The blood from my back reached my legs, pooling into my shoes. Each step made my shoes squelch on the ground.
Fuck.
I turned to Hurricane. I tore my shirt off, exposing my wound to the cold night.
"Hey Hurricane. Do you know how to cauterize a wound?" This was not ideal. Azula's job had been far easier. Simply cauterizing a stump was far easier than sealing a wound. Especially since mine was this agitated.
I couldn't actually see how much it had opened up. It very well could have been a small sliver. But the cold night made it feel like there was a hole carved into my back with a fucking shovel.
Hurricane gestured towards the ground with his head.
I tried to ignore the snarls of Luxray getting closer.
I could only feel the heat approaching, since my head was turned. Then hell itself decided to tattoo itself onto my back, making my skin feel like it was boiling.
A few seconds later, it was over.
The wound pulsed. My skin sizzled, glowing a light red.
But it had stopped bleeding.
And that meant I would survive. For now.
I turned to see Hurricane putting his bright red tongue back in his mouth, still steaming from the heat emitted.
I would've complained about how gross that was, but I was still trying to recover. Like come on, maybe use a heated up paw or something. Didn't using your tongue make you taste it? That was so weird. I heard the snarls of approaching enemies, forcing me to steel myself and stand tall.
I grabbed Oblivion in my right hand, holding a blade out.
I walked over to where Tristan was hidden in the bushes, and stood between the dangerous open air and the safety of the hidden bushes.
I nodded towards Arcanine.
"Go. Help Zuko. I've got him covered."
Hurricane looked back to where Tristan was, and looked back towards me. He hesitantly took a step forward, his paw inching towards the ground. And then he disappeared, the wind whipping as he used extreme speed.
I heard pained whines in the distance as Hurricane dealt with the Luxray.
Soon the wind whooshed again as he reappeared next to me.
"See, that wasn't so bad was it? Tristan's fine. Even injured, I can take care of him from zero assailants. Honestly, what could possibly get past you and Zuko?" I looked at Hurricane incredulously.
Zuko also returned, his claws a little more stained, speak of the devil. He looked at me with glee. He was having a blast.
The wild was good for him. It let him really give in to his natural instincts. Of course that really might be an issue once we get back to civilization, but for now he really could let loose.
Woah.
I was thinking far ahead there. Like I genuinely believed we'd make it out of this. Cool.
The next couple hours were relatively low stress. Hurricane took point, sniffing out enemies, and either him or Zuko easily incapacitated opponents with paralysis. I just sat back, doing nothing, as Hurricane directed Zuko towards enemies far better than I could.
They both knew how to handle their opponents, so I couldn't even really give them pointers. Especially since Hurricane didn't even tell me what the enemies were before they dealt with them. Of course, he couldn't really physically tell me even if he wanted to, but I felt a little left out nonetheless.
Hell, I was the only human here in any sort of operating capacity, and all I got to do was play babysitter for a catatonic dude in a bush.
Wow.
It'd only been a day since Tristan had been incapacitated, and I was already comfortable cracking jokes about it.
One of the few people I actually liked since I got here, someone who could have been a mentor. Who I'd only known for a couple days, and had almost begun to think akin to a brother. And he was laying on the ground not even five feet away, poisoned. Unconscious. And without any legs. I wonder who's fault that was.
I don't know why terrible situations happen to bring out my sense of humor the most. Well, I mean, what was the alternative? Depression? That didn't seem very beneficial.
Mourning seems counterproductive. At least right now. And what would I mourn for? What could have been? Plus I still don't know who died and who survived in the Saur attack. I mean, I felt sad whenever I thought about what happened. Did that count as mourning? I don't really have the time or resources to set up a pyre or anything. I guess I could do something like that once I was in a better place.
Getting angry at the Saurs also seemed useless. They were supposed to be nomadic. Would I spend the rest of my life hell bent on enacting vengeance? They were wild pokemon. They did that sort of thing to organized groups of pokemon all the time. Although now that I thought about it, it was frightening how organized they had been. To be able to get through the defenses the Rangers had set up was no small task. But even so, seething in silence for the foreseeable future didn't seem like a great idea. I had for a bit. I still do. My hands clench every time I think of them. But it's only momentary. I just feel like I don't have the energy to be angry right now. Especially since the thing I'm angry at seems so far away and untouchable. Besides, there is still a large amount of fear that holds back that anger.
If every emotion feels like there are drawbacks, what was I supposed to do? Should I just go on, like a robot, doing everything I do now with no emotion? Should I feel guilty for enjoying something when circumstances are shitty? Did it take away from others' suffering? Or would those that have suffered, those who had died, prefer that I keep making jokes, even if it's at their expense, simply because it might make my day a little brighter in a string of really shitty days.
To be honest, it seemed like a moot point to begin with. For some reason, I struggled to get angry, sad, or really anything in moments like these. I would get plenty angry or sad later, but the storm hadn't cleared yet. The danger had yet to pass. It was one of the reasons I liked high stress scenarios. My head was never more clear.
Hurricane blurred back into the small area between the trees.
Hurricane and Zuko were actually putting in work. And here I was, contemplating moral quandaries.
Life was weird.
The yellow lizard with electric powers that would eventually turn into a full fledged dragon that could fly and shoot lasers blurred back into the clearing, taking place next to the magic horse-size dog that could move almost at the speed of sound while spewing fire.
Yeah, life being weird was a severe understatement.
Everything seemed to be running smoothly. Admittedly, both Zuko and Hurricane were running on fumes. They were exhausted and hungry. So was I.
We'd all been awake for far too long. Zuko had rested well during the day. I assume. Hurricane may or may not have had any rest.
And the attacks hadn't really let up.
This wasn't sustainable at all.
I could see why the Rangers had needed a multiple manned team just for night patrol. Having a Zoroark cover us would have been nice. Having a psychic to feel out enemies would also have been convenient. Hurricane's scent did essentially the same thing, but some wild pokemon knew how to mask their scent. And while Zuko did serve as a good scout and replacement for Layton with his speedy pokemon, I was nowhere close to feeling safe enough to go to sleep.
That might change soon. It seemed like we were pretty much in the clear. Despite the ferocity of the wild pokemon here, they simply couldn't compete with the speed and intellect of Hurricane and Zuko.
That was quite interesting. While the wild pokemon out here were somewhat smart, there was limited critical thinking there.
I thought back to the Serperior I had seen at the Tree of Iron Scales. That had been a wild pokemon as well. Yet it had seemed so much more intelligent than the rabid aggressive Serperior that had tried to kill me and Azula earlier. The same scaled snake Pokemon, one of Unova's starters. They certainly had the capacity for intelligence. Even the wild ones. The one at the Tree had proved that. It had been planting and growing produce with a Chestaught. Both were grass types, able to produce their own energy from sunlight, yet were using their powers to grow food for those in the Tree that couldn't. Farming took humanity thousands of years to figure out. And we were supposed to be the smart ones.
I guess it's very different to have an established form of command. With actual complex commands being given out by Kommo-o for the last few centuries, the Tree's occupants had learned. They had grown. The mind, no matter the potential, still has to be cultivated. The Serperior were the exact same genetically, yet one was capable of thinking and acting at a completely different level of complexity.
The wild Serperior had been nearly the peak of what wild pokemon could be, in a sense. They could dodge attacks with ease. Their spatial cognition and reaction times were honed to ridiculous precision. They were likely better fighters than the Serperior at the Tree, when it came to physical combat.
However, as magical creatures that could actually alter the energy of the cosmos through sheer willpower, they didn't actually know how to use any special attacks. I'm sure that energy ball or the like was something Serperior could use. Yet the wild ones had only really tried to attack with leaf blade. And it made sense. Anything they hunted would be torn apart by leaf blade. So they would never actually have to ever think of any other solutions. They would never have to experiment with their ability to imbue their body with grass energy to try and find out how to learn something like an energy ball. Hell, they might not have ever seen anything use energy ball ever. Something like that might simply be outside the scope of what they know. The same way trying to explain quantum physics would simply seem impossible to a caveman. Or even most educated people from my time, really. Quantum mechanics was hard.
The brain is built for optimization. The Serperior from today had hunted all their lives, they had fought all their lives, so they were damn good at it. There was no reason for them to ever try to do anything else. The Serperior from the tree had been given tasks to do every day of its life, and it had learned how to do them to perfection. It likely could even do tasks before it was told to now, having learned to anticipate what needs to be done. Decision making and fighting went hand and hand, but they were trained in different ways. That's why the idea of a trap physically never crossed the mind of the Serperior. Holy shit I guess that's why Zoroark were perceived to be so damn dangerous. They were wild, yet actually knew how to fucking think. They set traps, actually being able to anticipate how something else, say a human, would react to something. And plan accordingly.
Fuck that was terrifying. Wild pokemon weren't supposed to be able to do that. I hope I never have to encounter one of the fuckers.
Overall, I guess this just explains something I've been wondering all of today. The wild pokemon I've come across tend to be purely physical or purely special attackers. Their move pools also tend to be very limited. I guess it just went back to optimization. Why practice 10,000 kicks one time when you can just practice one kick 10,000 times. It makes that one kick really fucking dangerous. After you find something that works, without the brain capacity to understand potential, you'll simply stop there. No improvisation. Simply rehearsing what's already been done.
To be fair, I think that's where humans came in. That's why trained pokemon could be so exceptionally different from wild pokemon. Or at least they had the potential to. It still depended on how good the trainer was.
I sighed. Hurricane and Zuko were really doing all the work. Not that I'd complain. My back was still aching. The som-bitch would take weeks to heal now. The potion had made things better, but I'd gone and fucked it up again. And there was no way in hell I was wasting the last potion on me. I hopefully would be able to use it on Tristan or Gallade, but it wouldn't help with the poison or paralysis. So for now I'd just save it for a rainy day. My body complained with another wrack of aches spreading all across my spine. A rainier day.
There were only a few hours of night left, and then we would be able to rest.
Or at least some of us would. One of us would have to take watch. And honestly, I don't think Hurricane would trust Zuko or I to do it. But if we were going to survive here for any length of time, he would have to rest. Hurricane was the biggest trump card we had out here.
Either way, fighting like this every single night was not an option. We'd be burnt out within three days, even if we took shifts during the day to rest.
Food was probably not a huge issue anymore. Any of the downed pokemon would be able to be prepped for eating, although I don't really know how to prepare that sort of thing. Maybe I'd have to go back to the Stantler clearing and cook the meat properly, and then smoke it so it'd last longer.
Both Zuko and Hurricane had been eating processed food their entire lives. I think. So switching to eating raw meat could potentially be very dangerous. The microbiomes in their stomachs might not be able to process that sort of thing properly. Or just give them serious indigestion. I'm honestly unsure if that'd stop Zuko at this point.
He's been giving more into his instincts.
However, the whole response to that has left me a little surprised. Him giving into his instincts means he's far more aggressive in battle. But it seems like it's releasing a sort of tension that's been building up this whole time.
It showed when he jumped up and licked my face when he saw me. He's never been that affectionate before.
Playful, sure, but he's never really shown that he cares.
I wonder if suppressing his aggressiveness just served as bottlenecking his energy, making him constantly antsy, whereas now he has more control due to releasing that energy. I'd have to watch him carefully over the next couple days just to be sure.
I gave a brief wave to Zuko as he returned from another successful venture of fending off whatever was out in the dark. Christ Starfall was ridiculous. We really need to find better shelter.
Wait.
Huh.
That got me thinking. There are multiple ways that you can limit threats in the wild. I had seen plenty today.
The Ferrothorn were poised in the trees, where they could simply use potential energy to crush anything that got close enough to attack. With a notable lack of fire types in the forest, nothing could really challenge them.
The Venemoth had a big enough colony that they could patrol their nest without rest, simply sleep powdering anything that got close.
However, there was one thing that I could do.
The Galvantula had electric webbing that served as an electric fence. It paralyzed anything that touched it, incapacitating anything that got close.
I had an electric type that could charge up that webbing, so after a wild pokemon tripped one of the lines, Zuko could recharge it.
I clapped my hands together in excitement, making Hurricane give me a look.
"Shit. Sorry." I whispered.
Didn't mean to make unnecessary noise. Internally I was buzzing with excitement. This could work. I simply had to think of a way to steal enough of the Galvantula webbing.
For starters, they seemed to sleep during the day. Granted, they slept on the webbing that I wanted to steal, so I don't think I'd be able to take much before they noticed.
Okay.
That was an option. Steal a tiny bit, day by day, eventually getting enough to set up a perimeter. Every day I would be able to bottleneck opponents even more, forcing them to attack from a single direction.
Not bad, admittedly. But I still want to think of something that will let me not have to worry about the wild pokemon starting tomorrow night.
How can I steal enough webbing to set up a perimeter, all in a single day?
Galvantula. Vikavolt. Weaknesses.
I tapped my chin.
Fire would work, but it'd also burn up the webbing that I want. Plus torching a bunch of intelligent pokemon didn't sit right with me.
Sure, I offhandedly caused the death of two Serperior and a Shiftry earlier. However, they all tried to kill me first.
I guess you could reason that the Galvantula would also kill me, given the chance. However, preemtive attack is still something I consider to be fucked up. Especially when I know that the thing I'd be preemptively attacking wasn't actively plotting against me. The Galvantula would just be defending their home. For all I knew, they were a passive species that only attacked to defend their own.
Plus, death by fire is pretty fucked up.
Okay. So no fire. What else was there? I think they were also weak to rock and flying. Wait no the electric typing gets rid of the flying weakness. Not that I have a flying type either way. Also I wonder if resistances canceled out like they do in the games. I couldn't logically explain why Zuko would take less damage from a sharp blade of wind than Azula. Physically their scales were nearly identical. Plus, Zuko and Galvantula were both electric types, yet one had a soft fur and the other had actual scales. Would the resistance carry over? This was real life.
I had to remember that. Things wouldn't necessarily work the same way they did in the games.
Anyway I didn't have any rock or flying type moves or pokemon, so that was ruled out anyway.
Huh.
I don't see a way that I can solve this with the tools I have. How could I acquire more tools?
Right.
I'd already incorporated that strategy multiple times today. There was something that could easily incapacitate every single one of the Galvantula and Vikavolt.
The Venomoth.
I simply had to get them close enough to blast them with sleep powder.
Did that count as inciting a race war?
I shook as I realized how possible it was for the governments of my past life to have incited conflicts between groups to fix a problem or create a problem only they could fix. Shit. It was that easy, wasn't it.
That's really fucked up.
I guess if you don't want to waste your own resources, or you want to be able to keep an air of innocence, all you have to do is knock over the right dominos in the right places.
That's super fucked up.
Well, horrifying realization aside, I think this would work. Admittedly, inciting pokemon to attack other pokemon was pretty fucked up, now that I thought about it.
Wait, all I had to do was get the sleep powder to go to the nest. That simply meant close enough.
I could have Zuko stand in as bait, downwind of the nest, so that when they tried to sleep powder him, I could simply return him from afar.
Bing bang boom, the sleep powder goes into the nest because the Venemoth use gusts, but they don't actually get close enough to notice the Galvantula.
Returning Zuko means he doesn't get hit. Then the Venemoth will have to return to their nest because they don't have a target.
Everybody's happy. Well, except for the Venemoth who don't get to eat Zuko. And the Galvantula, who have to reweb their nest. But hey, at least no lives are unnecessarily lost. That's a win in my book. That seems to be the best I can do to keep my moral conscious happy while also making sure that we do not die slash have to fight for our lives every single night.
I simply have to make sure I'm unnoticed by them. Maybe I camp out in a tree? How could I make sure they don't see where the red beam originated from? Do they have developed enough eyes to even notice the beam in the first place?
Okay. Well either way I had the beginnings of a plan. This was good. Admittedly there were a few ways I could test how good Venemoth eyesight was before going through with it. Or if they had the critical thinking capacity to know that there is an enemy where the red beam originated, even if the red beam didn't attack them.
I will continue to think about it.
"SQUAAK". Came a cry from above.
Shit.
I quickly scrambled to my feet, narrowly dodging the sharp talons of a Honchkrow. I looked around, only to notice that both Hurricane and Zuko weren't present.
Fuck.
The Honchcrow came in for another swoop, but this time I was ready with Oblivion.
The black crow-like Pokemon barrel rolled to the left, avoiding my sweep of the blade. It then circled back, charging up a ball of black energy.
The dark pulse shot down at me, making me dodge left. The black ball of energy crashed into the ground, sending dirt flying.
I sheathed Oblivion, looking around for rocks to throw. I quickly began moving around, throwing as many rocks as I could. I could feel the wound on my back straining, so I couldn't really put any force into the throws.
The Honchcrow didn't seem to want to try closing the distance anymore after nearly getting bisected by the steel ghost, and was now simply spamming dark pulses. I likewise continued pelting it with rocks, trying to think of options.
I didn't really have any better ranged options.
Then a blur of yellow zipped past me, scrambling up a tree. I hit the Honchkrow again, making it flinch.
Zuko jumped off the tree in a maneuver Tristan would be proud of, and tackled the Honchkrow with fists coated with electricity.
The two crashed to the ground, the Honchkrow knocked out instantly.
A gust of air hit me as Hurricane returned. He idly looked around at the destruction, and noted that the bush and its occupant were unharmed. He snarled, and sat down.
I noticed he had a cut that was bleeding on his front leg. His tongue lit up with heat, cauterizing the wound as he licked it.
Oh. I guess that's why he used his tongue to seal my wound. It's how he seals his own. That's actually really cool. He's his own field medic.
Granted, despite the cool solution to the problem, that wouldn't be what Hurricane was focusing on. Any wound would be seen as a mistake. The Arcanine looked like it was moping. It had lots of responsibility thrust on it out of nowhere. Its trainer and friend of at least a decade was in the worst shape of his life. It was forced to trust these novice beings that it barely knew.
Siba had said to protect them. And Hurricane would follow through. No matter what. But it didn't mean Hurricane was happy about it. Especially since he just wanted to protect his trainer.
I noticed the hard look on the Arcanine's face. "Hurricane. I've got the beginnings of a plan that will make our lives a lot easier. But we've got to make it through the night first." I looked him in the eye. "Can you make sure that happens?"
Hurricane turned his head to me and nodded grimly.
"Cool. Hey you don't mind if I use one of these right?" I asked, moving over to Tristan's pack and grabbing an Ultra Ball.
Hurricane narrowed his eyes, unmoving.
"Okie dokie." I quickly tossed it towards Honchcrow's unconscious form, catching it. Zuko looked at me, cocking his head.
I grinned. "I bet it tastes like chicken." Hurricane was still giving me a dirty look. "What? It's not like you were gonna use it. Don't you know how annoying it would be to lug this thing all the way over to the Stantler field to cook it? We can't just subsist off of calorie bars."
Hurricane opted to ignore me, going back to his post of sniffing for enemies.
I went back to mulling over my options. Obviously this creature was a thinking being. Morally that meant I shouldn't eat it. Yet animals didn't exist in this world. There were only Pokemon. Fishers caught Magikarp and Seaking to sell to fish markets all around the world. Miltank were raised from birth to be slaughtered as food.
I had known that the whole time I was here. I had eaten food my whole time I was here, knowing that whenever I ate meat it was a pokemon.
It certainly felt more personal when I was gonna be the one to have to prepare it, but did that make it worse? It certainly felt like it.
But what was I supposed to do? Starve?
Going vegan was an option, one I honestly considered, but Zuko and Hurricane needed protein. They physically would degrade as their bodies failed to have the proper nutrition to supply the kind of power they used in their physical attacks and movement.
Pokemon ate other pokemon literally all the time. And they certainly didn't have any qualms about trying to eat me.
Was I supposed to feel bad just because I was smart enough to realize the moral implications? For some reason, no matter how I tried to reason it, I couldn't get rid of the unsettling feeling in my gut.
I'm not sure if I was cut out for this world.
Either way, it was not going to help to question every decision I ever made about food choices right now. I needed sleep. I have a big day tomorrow. One that could potentially make our lives a lot easier.
I could properly think through the moral ambiguity of the food chain at some other point. Likely the day after tomorrow, when I would actually potentially go and cook the damn thing.
Whatever. Right now I need sleep. I turned towards Hurricane "I'm gonna take a cat nap. Try to make sure I don't die. I appreciate it. Cool love you night!" I said, curling up and passing out.
There were too many adrenaline spikes today. My body was so physically exhausted that staying awake had been a chore.
The second I laid down, I was out like a light.
Hopefully tomorrow will go a little bit better than today. Was that too much to ask?