"Ten bulk of white grass?"
"Yep. And that's just the first trip. Apparently they had some kind of bumper crop, and they want to start refining it right away. Your clients are the farmers, Rhyhorn and Tepig, requesting two apprentices to escort them from Longbar tomorrow. The pay is 400 Poké each, two ways."
"Who else is going?"
"Rockruff got nabbed for a patrol, and Venipede is busy with her other duties, like usual. It'll have to be you and Vivillon. Everyone else is out."
"Leaving here tomorrow, or from Longbar?"
"It's all on the paper… What's the matter? You don't normally ask so many questions!"
"Do you think they really need two apprentices? I mean, I'm not trying to get out of work or anything. But who are Vivillon and I supposed to be protecting the grass from, each other?"
"Ha! You aren't wrong, they aren't going to be robbed with Longbar being so close by. We could tell the local team to do it themselves, but that would mean sending a messenger there and back anyways. Might as well humor the farmers. Builds goodwill."
"Mmm-Hmm."
"Plus this way they won't blame us if wild Bouffalant eats their harvest."
"Haha, yeah, that makes sense. It just feels like I've been escorting farmers back and forth all month. Are there any independent missions? Maybe Karrablast needs some help?"
"Listen, rookie, I hear what you're saying, but I've got to balance these jobs across all the apprentices, so sometimes you're going to get the short end of the stick."
"I know that."
"Sorry, Charmander. I know you know. I know you know because we have this conversation every other week! Karrablast did have a mission today, but it was a hauling mission. I know you hate those, and Vivillon can't do them, so I sent Maractus. Now with this job, the clients are going to do all the carrying. Much better suited to you and Vivillon. I have to do right by all of you apprentices."
"Definitely. Forget what I said, I don't mean to pester you."
"No, it's OK, rookie. We've all been there. If the farmers still need a guard on the second trip, I'll make sure to find somebody else. And I'll do my best to send more independent missions your way."
"Thanks, Diggersby."
"And if you want more job variety, it's really Lucario you should be talking to, not me. She won't bite, I swear."
"I'll keep that in mind, thanks."
"You're welcome, rookie. This job should be easy for an apprentice of your stripes, so be glad for that, at least! When you get to be as long in the tooth as me, you'll miss the good old days when your only responsibility was to walk Pokémon from town to town."
An easterly wind drove a few rare clouds across the sky, the first sign that a humid front was shouldering its way into the arid desert. Noibat liked to think about those clouds and where they came from. There had to be wetlands, lakes, an ocean—some huge source of water out there, to the east. Thunderstorms always came from that direction.
Of course, the right conditions didn't guarantee a storm. Whether one would actually pass over his corner of the world or not was still a matter of chance. Tonight, the storm broke just in time to cover the aurora.
Noibat used to leave the bottle outside with its lid open to the sky when black clouds scudded over the scrublands. He didn't do that anymore, there was no point. It never rained here. Instead, Noibat sat at the mouth of his cave and tossed a stone between his claws. Waiting.
The plateau stirred to life as the first gust of wind blew over the capstone. This change in pressure loosened an unseen valve, and the tunnels of the north and south began to flow with Joltik. Only a fraction of the Joltik population could be seen outside on a normal day; now the cliffs chirred with the cicada sound of hundreds of them moving at once. The Woobat were there, too, waiting like Noibat was, fanning out over the face of the plateau. It had taken Noibat weeks to notice the Roggenrola, those dull Pokémon who spent their days hibernating in the scree, unmoving as boulders. Yet even the Roggenrola shifted to track the thunder with their eyeless faces.
BOOM!
Lightning struck the desert nearby, and a sweet, metallic scent filled the air. The Joltik puffed up and fed on the electric afterglow.
At that signal, the Woobat began their hunt. They dove close to the cliffs, dangerously close in the dry gale, snapping at the hordes of bugs as they fell past. The storm was projected onto the plateau in inverted colors, gray lightning slicing through roiling yellow clouds.
Zzzzt! Noibat flinched as an electrified web caught a Woobat in midair, the metaphorical lightning struck down by a very real shock. The Galvantula were more fishermen than hunters. Noibat always gave the spiders a wide berth when they went to retrieve their silken nets; he didn't want to be caught in the crossfire if a Swoobat tried to rescue an ensnared Woobat. Nobody—except the stony Roggenrola—was truly safe during this feast of opportunity.
When the coast was clear, Noibat crept from his cave toward the nearest Joltik. He drew closer, inch by inch, one claw and two feet on the ground, the other claw holding a blunt stone. Noibat had tried grabbing a stone in the spur of the moment—it didn't work well. Most of the time, you ended up with one that was too heavy, or one that didn't sit in your talons right, and then you whiffed your attack and fell on your face like a chump. It was easier to bring your own weapon.
Noibat's ears amplified his own missteps a thousandfold, but the Joltik was too engrossed with the lightning and the wind and the shrieking Woobat to notice him.
The Woobat weren't stealthy hunters. Their main strategy was to stun the Joltik with a psychic burst and then rush them down for a final bite. Usually, the nimble Joltik managed to hop out of the way. Sometimes the Joltik were snatched up, but still escaped by shocking their attacker.
Noibat wasn't as bold as the Woobat, he needed to remain hidden until the very last second. He narrowed his eyes against the dust-filled wind and settled into a crouch. The stone was the perfect weight in his claws.
He leapt.
'Ti—' The Joltik cried, but it was too late. Noibat tried not to hear the crunch.
Joltik were tough, sour, and hairy, kind of like eating an unripe kiwi without peeling it. He preferred Cutiefly when he could get them.
Noibat tended to start his days a few hours before sunset. He could never quite nail down a consistent schedule; the sun was too hot, the nights were too cold, and thunderstorms came at odd times. The human and Pokémon parts of his brain couldn't agree whether he was supposed to be diurnal or nocturnal. Some days he barely slept. Other days he overslept, which was impressive since the Woobat colony was such an effective alarm clock.
The timing of today's thunderstorm was very convenient. The storm relented at around three in the morning, which was exactly when he liked to leave for the black plateau: late enough that Unfezant would be there when he arrived, but early enough to avoid the rotation. He set off with the bottle slung over his shoulder and a Joltik tucked protectively under his wing.
Crossing through the twisted desert was more of an art than a science. Memorization was useless, the scrublands were an ever-changing maze of spatial illusions that you could walk into indefinitely and never gain a meter. Having the Woobat as a guide at night made the journey simpler, but Noibat could navigate on his own by trial and error—he was pretty sure that the Woobat were doing the same.
There were so many weird and magical things that he couldn't begin to explain: his transformation and amnesia, the looping caverns, the aurora. The way the tally marks he made when tracking the Woobat had slowly vanished, one by one, and then reappeared on other nearby rocks. Thinking too hard about this stuff made Noibat feel like a conspiracy theorist. All of it might be related, but how? Knowing what was happening didn't reveal why it was happening.
For example, why did the sun appear to reverse directions over his home, the yellow plateau? Because the plateau rotated twice per day! Every noon without fail, the massive slab of stone and the surrounding land silently rotated 180 degrees. It was surprisingly subtle if you didn't know to watch the horizon. The second rotation in the early hours of the morning is what gave it away: the moon and stars weren't supposed to suddenly pivot in the sky. The morning rotation was probably happening behind him right now. From the outside, you could watch the plateau's silhouette shift against the horizon like it was tossing and turning in its sleep. Noibat didn't watch. He kept his back turned until he reached the canyon.
Klak!
Noibat threw a rock at a Cutiefly and missed, the Cutiefly buzzed in alarm and then darted away. The canyon was a great place to practice your aim since there were nice, smooth rocks in the stream and an abundance of targets humming around the flowers. The expected rules of Pokémon didn't seem to apply in this world—Noibat wasn't getting any stronger by hunting Joltik. If he wasn't going to spontaneously learn new moves, he figured that learning how to throw with his claws was the next best thing. He had seen some success hunting Joltik like this, but he still couldn't hit the fast-moving Cutiefly.
There were nineteen Pidove and two Tranquill at the spring, plus Unfezant. One of the original twenty Pidove had vanished at some point. It was impossible to say which one, there were just too many birds to keep track of. Hopefully they'd evolved.
The Tranquill were much easier to tell apart than the Pidove. There was Prideful, who chased down Cutiefly with flashy aerial maneuvers; Baleful, who wouldn't stop glaring at Noibat; Watchful, the one who took over shepherding the flock while Unfezant napped; and Tranquil the Tranquill, who loved to float in the pool with the Pidove. Two brown-browed females and two red-browed males, respectively. Watchful and Prideful were here today. It was unusual to see two of them here at once; the Tranquill were infrequent visitors to the spring, popping in for a day and then disappearing again. Noibat assumed that they were off hunting somewhere.
Watchful, Prideful, and Unfezant conversed in low clucks as they sat together by the pool, the two Tranquill huddled close to Unfezant's flank. These Tranquill were grown up and independent, but they were definitely also Unfezant's children. Noibat could see it in the way they treated their Pidove siblings, and in the way they looked at Unfezant. He thought that the Tranquill must be telling their father about all the things they'd seen in the outside world.
All three birds looked up as Noibat approached. He stopped a respectful distance away from the flock and revealed the Joltik he'd brought. Prideful sauntered over to inspect it. This was normally Unfezant's job, but Prideful never passed up an opportunity to flaunt her hunting skills.
Satisfied with his offering, Prideful took off with a burst of wind. She made flying look easy, flipping and rolling around the Cutiefly with such agility that the bug Pokémon seemed cornered in the open air. A pair of Cutiefly soon joined the Joltik on the ground.
Two Cutiefly for one Joltik: that was the exchange rate they'd agreed upon. Well, not exactly "agreed." Actually, Noibat couldn't help but feel a little cheated. Yes, two Cutiefly was more food than one Joltik, but that didn't factor in how he had to lug the Joltik all the way from the yellow plateau while Prideful could catch two Cutiefly faster than you can say "fifty feral Fearow." Then again, he was lucky that Unfezant and the Tranquill were giving him anything at all. He'd originally intended the Joltik to be apology gifts for the whole stampede incident.
"Doooo?" A familiar Pidove was trying to get his attention.
The Pidove with the Cutiefly, the one he rescued from Mandibuzz, was the only member of the flock that Noibat actually recognized. The young pigeon waddled up to him and presented him with a rock from the stream. They had noticed how Noibat gathered sticks and stones from the canyon, and they thought it looked like a fun game. Now the Pidove showered Noibat in twigs and pebbles whenever he visited.
'Thanks, Maggie. I appreciate it a lot!'
"Maggie" was what Noibat had named the Pidove, after the magpie, another gift-giving bird. Admittedly, Maggie's gray-black feathers didn't really resemble the stark black and white plumage of their namesake, but Noibat thought that it suited them better than a descriptive name like "Prideful" or "Watchful." "Maggie" could also be short for "Margaret" or "Magnus", depending on whether they evolved into a brown or red Tranquill.
Maggie trilled happily. They didn't seem to understand what he was saying, only that it was positive, and that was enough. Did Maggie know that Noibat was the reason Mandibuzz had almost abducted them? Maybe Pidove were forgetful rather than forgiving. All Noibat knew was that this was the highlight of his day. One Joltik for two Cutiefly was a bad deal, but one Joltik for two Cutiefly and a cool rock? What a bargain!
Watchful was at Maggie's side as soon as Noibat opened his mouth, leading the Pidove away from the dangerous outsider. Maggie seemed confused, but they didn't argue with their older brother. They disappeared back into the flock without so much as a goodbye chirp. Clearly, Unfezant had warned the Tranquill about him. Noibat wanted to blurt out an apology—to explain himself, to make Watchful understand. He bit his tongue instead. Justifying your actions wasn't a real apology, and any sounds he made would just be interpreted as more aggression.
It's OK. I'm actually really lucky everything turned out so well. When I first woke up here, I would never have thought that I could make it to the point where I'd be trading with wild Pokémon! So what if I get a bad deal for Joltik… So what if I get treated like a beggar?
It hurt to be ostracized by Unfezant and his flock, even if they were just Pokémon. The worst part was that he couldn't really fault them for it. He knew the likely consequences when he started the stampede. Some burnt bridges couldn't be repaired.
Noibat kept his eyes glued to the pool as he filled the bottle with springwater. He could feel the Tranquil starting at him; he knew what expressions they wore without having to look up. Prideful saw Noibat as an entertaining curiosity, so she would be squinting at him in amusement. Watchful would be, well, watching him, vigilantly waiting for Noibat to slip up and prove he was a threat.
Where did Noibat stand with Unfezant? He still found the regal bird tricky to read. Unfezant had spared Noibat's life after the stampede, yet it also must have been his decision to keep Noibat at wing's length. Unfezant was the first one to give him Cutiefly in exchange for Joltik, yet he wouldn't let Maggie talk with Noibat for more than a second. Noibat wondered if he was supposed to be some kind of lesson in charity for the Pidove flock.
He braved a glance at Unfezant, hoping to find some hint of anger or forgiveness in his gaze. Unfezant had his eyes closed. Noibat waited. Unfezant didn't open his eyes.
KWAA!
That was Watchful telling Noibat to be on his way. Noibat tried to leave the spring with his ears held high—they had an embarrassing habit of flattening when he was unhappy.