Nothing happened until the next morning. Tyler spent most of the time sleeping. In the evening, Claire let him out again for a few minutes into another part of the den. She looked like she was ready to sleep too. Tyler watched with some interest as the trainer released Leo, Miranda, and the murkrow – what had her name been again? Claire had water for them and spread out a few different kinds of berries. She ate too, pulling silvery wrappings off brown bars with a crinkly noise and biting into them. Tyler wanted to talk, but all of them were busy eating as the sun went down. Then she put him back in his ball. Tyler sighed and closed his eyes again. I'm definitely getting rest now. He couldn't deny that he needed it, though; it was still easy to fall asleep again.
In the morning, Tyler woke up with the first hint of light. He paced around for a while, but then settled down to wait, watching the sun crawl into view. I wonder how it does that? The last Tyler had seen, they were inside. Looking around at the rest of the lightening sky, he noticed that there were clouds. Curious, Tyler got up and started walking around, watching the sky from different angles and cocking his head this way and that. He nearly tripped a few times from not watching where he was going, but he noticed that the sun and clouds' shapes got stretched in strange ways when he got close to the walls. The forest patterns on the walls did too. They all looked real, but when he got close they were flat, almost like a reflection – or like the images of pokémon he'd seen on the wall of that den in the forest. As he kept watching, though, he noticed again that the sun and clouds were moving. How the Catchers made the images look real, let alone how they made them move, was a mystery to Tyler. Forests, trees, and sky were just things in Tyler's life. He'd never thought much about the way they looked.
Once the sun was up, Tyler's ball started flashing again, and he turned an expectant circle. A moment later, he was released into the same den as the night before. Leo and the murkrow were already there, and Claire put Tyler's ball back to pull another off her waist. Miranda appeared with a flash a moment later. Claire said something, gesturing for them to wait, and disappeared through an open hole in the wall.
Leo stretched to his full height, opening his mouth in a yawn. "Good morning, everyone."
"Hi, Leo." Tyler turned to the flaaffy, dipping his head respectfully. "Good morning, Miranda." He turned to the murkrow. "And hi – I'm sorry, but I don't remember what you said your name was."
She shrugged it off. "I'm Olive. Don't worry about it – you've still got a lot to learn, and we can't expect you to pick up everything all at once."
Tyler nodded. "Okay. Thanks." Then another question occurred to him. "Where did Claire go?"
"Oh, she went to get food. She should be back in a minute," Leo answered, unconcerned.
"And where are we?"
"This is a PokeCenter – sorry, Pokémon Center," Olive told him. "Most of the trainers call them PokeCenters, though. It's a big red building, has lots of stuff for trainers. Claire usually stays in one while we're in town. They have healing machines here too."
"Healing machines… That's what the light was?" Olive nodded, and Tyler went on. "So the… den I was in at first – where they healed me – I was poisoned before," he added by way of explanation – "That was in here too?"
"That's right," Miranda confirmed. "Except they're not called dens. The Pokémon Center is a building, and this" – she gestured around at the walls – "is a room, inside the building."
Leo nodded, breaking into the conversation. "We had some questions for you too." He looked at the flaaffy and murkrow. "How did you end up getting caught? We were talking about it yesterday, and none of us fought you."
Tyler shook his head. "Some other Catchers – trainers – attacked my brother and sister and I." He stopped for a moment, mentally backtracking. "So, a bunch of… trainers attacked my family – a few months ago. Not just us, either," he recalled, "all the pokémon in the forest. They were just catching everything they could find. I got away, but I don't think the rest of my family did." He shook the memories away. "Anyway, I found my brother and sister a few days ago. They were in a den – a building. The trainers were keeping them in little rooms with other pokémon – they said they were testing them for something. I managed to get them out – well, they helped me too – and we all ran for it, but I got poisoned on the way. Then more trainers came the next day, and we got separated. We were going to meet on the ridge outside the town. The poison was getting really bad by then, but I was almost there. And then… a ball hit me, and the next thing I knew I was inside and I couldn't get out." Tyler finished, looking around uncomfortably.
Miranda nodded. "So that's why we didn't have any battles yesterday."
Olive was looking at him in interest. "What were those trainers like?"
Tyler thought about it. "There were a lot of them, but they all look kind of the same. Some of the ones inside had white on, but mostly they're in black."
The murkrow nodded. "I've heard of them. They're called Rockets, or something like that. I've heard they do a lot of bad things." She cocked her head. "So, I'm not surprised you don't like trainers if that's who was after you." She cocked her head thoughtfully. "Catchers might be a better name for those ones."
"Claire isn't like that, though." Leo looked at the vaporeon. "Really. Give her a chance, okay?"
Tyler sighed. "All right."
"You must have a lot of questions," Miranda offered. "If you want to know anything, you can ask us."
"Well…" Tyler began, "what do trainers do? What do we do?"
The flaaffy thought for a moment. "Well, it starts with something called the Pokémon League. Most trainers are trying to get stronger. To train their pokémon to be stronger, but also to learn how to work together with them. Then there's a group of really experienced trainers called the League. Trainers like Claire have to show they can beat each of them – and then the last four in a row – to be recognized as Pokémon Masters. It's supposed to be really hard, but… that's what she wants to do.
"But why?"
"To protect people." It was Leo who answered. "Like Olive said – like you already know – there are people who just want to use us. To hurt people, or to make money, or to take what they want from others. And… sometimes there are pokémon who do that too. Masters stand up for people and pokémon who can't stand up for themselves. And that means we do, too. You asked why I stay with Claire. Well, it's true that it would be hard to leave, but there's more to it than that." Leo gave Tyler a hard look. "It hasn't all been about fighting and getting stronger. Sometimes we just help people. We go all over the region. I mean, what was I going to do with my life back in the grassland? We eat, we sleep, we sometimes have to fight, but that's all. It's always about us. Going with Claire, we can do so much more. We can make a difference in the world."
Tyler found himself nodding. He could understand some of that – sometimes there just wasn't anything to do, but Tyler always felt guilty about it, like he should find something else to do to help find his family. He still didn't want to be here, but what the typhlosion said made sense. He sighed. "So then what do we do?"
"Well…" Leo wrinkled his nose. "It is battles, mostly," he admitted. "When we're out training, we'll get sent out a lot. Sometimes it's against wild pokémon, sometimes it's against other trainers."
Tyler thought about his experiences fighting trainers. They always seemed to be calling orders to their pokémon. "Do we have to wait for her to tell us what to do?"
"You'll usually want to," the typhlosion replied. "She knows a lot more about things than you do. Once she knows how you fight and what you're good at, she can show you how to do things you've never even dreamed of."
"Like what?" Tyler asked.
Leo looked around at the other two. "I can't really show you. Not inside." Miranda looked like she was stifling a laugh.
Olive took pity on him. "Like this," she said, spreading her wings. The room went dark. Even the sunlight coming through the windows was barely visible.
Claire's voice sounded outside their room, sounding distressed. "Oops, sorry," Olive said. Light came back to the room to show the murkrow looking embarrassed. Claire walked in and looked at her, then around at the other three. She said something else. Tyler listened carefully, but he still couldn't understand any of it.
"What was that?" he asked.
"Breakfast!" Leo exclaimed. In response to Tyler's uncomprehending look, he added, "You know, what we eat in the morning. Come on!" The four pokémon followed the girl through the corridor into another room. This one was larger, and it had a basin of water like the ones in the cells where Carson and Kara had been kept. Tyler glanced around to make sure it was all right, then padded over to drink. A smell reached his nose – it smelled like food, but not quite like berries normally did. Tyler found his mouth watering. Whatever it was, it smelled good.
Claire went over to the other side of the room and came back with the food. Tyler watched and smelled in interest as she started laying round… things on the ground. He looked over at Leo. "What are these?"
"Muffins!" the typhlosion responded. "They're my favorite."
"What isn't your favorite?" Miranda asked, throwing a glance at him.
Leo shrugged, not seeming to take offense. "Well, okay, your favorite then." The flaaffy opened her mouth, then closed it again. Claire was talking now, and Tyler tuned them out, trying to listen. He still wasn't sure what the human girl was saying apart from an occasional word, but he thought it might be something about what they would do that day. At least, that was the impression he got.
Olive sidled over to him. "She says we'll be out training for the next few days, until we get to the next city. And… she said she's not going to have you in any of the battles today, but she'll let you out for some of them so you can see what it's like."
"Oh." Tyler spent a minute trying to imagine how that would be. He was interrupted when Claire approached and slid one of the muffins in front of him. Tyler had forgotten about the food. He gave it another sniff – it still smelled delicious – and then lowered his head to take a bite out of it. It came apart more easily than he'd expected; there was a sort of soft crust, and the inside… the only way the vaporeon could describe it was 'fluffy.' It wasn't like anything else he'd eaten. It was sweet and had a flavor sort of like berries he recognized, but at the same time there was something he didn't recognize. It was one of the best things he'd ever had, though.
He finished the muffin and licked up the bits, looking around. After a moment, Claire pushed another one in front of him, speaking again in an encouraging voice. To his surprise, this one tasted like one of the spicy berries. He wasn't sure he liked it quite as much, but it was still good and he finished the whole thing, feeling a lot more full. I think maybe I could get used to this part.
After they ate, Claire pulled out their balls again. Tyler sighed. He'd actually enjoyed the morning. Miranda looked over at him. "You might as well get comfortable. It'll take a while until we get where we're going."
"It's not that bad," Olive chimed in, as Leo disappeared in a flash. "We actually get to do a lot more when we're out of town. You'll see." The last part was hurried, as Claire turned to Tyler next. He looked up at her and saw an encouraging smile before his ball pulled him inside again.
As Miranda had predicted, Tyler spent the next few hours undisturbed. He watched with some interest as the sun rose higher and clouds appeared occasionally. He prowled around a little and found another, deeper hole he hadn't seen before, but he didn't want to stay there and risk getting surprised like the day before.
I should practice or something. Tyler hadn't really done anything for the last few days, but he was feeling mostly better now. The Catchers' mixture had worked really well on the poison, and after two days the vaporeon felt more like himself. He took a deep breath. Where to begin? I need a target. Something to hit. After looking around for a few moments, he decided to use one of the trees. It would be big enough, and he could use it to hit with his tail too. And if he did somehow break it… well, he wouldn't feel too bad. Claire had been nice to him, but that didn't mean he wanted to stay.
Tyler started by going through his normal moves, practicing dodges and rolls – mostly so he could see how he felt. Everything seemed normal now; he didn't get out of breath or anything. That was good. He was still getting used to how the weight of his tail affected his balance when he wasn't just running, though, so he worked on that for a while.
After that, he practiced spinning around and using his tail, slapping it against one of the trees. To his mild disappointment, it didn't do anything to the ball, but after a while it left his tail smarting from the repeated strikes, so he stopped. His tail was sore now, and when he looked at it there were bruises and a few scrapes, though not as many as if he'd done it to a real tree. He went searching around and finally found a dip he could fill with water.
How should I do this? He circled around the small pool he'd made and finally settled for laying down next to it, curling his tail in the water. His scrapes and bruises dissolved, and Tyler sighed a little in relief as the pain went away. He watched with interest as the scrapes finished healing and those spots on his tail went solid again. The bruises took a little longer, but after a few minutes they slowly came back together too. The water had gone down a little, but not as much as he'd thought. I guess it's because I wasn't hurt too bad. The vaporeon reabsorbed the rest of the water and climbed back to his paws.
He put off doing anything else for a while, wanting to rest. Before he got around to practicing again, the sky started flashing red. He climbed to his paws again, looking around in interest. He was about to be sent out; where were they now? What was going on? The ball continued to flash; Tyler started shifting back and forth, wondering what was going to happen. Finally the white flash came he'd been hoping for, and the world cleared to reveal a rocky path. He'd appeared behind Claire; Miranda was there too, but standing in front of the girl. Opposite them was a male trainer in blue, accompanied by a black horned dog pokémon. Am I supposed to help fight? As he looked at Claire, she motioned him back. Just watching, then. Tyler sat and curled his tail fin around his paws as the two pokémon squared off. Tyler wondered if he might be able to just sneak away during the fight, but then Claire backed away until she was right next to him.
For a moment everything was still as the trainers exchanged a few words. Tyler caught what sounded like "Are you ready?" Then Claire called out something else and Miranda nodded, her wool fluffing up with static. Tyler cringed in sympathy for Miranda's opponent, but the enemy trainer called out his own order – Tyler picked out the name, Houndoom – and the black dog opened its mouth and breathed a stream of fire at her. It caught her in the side as she tried to dodge, leaving a smoldering patch down her side. That couldn't be good. Miranda gritted her teeth but didn't cry out; Claire was frantically calling out a few more orders. Tyler watched as the flaaffy dropped to the ground and rolled, putting out the embers. At least she knew what to do, he thought sympathetically.
He watched as she stood back up on her hind legs. The houndoom was charging now and she dropped into a crouch, bracing for the hit. As they collided, she locked her short arms against its shoulders as their heads met. For a moment the two struggled, head to head, but the houndoom had an advantage since it was on four legs, and started pushing her back. It exhaled more flame but didn't really hit Miranda, since they were both locked head-down. Tyler noticed that the ball on the flaaffy's tail was glowing brighter and brighter. What's she doing? Both trainers were shouting encouragement now, but Miranda was still losing ground. Tyler looked up at Claire and saw the tension in her face as the trainer stared intently at the two. Finally she shouted, "Now!" and Miranda pivoted to swing the glowing end of her tail into her opponent. There was an electric crack and the houndoom was hurled to the ground. Tyler winced again, remembering his own experience fighting a mareep.
The houndoom rolled away and got back up, breathing a wash of flame across the ground at another order from its trainer. Miranda went hopping back as the flames reached her hooves, and the two squared off again. Both Claire and the male trainer seemed reluctant to have the pokémon get in close again, so the next thirty seconds were punctuated by shouts from both trainers as jets of fire and sparks arced between the two. Miranda narrowly won, and the houndoom slumped back, defeated. The flaaffy was breathing hard too; she bent over for a moment, panting. The glow of her tail had faded to a pinpoint of light deep inside.
Tyler watched with interest as the two trainers stepped forward and exchanged a few words. Claire's opponent seemed disappointed, and the houndoom disappeared back into its ball. Claire herself turned and congratulated Miranda, drawing a tired smile from the flaaffy. The trainer rummaged in her bag and pulled out a container a little like the one she'd sprayed him down with. She started spraying it over Miranda, drawing her wool apart with a hand to concentrate on the flaaffy's injuries, which seemed to be improving a little already. Tyler caught a new scent from it, though he thought he might have smelled traces of it back at the – what did they call it? The PokeCenter. Catchers seemed to have a lot of different things for healing pokémon. As Claire finished and returned Miranda to her ball, he wondered why the other trainer hadn't taken care of his houndoom.
Back inside his own ball, Tyler thought about the battle he'd seen. In a way, it didn't seem too different from the training he'd done as an eevee. They did different matches, mostly just trying to get more experienced with facing certain opponents or kinds of attacks. The fight hadn't seemed serious – it really had been like a training match. I guess that's all right, then. He still wasn't sure about having to take orders from the trainer girl, though.
Tyler was sent out several more times that day to see more battles. They seemed similar to the first, just training fights. Claire alternated between her pokémon for different matches. Sometimes Tyler understood why – he knew from experience that Miranda would be a better match for a water pokémon than Leo would – but other times he didn't know what the trainer was thinking. He did notice that Claire's team usually seemed to win, although Olive lost a fight in the early afternoon and Miranda did later on against another trainer who also had a team of three pokémon. Tyler realized that Claire's team was actually four – if he counted himself, though the vaporeon wasn't sure if he did.
Tyler's ball lit up red again in the late afternoon. Used to it by now, Tyler started wondering what kind of fight this one would be. To his surprise, the ball opened almost immediately, depositing him on the side of a ridge. He looked around to see that it was sparsely forested with pine trees, and pine needles made a soft layer on the ground. He was the last one out, it seemed; Leo, Miranda, and Olive were already there looking at him. There was no enemy trainer to be seen. "What are we doing?" he asked, a little confused.
"We're done for the day," Olive answered. Tyler noticed that the murkrow seemed to have recovered from her fight.
"This is why we like it out here better," Leo added. "There are a bunch of rules trainers have to follow. One of them is that they're only allowed to have one pokémon out at a time normally. Out here with no one around, though, we can all stay out together." He looked over at Claire. "This is the best part of the day."
"Where are we?" That was Tyler's next question.
Leo shrugged. "Not sure. My guess is the other side of the valley from where we were a few days ago."
Olive flapped to the top of one of the trees. "I think you're right," she called down. "I can see the city from here."
Claire got their attention. She started with her usual "All right." Tyler didn't understand much else, but she said something about "here," which he took to mean that they probably weren't going anywhere else that day. So then, what are we doing?
That question was answered pretty quickly too. Leo and Miranda headed off into the trees, while Claire called Tyler over and produced a flat-bladed metal thing from her bag. She started making a circle in the pine needles and dirt with it. "What's she doing?" Tyler called up to Olive.
"We're going to make a fire there," the murkrow replied. Before Tyler could ask her to explain, she went on. "Claire wants you to soak the edge of the circle so it doesn't spread. You can do that, right?"
Tyler took a moment to process what she'd told him. "If you mean get it wet, I can do that. But why? Why are we trying to start a fire?"
"To keep warm tonight. You'll see – it's nice. Oh, and to cook the food. Leo could do that himself, but this is easier."
Every answer seemed to lead to more questions. Tyler decided to be quiet for a while and just see for himself. Following Claire's instructions with some help from Olive, Tyler followed the circle Claire had made, spraying a stream of water into the ground as he went. His paws got muddy in the process, but the vaporeon absorbed the water again, turning the mud into dust that brushed off when he wiped his paws on the ground. Claire was pulling out more things from her bag. Some of it looked like food, but most of it was alien to him. There was another shiny pouch, which the girl opened with a crinkling noise before upending it into one of the round metal things. Tyler looked at the tan powder she had poured out, wondering what she was going to do with it.
As he watched, she pulled out a container of water and started mixing it into the powder, resulting in a darker, squishy-looking paste. Tyler pricked up his headfins as he caught the sound of paws marching through the trees. Miranda and Leo appeared a few moments later, still some distance away and laden with sticks and branches. Claire smiled and called out to them before turning back to her mixture.
They arrived half a minute later, dumping their loads of sticks on the ground. Claire started stacking some of them in the middle of the circle, and then Leo lit them with a stream of flame. This was something new to Tyler; Father had used fire a lot – as had Ryan – but he'd never really seen anything keep burning on its own. All he knew about it was that both Father and the quilava had been concerned about setting anything ablaze for worry that it would spread. This fire didn't seem to be doing that. Maybe it had something to do with the circle of water he'd made around it.
The fire burned brightly, then uncertainly, shifting and catching in different ways, but after a few minutes it seemed to settle into a constant flame in the middle. Claire picked up her metal circle of paste and put it on the fire. Tyler couldn't resist asking another question at this point. "What's that for?"
"That," replied Miranda, "is what we're going to eat."
"Hmm." It didn't look very appetizing. "Why that? And why is it in the fire?"
"It's called cooking. It's something humans do. That in the pan is dough. If it gets heated up enough then it turns into bread, like we had this morning." Tyler thought about it. That was interesting. "Don't get too used to it," Miranda added. "We only have this when there's a fire, and even then not all the time. Usually we just have normal trail food, berries and stuff."
Tyler watched the pan for a while. Not much seemed to happen, but if he looked away for a few minutes and then back again he could definitely tell a difference. Finally Claire pronounced it done, and Leo reached into the flames to remove the pan. The bread looked and smelled much more appealing now. Claire picked up some berries and distributed them to the four pokémon. By the time they had finished eating those, Claire was removing the bread and breaking it into pieces, which she distributed again. He noticed Olive got the smallest piece and Leo the largest. Claire took a fairly large piece too. The vaporeon bent down to take a bite out of the bread. It didn't have the same sweetness or berry taste as that morning, but he still liked it. He wasn't quite sure about the warmth, though; he'd never eaten anything hot. It felt pleasant in his stomach, so he decided he was all right with that too.
After eating, they all lay around for a while. Tyler enjoyed hearing the soft sounds of evening again. Claire was on the ground, leaning against a tree with a flat dark-red rectangle. It cast a glow on her face, and Tyler watched as her fingers flickered through a rapid series of taps on the lit surface, wondering what she was doing. After a few minutes, though, he lost interest. Leo, Olive, and Miranda were discussing the battles they'd had that day. Tyler listened to that for a few minutes too, but he'd been there to see most of them, so he stopped paying close attention. He was surprised when Claire's voice rang out, calling him. "Vaporeon! Come over here!"
Tyler looked at the other three pokémon uncertainly before getting up to see what the trainer wanted. As he padded over, he got a better look at her rectangle. He remembered seeing something like it in a Catcher town. When he got close, he could tell that the lit part had an image on it. Claire tapped on it and the image changed. Tyler blinked in surprise. It had to be a machine. What was it for?
It went black for a moment, then showed the familiar image of a ball. Claire pulled a ball off her belt and expanded it. Tyler watched with growing confusion as she pulled out a thin black cord. She inserted one end into the machine, where it stuck. Then she pulled the ball open. It split in half – red on one side, white on the other – with the sides connected in the back. He looked inside. It was so small.
Claire wasn't done yet. She grabbed the other end of the black cord and inserted it similarly into part of the ball before shoving the ball under her legs and turning her attention back to the machine she carried. Tyler followed her gaze and was surprised to see an image of a vaporeon appear next to the picture of the ball.
"All right." Claire launched into speech again. Tyler pulled his attention away from her machine and tried to concentrate on the words, but all he was able to get out of it was that she was doing something with his ball. She tapped some more and the images changed again. Now they were looking at a familiar forest – familiar to Tyler at least. It was the one inside his ball. What's going on?
As he watched, Claire slid the forest off to one side. A rocky view that reminded him of the ridge replaced it. She swiped across again and again, and the landscape changed each time – mountain peak, cave, snow, town – and then moved on to ones he didn't recognize – a place with thick green plants everywhere, a meadow full of flowers, light tan dirt bordering an expanse of water…
Claire stopped there. She said something else, questioning him about "this one?" After Tyler didn't respond for a moment, she tapped her machine a few times, then pulled the ball back out and disconnected it from the cord before snapping it shut. She pointed it at Tyler, and he watched as her finger found the circle on the front before white light pulled him in.
Tyler blinked at the sudden brightness. The ball still showed evening, but it wasn't as dark. He was standing by the water he'd just seen in her machine. A quick look around showed him that everything had changed, matching the scene she'd just shown him. After he'd gotten over his surprise, Tyler stepped forward and put a paw in the water. It felt wrong; there were no ripples, and his water sense remained silent. He submerged completely, finding that it held him up like water did. He could even swim, but his gills didn't work. It was still air down there.
He tried it out anyway, but swimming wasn't the same when he couldn't feel the water or touch the currents. His ball was flashing again, and a soon after he got out of the water – or whatever it was – he was sent out again, appearing next to Claire where he had been before. She looked at him and asked if he liked it. He thought for a moment and shook his head, glancing at the ground. She looked disappointed, but nodded, pulling the ball open to put the cord back in. A few moments later, she was flicking through scenes again, pausing on each one to look over at him. He realized she was waiting for a reaction. She wants me to pick one? Tyler was touched by the gesture. Claire really did seem to care about him.
Tyler started watching the images more intently now. One of them would be his home from now on. After a minute of flicking through landscapes, the image changed back to the forest and started the same cycle over. He pricked his fins up when it got to the rocky slope again. Claire watched him for a moment. Trying to communicate to her that this was the one he wanted, Tyler reached out to touch her machine. Claire didn't try to stop him, but something popped up when he touched it, and he quickly withdrew his paw. "This one? You want this one?"
"Yes." Tyler replied automatically before remembering Claire wouldn't understand. He nodded agreement instead and Claire went back to work on her machine, flicking away the shape that had appeared and tapping a few more times before nodding to herself and pulling the cord out of the ball again. She closed it while Tyler waited, tail curled around his paws. He was actually anticipating it a little this time, wanting to see the ball now that he'd gotten to pick something for it.
When the light died away, Tyler looked around, taking in the slope. It was getting harder to see as the sun set, but he could make out patches of grass and lines of stones of different sizes. There seemed to be several paths leading up and down, and to his delight, Tyler almost immediately found a cave that reminded him of Zahna's den. He wouldn't mind staying in a place like this. He would have explored further, but his ball opened again after a minute, leaving him outside. She asked again if he liked it, a hopeful smile visible on her face. Tyler nodded confidently this time. Instead of returning him to the ball like he'd half expected, Claire returned it to its smaller size and stowed it away before reaching out to pat him on the shoulder. She said something else in a happy voice before turning back to her machine, leaving Tyler to go back to the other pokémon.
"So, how was it?" Miranda asked.
"It was good," the vaporeon responded. "She let me pick a different inside for my ball. I didn't know they did that."
"What did you get?" This question came from Olive.
"I picked a sort of rocky one. There's a ridge that looks like it on the other side of the valley." He thought about it for a moment. "I… know some pokémon there."
"So do you like it?"
Tyler nodded. The sun had gone down now, leaving only the fire to cast flickering light over everything. Miranda's glowing tail was visible too. "I think so."
Leo yawned, releasing a puff of flame. "Sorry," he said, closing his mouth again. "I think I'm going to sleep now."
Miranda nodded. "That'll probably be all for tonight." Leo and Olive moved closer to the fire's warmth, and after a moment Tyler followed. It did feel good to lay next to it. Claire was pulling something long out of her bag and spreading it on the ground now. Tyler watched as she turned back to her machine. A few more taps and it went dark, and the girl lay down and wrapped herself in whatever she'd taken out.
The fire was starting to get a little too warm, so Tyler got up and moved a few steps away before laying down again, facing away from the firelight. The warmth on his back was soothing, and before long he fell asleep with everyone else. It wasn't until the next morning that he realized Claire had given him the perfect opportunity to just leave and disappear into the night. He hadn't even thought about it.
September 4
Today was a good day. It's kind of fun to hang out in town every once in a while, but there wasn't much to do there, so it was good to get out and train again. They're definitely getting better. Murkrow's Night Shade is really paying off, even if she does show off and use it inside sometimes (like this morning, when I walked back into my room and everything was black).
Anyway, we got out of town pretty early and there were plenty of other trainers around. Not a lot of wild pokémon around here apart from pidgey and stuff – I'm not sure why. This whole valley seems pretty quiet, especially compared to the last few routes we've been on. Like I said though, plenty of trainers, so the team got some good battles in. I had Vaporeon out for most of them, just to watch. He seems all right, but I promised Nurse Joy I'd let him rest before starting battle training. I'll start him with the basics tomorrow, before we go into the caves. He's been watching everything I do ever since I let the team out to set up camp. He seems really curious about everything, but I guess that's normal for a wild pokémon the first few days. I seem to remember Flaaffy being a lot more laid-back about it, though.
All right, I just took a break from writing this, but I'm back now. I just remembered I still hadn't set up Vaporeon's ball. It was kind of weird; I set it to a beach since, you know, water and stuff, but he didn't like it. He ended up going for a mountainside of all things.