The later assessment for the rest of the group didn't hold much more promise. When asking Gab what worked, she shrugged.

"I was thinking of what Micheal said," she sighed. "And I just... tapped into a corner of my brain that knew Tail Whip, I guess?"

I sighed. It wasn't much help, but at least it was a start. We got to work. And by work, I mean we all went our separate ways at the edge of the dirt area and tried figuring out what the hell Micheal meant. If that was even what worked in the first place.

He'd said that we had to tap into our reflexes. So... did moves have the same thought process as trying to catch a glass of water you'd knocked over? With my track record, that would be worrying. Even in a battle situation, I wasn't sure my brain could be forced to click in a useful way. However, as I looked at my stingers, I remembered that I didn't even have the brain I'd started out with.

Around me, I just saw classmates trying to get used to their new bodies. Lola had started to examine her claws but eventually focused her sights on the canopy above. Gab was off in her corner, her hand on her forehead and ears dropping. Chloe held her wings outstretched, as if she hadn't figured out how to fly yet and was determined to find out. Micheal was the first I noticed actively trying to discover a new move, not just a Pokémon quirk or sorting out his thoughts. He kept trying to spit an Ember on the ground, but evidently, he wasn't having much luck. It just looked like he was imitating a cat getting a hairball out of its system.

Valérie had walked around and settled on hitting the stump Gab had stood on for her Tail Whip. I'd heard she'd done karate before, so she was built for the fighting type. "Punch" might've not been a move, but it did send a good chunk of wood flying. Thankfully, it didn't hit any of us.

Would that count as a Grass move?

Valérie grinned and tried to stare the stump down, clenching her fists. I noticed the instant she gave up on tearing it apart telekinetically. Her face now bore a scowl, brow furrowed and teeth clenched. I couldn't tell whether it was because of frustration or concentration.

She punched the stump again. This time, nothing came out other than a crunching sound. At that point, she looked up, and she caught me spacing out. I turned my head away.

"I'm getting firewood," she declared.

As she crossed the dirt, she caught Micheal's eye.

"Wait, should any of us go out alone?" He asked. "That's uncharted territory you're walking into."

She seemed to ignore him and kept going, the trees casting elongated shadows now that we barely had any daytime left.

Micheal looked around, his eye as terrifying as a teacher's when choosing which group would do their presentation first. I turned my head away, hoping to avoid getting picked to go with Valérie, but I felt the exact moment when his gaze landed on me. I felt it like fire.

No.

"Kieran, you want to go with her?"

I was going to retort a rejection back, but as I saw Micheal again, I realized he looked like he was going to be sick. The Bug type in me told me to get away before an Ember actually emerged. Micheal didn't need to add anything.

"Wait up," I yelled to Valérie, who was already three quarters up a hill we hadn't gone over yet.

Valérie only nodded, not giving me as much as a glance over. She kept walking in her steadfast way, and I climbed the hill she'd just crossed as fast as I could. I could do with some change of scenery, even if it was with her.

Fate (or Micheal, rather) had decided that it was Valérie and I's turn to fetch stuff. Well, more accurately, Valérie's, since she had hands. I was mostly there for my amazing emotional support. That's how it worked, right? You know, send in the two people who meshed the least well together to do something and have one to do nothing substantial— a fact that the other would never let go. That would work out fine. Honestly, that was probably Micheal's unironic thought process.

We must've spent an hour wandering around, taking notes of landmarks so we could find our way back. If I'd gone with Chloe, she'd probably make those into a song. Instead, I was stuck with Valérie. She had a good eye for dead trees, though. By which I mean we still hadn't found one up to her standards.

The forest was disappointingly barren of fallen branches and twigs, and the ones attached to trees were too high to reach. The only trace that something even lived here was the stray honeycombs littering the grass. The bugless hives up above were nestled within the branches, so comfortably that it was as if they were taunting us. With the lack of small fuel available, we had to look for the perfect tree, like it was Christmas or something. If it was too big, we couldn't carry it (especially since the trees hadn't shrunk with us). If it was too thick, we couldn't cut it. If it was too tall, it wouldn't fit in our nonexistent living room. It really was early, with it still being November.

It'd been a quiet trip; a "how about this one?" here, a "nope", "not that one", and "it's still green, stupid" there, but nothing much else. Other than that, though, she'd kept her remarks to herself, and I'd done so with mine. Valérie was weird in the way that she was a chatterbox only when she wanted to. Translation: when she had power over the conversation. The pervasive lack of birdsong or cicada noises made the silence deafening.

Finally, we found our holy grail: a young oak tree that was thin and of manageable weight. It even had the first dead branches I'd seen surrounding it. It was dead, so it wasn't even like we could feel bad about taking it or anything.

"All right!" Valérie said, rubbing her hands together.

I sighed, content that we'd finally gotten to a consensus. I wasn't sure we had a lot of daylight left, so we had to get back to the others as soon as we could to start the fire. Valérie grabbed the tree and started to push it to the right.

I stood there awkwardly a few feet away. It's not like I could help. I couldn't get any solid grip on the tree even if I tried. Still, that uncomfortable feeling of not contributing lingered. That pushed me back to my original duty, and I turned to conversation.

"So, what was that earlier about the PowerPoint?" I opened.

"I said what I said," she stated. "I don't trust you to be reliable, especially in a survival scenario."

"We're not going to mention that maybe I don't want to trust the person who threw me against a Pokémon?"

I didn't know how well a Beedrill face conveyed emotion, but I hoped my current expression showed more anger than hurt. It was hard enough to tell what my Meditite classmate was thinking; but when I couldn't even look at myself...

"We won, and you evolved, right?" She stopped pushing to face me. "So it was the right thing to do."

"Wow," I huffed. "But you didn't know that, though!"

"I was told to attack by Micheal and Chloe, and we didn't know how to do anything else. Besides, you'd agreed to it."

"Yeah, as a joke! I laughed at Plan Projectile!"

She rolled her eyes. That, I could read. My antennae twitched without any input from me.

I continued. "And that, by the way, is not an equivalent to messing up some school presentation. I'll own up to that because it was stupid and I should've read the book."

"Oh, of course you didn't read the—"

I cut her off. "But the worst that happened was a bad mark on a piece of paper! You threw a living being into—"

"I'll reiterate: what else should I have done? We don't know any useful "moves" now and we sure as hell didn't back then!"

"I actually know Pokémon! If you'd paid any attention to the presentation, you'd have noticed!"

"Jesus Christ," she groaned, returning to pushing the tree. "Let it go."

I rolled my eyes and crossed my arms. There was just no reasoning with someone who refused to be wrong. Valérie managed to bend the tree the slightest bit right, splintering the wood being split to the left of her. Meditite strength was no joke.

The tree finally gave way, and it fell on the grass with a thump. Sure, it was a smaller (and deader) tree than others we could've chosen, but it was still something. I stared at the fallen thing, my mouth slightly agape. Valérie must've seen it.

"It's only impressive because I'm short now," she shrugged. "I don't suppose those things can help cut it?"

She pointed to my stingers at that. They were nowhere near cutting instruments... or at least not without an HM. My silence was the only answer needed.

"Figures," she sighed, before grabbing the bottom with both hands. "Let's go."

I almost offered my help, but I wasn't sure of Beedrill's tree-carrying capabilities. They probably weren't super strong with arms this thin. Plus, any wrong movement could mean hard, gnarly wood falling on very fragile wings that I couldn't regain through a new evolution. I couldn't even get to the group faster to help there since my wings refused to work.

Despite another day here, I still couldn't do anything. And the thought of that made my blood boil.

We came back to Micheal, Chloe, and Lola doing some mock sparring, Gab watching anxiously from the side. Chloe was zooming around all this, trying her best to look threatening, but anyone that ended up a Swablu would fail. Every time she tried to pester Lola or Micheal, or to land a light hit, they couldn't hold back a smile.

Micheal was apparently still working on his Ember. Even though he was active in the mock battle, he would just stop every couple seconds, still looking like a cat trying to get a hair ball out. Nothing came out, and nothing had come out.

He looked up and finally noticed us. "Woah."

Again, even though the tree we'd brought over was a thin one, it was an impressive sight when taking all our size changes into account. Lola was the tallest of all of us, yet she barely reached an adult human's waist. Valérie, who'd done the work, didn't come up to someone's knees.

I noticed a ring of rocks neatly placed in the centre of the dirt area, some feet away from Valérie and I. As Gab came to put down another one, I realized that she'd been making a makeshift fireplace. Our berry pile had also been meticulously transported to its side, but not close enough that the fire should affect them. It seemed everyone had been trying to help in their own way.

Lola, having spotted the fallen tree, stopped her dance with Chloe to pad over to us.

"Allow me," she chuckled.

She stopped in front of the dead oak and shook out her fur dramatically. Then, she raised her front leg. Her claws started to glow and lengthened. Bearing a grin, she brought them down onto the tree, cutting it almost all the way through. The slice left three gashes, none bleeding with any sap (the tree was dead to begin with, after all). She had another go at it, that last swipe finishing off that part of the tree.

Lola stood with pride by her handiwork, probably ignoring the fact that she would have to slice way more logs than that. What was that move anyway? Cut? My mind whizzed with thoughts. With us being at a low enough level that I started off as a dang Kakuna, it couldn't be. Did we have egg moves? TM moves? Was it just Scratch? Yes, it was Scratch. It could only be Scratch. But when did she learn a move? Why did she?

"Glad you guys are back before nightfall," Micheal sighed, sitting down next to me.

I didn't play nice, and cut straight to the point. "What was your plan, sending me with Valérie? You thought we'd talk things out as if there weren't any actual problems?"

"What? I didn't do that on purpose!" He started, before mumbling something else.

I cut him off. "Problem solved! What a fantastic setup, Micheal!"

"Woah, buddy, please calm down. You were the closest to me, that's all." He'd risen up at that, looking pale.

"Have we even managed that Quick Attack? How's your fire coming along, huh?"

"Um..."

"God, what's the use of being here if we can't do anything a human or a Pokémon can do?"

That came out harsher than intended, but it was true. He turned away, and I mirrored the movement. I was instantly aware of the silence around us. The chatter had stopped, the other high school students being drawn to drama like moths to a flame.

"I..." I started, addressing the rest of the group before me.

I didn't get to excuse anything. Behind me, I heard a small cough, and then the sound of something light hitting the ground. The tiniest of crackles resounding against the silent forest told me what the source was before I turned around.

Micheal stood still, staring at the fruit of his work. His mouth was agape with his tongue hanging out, presumably from trying to get the thing out of his system. We got our Ember.

"What are we waiting for?" Gab exclaimed from the fireplace.

Micheal had missed his mark by several yards at least. We'd need to work on that. For now, we had to focus on getting some actual campfire. To that end, half of us took turns nudging it toward its target while Gab frantically filled the fireplace with the bits of sliced wood we had. The small, sparking chunk slowly made its way to it.

"That came out of someone's mouth," Lola called after us with disdain.

"So do your words, and we still have to tolerate them," Valérie yelled at her from some meters from the fireplace, kicking away at the Ember. It was still lit. "We still do, for no good reason."

Lola laughed and padded toward us right on time for the Ember to reach the dry wood pile. After some careful shuffling the logs around and fanning the thing, smoke took hold. Soon enough, we had an actual fire. And right on time, too. The sun was completely hidden by the hill on top of which we'd slept last night.

Everyone sat down, one by one. I felt the intense heat of the bonfire. It wasn't just hot, but it was also inducing a deep dryness in the air. The wind took its sweet time blowing smoke in everyone's face, and I ended up tuning out the conversations that took place around me.

The stars started to dot the sky, a chill seeping into the area as our surroundings darkened. To my right, someone's stomach rumbled. I glanced in Micheal's direction for only a second before turning away. It was all I could take after I'd made a complete fool of myself all day. I don't know if he noticed.

"Kieran, you want to pass me an Oran berry?" He asked in a casual tone.

Sure enough, to my left was the berry pile. I stood up, nudged an Oran berry toward him, and he chomped down with a muffled "thank you".

"You think those would be better roasted?" Lola asked, lying down on the opposite side of the pile. "We need s'mores."

Micheal chuckled. "Which berry do we want to sacrifice?"

I kicked a Chople berry into the fire. With a wave of sudden heat, it burst. The flames reached a height that almost dwarfed the trees. Then, after a few seconds, the blaze shrank back down to its meagre initial size. Thankfully, there hadn't been any berry equivalent to shrapnel.

"Dear God," Valérie said with awe. She palmed another one and readied the throw.

"No! Don't put in any more!" Gab urged, in a rare moment of word usage. "You'll burn the wood too fast!"

"Yeah, but it makes it warmer."

"Valérie, we need this to last all night," Micheal pleaded.

The argument started again, with Chloe, Micheal, and Gab trying to talk the pyromaniac down, and Lola laughing from the sidelines, chomping down on some Oran berries. Done with fighting for today, I picked up a Persim berry with my mouth and sat down.

When I'd evolved into Beedrill, I'd been giddy beyond belief. A scenario I never thought would happen just did, all on its own. Personally, I would've geeked out more if I was sent as a trainer rather than the Pokémon, but I'd take superpowers over some dumb field trip any day. Well, maybe not today anymore. At first, I'd been excited to sting enemies away, or fly. Who hasn't wanted to fly? I did nearly every time I stared out a school window. Now, all I could think of was how I missed my fingers.

I savoured the berry. It was starting to turn only good as opposed to amazing. I guessed eating nearly one thing for two days would do that. It was still enough to satisfy, though. After the disastrous presentation, my lack of flight, my fights with a stubborn Meditite and a seemingly apathetic Litleo... I needed some relief. Besides, as I saw the still blazing fire under the dark sky, I smiled. We did get one victory for today.