Ulysses "Ursaring" Rancor thought that it was going to be just another show. He had made his name, and his money, by traveling to strange and exotic locations around the world and filming episodes showing him surviving in the wild. It had all become rather played out, at this point, but the people were still watching and the money kept flowing in, so Rancor kept his writers busy coming up with new locales to highlight.
That was how he had ended up in Hoenn. There had been a few earlier trips to the region to highlight the Hoennese desert or the icy Shoal Cave. Then there was a long hiatus until Rancor returned to film part of his special comparing the different mountains and caves which had earned the shared title of Victory Road. That was fine. All in all, Rancor and his staff didn't really like Hoenn that much. It was a hard place to film because the region was both too boring and too exciting, between the sleepy attitude that most of its inhabitants had towards their day-to-day lives and the headline grabbing antics of not one but two groups of criminals running around. Just securing insurance for his crew and their equipment was a headache Rancor had preferred to do without.
But now that his show was in its seventh year, Rancor's writers had found themselves scraping the bottom of the barrel for ideas. There was even talk that this would be their last season, and Rancor thought that the rumors were probably right. Mirage Island had been thrown out early on and kept lingering like a bad smell. Somehow, despite no one from the producers on down to the interns advocating for it, Mirage Island had stayed on the list of show ideas long after other, better ideas had been played out.
On paper, Mirage Island was intriguing enough. The idea of an entire landmass which was so hard to map that it seemed to appear and disappear made for a good campfire story. That the island's supposed location was close to both the sleepy floating community of Pacifidlog Town and the ruins of the ruins of the Sky Pillar gave it an added air of isolation and mystery. Not a lot of people even claimed to have been to Mirage Island, and a lot of traveling trainers completed the Hoenn leg of their pokémon journeys without having even heard about it. To Rancor's knowledge, none of his competitors in the field of travel and survival documentaries had tackled Mirage Island before.
That didn't mean that this low-hanging fruit was particularly sweet, however. From what Rancor had gathered from the background research his staff had done for him, eyewitnesses unanimously reported that Mirage Island was populated solely by bright blue, rubbery-skinned wynaut. The diminutive pokémon were hardly intimidating under the command of a veteran trainer, and in the wild they were even less frightening. The dangers of Mirage Island, Rancor had thought with a smirk, was going to be boredom, not fearsome predators.
After two weeks of scouting out of Pacifidlog Town, Rancor and his crew had received another reason to hate Mirage Island. They simply hadn't been able to find the island, despite attempts to locate it by air and sea. While Rancor had kept in touch with the scouts by radio, he had started coming up with alternatives. It wasn't a pretty part of his job, but he had grown a lot more equivocal about lying to his audience since starting his show. His producers had instructed the scouts to stop looking for the real Mirage Island and start searching for a suitable alternative. An island with a fine harbor and a nice flat terrain which would be ideal for setting up all of the equipment they needed had been found. A surreptitious call had gone out for three dozen professionally trained wynaut to be shipped out from Pokéwood, and they were expected to come out to Pacifidlog Town tomorrow.
Rancor had gone to set up camp on the fake Mirage Island on a small boat rented from a local fisherman that morning, but something had gone wrong. Without any warning, a heavy fog had descended on the small fleet of ships carrying Rancor, his crew, and their equipment, and with their radios malfunctioning and visibility limited to a hand held in front of one's face, Rancor's ship had gotten separated from the others.
When he had seen that their ship was drifting apart from the others, Rancor had stormed onto the deck to demand better from their local guide. That had been a mistake. The rollicking waters had unsteadied the ship, and the waves lapping over the sides of the small boat had made the wooden floor of the deck slick and treacherous. When a slap of water nearly knocked the boat onto its side, Rancor had gone over the side and into the churning sea.
Now, Rancor was awake, and though he hardly wanted to believe it, he was starting to think that he was on Mirage Island. The real Mirage Island, that is, not the set piece his people had been working to dress up as the real thing. He hadn't wanted to believe it, of course. Years of cynicism bred by witnessing media wizardry at work had been hard to overcome, but there was still enough of Rancor's old attitude to make him look around his surroundings and form an honest account of his situation.
The first thing that he noticed, the thing that it was impossible to escape, was the horde of wynaut roaming around the island. When Rancor first awoke, there was a small blue wynaut looking down at him. After leaving the beach and exploring the island a little more, Rancor had found more and more wynaut. Each of the little pokémon he found began following Rancor around and by now he had picked up more than ten. To his knowledge, there wasn't any colony of wild wynaut anywhere in the Hoenn region except on the fabled Mirage Island.
The wynaut kept their distance from Rancor for the most part. All he had to do was to take a step towards them and the curious blue pokémon would scatter into the undergrowth, but they would reemerge soon enough. It was a little unnerving, but Rancor tried to keep his mind focused on escape and survival.
Even though he had long ago become coddled by his producers, enough of the wisdom his writers had put in Rancor's mouth had become lodged in the television personality's mind. Water was the key factor to survival, and he was fortunate enough to find a shallow river flowing from its source deep in the jungle covering the heart of the island. He bent down and scooped the cool water into his mouth, drinking greedily until he felt the gaze of the wynaut behind him on his back. Rancor turned around and looked at the pokémon and snarled, "What are you looking at?" His hand searched the ground next to him and found a rock which the river had smoothed over who knew how many years. Rancor hefted it at the crowd of wynaut and struck one of them in the head so that it fell down.
That got the pokémon chattering. With squeaks of what he imagined to be fear and dismay, they fled from Rancor. The one Rancor had hit with a rock was the last one to disappear, and only then did the man stand up and resume his exploration of the island. Rancor resolved to follow the river for as long as he could. His hunger made him decide against staying on the beach. After all, Rancor thought, he was an important enough man that his crew would be searching desperately for him. They would find him and get him off of this island, and it would feel much better to wait for them with a full stomach. There had to be some fruit or berries to support this many wynaut. Rancor laughed to himself as he found himself wondering what a wynaut would taste like. If he got hungry enough, maybe he'd roast one of those annoying little pokémon over an open fire and find out. Rancor was about to laugh some more when he saw one of the wynaut watching him from the bushes.
Rancor bent down to grab another rock, but when he looked for the wynaut again, it was gone.
Since washing up on Mirage Island, Rancor's clothes had dried out from his team in the sea, but the climate was humid enough and his hike through the thick jungle was strenuous enough that Rancor's sweat soon made his shirt cling to his back like a second skin. Rancor reached behind himself to pull it away and then fanned himself. He thought that he kept in pretty good shape for his age, but it was a lot different walking around a mysterious island without his trailer and a ready supply of bottled water on hand.
At least food was easy to come by. The thick canopy included many towering trees which bore fat red pieces of fruit. The ground was littered with them, too, which explained why the small armless wynaut were able to eat them. Since the fruit at his feet were a combination of overripe and picked over by the wynaut, Rancor opted to stand as high as he could and pull down one of the heavy fruits from its branch. As Rancor bit down, the fruit burst and filled his mouth with a strange combination of spicy and sweet as its red juice dribbled down his face. It was not pleasant, but he had eaten much worse for his audience and, besides, it was likely the best thing that he was going to eat on this wretched island, so Rancor helped himself to three more helpings of the juicy fruit.
Rancor hadn't realized just how thirsty he had been until he had found the river, and he hadn't realized how hungry he had been until he had found food. Now, Rancor was just realizing how tired he was. Even though he wanted to stop, he pushed himself to climb the gentle slope until he emerged into a clearing situated over more level ground. The midday heat was becoming more and more oppressive, and the fruit in his stomach made him feel slow and stupid. Rancor absentmindedly wiped away some of the juice that had dried on his face before sitting down. He wondered how big the island was really, and if he would be better off taking his rest on the beach in case a search party came calling.
Maybe they think I drowned, he thought numbly. "No, they're paying me too much not to want to make sure," Rancor said aloud and frowned at the silence that surrounded him. He decided to close his eyes, just for a few minutes while he caught his breath. But sitting quickly turned into laying down, and his short rest quickly turned into sleep.
Rancor awoke with a jerk. The sun was no longer overhead but hidden behind the trees of the jungle around him. More concerning was the gaggle of wynaut around him. His sleeping form apparently had lacked the ability to frighten off the inquisitive pokémon, and even though he was rapidly getting to his feet, the wynaut showed no fear. Rancor didn't have any rocks to throw at them, and nothing else to attack them with but the shirt on his back. "Shoo!" he said, but the wynaut crowding around him only seemed to press on him more insistently. They were all silent and smiling, and Rancor felt a rush of nausea when he felt rubbery skin against his leg. "Go on! Shoo!" Rancor said again, and this time he backed up his words with a powerful kick which sent the nearest wynaut backwards to crash into fellow pokémon.
Breathing hard, Rancor waited for the wynaut to disperse, but the small pokémon didn't flee as he had expected. Instead, one by one the wynaut began to beat their heavy black tails against the ground. There were more of them now, Rancor realized, about thirty of the blue creatures filling up most of the space in the clearing he had found. He tried to wade through the sea of pokémon, but despite their small size the wynaut were heavy and hard to move. Rancor felt a faint stirring of panic even as he thought about how ridiculous it all was. Who had ever heard of a grown man frightened by wynaut?
Once he was past the wynaut, Rancor began to run clumsily through the thick jungle. Branches and vines grabbed at him, but he all the same he couldn't help looking over his shoulder to see whether or not the wynaut were following him. That was why he wasn't prepared for the root which caught his foot and sent him sprawling to the ground with a cry of pain. He lay on the ground swearing and sweating as he gingerly disentangled his foot from the hazard. His ankle was painful to touch and Rancor thought that he could already see it beginning to swell.
"The beach, gotta get to the beach," Rancor muttered to himself. He propped himself up on his elbows and, after sparing another look back to see if there were any wynaut giving chase, he began to crawl slowly and painfully down the hill. He had to stay next to the river to keep from getting lost, but the ground by the water was rough going and Rancor felt every scratch and scrape the jungle inflicted on his body.
Just when Rancor's strength was flagging, he heard the sound of a helicopter's blades overhead. He looked up desperately, but couldn't see anything through the thick canopy. "Come on, almost there," he forced out through his teeth and then even called out to the sky, "Hey! Wait!" Rancor redoubled his efforts and felt like he was making good time crawling along the jungle floor. "Almost there, almost there," became his whispered mantra, and the thought of being so close made it possible to endure the first real tastes of pain that the television host had known in years.
Rancor emerged from the jungle and onto the beach feeling thirsty and tired, but also like he was at the end of his trials. Unfortunately, he wasn't alone on the beach. The wynaut had gotten there first and they welcomed his arrival with smiling expressions which only heightened the strange sense of menace they exuded. Rancor emerged into a semicircle of pokémon which quickly closed behind him to leave him surrounded. "Please," Rancor pleaded through parched lips, "I'm sorry, okay? I'm sorry, just, please, you have to let me go."
The pokémon all seemed to chortle at him, and Rancor tried to crawl past them. It had been hard enough to push past the wynaut when he wasn't injured, and Rancor blanched at the thought of trying to move the dense little creatures now that he was crawling around on his hands and knees like an infant. Still, he thought that they might give him some leeway if he tried.
He was wrong, though. The wynaut not only refused to move for him, but they actively pushed Rancor back. The blue pokémon bounced and battered Rancor to drive him into the center of their tightening ring.
"Please," Rancor said again. He could still hear the helicopter over the pounding of his heart, but he couldn't tell whether it was getting closer or further away. "I just want to go home."
The wynaut didn't listen to him. They drew even closer until they were clambering atop of Rancor with their nauseatingly rubbery skin. With as heavy as they were, it only took a few wynaut on his back to force Rancor onto his stomach. One tread on his twisted ankle and Rancor cried out his pain. He reached his hand out of the cloud of pokémon either to try and reach something which would help him, to signal to the helicopter, or to simply let part of his body escape the suffocating mass of wynaut.
From the sky it would have been impossible to see him, but Rancor held onto his hope as long as he could. Even after he stopped being able to see the helicopter, Rancor kept hoping that it would land and someone would save him. He hadn't been able to hear the rotating blades inside of the cloud of wynaut, and so he didn't notice when they faded away as the rescuers went back to Pacifidlog Town with nothing to report.
He held onto his hope until something in his back cracked and he let panic take its place.