It took a week for Baoba and Ash to leave the White Forest. Baoba wanted to continue to investigate the local flora and fauna (the White Forest being by far the most diverse in species in all of Unova) and talk to various Unovans about their feelings on a Safari Zone, and Ash's mom wanted sufficient time to say goodbye; after all, despite what Ash may have wanted, his mother was more than happy to have him stay at home for a few more years.
But finally, finally, Baoba and his apprentice left through the very door the man had come out of all those days ago. And less than a day later, on bikes, they arrived at their destination.
"But this—this is right next door! We haven't even made it to the next town!" Ash complained as he chained up his bike (a birthday present from the year before) and trudged past the fence that blocked the Lostlorn Forest off from Route 16.
"You wanted to be my apprentice. Well, in this case being my apprentice means going to the Lostlorn Forest. Unless you'd like to go back to the White Forest?" Baoba asked, fiddling with what Ash had learned was a Pokedex, albeit one with many more features than the model handed out to aspiring 15 year-old Pokemon Trainers for free.
"No! No, I guess it's fine." Ash sighed. When he'd imagined becoming someone's apprentice he'd always thought that they'd travel to far off lands and battle gyms daily, amazing the entirety of the region with Ash's natural skill and allowing him to become champion within months. Not… visit an unpopular forest that most trainers skipped as they raced to Victory Road.
"Good! Now, I'd like you to take this Pokedex—I have two— and catalogue as many Pokemon as possible. This will also be a good time for you to begin training your Cyndaquil. There's a great many grass and bug types in the Lostlorn Forest, you know." Baoba grinned as his last sentences caught Ash's attention.
"Then let's go!" The young teen said, dashing forward with Cyndaquil on his heels.
Before long they were in the forest proper and Ash and Cyndaquil were trying to power through as many battles as possible. While it was a bit difficult as the wild Pokemon were definitely at a higher level than Cyndaquil and the only attack moves the fire Pokemon knew were Tackle, Ember, and Quick Attack, the type advantage was good enough that they were still managing to trample through the forest at a reasonable pace, for all that they had to regularly stop at the random berry patches throughout the forest to keep Cyndaquil going strong.
After only an hour in the forest Ash and Cyndaquil, working together, had fought and defeated Cottonee, Petilil, Roselia, Combee, and an extremely difficult Pinsir.
"Great job, Cyndaquil!" Ash said as he hugged his partner, high off of yet another victory. "Let's find our next opponent!" Cyndaquil chirped in agreement and the two began to look around. "There!" Ash shouted. Pointing to a reddish-green Pokemon a few meters away. It was inching towards a music player Baoba had left out—apparently a number of Pokemon were attracted to music, and the Safari Zone owner had asked Ash to keep track of which Pokemon were obviously attracted to the player. Honestly, though, Ash cared much more about the prospect of attracting battles then the inner workings of Pokemon. Nevertheless, as the trainer and Pokemon approached the mystery Pokemon, Ash pulled out his Pokedex and made a note of its response to music as he aimed it at the creature.
"This Pokemon is a Venipede. It is a Bug and Poison type. It uses its feelers to read vibrations in the air and determine both its predators' and prey's location and state."
"Nice. Cyndaquil, Ember!" The Fire Mouse lunged forward, firing a small flame at his opponent. The Venipede reared back, annoyed, and spat some purple gunk at Cyndaquil. While at first the tiny fire Pokemon seemed fine after a second or two he suddenly tensed up in pain, whimpering slightly despite no visible injury.
"Cyndaquil?" Ash shouted from a safe distance away. At the same time the Venipede reared back for another attack. "Ember again!" Ash shouted, putting his Pokemon's strange behavior out of his mind for the time being. It took another Ember, but the Venipede finally went down. Unfortunately, Cyndaquil was still acting oddly. Ash picked up his Pokemon, scared that something had gone horribly wrong, and sprinted towards the back of the forest that he knew Baoba was exploring.
"Baoba! Baoba! Cyndaquil's been hurt!"
By the time Ash finally managed to track to track the elusive man down Cyndaquil was coughing and sweating and looked like he would faint any minute.
"Baoba! Cyndaquil's sick!"
"What's the—? Oh, I see. Well, not to worry." The Safari Zone owner rummaged through his pack, muttering as he did so. "I really should have given these to you earlier… where are—? Aha!" He pulled out a purple and yellow spray bottle, before holding each up to Cyndaquil's mouth in turn. "Not to worry, Ash. Your Cyndaquil was just poisoned. I really should have given you some antidotes and potions to start off with." He rummaged through his bag again and pulled out two of each. "Here you are! Next time use the Pokedex's Status feature to diagnose Cyndaquil—I paid extra for it, you know." Baoba then showed Ash how to access the screen, as well as the actual signs to watch out for. Once he was sure Ash got it, he turned back to his own work—he seemed to be trying to set up some cameras in the area.
Despite Baoba's unconcerned response, however, all Ash could think about was how helpless he had been to Cyndaquil's suffering—he'd, after all, been the one who had run through the forest twitching in pain again and again just because Ash hadn't realized what was going on.
"I'm really sorry Cyndaquil. I had no idea what was wrong and I should have. I've seen the signs often enough while watching battles on TV. I just—I froze. I'm really sorry." Ash said as he and Cyndaquil walked back to the front of the forest. He felt like an idiot—Champions didn't make mistakes like that—they always knew how their Pokemon were doing, and were never caught unaware. But as Ash continued to question whether or not the White Forest's visitors—Drayden included—were right, Cyndaquil looked up at him and chirped reassuringly, rubbing against his leg as he scrambled along. Ash shook his head, reminding himself that everyone made a mistake or two, and it couldn't be that big a deal, before petting Cyndaquil reassuringly. After one last promise to realize sooner next time, the two went back to work. As they made their way through the forest, however, Ash noticed something odd.
After every battle Cyndaquil would tense for a few seconds before relaxing again. Ash was tempted to run back to Baoba, but Cyndaquil didn't want to, so they continued on, though Ash kept it in his mind to ask Baoba about later—the Pokedex had not registered a status effect, and the odd behavior worried the young teen.
Around mid-afternoon they decided to begin targeting Pokemon that weren't necessarily weak to Cyndaquil's Ember. Their first target was a Watchog that seemed to be guarding a number of other, younger, Pokemon.
"Cool! A new opponent!" Ash said, sprinting towards the normal type as he pulled out the Pokedex, registering the time and place the new Pokemon had been spotted. Cyndaquil followed behind him, albeit more reluctantly than normal.
"Ember, Cyndaquil!" Ash shouted the second the fire type was near enough. Opposite them the Watchog tensed, but took the attack without retaliating. "Ember again!" Cyndaquil seemed even more reluctant now, but did as he was told. Again the opposing Pokemon took the attack calmly. Then, just as Cyndaquil was about to release another Ember the Watchog pounced, flaring wildly as it slammed directly into Cyndaquil. The fire-type didn't have a chance—it twitched, then lay still.
"Cyndaquil!" Ash shouted, recklessly running forward to gather the fire mouse in his arms. Thankfully the Watchog did not seem inclined to attack the young teen, so Ash took off to the campsite.
Once there he desperately tried to wake the fainted Pokemon up, but Cyndquil showed no signs of stirring. Ash's leg jiggled as he thought about what to do. He knew Baoba told him that if Cyndaquil ever fainted he was supposed to stay at the campsite until the Safari Zone owner returned, but this was an emergency! Finally Ash made a decision. He returned his partner to his Pokeball and sped out of the camp, darting through the brush towards the back of the forest where Baoba was working.
It took a while, scraping against more than a few branches in his haste, and fleeing from three separate aggressive Pokemon, but he finally managed to track down Baoba gazing through some particularly dense trees towards the end of Lostlorn forest proper. "Baoba!"
"Ash?" Baoba said, turning around. "Did you run out of antidotes?"
"No! Cyndaquil fainted!" Ash wheezed, out of breath from the running.
"What?! I thought I told you to stay at the campsite if that happened! You shouldn't go running around without a Pokemon that can fight, Ash."
"Lecture me later! Fix Cyndaquil now!" Ash shouted. Baoba pursed his lips but pulled out a revive and fed it to the unconscious Pokemon.
"This should heal him enough to get you back to the camp." Baoba said, before turning to look Ash in the eyes. It was not a happy look. "You will stay at camp until I get back. I expect a full written report on what you did wrong, both in the battle and in your actions afterwards—there's a number of books you can use for that purpose—and for Cyndaquil to be fully cleaned and brushed by the time I get back. Then we can begin your punishment—I will not take going through a forest without a capable Pokemon lightly."
"That's not my punishment?!" Ash yelped. It seemed like a punishment to him.
"No."
Finally taking in how serious Baoba was Ash nodded and turned back to camp. He tried to dawdle as long as possible in the forest, but Cyndaquil, still weak but much improved, wouldn't listen and went straight back to camp at (what was to Ash) a very unreasonable pace, obviously less than willing to put up with his trainer's behavior.
As Ash stepped into the site he pulled out his Gameboy, having decided that he had some time before he had to get to work. Just before he could turn it on it was bumped out of his hands.
Below him Cyndaquil sat, glaring at him as much as the tiny Pokemon could. He was clearly not very happy to have gotten in trouble, and less than willing to see Ash shirk his orders.
"I'll get the work done! But I have enough time for one game at least! It's been a tough day, I deserve the relaxation!" Ash argued, leaning down to get the dropped system. Cyndaquil squeaked and headbutted it out of Ash's hands again. "Cyndaquil!" Ash shouted, annoyed. The fire mouse squeaked again, not deterred. Finally Ash groaned. He left the Gameboy on the ground and pulled an "all-in-one" digital textbook and a notebook out of his backpack, before flipping to the first empty page and beginning to write. Every time he began to slack off Cyndaquil hit his head. Every time he tried to stand Cyndaquil used ember just above his head.
"Fine! I'll work!" Ash snapped, annoyed. He turned back to what he'd already done.
I shouldn't have run to the back of the forest without a Pokemon. Wild Pokemon will attack humans regardless of whether or not they have a Pokemon with them. I shouldn't have tried to attack the Watchog. It was really strong and…
And what? There was no way it was strong enough to faint Cyndaquil in one move, but that's what it did. Ash sat back, actually thinking about what had happened.
"I bet… I bet it was the move the Watchog used." Ash muttered, turning to his "Pokemon Moves" textbook and swiping through random pages for Watchog's move list. Ash's haphazard approach meant that it took a while to arrive at the list, but when he finally did it barely took two minutes to figure out what had happened.
"You were hit by a move called 'Bide', Cyndaquil." Ash explained to the fire type sitting next to him. He read the description, explaining what he was reading to Cyndaquil as he did. "The way the move works is the Pokemon using it takes about two attacks, and then it'll use the power of those attacks in combination with its own power to hit back twice as hard. Isn't that cool?"
Cyndaquil chirped, scrambling onto Ash's leg to see the video the young teen had pulled up on his Pokedex showing Bide being done by a Kricketot. It sucked that Cyndaquil had been hit by the move, but it was also a move that Ash could see using against a challenger when he was champion.
After figuring out the move Ash flew through the rest of the essay, even adding that he hadn't considered why the Watchog wasn't attacking back and how to deal with the attack in the future (use status moves for as long as the opposing Pokemon uses Bide or use a Protection move when it goes to release the energy). Finished, Ash gazed down at his paper. It was honestly some of his best work, and he was oddly proud of the effort he had put into it.
But he was on a deadline and there was now less than an hour before Baoba was supposed to return to the campsite, so thirteen year old and fire type alike scrambled to get ready in time. Both quickly bathed in the giant pail of water Baoba had made Ash lug from a stream earlier that day, and after changing into some cleaner clothes Ash began the painstaking process of brushing all of the nettles and clumps and dried poisons out of Cyndaquil's fur. Battling, as it turned out, was messy. Ash barely had time to put everything—including his GameBoy—away before Baoba came into sight.
That night the group dined on soup and bread, and after the meal Baoba read Ash's essay, complimenting him on his improved understanding of what he did wrong, before Ash began the arduous task of copying—by hand—the laws that applied to thirteen year-olds, including that of having to be within five feet of an adult or with a Pokemon and have a parent or master in the 'near vicinity' whenever they left their hometown. The next morning before he was allowed to go back to battling the teen finished his punishment by doing the math involving the cost of a Revive and how long the average person had to work to afford one, as well as what could mimic the effects of a revive (the Pokemon sleeping for ten to twelve hours). By the time he'd been released from the campsite Ash had resolved to keep his Pokemon from fainting ever again.
Well, unless they were near a Pokemon Center—recovering there was free, and Cyndaquil honestly hadn't seemed that hurt after Baoba had taken care of him.
Cyndaquil's odd behavior had, in the wake of the Watchog's attack, faded from Ash's mind, but as he fell asleep the small first evolution lying behind him squirmed, the problem still making itself known.