A bayleef ploddeded over the mountainside.
This in itself was unusual, for there was little for a bayleef to eat at that altitude, but this bayleef in particular felt like he didn't have a choice. It wasn't that there was no more room for him in the grasslands. There was lots of room, more than enough, but that was the problem. It was hard to find other bayleef, even harder to find chikorita, which was ridiculous, and almost impossible to find a meganium.
Now, he wasn't opposed to the lack of meganium, they chased him off good feeding sites and the females never wanted to mate with him, and his feelings about male bayleef were pretty much the same, but all the females were gone too. The chikorita though, that was a problem.
Normally, he didn't pay the chikorita much attention. The eggs, yes, he happily guarded his eggs while his mate ate, then she would return to the eggs and he would go feed, and back and forth until the eggs hatched. Once they hatched, they were no longer his problem and he'd be on his way, not to be seen by him again until he revisited that particular herd. Except, he wasn't seeing any chikorita with any herd, or very few.
He knew what the problem was; everyone knew what the problem was. It was the humans, plain and simple. Granted, they were trainers, not hunters, so all the chikorita were probably still alive somewhere, but somewhere wasn't good enough. They needed chikorita on the grasslands to evolve into bayleef and help the meganium keep the forest at bay.
The forest was already encroaching, covering the edges of the grasslands in shade and killing the grass, and meganium were the only ones strong enough to knock down the adult trees. It was a slow process, but a constant one.
He wasn't the only bayleef that had left the grasslands. Some went through the forests, while others went over the mountains, like himself. He suspected that many of them got lost and starved, or were hunted, but he had an advantage that the others didn't have: he wasn't lost. Well, relatively speaking, he wasn't lost. He had no idea where he was, but he was following the trail of a female bayleef and several chikorita.
The chikorita weren't doing well, he'd already passed a couple dead ones. There wasn't enough food for a bayleef, even with their fat reserves, nevermind a chikorita with hardly any.
The scent trail was a couple days old, but considering it had neither gotten newer, nor older, in the few weeks he'd been following it, he assumed that the bayleef was still healthy despite the lack of food. He certainly was, and she was travelling about the same pace as him.
After another three days of cold weather and no food, he caught up to the female.
She may have been healthy enough to keep her pace, but not eating for a week took its toll. Something had killed her, he wasn't familiar with its scent, and all that was left was a dried-up carcass and a few scattered remnants of her chikorita.
It was sad, he reflected, there weren't many bayleef left, and this one had been his guide, too.
He plodded onwards. He didn't want to fall prey to whatever had gotten her and, really, what other choice did he have?