Disclaimer - I don't own Pokemon.

…

Rex scratched behind Blair's ear as he hummed absentmindedly.

"Alright. Good news is, I haven't been reading the map wrong. Bad news is, we're off the map."

Blair squeaked from his shoulder.

"Don't give me that tone!" Rex scolded her. "You didn't know where we were either. Besides, you got to battle that shroomish - those things never show up around here!"

Blair squeaked again.

"Yeah, I know." (*1) Rex rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Okay. We still have sunlight, and that's the important thing. Our ferry leaves from Treasure Beach Port at… four? Was it four?"

His zubat was used to her trainer rambling, and knew he was talking to himself more than her. She gently headbutted his hand, and he gave her head a couple more scratches. In retrospect, maybe that shroomish wasn't worth it. But the experience of taking on something Blair had never fought before had been so tempting - how were they supposed to resist?

Treasure Island (not to be confused with Fortune Island - honestly, what was WRONG with mainlanders?) was a popular tourist spot, but only about a third of it. South of the beach itself was a small resort town, nestled into the crook of rocky hills, and that was as far as most people went. But if you were a trainer, those rocky hills and the battle-hungry monsters that called them home sang sweeter than any overpriced boardwalk strip.

And if you were Rex, you might go even further. He and Blair had wandered aimlessly, chased the shroomish, and fled from a grumpy hoothoot flock(in that order) through the dense scrub of rough trees and into the low, rocky dip at the southernmost end of the island. By the time the tide came in, land this deep would end up as sandbars and jagged rocks that made swimming illegally dangerous. Sevii waters didn't mess around.

And that, Rex realized, was the issue - his map was bad. Because of how intense their tides were, good Sevii maps had two land borders, with the space between either being land or ocean based on the time. At a tide three quarters to full, then three quarters of the space on the ocean side would be filled, and so on. Rex's map seemed to have the right amount of space between borders, but it had the borders in the wrong places. This careless mapper had probably messed up and put the low tide border where the high tide border was, then just took the mostly consistent amount of space from an old map, meaning an entire tide's worth of land was missing. They likely figured it didn't matter - it was the bottom of Treasure Island, where no rational person would ever go. Right?

"Right." Rex sighed. Still, maps were all about relative positioning and scale - even a small mistake like a border mishap could have wide-reaching consequences for the rest of the map, and that meant it was officially unreliable.

In fairness, cartography WAS difficult business. People could only dream of the sort of consistency that could allow for a single, constant picture. Reliable corridors between packs (*2) of monsters were key to getting around in the wild without disturbing too much nature - all over the world, the rule of thumb was to stay on the path and out of the bush.

The problem was that those vague "paths" changed constantly with the push and pull among monsters (and sometimes humans too), especially in places as rarely traveled as the south end of Treasure Island. Plant monsters grew huge swaths of flora in days, ice and fire monsters caused massive temperature fluctuations, water and air monsters shifted entire sea and sky currents -

Blair chirped and headbutted his hand again, harder this time. Rex blinked. "Oh, right. Sorry, girl." He gave her a quick apology tap on the forehead and kept scratching. Well, SOME air types could, anyway. Blair would get there eventually.

The point was that whether intentionally or not, the mapper had taken careless shortcuts, and Rex was paying for it.

"Literally," he muttered when he remembered the price tag. He had bought this only a couple of days ago, and had hoped it wouldn't become obsolete for at least another couple of months. So much for that.

So, options. Worst-case scenario, Rex could try to send out a distress signal for a ranger, but enough Knot rangers already knew him by name from the signals he had sent out before, and he really didn't need more of a reputation among them. Not to mention the look his mom would give him once she found out that Rex not only snuck out, but also wasted a busy ranger's time, and ALSO got himself into a mess he needed saving from in the first place. No, signalling was a last resort. He could do this himself.

He had the sun and his compass to keep him oriented, and in theory it was a straight shot north back to Treasure Beach and the ferry. Problem: once he reached the tree cover, those would be a lot harder to rely on. He couldn't climb a tree to check for the sun or Mt. Ember without the danger of disturbing something he shouldn't, and he couldn't safely rely on his compass in case of a metal or electric type screwing with it. He hadn't paid as much attention as he should have on his way down south, and he wasn't sure he could retrace the winding path properly without orientation, especially now that he knew his map wasn't to be trusted. Heck, that was probably why he ran into those hoothoot in the first place - they weren't on the human path, he was off of it. No wonder they were ticked off.

Rex allowed himself a cheeky smile. Ticked off. Because they were clock birds. Not for the first time, he wished Blair could appreciate his jokes.

Regardless, the trees posed the threat of getting truly lost, and that wasn't somewhere you wanted to be when it got dark. And if those owls were as wise as people said, they would definitely remember the boy who woke them up.

That left taking the edge of the island all the way around to the north beach. It would take longer, and he was a little bit worried about how crumbly the ocean cliffs could be, but he also knew it would be impossible to get lost. If he kept a good pace, stayed on solid ground (or as solid as he could find), he'd make it.

"Around we go, then," he decided out loud, and gave Blair a final solid bop on the noggin before lifting her up to sit on his head. "You're gonna have to help me keep my balance out there, alright?"

And protect him from anything that decided it didn't want him there. But that probably wouldn't come up.

…

A/N:

Thanks for reading - next one will probably be pretty short too, but it'll have some action. Remember to submit your OC if you want to!

*1 - psychic or not, trainers can't actually "talk" to their monsters. They just like pretending, the same way we do with our dogs and cats.

*2 - different groups of monsters have different group names. For example, a group of magikarps is called a school, and a group of hoothoots is called a flock. However, the imprecise term is a 'pack' if you're not referring to a specific species.