time when I was younger, and it was getting pretty dark, but I knew if I followed the river, I'd eventually make it to town, especially since I had just gotten Yachtzee right before then, and she's a really good swimmer and is big enough to carry, like, six people, but then I stumbled across this place! Pretty lucky, huh? It tends to flood a bunch in the spring when the water's higher, and I think I mentioned that gyarados like to spawn here in the fall, so it can be a little iffy sometimes, but this time of year, it's pretty much perfect."
She spun around, arms outstretched, only for her smile to fade slightly as she caught sight of twin dazed expressions at the flood of words.
"Right, sorry." One arm fell to rub the back of her head. "Don't mind me. I tend to ramble." Her zigzagoon let out a low growl, making Zoey glance up. "Yeah, yeah, I know." She cleared her throat. "Anyways, we can, uh, camp here for the night if you want."
"Looks great," Mira said, as Rumi murmured her own assent.
"Yeah?" Zoey asked, clapping her hands together. "Great!" She turned on her heel and rummaged through her bag, emerging with a veritable armful of loose pokeballs and tossing them in the air. All right, guys, come out and play!"
Before Rumi could blink, a massive shadow passed overhead only to land in the river with a resounding splash, sending a flood of water crashing into the shoreline that had her arcanine jumping back with a startled yelp and Mira's salandit racing up her body to hiss its displeasure from her shoulder.
"Whoops, sorry about that," Zoey giggled, heedless of the water soaking her own shoes as she reached up to pat her lapras on the head as it ducked down to nuzzle into her chest with a happy warble. A finizen leapt happily through the fading waves, popping up to wave its tail fin at Zoey before diving back down, letting out a complicated series of whistles and clicks each time it surfaced that had Zoey nodding her head along like she understood any of it.
A faint ripple from further out in the river caught Rumi's attention, but by the time she craned her head around the, frankly, enormous lapras—she had know they were big, but there was a difference between knowing that objectively and being forced to reckon with the fact face to face—all that was left to see was a quickly fading shadow underneath the water's surface.
Distressed yowling reached her ears, and Rumi looked back to see Zoey's vaporeon bumping her leg with its head insistently.
Rolling its eyes, the zigzagoon atop Zoey's head dove into her backpack, emerging with the telltale spray bottle of a potion clamped in its jaws.
"Aw, don't worry, Bumper. I'll fix you right up," Zoey said, patting the vaporeon briefly on the head. She raised her voice. "You too, Donatello, don't think you're getting out of a check up that easily."
The beat-up wartortle froze where it had just been about to dive into the water, looking back at his trainer with a sheepish expression. War?
"Nuh-uh, you know the drill, playing after patching up. Get your butt back over here."
Rumi had to hide a smile as the wartortle grumbled but obediently trundled over to stand next to the vaporeon with his arms crossed, waiting his turn.
Nearby, Mira looked to be doing the same. She sat cross-legged on a much drier patch of ground, her vulpix in her lap accepting its trainer's close examination with a patience her fletchinder clearly lacked as it hopped from the grass to her head to her shoulder. The salandit still perched there squawked in indignation and scuttled away to hide behind a flareon yawning and blinking blearily at its surroundings, clearly having just emerged from a nice nap inside its pokeball.
A low growl made Rumi spin to see a houndoom sat down with perfect posture, its pointed tail curled primly around its feet. It eyed her own arcanine with a haughty indifference as the larger pokémon jumped from side to side, landing with a resounding thud each time that made Rumi wince, tail wagging like a whirlwind as she obviously tried to interest the other pokémon in playing.
"Don't worry. He's all bark and no bite. He knows better than to start anything."
Rumi glanced down to find Mira watching her carefully, though her hands didn't waver in their task as she carefully toweled off each of her vulpix's tails one by one.
"I wasn't worried about my arcanine." She wasn't. Her pokémon might be a bit of a goofball outside of battle, but she could more than hold her own in a fight, weirdly buff zigzagoons notwithstanding.
Mira hummed, turning her attention back to the pokémon in her lap. "If you say so."
Rumi bristled at the clear dismissal, but she bit back the immediate retort on her lips. "She's just never had a lot of other pokémon around to play with," she tried to explain. Train with, sure, but most of her other pokémon were either uninterested in playing or too intimidated by the large fire pokémon once she'd evolved, and while Celine's pokémon had been indulgent with an overeager growlithe pup, they were much less so with a 2 m tall, 150 kg arcanine.
It had been a sobering realization for the both of them and had made Rumi regret using the fire stone Celine had gifted her for her birthday, at least right up until the look of pride on her aunt's face the first time her arcanine had landed a flare blitz on her sceptile and sent the much stronger pokémon staggering to one knee as it picked itself out of the new crater in the gym's back wall. Her arcanine had preened for a week after that and thrown itself into their new training exercises with an enthusiasm that matched Rumi's own, previous loneliness all but forgotten.
…Or maybe not forgotten, as it turned out, as she watched her arcanine's ears slowly droop back down in the face of the houndoom's obvious disdain with a tight feeling in her chest.
"Is that so?" Mira asked, sharp expression melting into a softer smile as her vulpix reared up on its hind legs to give her nose a lick before jumping down to shake the last bits of water from its fur. She moved to stand, ignoring Rumi's belated outstretched hand as she shifted smoothly into a stretch, one arm raised overhead. When she was done, she brought two fingers to her mouth and blew a sharp whistle.
The houndoom immediately turned on its heel and padded over, leaving Rumi's arcanine staring after it forlornly. Mira gave her pokémon a scratch behind one of its horns as it sat beside her, but its harsh expression never changed as it glared up at Rumi.
Rumi resisted to urge to take a step back, crossing her arms over her chest and glaring back insted. She had met pokémon far scarier. A grumpy houndoom wasn't going to intimidate her.
"Forza here has never really been much into playing," Mira said with a shrug, "Even when he was just a houndour pup." She nudged her drowsing flareon back awake with the toe of her boot, nodding her chin towards Rumi's arcanine when it squinted up at her quizzically. "You could use some exercise though, sleepy head. Go play."
The flareon yawned widely as it took its time going through a series of slow stretches, making it clear that obeying its trainer's command was its own idea before it trotted off towards the arcanine who had lowered itself to the ground, eyes bright and tail slowly stirring up dust devils in an obvious attempt to seem unthreatening.
Vul?
"You can go play too," Mira said, nodding down at her vulpix. "Just be careful around the bigger pokémon, okay?"
The vulpix let out a happy cry and bounded over, immediately pouncing on the arcanine's neck when it rolled over on its back with all four feet in the air, nearly disappearing completely into its mane.
"I said be careful!" Mira shouted, shaking her head.
"Don't worry," Rumi echoed Mira's earlier words with a grin that hovered somewhere halfway between smug and grateful. "She's all bark and no bite."
Rolling her eyes, Mira turned her back on Rumi and set about unpacking her camping supplies with careful hands. Her houndoom laid down nearby, head between its paws as its gaze finally shifted from Rumi to the pokémon playing nearby, keeping a close watch despite his clear disinterest in joining.
"You can let your other pokémon out too if you wanted," Zoey said, glancing up at Rumi from where her wartortle was trying his best to sidle out from underneath her ministrations. "There's enough space here to let loose a bit."
Rumi hesitated as she thought about it for a moment, fingers ghosting over the pokeballs at her waist. The first was a hard no. The second, her flygon, was fine in its pokeball still; there was no need to give potential future opponents more information on her team than necessary. Third and fourth, her grovyle and arcanine, Mira and Zoey had already seen, and they both deserved some extra food for the effort they'd put in during the battle earlier.
She tapped her fingers idly against the last pokeball on her belt, considering, as she glanced between Zoey's vaporeon using her lapras as a springboard to leap into the river now that he'd been patched up and Mira's flareon bouncing up and down off her arcanine's stomach. Her eevee probably deserved a chance to stretch his legs as well. It'd been a while since he'd been out for anything other than some light training, and maybe being around some of his potential evolutions would bring him out of his shell a bit.
Decision made, Rumi threw out two pokeballs, sighing as her grovyle sent one scathing look her way and immediately disappeared up into the trees to sulk.
"Still mad about the battle, huh?" Zoey commented, eyes tracking the rustling leaves where he'd leapt. Her wartortle appeared to be watching as well, letting out a subdued war as he scoffed.
"He's just annoyed that I pulled him out of the fight. He'll get over it in a while."
Hopefully. He'd been getting worse and worse about it, sometimes sulking for days after a particularly contentious match.
Rumi ran a hand over her braid. It's not that she didn't understand his frustration, but what was she supposed to do in that situation? It had been a losing battle as soon as his speed advantage was taken away. If he was stronger, she might have considered leaving him in, trusted him to be able to take more hits and keep hitting back, but he was the one who refused to evolve at every turn despite numerous opportunities.
"And who's this little guy?" Zoey crooned, breaking Rumi's train of thought.
She followed the other trainer's line of sight down to her own feet, where her eevee was huddled close behind, peering around her legs with wide eyes at the various pokémon scattered around the area.
Rumi couldn't exactly blame him for being shy. She rarely had more than one or two pokémon out at time, so this was a bit more than he was used to. If she was being honest, it was a lot more than she was used to too. "It's okay," she said, squatting down and giving the eevee a slight nudge forward with what she hoped was an encouraging smile. "They're—" She paused, stuck trying to find the right words.
Acquaintances? That seemed too formal.
Colleagues? Even worse.
Rivals? Maybe Mira was, if they both ended up going for the pokémon League Championships at some point, but that was too far off in the future to even contemplate, and besides, Zoey had shown no indication that she was interested in the league challenge despite her team's obvious strength.
"Friends?" Rumi settled on after enough of a pause to make it awkward, wincing at the rising intonation that turned the word into more of a question than she'd meant to imply.
Although Zoey didn't seem to take it personally if the beaming grin on her face was any indication. She knelt down beside her wartortle and held out one hand for Rumi's eevee to sniff.
He did so tentatively, ducking back behind Rumi's legs with a squeak when Zoey's zigzagoon took the opportunity to run down her arm and lick up the side of his face, leaving a long trail of fur stood up the wrong way.
"Percy!" Zoey scolded, though the effect was somewhat mitigated by her laugh.
The indignation clear on her eevee's face had Rumi struggling to hide a smile of her own. "Well?" she said, raising an eyebrow when he looked up at her.
He scrubbed a paw over his cheek and turned back to glare at the small black and white pokémon.
Squinting his eyes in a sly grin, Percy stuck his tongue out in return.
That was enough to goad Rumi's eevee into pouncing on him, tackling the zigzagoon off Zoey's arm and sending both pokémon tumbling to the ground.
"Should I be worried?" Rumi asked as the zigzagoon rolled to its feet, recalling how easily the small pokémon had tanked a hit from her arcanine, something that just hours ago she wouldn't have even thought possible. She watched with some apprehension as he knocked her eevee's legs out from under it and sat on him. His tongue dangled menacingly in front of its face, eliciting an alarmed bark and a full body struggle from the eevee as the threat of being licked again inched closer and closer.
"Nah," Zoey said with a dismissive wave of her hand as she snagged the back of her wartortle's shell where he had begun to sidle away towards the river, grinning as he sat back down with a disgruntled war, escape thwarted. "Percy's good with kids."
Rumi resisted the urge to point out that they were pokémon, not people, keeping a careful eye on them as she set about unpacking her gear for the night.
At the motion, her arcanine bounded over, panting, Mira's vulpix still clinging to the ruff around her neck, to flop with her nose mere centimeters from Rumi's bag, ears raised in rapt attention.
Rumi rolled her eyes. The only thing that could distract her arcanine from playing was the promise of food. "Don't worry," Rumi said as she gently extricated Mira's vulpix from gnawing on her ear, redirecting it towards where her eevee and Zoey's zigzagoon were roughhousing instead. "I'm getting your supper ready right now."
She dumped a few cups from the bag of kibble that took up most of the space in her backpack into a bowl and set it down, letting her arcanine get a head start as she prepared much smaller bowls for her grovyle and eevee.
Her own stomach rumbled, reminding her that she hadn't eaten anything yet today except an energy bar when she'd set out that morning and an apple she'd managed to snag during the day's travels. She dug around deeper in her backpack and pulled out the sad remains of the sandwich she'd made for dinner yesterday.
"That's what you're eating?"
The clear dismay in Mira's voice made Rumi look down at her slightly squished sandwich in confusion. It wasn't anything special, sure, and riding around in the bottom of her pack all day hadn't done it any favors in the looks department, but she didn't think it deserved that amount of disdain. She was fairly certain it was still edible and besides, it wasn't like she had a better option at the moment unless she developed a sudden craving for pokémon kibble. She looked back up at Mira. "Yes?"
"No." Mira loomed over her, face set in a scowl.
"Well, it's what I have, so—" Rumi shrugged, already feeling herself bristling. Really, what was her deal?
"And that's what you're feeding your pokémon?" Mira interrupted.
Rumi followed her pointing finger to where her arcanine was already halfway through her bowl. It looked up, tail wagging, and barked, spewing bits of kibble their direction. Rumi delicately picked a chunk out of her sandwich with a grimace and flicked it away.
"Well, yeah?"
"No."
"No?" Rumi wasn't sure what game they were supposedly now playing.
"No," Mira repeated, crossing her arms in front of her. "Your pokémon deserve better."
Rumi let out a low hiss of frustration as she struggled to wrestle the bag of pokémon food around one-handed to better demonstrate the label on the back listing the ingredients. "This has all the nutritional needs that pokémon require."
And it wasn't like she bought the cheap stuff either. Saja Corp.'s commercials may have been corny (if she never saw a cartoon pyroar cheerfully spouting 'Where we take pride in our products!" again, it would be too soon), but they developed top-notch resources for pokémon trainers, with a price tag to match.
"They just battled!" Mira continued.
"Only two of them." Rumi had lost the thread of the argument completely. What even was the problem? "I'll make sure they get extra to make up for the training."
"That's not the point!"
"Then what is the point!" Rumi threw her hands up in frustration, and both trainers watched her sandwich go arcing through the air. Her arcanine's head snapped up as it licked its chops and leapt, jaws clamping shut around the sandwich. The ground shook when it landed, and a few pieces of soggy lettuce flopped out into the dirt followed by a single sad slice of cheese.
The arcanine observed the mess with its head tilted to one side, then the other, as if trying to parse how that had happened. Then it trotted over and held the remains of the half-eaten, disassembled sandwich in its teeth out to Rumi proudly, tail wagging.
"Look," Mira said, pinching the bridge of her nose as Rumi tried to reassure her arcanine that yes, she did a good job, but no, really, she didn't want what little remained of the sandwich back. "I can cook something up quick."
"You really don't have to—"
The sound of kibble falling into a metal bowl reached both their ears, and Rumi could see Mira's eyebrow twitch as she turned to watch Zoey desperately try to slow the trail of food into her vaporeon's dish from a bag that carried a suspiciously similar-looking label to Rumi's own.
Zoey shoved the bag behind her back and gave a sheepish wave as her vaporeon dove for the bowl, knocking her legs out from under her in his haste.
"Hey, no, wait! Bumper! I said wait—"
"I'll cook something up for all of us," Mira growled in a tone that brooked no nonsense, turning on her heel. Without missing a beat, she pulled a glossy black pokeball out from inside her jacket, expanding it with a quick tap and tossing it up in the air. "You want to help with that, Aria?"
A massive crocodilian pokémon emerged, glossy red and white scales catching the evening light as it opened its jaws wide in a terrifyingly wide yawn that revealed a mouthful of sharp teeth. Flames gouted from the side of its mouth with the motion, sending a rush of heat through the clearing that chased away the chill of the swiftly-approaching evening and left a lingering warmth in its wake.
Rumi cocked her head to the side as some of the flames seemed to almost take the shape of a fiery bird perched atop the pokémon's head before it flickered away again with the shifting wind.
Zoey gasped as she caught sight of the pokémon from her position upside down on the ground. "And who is this beauty? Wait, wait, wait—" She rolled over and dove for her bag. "—don't tell me!"
The telltale chime of a pokedex scan completing rang out as she rolled back to her feet:
<Skeledirge: the Singer pokémon. Skeledirge's gentle singing soothes the souls of all that hear it. It burns its enemies to a crisp with flames of over 3,000 degrees Celsius.>
"This is Aria," Mira said, scratching under the scales on the massive pokémon's chin with an affectionate smile. The skeledirge leaned into it with a low, reverberating hum that Rumi could all but feel in her bones. She wasn't sure if her soul was soothed or not, but it did seem to make the ever present tension in her shoulders ease enough to drop down a few centimeters.
Well, maybe one, if she was feeling generous. She could already feel them creeping back up again the more she thought about it.
"She's been with me since she was just a little fuecoco," Mira continued, heedless of Rumi's internal struggle. "Although I guess I was pretty little back then too." She cast a glance sidelong at Zoey, a smirk tugging at the corners of her mouth. "Though maybe not as little as you."
"Hey!" Zoey exclaimed, hands on her hips. "I'll have you know that I'm a perfectly average height, thank you very much. We can't all be freakishly tall."
"I'm not freakishly tall, just regular tall."
"Hmm. Agree to disagree." She gestured to the skeledirge, nearly bouncing on her toes. "May I?"
At Mira's nod, Zoey ran a hand over the pokémon's cheek, eliciting another deep hum that made Rumi breathe a little easier. Maybe that was why she blurted out the question that'd been gnawing at her since the pokémon emerged.
"Why didn't you use her during your battle?" It was obviously Mira's best pokémon if the fact it was in a luxury ball of all things was any indication. Even a match with a heavy type disadvantage might have been salvageable if it'd been on the field, as her arcanine could attest.
One corner of Mira's mouth crept up in a rueful grin. "Well I was going to, but someone interrupted." She crouched down to flick Tango's snout playfully where the salandit was curled up on top of her pack. "You have to move, buddy. I need to get into that."
The salandit yawned, blinking as it wrinkled its nose, then squawked happily as it caught sight of the skeledirge and launched itself into the air.
The skeledirge caught him in its mouth, rolling her eyes as he poked his head out between her teeth, heedless of the flames, and crawled up to perch on top of her snout instead, chattering and gesturing as if replaying its earlier battle for the larger pokémon.
Mira shrugged. "I know Aria can win." Her gaze slid to Rumi briefly, assessing—and found wanting—before flicking back. "There was no reason to prove it, at least not when Tango wanted a shot at it."
Rumi stiffened, but before she could form a response—
"BUMPER!"
Rumi's head snapped up as Mira flinched and nearly fell face first into her pack.
Zoey narrowed her eyes and pointed a finger at her vaporeon, who had one paw poised, ready to smack Rumi's eevee into the river.
The vaporeon began to groom its paw as if that's what it had meant to do all along, all the while refusing to meet Zoey's gaze.
"Behave, mister." She pointed to her zigzagoon next. "Percy, keep him in line."
The zigzagoon stood up on its hind legs and gave a mock salute with an enthusiastic zag! before proceeding to full body tackle the vaporeon into the water.
Zoey rubbed the back of her head as Rumi hurriedly recalled her eevee back into his pokeball. "Sorry about that. He can get a little jealous sometimes if he thinks he's not the cutest little guy around." She pitched her voice a little louder. "Which he obviously is, so there's nothing to be jealous of."
Her vaporeon let out an indignant garbled bark as Percy dunked his head back down into the water again.
Laughing, Mira shooed them away as she enlisted her skeledirge's help in getting a fire going, and soon enough the clearing was filled with a mouth-watering aroma that had Rumi's arcanine inching closer and closer to the pot simmering away.
Rumi wasn't worried about it burning itself; it was a fire type after all, but she was worried about it being underfoot, though Mira didn't seem to mind it being around while she cooked if the absentminded scratches she gave it while checking the contents of the pot were any indication. More surprisingly, her houndoom didn't seem to mind either, watching the pot with just as rapt attention from the other side of the fire.
Despite the chaos of earlier, Rumi could feel herself relaxing. It was…nice to be around people and their pokémon again. Too bad it wouldn't last.
A notebook was suddenly thrust into Rumi's vision, interrupting her musing. "Here!"
Rumi blinked at the blurred mess of black lines in front of her hovering mere centimeters from her nose. Leaning back made the lines resolve themselves into a sketch of her grovyle sat up in the tree he had so far refused to come down from, even for the promise of supper, though in Zoey's interpretation, he at least looked less sulky and more pensive.
"I know it's not, like, my best work," Zoey continued, shifting from foot to foot, pencil twirling in her fingers, when Rumi remained quiet, "But I wanted to get something down before I forgot. Tried to capture his personality a little bit, y'know?"
"You really did," Rumi murmured.
Zoey beamed. "Oh, hey, Mira! I have one of Tango too!" She called out over her shoulder. She flipped the page over so Rumi could see first, sending her into a coughing fit as her vision was suddenly filled with the image of a giant cartoonish salandit standing triumphantly atop a pile of knocked out pokémon with both arms raised high in celebration.
"You going to be all right over there?" Mira asked mildly, one eyebrow arched as she turned, spatula still in hand.
Rumi gave a shaky thumbs up as her lungs remembered how to breathe properly.
"Right." Mira turned further, leaning in. "What's this about Tango, then?"
Zoey bit her lip, hiding a grin. "I drew his battle from earlier." She spun the notebook around so Mira could see.
Mira perused the picture for a long moment, as if taking in every last detail. Then she let out an undignified snort as her shoulders began to shake in silent laughter.
Looking satisfied with herself, Zoey sat back on her heels and held her notebook down low enough for the pokémon in question's appraisal."What do you think, Tango?"
The salandit scuttled over and cocked its head to one side, then to the other, bobbing up and down as it squinted at the page suspiciously. Then he reached out and took the corner of the page in his mouth, shaking his head from side to rip a chunk of paper off. He chewed it for a moment before he sat back on his haunches and let out a burp of purple flame with a satisfied saaaal.
"Well apparently he loves it," Mira said drily, amusement threading through her tone.
"You, sir, have the most refined taste," Zoey said, taking Tango's hand solemnly and shaking it before she lost her composure and dissolved into a fit of giggles.
Rumi could feel a smile spreading across her own features at the pokémon's antics. He didn't seem like much use in a pokémon battle, but she had to admit he was at least entertaining.
Soon enough, Mira declared that dinner was ready alongside an affirmative hum from the skeledirge who lifted the larger pot off the fire with its tail, holding it up for Mira to dish out.
After the excitement of the day, it was a little surprising that dinner itself turned out to be a quiet affair, but Rumi only had to take a bite out of the bowl of simple curry and rice Mira unceremoniously shoved into her hands to understand why.
"This is amazing," Zoey sighed.
Rumi had to agree, quickly deciding to forgive Mira for making her lose her far inferior sandwich earlier as she shoved another bite into her mouth.
"It's really not," Mira drawled, but she looked pleased at the praise all the same.
When they were finished, Zoey volunteered to clean the dishes with the reasoning that she wanted to spend some quality time with her lapras and finizen at the river before bed, leaving Rumi and Mira to sit by the slowly dying fire in companionable silence.
Rumi could feel her eyelids drooping as she leaned back against her arcanine's comfortable bulk. It had been a long day of travel and many long days of traveling before that.
The fire crackled, a handful of sparks shooting up as Mira nudged a log deeper into the coals with the toe of her boot. Faint splashes and Zoey's bubbling laugh floated on the breeze from the direction of the river. Deeper in the forest, a hoothoot called softly, echoed by the harsh call of a murkrow. Closer by, a soothing hum resonated from Mira's skeledirge as it lay curled around the other side of the fire, basking in the fading warmth. Behind her, her arcanine let out a long sigh, and Rumi let herself sink into it.
Far off in the distance, thunder rumbled, and Rumi stiffened, eyes flying open. She turned her gaze up, watching the sky for the faint flickers of lightning that heralded one of the many summer storms that rolled in with darkened skies, blustering winds, and heavy downpours only to disappear as quickly as they arrived.
One…two…three…
She got to nearly sixty before an even fainter rumble reached her ears, and she let out a sigh of relief. It sounded like the storm was far and moving further.
Her arcanine whined, nudging its nose under her arm, ears up and alert.
"It's all right," Rumi murmured, burying her hands in the fur along its cheeks and shaking its head gently back and forth. "Looks like we won't get rained on tonight, but just in case…" She stood, using her arcanine's nose to help leverage herself to her feet. She took a moment to stretch muscles that had stiffened from the time spent sat down before holding a pokeball up. "Off to bed with you now."
The arcanine yawned widely before disappearing back into its ball in a burst of red light.
Rumi pitched her voice a little louder, eyes scanning the surrounding treetops for her grovyle. She knew he wouldn't have gone too far. "You want back in your pokeball too or you staying out for the night?"
An acorn pinging against the back of her head was the only response she got.
"Suit yourself," Rumi muttered, stooping to gather up her gear. She slung her bag over her shoulder and tucked her sleeping bag under her arm as she turned towards the woods.
"Where are you going?"
Rumi froze, glancing back.
Zoey stood there, head tilted to the side, hands full of clean dishes. Mira looked up from where she was busy laying out her own sleeping pad. She looked just as confused.
"I was just going to set up a little ways away." Rumi rubbed the back of her head, wincing slightly as her hand ran over the new lump there. "I've been told I talk a lot in my sleep, and I don't want to bother you guys in the middle of the night or something."
Zoey's expression brightened. "Oh that's okay! So do I." She looked to Mira expectantly. Rumi followed her gaze.
Mira paused in rolling out a blanket atop her sleeping pad, sitting back on her heels as she pushed her glasses up her nose. "What? Why are you both looking at me? I sleep like a log."
"See?" Zoey said as she set the dishes down and went about setting up her own gear. "You won't be a bother."
Rumi waved her free hand almost frantically. "No, no, it's okay, really! I should call my family before bed anyway, you know, let them know I'm still alive and where I'm headed, so I'll be up for a while yet."
"If you're sure…" Zoey trailed off, brow furrowed.
Rumi nodded firmly. On this point, she was sure. "I am."
"Well, good night then! And thanks for agreeing to travel with me. It's been nice having people to talk to."
Her zigzagoon let out an affronted grumble as he circled around the head of her sleeping pad before collapsing with a loud sigh.
Zoey rolled her eyes with a fond smile as she settled down beside him. "Yeah, yeah, you're nice to talk to too, Percy, but it's nice to have friends who can talk back sometimes too, y'know?" She gave him a brief nudge to the side as she set her pack up as a makeshift pillow.
"Night," Mira said simply as she set her glasses aside and rolled over, pulling her sleeping bag over her head, signaling the end of the conversation for all intents and purposes. Her houndoom settled down along her back though his gaze remained alert and watchful as Rumi gathered the rest of her things.
Rumi hesitated as she glanced at the fire and the array of trainers and pokémon scattered around it. It looked warm, inviting, welcoming.
If only she could accept.
Rumi murmured her own good night and turned on her heel, leaving the warm glow of the fire behind. It was fine. She was fine. She was used to traveling alone now, so she shouldn't get used to good food and good company anyway. Far better to keep her distance.
She carefully picked her way through the underbrush until she judged she was a safe enough distance away to set up her own things for the night. Laying out her sleeping pad and bag was the work of only a few minutes, and Rumi collapsed onto it on her stomach, letting herself have one brief moment of relaxation as she listened to the chorus of kricketot calling back and forth throughout the forest. Before sleep could claim her completely, she groaned, rolling over and reaching into the pocket in her bag where she kept her phone.
Despite already knowing what she would see, Rumi still felt a stab of disappointment when she turned it on.
You have 0 unread messages.
She turned the phone back off and lay back on her sleeping pad, one hand curled under her head, the other still clutching her phone now facedown on her stomach. She didn't know why she kept checking it every night, why she thought anything would be different after she left home, why she thought Celine would be the first to break the silence. With a sigh, she placed the phone back in its pocket and removed her belt and its attached pokeballs so she could sleep more comfortably.
At her touch, the first ball on the belt began to rock slowly back and forth, the release button blinking an ominous deep red, once, twice, three times. Rumi scowled down at the thing and hurriedly stuffed the belt into the very bottom of her pack, layering her extra clothes and the remaining bag of kibble on top and tossing the entire pack a ways away for good measure. It wouldn't help; it never did, but it made her feel marginally better.
She fell back onto her sleeping pad, watching the sky, counting the seconds between each flicker of distant lightning she could still make out on the horizon and the echoing growl of retreating thunder until she fell into an uneasy sleep, hoping against hope that her sleep was dreamless.
No such luck.
The sky split asunder overhead, flickering afterimages dancing across her eyelids as the first cold drops of rain began to pitter-patter uncomfortably against her skin. Thunder cracked in response mere moments later. Her ears were still ringing with the force of it as she came to, slowly, agonisingly so, like pulling herself free of sucking mud intent on dragging her back down.
Or maybe it wasn't the thunder, as the whine in her ears continued to build until it was a near-deafening roar that rattled and echoed against the confines of her skull, nearly sending her back under into the void she'd just clawed her way out of.
A shiver ran down her spine. She didn't want to go back there. She needed to move. She needed to run. She needed to get away from whatever was making that awful noise.
Only her limbs refused to respond as she struggled against what felt like the weight of an entire building pressing down on her. A whimper escaped her throat as her head thunked back against the ground, eyes slipping shut against her will. She was so cold and the noise was so loud. She couldn't hear, couldn't think, couldn't feel—
Another flash of lightning. Another answering crackle of thunder. But a lull in the rain made her flick one eye open.
Wide eyes stared back at her from above in a face framed by red running down one side and a tangled mess of black hair slicked down from the rain they were blocking. A hand flew to their mouth, and then the face disappeared from view.
No! Don't leave me! she tried to call out, but she couldn't seem to draw enough breath to do more than wheeze wetly.
She wasn't sure how long she laid there before a clammy hand touched the side of her face. She flinched, craning her neck painfully to the side only to see the same face as before. They knelt in the muck beside her now, brow furrowed tight with pain, one hand braced tight around their stomach. The other hovered above her placatingly before slowly reaching down to wipe some of the rain from her face.
They were saying something, but she couldn't make out the words through the steady drum of pelting rain and thunder rumbling overhead. The soothing tone was a palpable relief, though, like jumping into the cool, clear waters of the lake on a scorching summer day. The ominous hum in her ears faded to a distant static, still there, but muted now, enough to think, enough to feel—
Huh.
She raised one arm up, now that she could feel it, and blinked. It looked different, wrong, but for some reason, she couldn't recall why that would be. Her fingers moved when she wiggled them, and yet something about it felt…off, like a puppet still moving after its strings had been cut.
She shivered again; she was still so cold. Why was she so cold?
Her companion watched, expression shadowed by the next flash of lightning, and placed a hand on their chest, taking an exaggerated breath in and out, in and out. Then they gestured to her, nodding encouragingly.
Oh. Right. She needed to breathe.
Her hand dropped, curling into a fist against her own chest. She went to take a deep breath, only to freeze, cold realization settling in, as her lungs refused to inflate. Fingers scrabbled at her throat as panic seized her, and she looked up into eyes shaded by what she now realized was sorrow.
She couldn't breathe.
She couldn't breathe.
She couldn't breathe.
She couldn't breathe.
Because she no longer needed to.
Rumi came to with a start, shivering and gasping for air around the crushing weight keeping her lungs from inflating properly.
It didn't help.
Her own personal nightmare loomed over her, one paw held firmly to the center of her chest as it glared down at her with bitter malice in its glowing gold eyes.
Rumi jerked away from the monster, heart leaping painfully in her chest, panicked, as her legs tangled in the bottom half of her sleeping bag. The zipper finally gave way with an awful tearing sound under her thrashing, and she rolled up onto her feet, breath coming hard and fast as her fingers twitched towards the pokeballs that were normally at her waist.
Not that it would do any good even if she hadn't tucked them away in her backpack for the evening. She had tried battling the thing before, but her other pokémon seemed reluctant to face it, and their strongest attacks seemed to barely even faze it. Even Celine's pokémon—the strongest Rumi had ever known—had come up short. Oh, they were able to drive it off for a time, sure, but Rumi would inevitably wake just long enough later that she had begun to hope that this time it was gone for good only to see it looming in the shadows of her bedroom, its pokeball, a cracked and battered thing, nestled carefully back amongst the others like a parasite's egg. The third time it had happened was the only time Rumi had ever seen something like fear in her aunt's normally stoic expression. It had sent an icy spike of dread through her at the realization that there was nothing she could do, a constant gnawing anxiety that had dogged each footstep since just as readily as the nightmare of a pokémon did.
The pokémon craned its head around to follow her. Ghostly pale hair undulated in disorienting waves around its hunched,grey-furred form, wisps of energy gathering at the tips and turning it a deep, dark hue that in some lights looked like the purple more typically seen among poison types while in other lights it seemed a dull red that brought to mind dried blood. Jagged cracks pulsed with a dull glow through the ruff of fur around its shoulders, tracing down its lightly swaying arms like lightning, ending only at the sharp, black claws now glinting in the moonlight overhead with each minute twitch and flex of its paws.
Rumi swallowed heavily, one hand coming up to feel the faint indentations left in her skin from those claws through the shirt now plastered to her chest with cold sweat.
If it ever decided to press down just a little bit harder…
Rumi shivered, goosebumps prickling along her arms. "What do you want?" she grit out as quietly as she could, mindful of the other trainers sleeping nearby.
The zoroark—for that is what a deep dive through her mother's old books on malevolent forces and uneasy spirits tucked away in the dustiest corner of Celine's library had finally concluded it most likely was, even if it was unlike any zoroark she had ever seen or heard of and her attempted pokedex scan had turned up nothing but flickering static and an incomprehensible error message before it died completely in a stinging shower of sparks and an acrid puff of smoke— just continued to stare, silent and still as always.
And that was what continued to puzzle Rumi the most of all. It didn't seem to want anything, or at least anything other than to be near at all times in order to terrify anyone who got close to her with apparitions and illusions that had sent more than one would-be friend running for the hills, keeping her isolated and alone.
The villagers back in Hallowveil never said anything directly to her face—Celine's position and reputation instilled at least a modicum of respect still—but eventually rumors got around, and Rumi couldn't help but overhear the whispers that clung to every interaction like cobwebs.
Jinxed. Haunted. Cursed.
She couldn't exactly disagree with them.
The sound of a throat clearing behind her made Rumi jump, and just like that, the fear clawed its way back up her throat from where it had just begun to uneasily settle in her gut. She whirled on her heels, heart hammering in her chest.
Mira stood there, water bottle in one hand, scrubbing the other up and down her face, blinking owlishly in the low light of the moon overhead and the fading campfire behind her. Her houndoom's eyes flashed from beside her as it lowered itself slightly, hackles raised and lips pulled back in a silent snarl, eyes fixed behind Rumi.
But Mira wasn't running, and she wasn't screaming like everyone else had when they first laid eyes on her personal nightmare. In fact, she just reached down to tap sharply on one of her houndoom's horns with a half-muttered, "Be nice."
What?
Rumi's limbs felt like they were frozen in ice as her brain refused to catch up to the present cirumstances, instead giddily wondering how the zoroark liked being stared at for once.
"Uh, are you all right?" Mira finally asked in the face of her continued silence, squinting past her, nothing but bewildered curiosity on her face. "Thought I heard something and figured we'd check on you."
Like moving through molasses, Rumi marshaled her scattered thoughts into some semblance of order and shifted so she was blocking Mira's line of sight. She ran a shaky hand over her own braid, tucking loose strands back into place just to give her trembling fingers something to do. "Yeah, perfectly fine, just bad dreams." It wasn't completely a lie.
"Oh. You…want to talk about it?" The offer seemed genuine even if the question seemed to almost pain Mira to ask.
Fortunately for both of them, there was nothing Rumi wanted to do less. "It was nothing, really."
Mira looked like she was about to press the issue, and Rumi was already opening her mouth to argue the point when all the other trainer said was, "Sorry, I don't have my glasses, so I can't see too well, but is that a…gardevoir?"
Rumi's entire thought process came to a screeching halt. "What?"
"Your pokémon?" Mira asked, craning her head around Rumi and pointing past her helpfully, as if she hadn't noticed the pokémon looming behind her. "Is it…not a gardevoir?" she asked in the face of Rumi's continued bewildered silence. She looked down at her houndoom, who just let out a quiet, disgruntled bark that sounded to Rumi like nothing so much as a scoff of disbelief, then back up. "I know I'm blind, but I didn't think it was that bad," she muttered more quietly to herself.
Rumi hazarded a glance back over her shoulder, already bracing herself for the inevitable fallout, resigned apologies already on her tongue, only to do a double take as she was met with the picture perfect image of an actual gardevoir, or at least what she imagined one would look like given she'd never seen one in person. A rounded green crest of hair sat atop a white body that flowed down and out into gown-like waves, bisected by a red plate through its chest that connected the green skin of its slender arms. Only the eyes gave any indication that it was still the same zoroark that had been there only moments before, red eyes now instead of gold, but still staring at her flatly, as if daring her to say otherwise.
Cold relief flooded Rumi's limbs, leaving them numb and buzzing. She pressed her fingernails into her palm until the point of pain to dissipate the sensation as she fumbled for a response that didn't sound like she was going insane. "Ummm, yeah, of course! Good eye. That's a gardevoir all right. What else would it be?" She winced, shutting her mouth with an audible click of her teeth, and stopped talking.
Mira looked at her funny. "Uhhh, I don't know. I just know you didn't have it out earlier. What, does it not like other people or something?"
Rumi couldn't help it. She barked out a laugh that sounded brittle even to her own ears. "Something like that."
"Yeah, all right. Well, I was going to grab some water and go back to bed if you're okay here." Mira hesitated a moment as she turned, then threw back over her shoulder, "There's leftovers from dinner still if your friend is hungry and wants some."
Rumi let her head dip in a tight nod, hoping the expression on her face read as more polite smile than grimace.
'Friend.' Right.
But it wasn't like she could exactly argue the point without revealing what it was, and as nice as the surprising lack of screaming in terror was, she was desperate for this conversation to be over so things would make sense again. "Thanks."
But Mira didn't seem to be quite done yet as she glanced up, scratching the back of her head. "Everyone gets bad dreams sometimes, you know," she said finally, voice pitched low enough that Rumi had to strain to hear the words. "You don't have to hide them."
Rumi let out a a huff of breath that could have been a laugh if it weren't so full of years of sleepless nights, whispered condemnations, stilted conversations, and a constant, gnawing anxiety.
If only bad dreams were the worst of it.
"I'll…consider it," she offered. It was only a few days to Smokeleaf Town. She could hold it together that long if that's what it took. Then they'd go their separate ways, and she wouldn't have to worry about it. Well, she would, but it would at least only be her problem to deal with, not anyone else's.
Mira shook her head. "Right. Great. Good talk." She raised a hand in farewell before picking her way back through the trees, heading back towards the distant light of the campfire.
Her houndoom stayed a beat longer, growling lowly, tail lashing, eyes fixed on the gardevoir illusion until a sharp whistle cut through the night. Even then, it backed up step by careful step, refusing to turn its back until it too was swallowed by the underbrush.
The moment it disappeared, the gardevoir took a single, threatening step forward.
"Don't!" Rumi hissed, reaching out. She shuddered, hand going numb and clammy where it passed through the gardevoir illusion to the frigid fur writhing just underneath.
Soldiering past the nausea rising in her gut at the disconnect between what her eyes and hands were telling her, Rumi continued, "She's a friend. Her and Zoey both, and their pokémon." The term rolled off her tongue easier this time, as if repeating it somehow made it more true.
The gardevoir illusion turned its head slowly to regard her.
"Well, sort of," Rumi amended under its flat gaze. "Maybe. At least for a few days?" She bit her lip. "So if you could please not scare them off this time?"
The zoroark didn't answer—it never did—but it also didn't move towards Mira or her houndoom again, so Rumi tentatively took that as acquiescence, at least for now. She could work with that.
She chewed on her lip, thoughts suddenly racing. "Actually, do you think you can keep that form?" She'd never known the zoroark to disguise itself completely as another pokémon for any length of time before, but it was worth a shot.
A ripple shivered over the gardevoir illusion, revealing the monstrous zoroark behind it for one brief, flashing moment, head tilted and ears canted ever so slightly in something like surprise, before a sneering grin crossed the creature's face and the gardevoir illusion slammed back into place, face carefully blank of all emotion in a picture perfect image of the psychic pokémon once again.
Rumi's vision swam at the brief double image, sending another stab of nausea roiling through her gut. She swallowed it down. "I'll take that as a maybe." She closed her eyes and steepled her fingers in front of her face, letting out a long breath as the dumbest idea she'd ever had formed in her head. "Okay, new plan. You can come and go as you please as long as you look like that."
Ignoring the fact that it came and went as it pleased anyway, Rumi wanted to at least reduce the fallout from its presence. A gardevoir was a perfectly acceptable, even admirable, pokémon for an up and coming young trainer to have. Her own personal sleep paralysis demon much less so.
The red eyes of the gardevoir illusion burned into her own, looking for what, Rumi didn't know. Then it inclined its head ever so slightly and turned its back on her, its gown flowing behind it in softly flowing waves that hid the writhing fur beneath. It glided over—away from where Mira and Zoey and their pokémon slept, Rumi gratefully noted—to stand beside the riverbank, arms crossed and face tilted upwards. It remained there, still and silent except for one brief twitch as a last flicker of lightning flashed on the distant horizon, echoed only by a quiet plop from further out in the river, too far for thunder to even register.
Rumi rubbed her arms against the goosebumps prickling over her skin, hoping she hadn't just made a huge mistake.
By the time she resettled her sleeping bag into more or less the correct orientation on its pad (after lamenting the now-broken zipper and a new tear in the nylon), the zoroark had turned its attention back to her, two eyes, one red, one gold, gleaming balefully in the distance.
Rumi rolled over, pulling the covers over her head to block out the sight, but she could still feel the back of her neck prickling under the imagined weight of the pokémon's gaze. She squeezed her eyes shut, ruthlessly willing her breath to even out even as the stifling heat of the sleeping bag threatened to choke her.
It was fine. She was fine. It was all going to be fine.
Sleep didn't come again that night.