Outside the border between Pallet Town and Viridian Forest, Melissa Edison and a colleague of hers are looking at a tablet connected to an attached camera to Melissa's Pidgeot, the only flying-type Pokémon by a Field Researcher available at the moment.
"It sucks that we're not ethically allowed to borrow lab-dwelling Pokemons; the forest is too wide for only two Pokemons, even with how fast Pidgeot is."
Melissa's colleague sighed, she also can't use the children of her Pidgeot because... well, her Pidgeot doesn't have any children as of yet plus the regional birds inside the lab will be released as a part of diversifying the Flying type pool of the region project, if the field researchers trained some of them to be their eyes in the sky before releasing them again, that would mess up the survival of the fittest as it would favor the artificially selected bird Pokemons.
And again, they are not allowed to keep these hypothetical trainees as their Pokemons.
Furthermore, not all Field Researchers are free like Melissa, who's just about to propose a dissertation, meaning data collection doesn't keep her that busy yet; some of them are all over the region to float their research instruments for their dissertation, so they can't be lending their flying types to the internship because they would lose their transport method.
"Yes, and it just so happens that I'm the only field researcher aside from you and the lab researchers of the research center to not have any errands... and I happen to use a Rapidash for my long land travels."
Melissa nodded at this, though she didn't specifically blame the preferences of her colleague, after all, not all trainers can gulp down their fear of height; that's a normal genetic human response, though she grumbled about the fact that the Professor didn't tell the whole truth about the number of Flying Pokemons in their hands. The two researchers, Melissa being the younger one, continued to watch the camera for Melissa's Pidgeot while the other set of Field researchers, who are inside the forest, are also monitoring the camera attached to a Fearow.
Suddenly, in the middle of the job of Melissa and Jeremy, they heard an elderly voice behind their backs, which made the teen and young adult turn around. In front of them, they saw a scrawny man with a wooden cane and another man, seemingly the son of the old man, looking at them with worry.
"Uhm... are you two researchers from young... Professor Oak's lab?"
Melissa and Jeremy frowned with seriousness as they both nodded and answered: "Yes".
As both professionals in a very specialized field, they knew that normal civilians would not approach them that much regularly, unlike Officer Jennies or Nurse Joys, and they are yet to be popular researchers at all who have some groundbreaking discovery that revolutionized the Pokémon world, thus they knew that this matter should be a serious one.
"Oh, I see... well... you see, because of our carelessness... w-we... let a battle-ready Miltank escape its isolated enclosure, and as we can see that it's internship season again, we're afraid that the Miltank might jeopardize your program..."
Obviously, as the two researchers froze on the spot, circulating in their minds the implications of the contamination of the sight of the first activity of a rarely encountered Pokémon, which caused the old man and his son to be more nervous, fortunately, soon, the two researchers finally spoke.
"... that's a problem, alright."
___________
North of Viridian Forest, with Anthony's current location as the radius.
Mary, the new friend of Anthony is looking around the forest with her Skitty leading the way, and as Mary continued to stare at the loamy ground as well as the veiny bodies of the plethora of trees, she can't help but frown for as she ventured deeper and deeper to the designated and approved area inside the Viridian forest, the density of the Pokemons, specially the most common ones like that of Caterpie line, Weedle line as well as some rare ones like the Wurmple line and the occasional Spearow and Pidgeys became thinner and thinner until her current location practically became devoid of any moving life.
_So quiet... too quiet..._
Mary looked at her Skitty, and as expected, her Pokemon, that's trained tor recognize lack of presence of something to chase except for its tail to be a sign of varying environmental changes also wore a serious expression, it started to puff out its tail with 3 pollen-like buds on them, causing some scarce yellow pollen to puff off (or a normal powder made to mimic pollens) while it growled lightly whilst putting up a defensive stance in front of its trainer.
Mary frowned further at this, confirming the abnormality of the situation.
While it may look like just a simple superstition, population density of a certain place is actually one of the very primordial data-backed survival facts one should consider when assessing danger, because no Pokemon or any living creatures in that regard will leave their natural habitat just because they wanted to have species tourism or something, they had to have a very existential reason on why they did something so illogical.
And the emptiness of all her routes, not even encountering a normal Caterpie, most certainly means danger in the eyes of the girl intern.
_Damn it, trouble already 30 minutes in the first activity?_
Mary, even though afraid, immediately dished out an order to her Pokémon.
"Be ready to fight or flee."
Still growling, the Skitty nodded; all of the 'pet-only' stereotype of its species immediately got burnt to cinders by Mary for it to be a helpful staller (as of the current strategy) in battles and also a good instinctual responder to her commands. As if on cue, the moment Mary said such commands, the trainer-Pokemon duo heard the dreadful and iconic buzzing sound of rapidly flapping, vibrating wings alongside shining, naturally red eyes in front of them.
The Pokémon has a 3-segment body predominantly yellow in color, with its densest part, its bottom, having a stinger attached. Its hands, also made out of stingers, have black stripes on them, whilst its middle section contains both of its hands and legs. Finally, from the rapid vibration of its two pairs of wings are several squares and rectangles.
3 Beedrills in their front and more are coming all around them appeared with all their stingers and aggression.
_Am I lucky that I don't have a grass-type partner?_
Mary sighed at this, even though she's a rather mild-mannered girl and wanted not to risk her Pokémon's safety on the line as much as possible, she had to decide in a split second.
"Protect and run to the west!"
Mary didn't wait for her Pokémon to run past her but instead immediately dashed towards her back. Fortunately, as one would expect, she and Skitty have great chemistry; thus, the Pokémon immediately hopped on her shoulder before erecting a clear bubble-like energy. For a moment, Skitty trembled as it struggled to sustain a one-turn move; however, Skitty ultimately endured.
"BEEEEEE!"
"BEEEE!"
"BEEDRILLL!"
The riled up Beedrills obviously won't let their targets run past them, immediately, all Beedrills that are crowding the area soaked their 3 stingers with poison, which it coagulated and were spat out towards Mary and Skitty as they chased them.
_Tsk, Sludge Bomb!_
Mary identified the attack immediately; however, she doesn't have time to lament any of her current worries and can only run and hope that a field researcher will notice this anomaly. For meters, coming close to kilometers, or perhaps, it already is, Mary and Skitty dodged, blocked, and rolled over to not get scraped by the poison and physical attacks of the Beedrills, and to make matters worse, assailants, from different bug-type species as well as Ivysaurs, Dustox, and Bueatiflies started attacking them too.
This caused great burden to Skitty; however, seeing that its trainer never even once buckled on her job to run for their lives, the Pokémon remained steadfast and funneled all of its strength into the Protect move it had been maintaining all this time, and because of her Skitty's stubborn nature, Mary was able to confirm the cause of the sudden attack.
In the body of all the Pokemons that are assailing them, Mary noticed several degrees of injury, which is also the reason why they can still hold out for some of them, because their severe injuries forced them to rest and never join the attack again.
_Someone attacked them, and they're venting on us! It's a good thing Heracrosses are most likely stronger than whatever that might be, or we will get turned into a porcupine before finding our asses stuck up the horn of a Heracross!_
Well, Mary, or researchers in general, are rarely well-mannered, though that's not what's important right now.
____________
Anthony and Zubat were frozen, unable to process for a moment what had been laid bare in their eyes.
In front of the trainer-Pokemon duo, Anthony and Zubat, is a heap of Pokemons: Caterpie, Butterfree, Metapods, as well as Kakuna and Weedles, with some Bulbasaurs too, all of them have injuries of differing degrees. The bug types have wounds with green blood oozing out of their head, tails, and some even worse ones have some gummy flesh on their cross sections hanging out of their skin.
This scene made Anthony gulp in anger and worry for himself and for Zubat, while Zubat, of course knew that the safety of its trainer is most certainly to be jeopardized in this part of the forest wherein there's an attack of a rampant Pokemon, thus it didn't think about itself and immediately entered heightened alertness, it bristled up all of its fur whilst it cried out.
"ZUUUUUUU!"
It was childish, yet provocative, as if to challenge the assailant... or perhaps intimidate it. Anthony was quite happy that his Pokemon cares about him, however, he would be more happy if Zubat shot the supersonic it have just released upwards for the Pokemons of the associate field researchers to know the situation, however, it was already too late, for just when Anthony was about to command Zubat to immediately shoot out a supersonic as a SOS, a bush behind Anthony suddenly rustled violently whilst a pink flash of light shot upwards.
Anthony took 3 steps back in fright and apprehension whilst looking abruptly to the Pokemon (Anthony is sure that it is a Pokemon), it has a pink fur dotted with a yellow spot in its mammary glands area while black spots riddles it at the back, the fur in its head looks like a bonnet whilst its cow hands spread out as if to show challenge and dominance.
"MIIIIIIIIIILLLL!"
Anthony's eyes trembled, and his face became ashen.
"Battle-ready Mitank!"
One Pokemon that is rarely documented to show any sign of aggression is a Miltank as it was said that only a handful of these Pokemons such as this in the past decade has been recorded, and while this might mean that trainers doesn't need to attach importance to Miltanks in wild adventures, it also implies that trainers will usually not be well equipped if Miltanks do started to show aggression.
_Godamnit, it's too fast, we can't report._
Anthony, realizing this, immediately stepped back again.
"SUPERSONIC, FULL POWER TO THE EAR!"
Zubat, seeing the dire tone of its master, immediately put itself to work. It moved forward before puffing in a massive amount of air and blasting a blue colored supersonic wave, which the unusually excited battle-ready Miltank blocked head-on, causing its head to tilt hard to the right before falling from high up.
"Miii?"
For a moment, the battle-ready Miltank's eyes were unfocused, which made Anthony immediately recognize its opening due to the numerous mock battles he and his father had done over the course of months.
"Wing Attack!"
Anthony shouted, and Zubat obliged, making a nose dive while making its wings coated with the mysterious energy inside it; however, the Battle Ready Miltank immediately twitched its ears to the side of Anthony and dodged the Wing Attack before again jumping upwards and letting its legs shine before diving down directly on top of the back of Zubat at extreme speeds.
Anthony immediately commanded.
"Supersonic and dodge!"
And again, the Pokémon obliged, a blue wave was shot out, once more causing confusion to the battle-ready Miltank and making it miss the Stomp attack's mark. Zubat, however, is not well-off as it sharply dodged a fast-coming attack from a battle-starved Pokémon, making it stumble 3 times into the ground.
This made Anthony gulp in nervousness; however, he focused on the battle.
_If Zubat is not trained in dodging and in agility in general, the battle would've ended that quickly..._
Anthony gulped again, which strangely made him wonder: Is it really because of nervousness?
"Zubat, Absorb!"
Well, for Anthony, it doesn't really matter because now, he has a battle to win.