Tanya raised a limp hand to wave at the man at the front desk of the hospital she had been brought to. She was sure she'd been told its name, when she had been loaded up with some of her uninjured coworkers, but she hadn't cared to take in the information then and had no intention of learning it now that she was leaving.

Her eyes quickly adjusted to the difference in lightning, minute as it was – despite it being close to ten, the outside was nearly as bright as the clean, sterile hallways of the downtown hospital – and she continued on her way, uncaring of the throng of passersby or even the microphone-armed reporter duo standing just outside the perimeter of the hospital's property line shouting questions.

She kept her back straight, her eyes forward, and walked home.

Her eyes didn't even flick to the turn she knew she'd have to make to get on the train. She needed the extra time the walk would give her.

Even as the cold February air bit at what little of her was exposed, she continued her slow, meticulous gait, eyes and ears focused on her surroundings even when her mind was so very distracted. Not by anything that had happened at the hospital, of course. She hadn't been harmed in the slightest, and despite that, she'd been offered a bed and a room on the company's dime. She'd declined, naturally, and without any reason to keep her, the nurse making the offer had simply wished her well and gone off to see the next person in an undoubtedly long list of people he needed to make the same offer to.

Falling into a stiff yet warm mattress was only fleetingly tempting in the face of her newest goal.

In the face of her failure.

A particularly stiff breeze broke against Tanya's warm clothing – freely given by the hospital due to, again, the willingness of Silph to foot the bill – and she placed a hand in one of her pockets, retrieved her phone, and went through her messages.

She'd been inundated with them. Messages asking if she was okay. Messages hoping she was safe, and alive, and getting better. Her eyes drifted past them, thinking up a short, thankful, and polite reply she could give to most of them, one at a time.

None of it mattered.

Tanya took in a deep, cool breath of the wintery air. She tasted a hint of diesel and grime, but mostly it just tasted cold.

Tanya was going to become a Pokemon trainer.

Engaging with Pokemon as little as possible was no longer an option. It was no longer just a matter of entertainment, or her job, or her relationship with the people around her, or even the efficient accumulation of skills in preparation for the slight possibility that Being X would send her to another life in another world.

She took in another cool, crystal breath. Engaging with Pokemon was a matter of life or death.

Yes, the police existed, and yes, other people had strong Pokemon, and yes, what had happened was a natural disaster.

But Tanya was marked.

She'd talked with Kailani Aoi, an immigrant from Alola who worked on one of the other numbered translation teams. Her Pokemon, a little Fairy-type with a body that reminded her of a flower-crown, had been knocked out rather quickly, and the woman had answered Tanya's questions.

She'd stuttered, and babbled, and shaken, but she had answered them, to the best of her abilities. She'd talked about her native region, and Ultra Space, and about what caused the Ultra Wormholes. She'd muttered about them occurring naturally in places where 'space and time were thin,' and she'd spoken of two Legendary Pokemon, and she'd stumbled through the menagerie of Ultra Beasts that inhabited the worlds beyond the wormholes she could remember.

She'd talked about how, these days, they were understood to be like most normal Pokemon, if an order of magnitude stronger and infused with the energy of Ultra Space. She'd talked about a crisis that had occurred over four decades ago. She'd talked about the scandal that had rocked the nation when some government files had been leaked detailing deaths related to Fallers.

Tanya took in another long breath. And then another. She kept her breathing as even and constant as her inexorable march forward.

She talked about other things, too, but Tanya had hardly caught any of the conversation after she'd explained what a Faller was, and the woman had been too nervous, too terrified, to realize that Tanya had stopped listening.

Faller. Someone who fell from one place and ended up in another. Someone who had traveled from one place, one time, one dimension, into another. Someone who carried a lingering echo of the energy of the tears in space and time with them for the rest of their life.

Someone who acted as a beacon to lost or confused Ultra Beasts searching for an Ultra Wormhole in order to return home.

Tanya stumbled, her breath hitched slightly, but then she was walking normally – straight backed and focused on giving short, thankful, and polite replies that obviously reflected how she was feeling.

She took in another breath.

Tanya was a Faller.

For the rest of her life, those terrifically strong Pokemon would be drawn to her. She didn't know to what degree they were drawn to her, or how common they were on Earth, because she hadn't asked. Asking those kinds of very specific questions sounded like an excellent way to stand out in the woman's confused, panicked mind, and an excellent way for someone asking questions to have suspicions piqued or confirmed about Tanya.

Tanya grimaced. Later – tomorrow, or sometime later that week – Tanya would visit a library to determine exactly how in trouble she might be. Would she be detained for experimentation? Was she liable for the damage caused by those Ultra Beasts for failing to report herself to the authorities? Precisely how had those other Fallers Kailani had mentioned died?

More than the Ultra Beasts, however, was the threat of Pokemon as a means of force in general. Whether it was an Ultra Beast, or a mugger, or the police, or some idiotic, utterly brain-dead idiot she fired, it was clear that if Tanya did not have a Pokemon, she would be at the mercy of others.

If she was to pursue any of her goals, long or short term, she needed security.

Conventional weaponry was entirely infeasible. As good as she was becoming with wielding a naginata, carrying a full-sized weapon like that around would be a logistical nightmare and was a legal impossibility. She vaguely recalled Master Ikube mentioning wanting a hydraulic-driven folding models, but in addition to being prohibitively expensive, they could only be bought by dojo masters or by Trainers, after a number of years of application, being ranked skilled enough by a dojo, and possess a clear and present need to have one.

Most other weapons were out due to similar logic. Guns were a non-starter. Apparently, two Prime Ministers were just the most prestigious members of the government to be killed by homemade firearms among over a dozen within the last half-century. In response, the strict laws she remembered from her first life had been made even more strict. Her best bet would be to train in using an easily concealable weapon like a knife.

She would do that.

Her grimace turned into a snarl. The problem with using any conventional weapon, was that Tanya could not fight a Pokemon with one. Bruce Lee had only managed to 'beat' that Machoke because it hadn't used any moves. Their competition had been one of skill, not of strength. While waiting in the hospital, she'd watched it break a five-inch thick piece of steel in half with a move called Karate Chop.

Whether it was a knife or a naginata or even a gun, when Pokemon got strong enough, trying to defend herself from a Pokemon would be like trying to fight a tank. Her magic evened the odds, but even then, she doubted a formula-

An explosion filled her vision, and she froze in place. Explosion after explosion after explosion. Whirling, nonsensical lights. She collapsed sideways and roughly impacted the wall of a building. The street closed in around her as it became a room and people retreated and pressed inwards, desperately trying to avoid being blown to pieces or melted with acid or having their head kicked off or-

Splayed out beneath the shivering body of its trainer, fur clumped by blood and dirt, skin and muscle bulging from exertion and blood and bruising, barely conscious and certainly not lucid, was the almost-corpse of an ape.

Its vacant, blood-filled eyes had met her own teary gaze, and it had ignored everything to keep fighting.

Tanya's fists clenched as she righted herself. She took in another breath and found that it was hot-

She closed her eyes tightly. She had been completely, utterly useless.

The fact that she had lived, had survived, was not because of anything she had done.

She took another breath and found that it was slightly less warm.

Yes, she hadn't been able to do anything then. She would rectify that problem, that failing, soon enough.

She would become a trainer. She would raise a Pokemon – or maybe more than one – to a high enough strength that she wouldn't have to fear for her safety in the event that she was threatened again. With her safety secured, she could once again focus on achieving her longer-term goals.

She took a breath of air. It was the same, cool air that she had been breathing her entire walk.

More questions bubbled up in her mind – How could she hide the energy that marked her as a Faller? Who could check that sort of thing? Could Hospitals? – but she pushed them away, for the moment. She had more messages to create and copy and paste and tweak-

A notification appeared from the top of her screen, as she clicked on it without hesitation. It was from her work app.

Her eyes scanned the screen quickly.

She licked her chapped lips. The company claimed that it had done its best to keep its employees safe, and that despite that people had still been hurt. Everyone who'd been at the building was getting a week of mandatory paid time off so they could recover, and…

Tanya's eyebrows shot up.

If people wanted them, they could request even more time off, payment for therapy, an apology bonus, among other items. When the week was up, everyone who could would be working from home for at least a month while the Pokemon that had been knocked out were captured and repatriated to their homeworlds and the building was renovated.

Tanya nodded slowly as she returned to her messaging app and began to respond in earnest to the texts she'd received.

Becoming a trainer was much easier said than done, but there were resources for such things, and a whole week off would certainly give her a head start.

Her legs moving in the same unending, unbending gait, Tanya continued to walk home.

-OxOxO-

Allowing the hand grasping her phone to fall to her side, Tanya sighed as she continued her long walk home. Tanya had already texted nearly everyone she had social connections with.

Most were boilerplate responses about how she was perfectly healthy, if a bit shaken, and that she appreciated the concern they expressed for her. Each was changed, slightly, depending on who was asking. Whether it was the few coworkers who had had the day off, her landlord, some of the people she'd shared a conversation or two with, or a few of the other students of the dojo she'd run into enough times that they'd offered to exchange numbers with her and she hadn't had a polite reason to refuse, they remained largely the same.

Tanya's feet drummed on the concrete like her fingers had on her phone screen. In addition to the questions she'd received, she sent a few queries on people's status of her own.

The questions she asked the team of four translators she was now the head of as part of what had once been CCTS and was now Silph Company Translations Team Four were just as polite and short as the ones she'd received. The ones she sent to those whose Pokemon had fought contained a hint of thankfulness. The ones she sent to those who had been hurt expressed her sympathy.

All of her messages expressed her own polite, professional concern for the wellbeing of those around her and her desire for them and their Pokemon to recover swiftly.

She had had much longer conversations with two people, thus far. The few faces and Pokemon walking about this late at night blurred in her mind like the words she'd seen and sent.

Most of the conversations didn't matter. Endless repetitions of 'I hope you get better' and 'stay strong,' and a mountain of offers to be there if she needed to talk about anything were given because that was what was considered polite to do rather than any real desire to do so. Equally as expectedly, Tanya had acknowledged the offers with the unspoken agreement of both parties that Tanya wouldn't actually accept them and take up the time of people she wasn't particularly close with.

Her two longer conversations with Angela and Ikube were a touch more honest, owing to her slightly closer relationship with both, which meant she could quickly dispense with the platitudes and tell them that, while she was obviously thankful for the offer, she had no intention of taking either of them up on their offers.

What did matter was that she'd candidly told both that she wanted to obtain a measure of safety for herself in the wake of the disaster and she was seeking their advice with Pokemon training.

Angela, as Tanya had expected, was the least helpful. She was shocked but supportive of Tanya's decision. For all that it mattered that they interacted daily, their interactions were also almost always short and shallow, so Tanya certainly hadn't expected the woman to express any kind of disapproval, even if she felt such for some reason or another.

Overall, however, she was self-admittedly uninterested in Pokemon battling overall. She went to the park every other day to give her spoiled-rotten Poochyena a bit of exercise, but she didn't battle much otherwise and only watched battles when they became mainstream.

Ikube, also as Tanya had expected, was more helpful. He had two Pokemon – a Machop and a Poliwhirl – casually battled, and he sometimes served as a Gym Trainer for challengers trying to earn their first few badges when no one else was available to do the job.

The first thing he'd done when she'd told him was to caution her not to become imbalanced, and that she should take some time off from their lessons if she needed it. He'd followed it up with advice to never forget the needs of the Pokemon she bonded with, and offered to show her what he knew when they met next.

She'd accepted his offer to put off their lessons for the week and scheduled their next meeting after that as well.

She breathed out slowly and then raised her phone up, navigating away from the messenger app and to another. A few button presses more, and her phone began to ring.

"Tanya?" a surprised voice asked over the phone. "Yes," she said in reply.

"Tanya!" Ichigo shouted. He began to babble. "Are you alright? I saw the news – by the Birds, did you get hurt? What happened? Do you-"

"I'm fine," she replied curtly, without a care for the babbling. "I wanted to… talk. With you," she said haltingly.

"Sure, sure! Whatever it is. I've got time." She felt the briefest urge to grill him on whether he had gotten around to getting a job yet, but she pushed it aside. That promise hardly mattered at the moment.

"I am going to become a Pokemon trainer," she said without further preamble.

She expected a number of reactions. Triumphal glee. Mock affront. Confusion. Remotely, she even thought he might be genuinely angry, considering how much he seemed to care for his Sentret, even if that care didn't extend to keeping it from fighting other Pokemon.

"Tanya…" he began, "Are you alright?"

She blinked, her rhythmic steps interrupted for only a moment. She… hadn't expected concern.

She sighed tiredly, and then she nodded to herself. Yes, that had to be it. Of course he'd show some concern, considering he had no idea what had happened. She hadn't seen the reaction coming because she was tired.

"As I'm sure you saw," she began blandly, moving 'getting rest' up her mental to-do list, "Silph was nearly at the center of the disaster. Our floor managed to hold out, but…" she paused. Ichigo didn't interrupt.

She took in a deep breath, held the cold night air in her lungs, and then let it back out in a warm exhale. "It was very close," she continued. "Everyone with Pokemon did their best, but the Ultra Beasts just kept coming and destroying everything and by the end," she said, her words starting to fall out of her mouth, "There was only one Pokemon standing between everyone on the floor and the Ultra Beasts and I- I can't-"

She violently cut herself off, took another cooling breath, and then continued. "For all of my training at the Fighting Dojo, I lack the ability to keep myself safe. In order to do that, I must become a Trainer."

Ichigo was quiet for several long moments. "If you really want to be safe, quickly," he said, the anxiety in his voice mostly gone, "you'd be better off hiring someone-"

"Not an option," she replied instantly. "I don't have the funds to keep that up in the long term, and someone like that would never be as invested in protecting me as I am." She didn't add that someone like that could always be bought by the next highest bidder, and Tanya was under no illusions that she had the kind of money to outbid someone with the resources and desire to track down a Faller.

No, training an animal to be more invested in her safety than its own was the best way to go.

He sighed, and she could almost see the slow, resigned nod he always did whenever he sighed like that. "Still not interested in going on your journey, I take it?" he asked. The mirth and anticipation usually present in his voice when he'd asked her that question before was completely absent.

She shook her head. "No."

He sighed again. "Well, that's fine. Might take a bit longer…" he trailed off under his breath. "Do you have any Pokemon in mind? I, ah, may have come up with a few ideas. What do you know about each type? What- well, no, considering the situation, it hardly matters-"

Momentarily, she tuned out of the conversation, struck by just how… invigorated Ichigo seemed to be. Then, with a slightly bemused shake of her head, she cut him off. "Ichigo. I know a little about types, but… I already have a Pokemon in mind that I want to catch."

She ignored his exclamation of incredulity.

One of the things she knew about Pokemon, after being compared to them by people with more creativity than most – or perhaps word of her disdain for being compared to fairy-types had reached them before she had – was that Bug types matured relatively quickly.

-OxOxO-

It was nearing midnight. The moon, its near-fullness obscuring the majority of the lights centered around its southern pole, perched above a nearby building and provided illumination. Barely having to look to navigate to the correct app, Tanya waved her phone past the electronic scanner by the front door and walked into the complex, her steps barely slowed by the door.

Her constant gait took her first to the supplies closet. She took out the metal broom she'd bought as a replacement for the wooden one, and, her movements just as methodical as they had been all evening, unscrewed the head of the broom. She let it clatter to the ground.

She swung the unadorned pole a few times to get a feel for its balance and then, with a determined nod, she spun on her heel and began walking towards her room. A quick check of her phone confirmed that it was still curled up in a ball in the center of the room, asleep.

Once more, she nodded determinedly.

She unlocked the door as fast as she could and rushed through the open doorway, uncaring of the loud bang that echoed as she smacked the Weedle up and off of the ground. It rebounded off of one of the cabinets of her kitchenette and then fell to the ground on its back, writhing and flailing in an attempt to land a blow on whatever had hit it.

Tanya pushed the door that had slammed into the wall closed with one of her feet. Her hands did not leave her weapon, and her eyes did not leave the flailing insect before her.

Pushing the lingering hesitation she still felt out of the door instead of the defenseless bug type, the door closed with a click. That, it seemed, got the Weedle to stop jittering. It looked around. It looked towards her and towards the closed door.

With the Weedle focused on getting its bearings, Tanya risked taking a hand from her weapon. Slowly, it began to blindly search through the bag at her side.

The Weedle got off of its side and onto its legs. Her eyes narrowed. "If I am to achieve anything," she declared, to herself, to the world, to the absent entity that had got her into this mess and to the insect before her. Her hand pushed past her wallet and some items she'd purchased on her way home. "Then I must have at least a modicum of safety. If that means I must restrict the freedoms of a wild animal and train it to fight and kill for me…"

Her hand grasped what it was searching for, and, slowly, she withdrew the Poke Ball Ichigo had given to her over a month ago. She took a long, steadying breath. "Whether I find this action repugnant is immaterial. If it is necessary, I will do it."

She dropped the Poke Ball at her side and resumed her stance, cold metal gripped firmly in calloused hands. The Weedle's head bobbed up and down briefly. Then, they were both still.

For a moment, the status quo remained. She sized it up and recalled everything she could about how it fought and acted; it remained unmoving, waving its hind-stinger about in a threatening display.

The moment passed. They both moved.

The Weedle jumped through the air, tail stinger glowing bright purple and pointed straight at Tanya's chest. As ever, the fact that the size of the room restricted her movement did not keep her from responding.

She feinted, missing the Weedle in order to bare the center of her weapon at it. The Weedle had twisted in the air to try and avoid the false blow and left itself open to Tanya's reply.

With a heave upwards and a bending of the knees to crouch down, she sent the airborne Weedle her head and into the door behind her. In two steps, she had repositioned and brought her pole around to smack the Weedle.

It had landed on the door instead of embedding its tail into the pockmarked door. As her pole swung downwards, it dove towards the wall to the right of the door. Her attack glanced off of the scarred wood, but Tanya pressed the attack, swinging and poking at it again and again as it dodged from the wall, to the floor, to the ceiling, and back to the door again.

She swung once more and snarled as it dodged. It still wasn't preparing to attack. She backed away until she was standing below the mattress above her desk, choosing to catch her breath and observe her opponents.

When she didn't press the attack, it jumped one last time and landed on the closed, western-style toilet in her room. For a single instant, it just stared at her as she did her best to keep her pole between it and her, even with the frame of her bed partially obstructing her line-of-sight.

Tanya shifted slightly, and a thin, white line of string shot from its mouth. She jerked her pole out of the way of the attack, and it jumped from the toilet and onto the counter next to the room's only window even as the line sailed upwards and onto the opposite wall.

It flicked the line, and it began to slowly drift down through the air. Tanya ducked around it, coming out from under her mattress and once more standing in front of the closed door. Then, after a moment of consideration, she tapped the end of her pole to the string and attempted to pull the Weedle from the countertop. The line extended easily.

It seemed it wasn't about to be outsmarted by a maneuver Tanya had already pulled.

With another leap several times the length of its body, it landed on the thin strip of wall between the frame of her bed and her miniscule bathroom. Tanya repositioned even as it pulled the line taught and tried to yank her weapon away. If she could grab a knife and cut the String Shot-

The moment her left hand darted from the shaft of her weapon, the String Shot went limp. Without a moment of hesitation, Tanya bounded towards the door as the Weedle jumped at her. She winced at the pain in her shoulder as she connected with the heavy door, but she ignored it as she rose once more, breathing heavily as she reacquired her target.

She watched as it showered the room in String Shots, her eyes narrowing. Most of those lines would do little to inhibit her movement – they lost a bit of their strength and stickiness when the Weedle was no longer connected to it and only ever slowed her down specifically when they connected with her body – but them not doing much was not the same as them not doing anything.

Then, when the Weedle was seemingly content with the dozen or more strings radiating from its position, it paused and looked at her. One line was still stuck to the tip of its red, ovoid nose. It sat there, staring at her.

She adjusted her grip on her pole as she thought. It had grown used to the tricks she thought of. How, then, would she land another blow? She was fairly sure she could win once she'd landed the first blow, but…

She adjusted her grip again. It shifted in place as well, its legs twitching in anticipation. Its head glanced towards the window behind it-

Tanya struck, weaving through the haphazardly deployed String Shots and jabbing the Pokemon with all the force she could muster. It flew backwards and crashed into the glass.

The glass held. It didn't even crack. For all of the seemingly magical abilities of Pokemon in general, Weedle just wasn't that heavy.

It was dazed. That hardly constituted a reason to hesitate.

Tanya brought her pole upwards and, with all the force she could leverage, swung it downwards into her countertop.

It was dazed, yes, but it still managed to roll out of the way.

Tanya's arms shook as the force of her blow reverberated up her arms. She stepped backwards reflexively, and found that something was tugging on the back of her jacket. A String Shot, undoubtedly.

Cursing, Tanya watched as the Weedle began to regain its bearing with a shake of its head while Tanya tried her damndest to remove the silk off of her back without letting go of her weapon.

With three more violent rotations of her torso, she managed. The Weedle too managed to shake its mind free of whatever damage she'd caused it.

Again, they faced each other, unmoving. Tanya considered their relative positions, how long it had been able to fight her in the past, the stop she'd made before coming back, and the fact that they'd been fighting almost every night for well over a month. Tanya had very few surprises left to spring…

But she had at least one more.

She charged, shouting loudly, reeling her pole back, preparing to sweep across her countertop.

It could have jumped up to avoid the attack and land on the countertop, or on the ceiling, or even on the closed window. Instead, as it so often had, it opted to meet her attack with a cry and an attack of its own, the stinger on its head glowing purple.

Without a moment of hesitation, Tanya cut off her scream, dropped her pole, and continued forward, her left arm covering her torso and her right arm still reeled back. The Weedle flew towards the air, she charged-

"AH!" she screamed as the attack landed. The Weedle didn't do anything else – didn't attempt to dig its stinger in, or jump away, or follow up with the barbed stinger on its tail – and Tanya fell to the ground, landing on her side.

Her right hand snaked out like lightning and clamped down on its tail, gripping just below its stinger so it couldn't maneuver out of her grasp. She roughly pulled-

"FUCK!" She screamed again. Blood oozed from her arm, but she paid it little mind, for the moment. Gasping for air, she forced her wounded arm to move and grabbed the insect by the neck. She took a deep, shuddering breath, and managed to get onto her knees.

It thrashed, whatever momentary shock it had suffered completely gone. Snarling, she forced it to the ground and pressed a knee onto the underside of its tail. Then, lifting her now freed right hand, ignoring its panicked cries and writhing body and undulating legs, she slammed her fist into the side of its head with a shout.

It continued to struggle.

She punched it again.

It continued to struggle.

She did it again, yelling even louder this time.

It stopped struggling, tiny body heaving just as Tanya's chest was, and Tanya's gaze whipped around the room. Where-

Her right hand lanced out once more and grasped the Poke Ball she'd set on the ground. Without further ado, she smashed the closed ball into the side of its head like a rock.

The ball's button depressed, it opened a crack, and the Weedle's eyes seemed to regain the smallest spark of lucidity as it shrank down in a flash of light and disappeared. The Pokeball snapped shut, and then…

Tanya continued to heave air.

The ball shook once.

She shook her head, her gaze snapping briefly to her bag. She needed-

The ball shook again.

She grasped her left arm with her right, trying to stem the bleeding, for a moment, while she waited.

The ball shook once more.

She grit her teeth. Stay in the ball, you piece of-

Click.

Tanya didn't celebrate. Instead, her right hand dove into her bag and threw the contents out. Her eyes searched the scattered contents quickly-

There.

She grabbed the medical supplies she'd purchased and stumbled towards her sink. She turned it on, waiting only a moment for the water to heat. Without preamble, she thrust the inch-deep wound under the water.

She growled as tears involuntarily formed in the corners of her eyes. Rapidly blinking them away, she used her right hand to hold the box for the bottle of Weedle antivenom up to her eyes.

"Dizzy sensation?" she audibly asked herself. Her balance wasn't entirely steady, but she'd just been fighting. She felt no more unsteady than she might have after an exhausting fight against the Red Army. She looked between the box and the wound. There didn't appear to be any discoloration, compared to the wounds she'd seen on her fellow soldiers, and she didn't feel a burning sensation either. Just familiar pain.

She nodded to herself. "Right. A small application that won't negatively impact me if I'm right and will work to keep me healthy if I'm wrong. Some bandages, and a visit to the hospital, and I'll be fine," she said. The shaking of her right hand wasn't a sign of anything bad, either – that was just her body coming down from the rush of adrenaline after the battle.

Following the video she'd found online, it took only a few minutes more to dress the wound using the supplies she'd purchased as best as she could.

Tanya inspected the bandages and found them to be satisfactory. She turned around, and looked down at shiny Poke Ball resting on the ground that contained the-

She shook her head. No. Leaning down and picking up the ball, she studied its inscrutable exterior. It wasn't the Weedle. It was her Weedle, now.

She took in a deep breath and, after aiming the ball as she'd seen Ichigo do with his Pokemon, she depressed the button in the middle of the ball. There was a flash of light, and her Weedle appeared on the floor. It looked up at her weakly.

She stared down, for a moment, her empty left hand hovering in the air, drifting towards her knife block. If it still tried to attack her, she wouldn't hesitate to finish the job.

It didn't move, simply staring up at her. Then, with a near-inaudible huff, it laid placidly on the ground. Tanya sighed in relief and then, hesitantly, moved towards one of the other things she'd flung from her bag.

She picked the item up and, without another word, sat on the ground next to her Pokemon. It glanced up at her, and she firmly held down on its back with her left hand as she aimed the item with her right. "If you try to hurt me…" she threatened. Still, it remained motionless, so Tanya depressed the trigger of the item.

Her Weedle flinched, but it remained still. Tanya continued to squirt the Potion onto her Pokemon, and watched, entranced, as the slight discoloration of its carapace faded and its energy returned. Despite its returned energy, it remained still.

Tanya tossed the spent Potion into the trash and then, quick as a flash, darted back to the kitchenette, her right hand now hovering over the knives, waiting for it to capitalize on its newfound strength to attack again.

The Weedle just stared at her. After a long twenty seconds, during which they did nothing but stare at each other, Tanya nodded to herself and then picked up her Pokemon's Poke Ball.

She glanced up towards her bed, and a wave of tiredness washed over her.

Hazily, she clambered up onto her bed and sat down, blinking slowly. She gripped her tired face with her worn hands, rubbing for a moment and then sighing as she braced against the bed. She had a lot she needed to do. What those things were swirled on the edge of her awareness, tiredness stripping her ability to describe what she needed to do-

Her Weedle jumped up on the bed, and Tanya jerked away from the sudden movement. Again, it just stared at her, but when she made no attempt to move away, it slowly crawled towards her, until-

It rubbed the right side of its head against the hand that was propping her nearly limp body upright, very carefully pointing its stinger behind her instead of at her side.

She blinked at it.

Was it… hungry? Or was that a sign of affection?

Hesitantly, she scratched the side of its head.

She had absolutely zero expectations for what petting a foot-long insect would feel like. Despite that, she still managed to make some comparisons.

The best way she could describe it was like running her nails across a material with the hardness of linoleum, the give of cork, and the temperature of lukewarm leather. Needless to say, it felt absolutely nothing like petting a dog or like brushing Viktoriya's hair.

"Weed! Weweedle weedle!" It leaned into her touch.

She shook her head once more and then slowly, laboriously, returned the Pokemon to its ball.

With that last action, she collapsed onto her bed. She struggled, briefly, to remain awake and productive, but she lost the battle quickly.

-OxOxO-

The first thing Tanya did when she woke up was suppress the urge to scream loudly.

The second thing she did was bodily push the foot-long insect sleeping on her chest off of her and her bed.

"Dle!" it cried as it plummeted from the loft her bed was in and onto the hard floor. It smacked into the ground, and Tanya groggily glanced down to make sure she hadn't just killed her first Pokemon.

It looked slightly dazed, rubbing its nose with the last segment of its body, but otherwise, it looked completely fine. She breathed a sigh of mingled relief and annoyance, and then flopped back down onto her bed.

Without further preamble, she found its Poke Ball, returned it, and set it on her desk. She undressed and stepped into her shower and washed herself of yesterday's grime.

Unwinding the bandages, she found the wound wasn't inflamed or infected. She's still go to a clinic to have it looked at by a professional, obviously-

She blinked as water cascaded around her. First, actually, she would need to figure out if hospitals could check for her being a Faller, which meant a trip to the library. She frowned at the thought. She ached to just look it up online, but she was still exceedingly wary of looking up potentially sensitive information when every last webpage she'd visited, even after almost six months, had declared themselves to be 'hazard free' with guarantees from various government organizations.

She shook her head. She had a week off, starting today. She'd spend the first six figuring out how best to be a trainer.

As she left the shower and dressed herself, she noticed a new notification on her phone. She might not have cared much ordinarily, except it was from an app she didn't recognize. She opened her phone-

Her curious expression soured. It was from her Trainer App.

She read it quickly, and her face's annoyed frown only deepened.

As she'd expected, she was being notified she had caught a Pokemon that placed her in violation of the restrictions of her Basic License for Practicing Pocket Monster Training in Kanto. She had a week to either take and pass a test to get a License that had no restriction on training poison types like Weedle, get a Type Restriction Waiver for her current license, or release the Pokemon.

If she didn't get either within the week, her account would be suspended until she released the Pokemon or obtained either within a month. If she didn't do either of those, then the Kanto League would send a representative to talk her into getting either or to force her to release the Pokemon.

She sighed. She had been expecting it, obviously, but she resented having to spend her time that way.

She resented needing to become a trainer at all.

She resented the emergence of danger in her third chance at life.

Light burst out of the Poke Ball placed on the counter, and Tanya jolted away in alarm.

It paid her reaction no mind, seemingly content to go sniffing about her possessions.

Tanya sighed.

More than getting a new license, or learning more about how Fallers were found, or even going to the hospital, Tanya's first priority was taking care of her new… pet. What kind of sustenance did it need? Where would she get the information, and then the sustenance itself? How would she fit everything she needed into her budget? Would she be able to get a better apartment like she'd been anticipating?

The Weedle sniffed her breadbox. It glanced at her and, when she made no move to stop it besides raising an eyebrow, it managed to work its tail under the latch and open it. It shouted out in triumph… only to cry as it jumped out of the breadbox and smacked onto the ground for the second time that day when it touched the plastic covering her bread.

She stared blankly at it, and then she let out a much, much longer sigh.

Life was going to be busy…

-OxOxO-

A/N 1: If you'd like to donate to support me monetarily, search for Sugarcane Soldier on the website of the Patrons.

Thank you to WarmasterOku, Afforess, UNSC_Kawakaze, Theewizzz, and Vee for supporting this story and everything else I write. Make sure to vote if you haven't yet!