Hey there. Thanks for tuning in to my story here. I know it's a little slow right now but I promise you that Danny boi is going to interact with pokemon (Eventually).

I'll have you know that I bought a coconut with a husk on for this chapter. It was difficult as fuck to open.

I need a proof reader.


Daniel walks beside his old footprints. This downtime affords his mind to drift. His hunger grows. The sun beats down on his head.

'Ugh. I don't like this feeling. Not knowing where my next meal or any food feels... scary'

Another pit opens in the man's stomach. This one born of the fear of starvation. A wingull flies into the forest.

'Are pokemon usually this wary of humans? I guess the ones here have never seen one before. If I asked nicely, would any of them help me? Seems too fairy-tale, even for the world of pokemon'

A bent coconut tree appears in the distance. It bows deeply to the sea, as if the tree is a subject to the water.

'Well there's that tree I remember, it even has some coconuts at the base. They look a bit worse for wear though. At least they're on the ground.'

The man arrives at his destination, a kowtowing coconut tree. Scattered at its base are four large brown husks, each of which contains the treasure that the man seeks. The palm's leafy end hangs about ten feet off the ground. At its head hangs a bounty of green and yellow coconuts, each one the size of a human head. The green ones appear smaller than the yellow ones.

'Let's see if I can grab some coconuts without climbing the tree'

With a running start, the man jumps towards the head of the palm tree with his arms stretched above his head and his eyes on the prize. His hands flail several feet below the coconuts.

'I never could dunk a basketball. I ain't got dem hops fr fr'

The man chuckles to himself, granting a moment of levity.

'Ok. Time to get climbing.'

The tree's trunk rises straight up from the sand until it starts to bow at the man's chest. It then rises steadily as it approaches the sea. The man wraps his hands around the trunk and removes his flip-flops. He carefully ladders his way up until he reaches the bend, where he rests his chest and lets his legs wrap around the trunk. Slowly, the man inches his way like a caterpillar to the head of the tree. His anxiety rises with him.

'Just take it slow. The most important thing is to avoid getting hurt.'

The man reaches the tree's head, its bounty is within reach. He nervously takes his right hand out of the hug and grabs a green coconut. He gives it a tug. A tug that shakes the bunch and disrupts his balance.

'Okay okay! Don't pluck it. Twist it instead, Daniel.'

After collecting himself, the man twists the same green coconut. The snapping stem is nearly silent against the sea breeze, but the prize is freed from nature's grasp.

'Alright! That wasn't so bad. I should try leaving some of these up here. I don't know if any of them are too ripe or not ripe enough'

The man drops his first coconut which the ground kindly catches. Then a second coconut follows, a third, a fourth until finally, the man has freed eight coconuts from the tree. The man slowly inches backwards off the tree. His anxiety does not fall with his height. His grip loosens as he nears the ground. A sense of accomplishment washes over him as slips his flip-flops back on.

'Wow. I don't think I've ever felt pride and accomplishment like this before. Maybe when I won that spar as a kid in kung-fu. But my life definitely wasn't in danger like it was ten feet up in the air. Let's just carry what I can back to the pond.'

The man collects four of the twelve coconuts on the ground into his arms. Two of them are yellow, one is green and the last is brown and dried. The pokemon of the island watch the man as he makes a third trail of footprints in the sand. Krabby peek above the waves, Wingulls observe from the trees, and a slowpoke stares blankly while remaining right where he is. The sea continues its rhythm as the breeze rustles the forest. The sun beats the man's brow and he is unable to shield himself. The man spots the stick he planted in the sand before he left and proceeds to the vaguely banana-shaped pond and drops his loot. His arms are somewhat fatigued after the climb and carry.

'Ok. Time to break these bad boys open.'

The area is mostly clear of grass save for the edge of the pond. Instead, the forest floor is covered with fallen leaves, sprinkled with sticks. scattered with sprouts, and strewn with stones. Some stones near the waters that feed the pond are round while others are flatter and show much more variation in size. The man collects a few flat stones and some rounder stones. Some can be used with one hand while others require both. He clears the ground of debris near his coconuts and sits cross-legged on the bare earth. He chooses one sturdy stone as his anvil and places a green coconut on it. Using two hands, The man chooses another flat stone to guillotine the poor coconut head in front of him. He raises the tool a few inches above the green coconut and crashes the edge right into the oblong ball. Its husk responds with a crunch of ripping fibers. A small gash now features prominently on the green coconut. The man sticks his hands into the gash and tries to pull. It does not budge.

'I thought that would be much easier'

The man raises the stone guillotine once more, and once more he brings it crashing down into the gash. The stone enters deeper into the coconut. The man tries to rip the husk off again. Again, the husk does not move. He repeats this ritual, but this time he makes another cut parallel to the first one. With his arms feeling the burn, the man sets down the rock and tries to rip off the husk. With great effort, one-sixth of the husk is torn from the coconut.

'You've got to be fucking kidding me.'

The man's frustration builds.

'Wait... work smarter, not harder'

The man places the coconut to the side for the moment. He places the guillotine on the stone anvil and takes a round stone in his right hand. He strikes the surface of the guillotine until it is shattered into long, handle-like chunks. He takes the one that fits most comfortably in his hand. One end is flat while the other ends in a dagger-like wedge. He takes the wedge end and repeatedly stabs it into the coconut, creating a line parallel to the other two. He then saws the stabbed gash with the sharp edge. With this cleaner cut done, The man Tries to remove the husk once more. It doesn't require nearly as much effort as the last tear and comes off with a loud rip. The man pulls some remaining hairs off of the new bald face.

'Yes! I managed to get this far without cutting myself!'

The man repeats his new method for the rest of the husk, hoping he didn't just jinx himself. He has a much easier time than when he tried using the stone guillotine. The man is left with the familiar shape that shows up in commercials, although it's much paler. The man takes a look at the three divots in the coconut.

'It really does look like a face'

With the blunt end, the man takes his coconut opener and strikes the pale skull at the midpoint of the line between its "eyes". A crack forms but doesn't reach completely around the coconut. The man sticks the wedged end into it and levers the coconut open. Some water spills over the edge of one half so he pours some of the overflow into the other half. With a coconut half in each hand, the man drinks all the water in one, then the other.

'Incredible. I didn't think I would love the taste of coconut water this much. Hopefully it stays that way'

The man continues removing the husks from the three remaining coconuts. The two yellow ones were similarly involved to de-husk, while the brown one was the easiest of the lot. It felt like he could rip that one apart with his teeth.

'This brown one feels dry. That video of a buff Samoan ripping apart a coconut husk with his teeth must have been with one like this. Unless he was WAY stronger than me'

The man moves on by drilling into the mouth of each coconut. Using a small triangular shard created when he smashed the stone guillotine. When he gets impatient with that, the man takes a pointed rock and hammers it like a nail into a board. The man partakes in the coconut water that drools out of the hairy skull. A particularly cold breeze strikes him.

'I should find some way of starting a fire. Think Daniel, think. What kind of sticks do I need to rub together to make a fire. That primitive technology channel had a video about it. He found some wood that was as thick as a drum stick growing out of the ground. I think he also let them dry in the sun for a while. I guess I'll just collect sticks that fit that description and leave them out to dry.'

The man rises to his feet and begins scouring the forest for fire sticks. He finds several sapling growths, presumably of different species and using a sharp rock, he cuts some branches. His arms are soon full of drumstick branches. The man returns to the pond where he begins pruning the branches free of leaves and offshoots. He also scrapes the bark off of half of them. The man notices the oddish hiding in the grass. Its leaves are reminiscent of a pineapple.

'That oddish looks different than how I remember. I swear their leaves were broader. More temperate looking. I guess that's the tropical environment or something.'

The man takes his experimental fire sticks to the beach to dry. The sun appears to have passed noon.

'Hopefully the burning sands and sun will dry these sticks out enough to be used before it gets dark.'

The man busies himself by collecting the remaining coconuts at the kowtowing tree and gathering firewood. For kindling, he plans to use coconut husks, the dry ones in particular. As the sun approaches the horizon, the man has four husked coconuts at the pond.

'Oh shit I need somewhere to sleep.'

With that, the man searches for something soft enough to sleep on. He finds some short palm trees and chops off some of their long fronds. He pulls them apart at the middle and makes a mat on the ground at the exposed earth near the pond. He lies down and gives it a test.

'This sucks ass, but it's probably better than sleeping on the dirt.'

The crisp fronds itch and scratch at his skin. The leaves crunch under him while the pile that forms his pillow sticks to his hair and tingles his neck.

'Never mind. Fuck this. I'm sleeping on the dirt.'

The sun hits the horizon. The sky becomes orange. The man collects the sticks on the beach. They come in pairs, from the tree they were each collected from. The ones skinned of their bark feel drier and brittler than their unshaven counterparts. The man takes a small, triangular rock and begins drilling shallow holes in half of the fire sticks. He cuts an inch off of the other half such that their ends are flat. The man takes a flat-end stick and claps it between his hands. He places it into it's counterpart with the shallow hole. He begins to rub his hands together, moving down the fire stick and returning to the top. The motion rotates the fire stick, creating audible friction, but no smoke.

'That primitive technology guy makes it look so easy. If smoke doesn't appear soon, I'm going to move on.'

And so the man moved on to another pair. And another. Until one started to smoke.

'Ok. Keep going until the thing can maintain itself.'

The man keeps rubbing the sticks together. His hands now sport blisters after all the previous attempts. Finally he stops, pouring the embers out of the now blackened hole into a dry coconut husk. He blows on the embers with a gentle sigh. The husk responds with smoke. He gives it another blow, this time harder. The Husk responds with even more smoke, enough to irritate the man when the breeze blows the smoke into his face. The man continues to blow. He looks away when breathing in to avoid inhaling smoke. Soon enough, the smoke gives way to a bright flame. It illuminates the pond area with an orange glow to match the setting sun. The oddish runs out of sight.

"Yes!"

The man makes his joy known to the pokemon of the island. He places the burning coconut husk on the ground and starts adding more fuel to the fire. Soon enough he has a proper campfire set up. Complete with a stone circle. The sun falls past the horizon. The cool breeze of the day transforms into a cold wind.

'I'm very glad I made that fire. This wind would've killed me.'

The man stares into the fire. Its heat strikes his exposed arms and legs. His breathable workout shirt makes him uncomfortably cool at this time. The man takes a coconut and drinks the water. He collects the other drained coconuts and breaks one open. Its white flesh appears moist. He takes his fingers and tries to scrape the flesh out. It is much harder than he realized.

'What the hell. This is really stuck on there. Where's that sharp rock.'

The man finds his sharp rock. With it he separates the hard brown shell from the softer white coconut meat. It isn't a clean cut, but it works. Some brown "skin" is still stuck on the convex sides of the coconut meat.

'I wonder if this brown stuff is edible.'

He takes a bite. It tastes much more bland than he expected. The brown parts, however, taste of cardboard.

'Ok I'm gonna scrape this stuff off.'

The man uses his sharp stone to do just that.

'My hunger is the only thing letting me continue to eat this. Why do people like coconut meat again?'

The man's gaze travels upwards. There is a clearing in the canopy above the pond. The sky is dark and dusted with stars. So many more stars than the man is used to. So many more than he has ever seen in the sky with his own two eyes. Some are big and bright. Those ones appear as a twinkle in the heavens. Others are smaller and dim. A pinprick in the canopy of the sky. What the man notices most, however, is what is not present.

'I don't recognize any constellations. If I were on Earth's southern hemisphere, I think I could at least spot the southern cross. Also, the Milky Way isn't here! There's no sign of that beautiful streak. I wish I could have seen it when I had the chance.'

Homesickness immediately strikes Daniel. He has no labor to distract his mind. He is lost. He is alone. He feels cold.

'Fucking hell Daniel. You managed to distract yourself for this long, why'd you have to ruin your streak?'

Daniel lies down next to the fire. Staring at the stars through the canopy above him, his thoughts wander once more.

'You're here Daniel, not there. Here is what matters. You will starve HERE and NOW if you're stuck somewhere else.'

'I never got to say goodbye. I don't even know how I got here. Did I die? Was I chosen? Is this some trial set up by powers beyond me?'

'No Daniel it doesn't matter. You saw what you did out there today. How many people would have resigned themselves to their fate? Not you. You won't sit around to die. You can survive out here. You can even try training a pokemon to help you get out of here! How about that Daniel?'

'But how would I even make a pokeball? The games just hand waive that. I need an apricorn and red shard or something if Pokemon Legends: Arceus is anything to go by.'

'Then do it the old fashioned way! That oddish over there will either warm up to you or leave. So its up to you to keep it around!'

'That thing is probably better at surviving here than me. What are the chances that it outlives me?'

'IT DOESN'T MATTER. YOU WILL NOT DIE HERE DANIEL. YOU WILL MAKE IT.'

Exhaustion begins to take Daniel. His eyes blink slower and slower. The cold wind doesn't seem as cold. The Dirt feels less uncomfortable. The fire feels just warm enough.

Daniel is still. He is still stuck. He is still alone.

He is still alive.