I woke up in the middle of the night to a rustling noise. Something was shaking the tent. Before I could grab my flashlight to see what was going on, I felt Hart clumsily walk over my body to investigate the source of the noise. He froze.

Just as I finally managed to turn on the flashlight, Hart began to growl. I had seen him angry plenty of times before, but this was different. His teeth were bared, his tail was pointed straight behind him— if I wasn't scared of the noise before, I was scared now. I didn't grow up around canine pokémon, so I didn't know exactly what this meant besides that he was absolutely livid and whatever was outside was probably a threat. Slowly, his head turned to face me and his eyes widened as if to say, "let me out."

Usually I would try to contest this behavior in an attempt to assert dominance, but I decided to trust Hart on this one. Whatever was outside the tent, I wanted it gone, and Hart was practically volunteering to scare it off.

The tent rustled again, this time from the other side. Hart spun around and whacked my jaw with his tail in the process. "Thanks," I spat.

I pointed the flashlight to where Hart was looking and breathed a sigh of relief. Whatever was shaking the tent, most likely a pokémon, it was small. Like, really small. Smaller than Hart. It was probably a pikachu or maybe a skwovet. "You're scared of that?" Hart shot me a look. I rolled my eyes and unzipped the tent.

Hart shot out like a bullet, immediately disappearing into the night. I could hear his footsteps race around to the other side of the tent, and a split second later, he released a barrage of barks. The other pokémon (at least I think it was the other pokémon) responded with a high pitched shriek. I heard something "swish" through the air and hit Hart. Now he was the one shrieking.

From then on, I could only assume that Hart and the mystery pokémon were trading blows. For every bark and growl that Hart let out, there was an equal if not greater amount of screeching and crying from the other pokémon.

At one point during their brawl, the body of the mystery pokémon was slammed into the side of the tent. I heard a pole snap in half. A split second later one of its claws tore into the fabric and left a clean tear behind. My heart started racing and I burrowed deep into my sleeping bag as if it would protect me. If the pokémon could damage the tent that easily, I feared what it could do to my body. I held my breath and braced for a collision with our assailant. Thankfully, nothing made its way through my tent's brand new opening.

Once it sounded like their scuffle was moving away from the tent, I mustered up the courage to investigate what was going on myself. The clouds obscured what little sliver of the moon remained in the sky, so it was pitch black. I had to rely on my flashlight for light. Other than that, the weather was perfect— but before I could finish properly admiring the weather, I was interrupted by a bright orange flash from the direction of Hart and his opponent.

My heart sank. Hart had used an Ember and the area around them had caught fire. "No! Bad! No!" I awkwardly yelled as I ran towards the damage. The pokémon had fainted by the time I arrived on the scene. Hart was sniffing its body as the grass surrounding them burned. Unfortunately, I didn't have a water pokémon to help me put out the fire, but the flames were small enough that I was able to stomp them out after a few minutes. During that time, l had all the time in the world to think about how I was going to chastise Hart for being so reckless.

"Fire? Really!? Hart, it's like two in the morning and practically impossible to get firemen out here if something had gone really wrong!" I paused to catch my breath. "There is literally nothing we could have done if you started something bigger. You could have burned down Route 4!"

Hart continued his investigation of the fainted pokémon without the slightest regard to my lecture. I recognized the pokémon on the ground as a meowth— the kind native to Galar. I believed they were steel types. Maybe using fire was actually the right move…? No. It was still too reckless to even try. Plus, I doubted Hart could have even determined what kind of pokémon his opponent actually was in this visibility. "Are you even listening to me?"

Hart glanced up at me, though not with any anger in his eyes. Actually, he looked quite concerned.

"Hm?"

Hart nudged the meowth's ear with his snout, bringing it into the light of the flashlight. Something twinkled. I got onto my knees to take a closer look. The meowth had an earring. Just one, though. Its other ear didn't have a place to put a matching one. I took its pierced ear in my hand. It was metallic and quite heavy. Gold, maybe. Whatever it was made out of, it looked and felt really expensive.

That was beside the point though. This meowth quite obviously belonged to someone, and Hart had just absolutely obliterated it in battle.

Maybe it was an overreaction, but I checked to see if the meowth was still alive. Thankfully, I could see its chest rising and falling and could feel a pulse. I looked at Hart. "You're lucky."

He looked away and snorted.

I raised an eyebrow. "Don't act like you don't care."

He didn't even acknowledge me that time and continued to act like he was interested in something off in the distance despite it being pitch black outside.

I smirked. "You know I saw that face you made." Still silence. I leaned in for extra effect. "I know your deep dark secret now. You actually care about other living things," I said, trying to stifle a laugh. I was met with a growl. Apparently, he didn't find that one as funny as I did.

Truth be told, I didn't know what to do next. On one hand, this meowth needed medical attention as soon as possible, but the pokécenter was about an hour's worth of a hike away and I was tired and desperately wanted to go back to sleep. On the other hand, I didn't want to stick around this place and be blamed for the fire damage. We could probably escape any blame by leaving.

I looked down at Hart as if he could offer me his thoughts on the matter. He was still looking off into the distance, probably embarrassed that he had shown an emotion other than hatred or malice.

Whether it be out of genuine concern for the meowth or pure spite for Hart (who I thought could use a little night-time hike as a sort of punishment), I decided to pack up camp and head back to Turffield.

It's not like we had a tent to go back to anyway.