"Kid, you seem to be hitting the restroom quite often these past few days," Stationmaster Hideki remarked one afternoon, his tone laced with amusement. "Slacking off, are we? Trying to avoid work?"
Xiu, caught mid-stride on his way out of the Rescue Station building (ostensibly heading for the restroom, but actually rushing back to his cabin to check on Happiny), could only force an awkward smile and clutch his stomach dramatically.
"Ah, Stationmaster, it's not like that hehe," He said, trying to sound genuinely pained. "I ate something bad a while back... stomach's been acting up fierce these last few days. Can barely stand upright after squatting, you know?"
"Hahaha~" The Stationmaster chuckled, the sound warm and genuine. He clapped Xiu reassuringly on the shoulder. "Take care of yourself then, boy. Don't ruin your health while you're young. Head on back, get some proper rest."
Xiu felt a pang of guilt. He knew the Stationmaster wasn't really suspicious; it was just his gruff way of showing concern. But the real reason for his frequent dashes back to the cabin – frantically feeding a demanding Happiny – obviously couldn't be revealed. Best that no one knew about his unexpected dependents.
Returning to the cabin after another long day at the Rescue Station, Xiu felt like his bones were grinding together. Utterly spent.
He didn't know why, but the workload at the Station seemed to be increasing exponentially. New arrivals, injured Pokémon confiscated from poachers or found abandoned, were pouring in almost daily. The facility felt strained, pushed beyond its normal capacity. Whispers among the staff hinted at increased poaching activity region-wide.
But those were concerns above his pay grade. His world had shrunk to two simple, demanding constants: work, and feeding the two small creatures now reliant on him.
"Dinner time!" he announced wearily, releasing Abra and Happiny from their Poké Balls.
Happiny, thankfully, had started to settle into a more predictable routine. Its appetite, while still healthy, was no longer the bottomless pit of the first few nights. Twelve bottles of Moomoo Milk were no longer vanishing between dusk and dawn. It was even starting to tentatively accept small amounts of softened pellets mixed with the milk. 'Progress.' Soon, hopefully, it could transition fully to solid food. Then the Moomoo Milk could become an occasional nutritional treat rather than a staple, easing the crushing pressure on his finances.
They ate – Abra with its silent Telekinesis, Happiny with clumsy enthusiasm, Xiu with exhausted bites of reheated leftovers – while Xiu forced himself to open his breeder's manual again, pushing towards his long-term goal despite the fatigue.
Work. Caretaking. Study. The rhythm of his life, managed meticulously, day after demanding day. Steady, if precarious.
— — —
Noise. A cacophony of ringing phones, clicking keyboards, urgent voices. Pain throbbed behind his eyes, sharp and nauseating, like his brain was about to split open. He blinked, vision swimming. The glow of a familiar computer monitor. Stacks of overdue files threatening to avalanche onto the cramped desk…
"Shit!"
Xiu bolted upright in bed, heart hammering against his ribs, gasping for breath. Panic clawed at his throat. He looked around wildly, eyes darting through the darkness of the cabin. 'Just a dream...' A nightmare echo of his past life, of the moments before his collapse. 'Damn it! Thought I was dying again!' He pressed a hand over his racing heart, wiping beads of cold sweat from his forehead with the other.
Outside, the world raged. Wind howled like a hungry beast, rattling the thin wooden walls of the cabin. Rain lashed down in sheets, drumming relentlessly against the roof. Thunder cracked overhead, deep and resonant, punctuated by blinding flashes of lightning that momentarily bleached the interior stark white. The air crackled with static.
He felt unreasonably irritable, the storm mirroring the turmoil within him. This world's climate was capricious; he'd seen sunny afternoons erupt into sudden downpours more than once in his month here. But never like this. This was a deluge, a proper tempest.
His throat felt dry, scratchy. He swung his legs out of bed, fumbled for his water glass on the small table, and took a long sip. The cool water helped, momentarily calming the frantic edge of his nerves.
But sleep was impossible now. 'The nightmare, the storm…' He sat on the edge of the bed, absently stroking the cool glass, frowning into the darkness, thoughts churning.
After a long while, his breathing evened out, but the adrenaline lingered. He tried lying down again, pulling the thin quilt up, but it was useless. The wind shrieked through unseen gaps in the cabin walls, a high-pitched whistle overlaying the roar of the rain and the periodic booms of thunder. He squeezed his eyes shut, resigned to riding out the storm awake, praying the flimsy structure wouldn't simply tear apart around him. Just survive the night.
He didn't know how much time passed. The rain showed no sign of letting up; if anything, it intensified. Lightning flashed almost continuously now, the brief moments of daylight-bright intensity followed by disorienting darkness. The cabin groaned and creaked under the assault, timbers protesting against the wind's fury. 'Is it going to collapse?' A genuine fear, cold and sharp, gripped him. He felt a strange kinship with some ancient poet he vaguely remembered reading about – Du Fu? – sheltering in a leaking hut during a storm. 'Never thought I'd relate.'
BANG!
The cabin door burst inwards with explosive force, ripped open not by the wind, but by something solid hitting it. Rain and wind blasted into the room, instantly soaking everything. Xiu, startled from his tense vigil, instinctively thought the wind had finally broken through. He started to get up, intending to somehow force the door shut against the gale, when a dark shape, low and fast, scrambled through the doorway out of the torrential rain.
"Fuck!" Xiu reacted, trying to dodge, but the cabin was too small, his reactions too slow. The dark figure collided with him, sending him stumbling back onto the bed with a startled grunt.
Attacked! Instinct took over. He didn't think, just reacted. His hand shot out, grabbing the Poké Ball resting on his bedside shelf – Abra's ball. He slammed the release button.
Abra materialized in a flash of red, instantly awake, sensing the intrusion, the sudden violence. A dazzling blue psychic aura erupted from its small body, expanding outwards in a protective wave. 'Barrier!' Xiu felt an invisible force lift him slightly, pressing him back against the headboard, while simultaneously shoving the intruder forcefully away, sending it tumbling back towards the open doorway.
"Wait!"
In the brief, intense flare of the psychic barrier, Xiu caught a clear glimpse of the intruder. Recognition hit him like a physical blow. He yelled out, his voice sharp with urgency. "Abra, stop!"
The psychic halo vanished as quickly as it had appeared. Abra hovered silently in mid-air, its battle-ready intensity fading, replaced by its usual calm impassivity, eyes closing again.
Ignoring Abra for the moment, Xiu scrambled to turn on the solar lamp, its weak yellow beam cutting through the rain-streaked darkness. He stared at the figure sprawled near the doorway, now pushing itself weakly up. Green carapace, scythe-like arms... Scyther. The same Scyther he'd helped rescue from the poacher days ago.
Confusion swamped him. 'Why is Scyther here? Battering down my door in the middle of a storm?'
"What happened?" he asked, his voice still tight with adrenaline.
He moved closer, lamp held high. Through the dim light and dripping rain, he could see the Scyther was injured again. Fresh cuts, bruises, scorch marks marring its sleek form. It definitely hadn't come seeking shelter from the rain.
As Xiu voiced the question, a strange sensation brushed against his mind, like a tentative mental touch, followed by a wave of feeling – fear, pain, anger – and then, impossibly, coherent thought that wasn't his own.
'Humans… attacked… followed…'
Xiu froze, stunned. He looked sharply at Abra, hovering nearby. 'Did I just… understand it? How?'
Memories from the past life supplied a possible answer: Telepathy. A rare psychic ability, sometimes depicted in anime or mentioned in obscure texts, allowing direct mind-to-mind communication between Pokémon and humans. Like how Abra shared its memories before… but clearer? Stronger?
No time to analyze. The meaning was terrifyingly clear. Hunters. Here. Now.
"Abra," Xiu snapped, his voice regaining its urgency. "Try to talk to it, find out more!" While Abra focused its psychic energy on the injured Scyther, Xiu grabbed his own communicator – the one that had dried out but remained stubbornly unreliable. He tried hailing the park's main frequency, hoping against hope it would work this time.
'Need to report this. Poachers in the park, during this storm… this is way beyond me.'
Static answered him. Nothing but harsh, crackling noise. The storm's interference? Or something else? The device was useless.
Just then, Abra relayed the Scyther's frantic message, the thought echoing directly in Xiu's mind: 'Attacker… followed me here… close...'
At that very moment, miles away at the park's South Gate complex, the main administrative building, usually dark and silent at this hour, blazed with light. Alarms, previously silent emergency frequencies, shrieked through the storm-lashed night.
Xiu's earlier, failed attempt to contact the park had triggered a hidden emergency beacon within the faulty communicator. The park was responding.
Throughout the facility, skeleton crews and on-call staff jolted awake. Lights snapped on. Years of emergency drills kicked in. Personnel moved with disciplined haste, returning to stations, activating systems. The entire park apparatus, like a sleeping giant roused to sudden, urgent life, began to mobilize.
Security feeds from cameras across the park flickered to life, their images distorted by rain. Real Forest Rangers – not part-time garbage collectors like Xiu, but trained professionals equipped and authorized by the League – were dispatched from scattered outposts, venturing out into the raging storm to investigate the triggered alert and other anomalies. These were the park's true protectors, trained specifically to deal with poacher incursions.
Back at the main complex, security teams assembled rapidly, donning weatherproof gear, checking weapons and Pokémon. Small, heavily armed units fanned out from the building, heading into the storm-ravaged park, moving towards predetermined strategic points, ready to support the Rangers or intercept any intruders.
The hunt was on.