Hisoka did not understand the appeal of sleeping outside. He had done it two nights in a row now and he felt very much over it as a concept. At least last night he'd actually fallen asleep, however briefly. It was slightly easier with more people around - Hisoka worried less about being the first one eaten.
Also, having Oak and Aiden around kinda felt like having adults in the room. When it had just been him and Tori the night before, Hisoka felt weirdly responsible for her safety, and that was...daunting.
He glanced over at Tori. She was near the fire, laughing with the grad students as they cleaned up from breakfast. Her face was fresh from sleep, but her hair was frizzier than usual and there were still dirt smudges on her arms from yesterday - a different look entirely from her prim school persona. It was like she was going feral.
Hisoka snorted at his own unspoken jest.
"Allergies, my friend?"
Samuel Oak stepped up beside Hisoka. He was folding a piece of canvas. Next to him, his Wartortle stood also folding something.
"Ah...no! Nah, just a little trouble sleeping."
"Mmm. I imagine your Bulbasaur could help you with that."
"Bulbasaur?" Hisoka was confused. He looked around the camp for his Pokémon and spotted it sitting in a patch of grass beside Aiden's Cubone.
"Bulbasaur can learn an ability called Sleep Powder. I wouldn't recommend relying on it every night, but now and then, a Bulbasaur's spores can help put you to sleep in a pinch." Oak delivered the information with a wink.
That was a tip he didn't think anyone was teaching at Pokémon Tech.
"That's...good to know. Thank you."
Oak clapped Hisoka on the back and then moved off to tend the rest of his things. His Wartortle followed.
There wasn't much for Hisoka to pack once he'd rolled up his sleeping mat. He saw Aiden scattering the extra sticks and log seats they'd collected last night. When there was nothing left to disperse, he moved to the campfire and started to snuff it out. Tori and the others scattered away to avoid the billows of ashy smoke as Aiden dumped the nearby water bucket into the coals. Hisoka pitched in to cover the wet remains. Cubone did too. It was a funny enough sight, the two boys and one Pokémon standing in a circle kicking up a half-arsed sand attack, that it sent Tori giggling. She joined in for a few stomps at the end.
Aiden instructed everyone to do a final check for litter and left-behind items, and then they were on the march again. Or the climb, rather, as they started up the rocky incline of the Mt. Moon range not long after setting out.
Oak and Aiden returned their Pokémon to Pokéballs. Some ledges were simply too high for the Pokémon to clear. Meowth, however, stayed two jumps ahead of Tori on the boulders, looking back over its shoulder at her often.
At the head of the group, Oak set the pace. He frequently consulted a folding map and compass, and used his heavy binoculars so often he left them hanging around his neck by a strap.
The grad students made a valiant effort with the wagon, but decided to abandon it at the first overhang on the way up. They packed the contents into massive backpacks and left a flag of yellow fabric flapping outside to hopefully find it later.
The group stopped for lunch on a grassy plateau. Looking down over the edge was a frightening testament to how high they'd climbed that morning, but out to the north, across the elevated plateau, the distant peaks seemed like short, pointed hills.
The sun was hot and clear above them. Flocks of Spearow and Fearow flew in formation and other Pokémon looped overhead. Few trees grew up here, but the ones that did were adjacent to a trickling stream. It created a cool grotto for the group to rest and eat lunch.
It was also, they soon found out, the favored hang-out of two very ornery Graveler.
Tori and Beau had just slipped out of their shoes a little ways downstream. They stood in the shallow water and cooled their feet, talking animatedly. When Hisoka felt someone approach him from behind, he quickly turned away from watching her.
He pivoted to face a rock slab. The slab had two eyes, deep-set in a flat, pebbly snout. Its mouth opened as it breathed, wide and red as a melon missing a wedge, a hint of a pink tongue peaking out with every exhale.
Somewhere to his left, he heard Levi yell out. Two sets of footsteps pounded towards them.
"Wartortle! Get that Graveler's attention!"
"Cubone-"
"Exeggcute, go!"
In front of Hisoka, between him and the Graveler, a stack of pinkish egg shapes appeared. The Pokémon Exeggcute was facing away from him, he could tell, because he couldn't see the individual faces on the eggs. They were a plant type of Pokémon, which was an excellent choice by Oak against the rock type Graveler, but Exeggcute also had another set of abilities.
"Reflect, Eggster! And a Leech Seed"
Psychic energy sparked from the eggs upward, coaxing a barrier into existence in front of the wild Pokémon.
Oak moved on to giving orders to his Wartortle, but the Exeggcute was trained enough to soldier on solo. While the Graveler contemplated the impossible apparition in front of its face, the Exeggcute slipped a seed between its feet. Vines sprung up from the spot, entangling the rock Pokémon and pulling it off-balance.
When it landed on its back, the Graveler howled. From Hisoka's periphery, Bulbasaur charged in, vines waving, whipping scoldingly at the prone Pokémon. Graveler pulled in its arms and legs, becoming an armored sphere, hiding from the attacking plants.
"Now's the time to make your catch, friend!" Oak called. He had subdued the second Graveler. He held a Pokéball of his own, poised to catch it.
Hisoka patted the front pouch of his hoodie, then the empty pockets of his jeans. He threw up his hands to show Oak he had no Pokéballs. Meanwhile, the Graveler in front of Hisoka started to roll. It picked up speed slowly, making its way out of the situation and towards the lip of the plateau.
Tori and Beau splashed towards him just in time to watch as the huge boulder Pokémon rolled itself off the edge.
Oak watched this happen, then looked down at the Graveler at his own feet.
"Was that your friend? Would you like to go too?"
The Graveler didn't react immediately, but the intention of Oak's question eventually sank in. Nervously, it shuffled away from him, towards the same spot on the edge. And as if the drop were nothing, it rolled itself right over. The moment it was out of sight, Meowth darted from Oak's shadow and leapt into Tori's arms.
There was a distant crash below them, followed by a crack, and the patter of hundreds more falling rocks.
"No wonder the mountain paths never last around here." Oak dusted his hands, staring out across the peaks with a thoughtful expression.
Hisoka ran to Bulbasaur.
The little Pokémon was looking over the edge after the Graveler. It secured itself from falling with a single vine wrapped around a stump. When Hisoka approached, it turned to him, emoting joyfully.
Hisoka dropped to his knees. He put his hands on Bulbasaur's face and tilted it up, squishing its rubbery cheeks in the process.
"You're a hero, bud! You are so brave!" The praise might have sounded a little excessive to his own ears, he thought, but it made Bulbasaur melt. The Pokémon rolled its eyes back in pleasure and its vines danced in the air.
Oak was praising his own Pokémon. The rest of the group was shaking off the fright. In reality, the whole event had lasted less than three minutes. It was a stark illustration of how quickly things could get out of hand in the wilds. Hisoka looked over towards Aiden.
As guardian for the group, Aiden had felt responsible enough in the situation to send out his Cubone, but Oak had cut in.
"You were brave, Cubone. We'll do more training, and you'll be ready next time."
The Pokémon clutched its bone club to its fluttering chest, frozen in place, hyperventilating. Hisoka wagered Oak had seen the Pokémon's panic in the moment.
Aiden sat down in the dirt next to Cubone and spent some time murmuring to the frightened creature. Eventually, it sat down too and leaned into its trainer, visibly relaxing.
To bring the group back together, Oak summoned everyone to witness his documentation of the Graveler. He showed the gathered team how to record an encounter: location, time of day, type and description, estimation of height, surrounding habitat, and signs of health or sickness.
He brought a fresh notebook on every trip, Oak explained, and recorded as much as he could about his experiences. Individually, they may seem pretty mundane, but his notes had proved helpful several times. They led him to discover an out-of-season migration pattern for a population of Butterfree once. Another time he'd recorded a sighting of what turned out to be an invasive species. All of these events had great scientific merit.
By the time Oak finished his impromptu lecture, everyone had shaken off their nerves. Tori was laughing again, and Cubone explored more of the space outside Aiden's shadow.
Feeling poorly rested and recently shaken, Hisoka finished out the day in a fog. No other event felt close to that intense, so he let it all slide by. The rocks and gnarled roots and splashes of Pidgey shit all looked the same in his periphery as he focused on his feet and where to place them. He wanted to talk and joke as he walked, but they climbed single file and he didn't have the breath for it anyway. Instead he labored silently under the weight of his pack until they reached their campsite in the evening where set-up and dinner and bedding down were a droning blur.