Chapter Thirty-Five:
Bushwhacked

Disclaimer: I do not own the series Pokémon. Like, at all. It and all its respectable characters are © to Game Freak and Satoshi Tajiri. However, all writing contents and semi-plots here are © to me; unless it is stated otherwise. All shows/ books/ video games/ songs that are mentioned in this chapter are all © to their respective owners, I do not own them.

Notes: SleepyDrampa and BlueFlame27, your comments made me laugh so hard, I almost choked on my drink—which would have been bad, because it has whiskey in it. I also wrote a good chunk of this to zombie horror flicks. I don't know what that says about me, but I'm sure someone could pick it apart!

Current Team: Keno the Marshtomp, Sela the Mightyena, Ambrose the Kirlia, Faye the Swellow, Nux the Gyarados, Gunner the Aron

Badges Won: Stone Badge, Knuckle Badge, Dynamo Badge


"We're taking him on board?"
"We are."
"Don't know if I see the percentage in that."
"Then don't strain your brain trying. You might break something."
Jayne and Captain Malcolm Reynolds, "Firefly"


How long could the average pokémon stay confined within their pokéball and not starve?

A week? Two weeks? A month? A year?

…Indefinitely?

This seemed like a question that would be asked by a child attending school to learn more about pokémon and the tools used by budding trainers for the life to come. There was still plenty of things Shay didn't know about or hadn't thought about asking until hindsight was in her rearview mirror, so to speak.

The hairs along the back of Shay's neck rose and stood at attention as the evening wore on. Shay kept her hand—shoddily stitched, bandaged, and slightly shaking—tucked in close. It was swollen and stiff, and the pain radiating from the puncture wounds were thankfully dulled by leftover meds and whiskey from Mauville Shay had on hand.

Dinner would take longer to make, so Shay kept it simple. There was a heavy silence that had settled over the camp. Shay tried to ignore it, to let it be. It did little to ease the stares she could feel upon her backside, or the looks exchanged—sans Ambrose—when the team thought she wasn't paying attention. Keno hovered much closer in particular, she also noticed.

Strangely, and suffocatingly, she felt the sudden and sheer absence of Ambrose's presence. The familiar skitter of the itch-shiver-scratch at the back of her thoughts was a yawning, empty chasm where he'd usually be. Shay wasn't sure how to reach out for it, let alone voice her concerns aloud in a cohesive way. She found herself actually missing the press of his mind against hers, and with it gone, it was…uncomfortable.

Anxious thoughts continued to crawl beneath her skin like a band of determined ants.

Nux's pokéball hung at her hip and every time she bumped her elbow against it, or into something that reminded her of its presence, Shay froze and waited. The glaring whiteness of the bandages were slowly flecking with red whenever she flexed or twitched it too much or bumped it on something by accident. Again, she had to thank what leftover pain meds she had for dulling the ache in her hand.

She tried to go over what she had done wrong, and her thoughts eventually settled on…everything.

I did everything wrong. I had to have. He's not a little fish anymore. He's…something more. I didn't respect that enough.

He'd become something she'd never encountered before, and she wasn't sure she had the skills to say she could handle it. Shay couldn't help but feel that her lack of preparing ahead of time, of not knowing what to expect had done her in. She wished she could say she had left it untouched, unturned because she had wanted to be excited and surprised.

He's a predator, she surmised at last. Predators couldn't be tamed like some household pet. They were something more and an agreement—a mutual pact—needed to be reached between human and animal. She could only surmise the same dictation could be applied to pokémon.

She wished she could ask her dad what she should do next. He was like the Steve Irwin in their family. He wasn't opposed to jumping out of moving vehicles to catch unsuspecting reptiles to show them off to people before releasing them back to the wilds, unharmed. He was the same man who didn't flinch from taking a dip in his aquariums to spend time with hand-raised sharks and eels.

Aside from Steve Irwin's various television specials and shows, her mother and stepfather themselves had taught her to find the beauty in animals—and to respect them. She was at a loss as to how to figure out whether Nux respected her in return, and if not, where she had failed him. Where she could improve upon and reach that mutually settled pact between the two of them.

"Anything with a mouth can bite," her mother's advice came whispering at the back of Shay's head like a phantom. It had been the motto growing up as far as pets had been concerned.

The thought of her parents hit Shay hard, made her throat swell and tighten up. She sniffled and scrubbed away at her eyes, taking deep and slow breaths until she was calmer.

You'll get through this. You can do this. You made it through the Marines. You made it through a deployment. You got through all of that crap, so you can make it through this. Suck it up, buttercup.

It was getting harder to adhere to such self-imposed pep talks. She wanted to scream. She wanted to cry, more than anything else.

She wasn't some Call of Duty or Battlefield badass. She had been trained to shoot, and she was a damned good shot—but the logistic administrative side of things is where she laid on the work spectrum. Shay had been a supply admin. She'd made sure that everyone got their beans, bullets, and bandages. She made sure they got their spare parts of engineering, the motor pool, and everything else in between. It didn't stop her from wishing she was something more. Maybe then she wouldn't feel so lost half the time.

Shay found herself thumbing the curve of Nux's pokéball, absently so in little circles with her good hand.

"Shay?"

She blinked at the sound of her name and craned her head in the direction of the speaker. Keno stared back at her and she could see the concern rippling in them. Shay offered him a half-smile and dropped her hand on reflex.

"Yeah, sorry. I was zoning out again, huh?" Shay said sheepishly. The concern did not dissipate from Keno's face. In fact, the whole team sans Ambrose, had their attention fixated on Shay.

"Are you sure that you're okay?" Keno pressed, his voice a perfect mixture of cautious yet gentle. She didn't miss the way his tiger-orange eyes flicked to her bandaged hand before returning to her face. As if on cue to his inquiry, her hand gave an especially harsh throb that made her almost believe Nux's teeth had sunken back into her flesh.

Shay resisted the urge to pull her bandaged extremity close to her chest, to cradle it in a cage made by her other hand.

"It doesn't hurt as much anymore," she finally replied, her voice softer and more reserved. It was a half-truth. The pain was slowly climbing upwards again. She could also feel the exhaustion of the day beginning to weigh on her more heavily now. It pulled on her limbs and gathered along her shoulders and back. It all compounded from her early morning run, hiking up and down the lakeside multiple times, and the shock of Nux's sudden turn. All she wanted to do was crawl into her tent and hide under the covers of her sleeping bag.

Ambrose stirred, drawing Shay's eye to him. He swayed a hand into the air and a pale violet light began to shimmer around it.

"You should go rest," he said and wordlessly, the others seem to take that as a cue to begin moving. The main pot suspended over the fire rose into the air, encompassed by the same glow as Ambrose's hand. Keno began up everyone else's dishes, stacking them together the same way he'd seen Shay do many times before. Once the pot was removed, Gunner began to kick up loose dirt to stifle the fire. Sela stood on the other side of the fire and did the same, and soon the crackling blaze died down to a cherry-red glow of embers in the pit. Faye fluttered down from her perch in the trees to settle on Shay's shoulder, mindful of her sharp talons.

Faye gave the woman an affectionate and gentle nibble on her earlobe.

"They'll clean up. You get in bed."

That soured Shay's mood and she pouted as she viewed the Swellow out of the corner of her eye. "I'm not an invalid, I can still help out."

Faye's next nibble wasn't quite as gentle, earning a yelp from Shay.

"Dude, what the fuck?"

"Bed. Come on, we have a long day ahead of us and an early start tomorrow." Faye chided her. Keno turned to face them both, balancing the bowls in his broad hands. He flashed them his toothless smile.

"We'll handle cleanup tonight, okay? It won't take too long. We'll be in bed soon."

Shay hesitated, a protest dancing along the tip of her tongue and the edges of her teeth. She slowly swallowed it back down, feeling the comforting itch-shiver-scratch of Ambrose's mind brushing against her own. It quelled her previously bristling thoughts, but it was short lived.

Again, her attention was drawn away by the growing throb in her hand. Shay took pause to check the time and was surprised by how late it was getting.

Shay finally nodded to Keno and the others, reluctantly turning on her heel and ducked so she could crawl into her tent. She shucked her boots off and put them in a corner by her pack and set her belt with Nux's pokéball still attached on top of them. Shay slipped into her sleeping bag while Faye hopped off her shoulder to settle on the lumps that were her legs.

Shay winced as the throbbing in her hand began to become increasingly persistent. She lunged for her pack after a few minutes, unzipping an outside pocket. She fumbled until her fingers brushed the familiar curve of her medicine bottle. Shay pulled it out, undid the lid, and shook out a pill before putting it all back and placed the bottle back into her pack. She unhooked her canteen and took a swig before throwing the pill back, swallowing it all down.

"How's your hand?"

Shay sighed. "Ask me that in about twenty minutes. Should be doing better by then."

Faye shuffled upwards until she was sitting just below Shay's hips. "Shame you can't just use a Potion or eat some berries to get better like we can."

"I think I'd be very concerned and have a lot of questions if that suddenly began to happen." Shay replied dryly, offering the Swellow a thin smile.

Faye chuckled. "True."

Sela was the first to appear, thrusting her snout under the tent flap to move it aside. Gunner was hot on her heels, awkwardly lifting his paws up and over the lip of the tent's flooring. Sela proceeded to collapse between Shay and the back tent wall. Shay scooted a bit closer to her while Sela heaved a heavy yet content sigh. Shay reached over and scratched the Mightyena between her ears and stubby horns. Sela made a soft rumble of approval, tilting her head into Shay's hand.

"Right there—that's the spot."

Ambrose and Keno weren't far behind. Keno lifted the tent flap and allowed the Kirlia to slip in first before admitting himself inside. He paused long enough to pull the tent's door zipper down its track before settling on Shay's other side. It was a bit of a tight fit, but with everyone snuggled up together, the warmth of everyone beat back the slight chill of the night.

The pain that had resided in Shay's hand soon dulled to a faint ache that was bearable to ignore. She was grateful for that, and for the saving grace it provided to allow her to slip almost seamlessly into sleep.


Morning came all too soon.

Shay found herself in the middle of a dogpile consisting of her team. Shay lay there, trying to figure out in her groggy state, which limb belonged to which team member. Sela's back was pressing in on her from her left side—the side she couldn't exactly lay on fully due to her hip issues—while Keno occupied the right side. Faye was still perched on Shay's thigh, head tucked under her wing. Ambrose was curled above her head, and Gunner…

She wasn't sure where Gunner was. Perhaps by her feet? There was something heavy weighing down part of her sleeping bag, still and unmoving.

It was still dark, but she could tell that the sun was close to rising, because the inside of her tent kept getting easier to see in, the dark being beat back by the oncoming morning light.

Shay eventually stirred into motion, unable to keep laying on her side, and certainly not flat on her back for much longer. Shay moved slowly, carefully, moving Faye as gently as she could to nestle in a crevice of her sleeping bag. Shay reached over to her pack, her only thought this early in the morning being to ease her aches and pains. She pulled out her meds and took them, and settled back down to wait as they kicked in.

Keno was the first to stir in her wake. He sat up and turned over, stretching as he yawned. Shay was busy scrolling through her x-transceiver, reading a news feed from two days ago about a far-off region called the Alola Islands. She faintly recalled the name but couldn't place where or when she might have heard of it. The regional professor there looked vaguely familiar…

"Morning," Shay said with a brief glance toward the Marshtomp. He blinked slowly at her, eyes still clouded with sleep before he grinned tiredly.

"You're up earlier than usual."

Before Shay could open her mouth to respond, her morning alarm went off and it was like a tuning fork rattling up her spine, only to ping-pong about inside her skull. She quickly swiped it off and shimmied back up, silently mourning the perfect-comfy warmth she had built up in her sleeping bag.

Shay began her morning routine, slipping her socks and hiking boots back on, donning her lightweight coat on and zipping it up. The others began to stir at all the movement she made. Keno unzipped the tent door to step outside. Faye stretched her wings and hopped up on Sela's shaggy backside as the Mightyena hauled herself upright and followed the Marshtomp out.

The rest followed shortly after, with Shay lingering behind to pack everything up. Shay hesitated at her belt, with Nux's pokéball still clinging to it, innocuous and still. Whatever trance it held on her broke and she threw it around her waist, cinching it until it was snug but not too tight.

Once everything inside was packed up, she began the work of breaking down her tent. She had to pause halfway through when the pain in her hand needed to be attended to. It felt swollen, pulling taut against her bandages, with a faint bloom of now-dried blood peeking through the cleanly white. She took a break to address that and was glad to see, as she pulled the medical cloth away to assess the damage, that her stitches (shoddy as they appeared) seemed to be holding up. Her hand was indeed still somewhat swollen, but she still had some range of motion, could move her digits quite a bit before it hurt too much. Shay redressed her hand and took some pain medicine, then finished packing away her tent. I'll need to see an actual doctor soon. Make sure it isn't infected.

The next thoughts turned in her head, and her focus turned to making food and coffee. Keno and Sela were already working together to rekindle the few embers that had somehow survived the night under a pile of ash and sand. It didn't take them long, and shortly after, Shay had a skillet sizzling with leftover rabbit and eggs and butter, seasoned lightly with salt, pepper, and even a dash of garlic powder.

Shay carefully packed her spices back into their designated pouch, and then sealed and returned her store of butter back in its container. That all went inside the insulated bag that held her more short-lived foodstuffs. Faye pecked at the eggshells Shay had left out for her, grateful for the extra calcium that they could give her.

Once the food was done, they all dug in. Shay kept a separate plate of extra food beside her as she picked away at her plate. The others took notice of it as well. Sela especially was eyeing it keenly with a hungry gleam in her eyes.

"Is that for you, or is it up for grabs?" She finally asked, licking her chops. A bit of egg yolk was stuck to the corner of her mouth, along the black of her lips and the grey of her muzzle.

Shay caught herself reaching for Nux's pokéball and stopped halfway to her belt. Deliberated on the position her hand was at. Then finished the cycle and let her fingers curl over curved edges of the pokéball until she was grasping it in the palm of her hand. She noticed how the others stiffened as they took notice of what she was doing.

"Wait—you're not really going to let him out here? Now?"

There was alarm in Keno's voice as he locked eyes with his trainer. Sela was bristling, her entire shaggy backside springing upwards to stand at attention, a low growl deeply reverberating in her chest. Ambrose tilted his head in her direction, brows furrowing with concern, while Faye stopped pecking at her meal entirely to focus on the situation at hand. Even Gunner was stiff and still, blue eyes bright and alert.

Shay ducked her gaze and stared down at the pokéball sitting on the belt; the only one that held a pokémon that is.

"He needs to eat. And…I think it'd be best to start again. And all of you are here, so…"

The rest of her words fell away before she could complete them and yet, they all seemed to understand what she meant to say.

She plucked Nux's pokéball from her belt and enlarged it, hesitating.

Twenty seconds of courage. It was all she needed to get this done.

Shay tossed the pokéball, and it broke apart, and Nux spilled from its center, first a bright light and then it solidified his form until the glow faded.

Nux's eyes were a brighter shade than Sela's. Bright like coral stone. His scales shone in the early sun, but Shay's eyes were drawn to the scars that had marred him just the same as when he was a Magikarp. They seemed to have spread out and grown to match his body size. Nux snorted, claws digging into the soft earth as he lowered his head and brought it closer to her.

The Gyarados held her gaze, and a shiver pinged up her spine. From the corner of her eye, she could see the rest of the team shifting closer, could feel their presence encroaching in her personal space.

A low, soft hiss held in Nux's throat, coral-coloured eyes flickering between every member before settling on Shay. The flesh along her arms prickled with goosebumps, and the hair stood up at attention. In spite of her closeness to the cozy morning breakfast fire, she felt a sheet of ice dousing her suddenly.

"Well, it's about time. I thought you'd never let me out. You've got some nerve—"

"LOCK IT UP!"

Nux's jaws clacked shut, teeth snapping against one another so loudly it cracked in the air. His coral-bright eyes widened, and he reared up, taken aback by the sharpish snap Shay's tone had taken on. She dug deep, trying to emulate her drill instructors. It was only now, in the light of day, that she felt better prepared in dealing with Nux. Perhaps some part of her felt that, in the light of a new day, nothing bad could happen. Not in plain sight.

Shay drew back her shoulders, jutted her chin upwards, and glared up at Nux.

"You're the one with damn nerve, thinking you can just go off on me like some wild animal. Do you have no pride in what you are, or any shame for what you did?" Shay thrust her injured, bandaged hand upwards and narrowed her eyes. Nux said nothing, eyes darting between the sight of her hand and her face. His lower jaw slowly lifted to connect with his upper half, closing tightly together.

"SIT UP STRAIGHT!"

Nux reared his head back further, eyes growing even wider. Without warning, his lower back half, coiled and distant as it was, slammed to the ground. Shay allowed only a moment to pass before she bellowed out, "My name is Briton Hawkins, Sergeant of the United States Marine Corps, and I am your trainer! Starting now, you will treat me and the rest of this team with the highest respect! DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME? I WANT TO HEAR YOU SCREAM!"

Nux only stared, lower jaw dropping. Shay snapped forward a step, shoulders ducking as she glowered at Nux. She was more than surprised and pleased all at once when he had backed up—even if it was only out of surprise.

"I DIDN'T HEAR YOU! I WANNA HEAR YOU SCREAM!"

"I…I understand. You're the trainer."

"FUCKING SCREAM!"

"I UNDERSTAND!" He yelped back, his head remaining high and out of reach while the rest of his body remained frozen in place. A sliver of her enjoyed the confused, maybe even terrified, look in Nux's eyes as he seemed to be reassessing her. Was she just a small noisy thing, or a scary enough intimidator, despite her small stature? Shay wasn't picky. Either way, it seemed like she had captured his attention enough.

She let the seconds tick away before she turned to the plate of food, she had on standby for Nux, and waved toward it. "Come and get your food for the morning. Hurry up. Don't make me count down from a hundred. I can do it fast-like, you know."

Nux didn't seem willing to challenge her on the matter and swooped in, quickly gobbling up all that was on the plate for him. Shay kept her eye on him, watching as he slurped up every bite with a forked tongue. A gasp caught up in her chest, sharp and stabbing along her collarbone, when something touched her arm.

Shay whirled, only to come face to face with Keno and her gaze softened. It shifted almost instantly to worry at the look of confusion on his face.

"You…your name…" He began and Shay stared at him, dumbfounded at first. The others reflected his confusion. Even Ambrose's face was creased and pitted with worry.

"Your name isn't…Shay?"