Snow drifted lazily through the night, covering Dappled Grove in a blanket of white.
Moonlight washed over the forest, and every gust of wind sent a thin veil of powder swirling between the trees.
A tiny Pokémon trudged through the snow, leaving a trail of deep little footprints behind it.
Its short white legs sank almost halfway into the powder with every step, while pale blue hair hung over most of its face like an oversized cap.
Only when the wind lifted its bangs could the amber eyes underneath be seen, faintly gleaming in the dark.
Two flat amber horns parted its hair, the larger one pointing forward and the smaller one toward the back.
It was a Ralts—and with those colors, unmistakably a Shiny one.
Wild Pokémon might be tougher than ordinary animals, but winter was still winter.
Ralts wasn’t nocturnal either, so there was only one reason it had ventured out this late.
It was hungry.
“Ra?” Its horns twitched as it suddenly stopped and turned toward an open patch of snow ahead.
Nothing seemed unusual at first, except for a slight mound in the otherwise smooth surface and a strip of black fabric poking out from underneath.
The mound jerked.
Ralts stiffened just as a figure burst out of the snow, rolled onto his side, and sat up gasping for air.
“Ral!?” The little Pokémon recoiled so quickly that it tripped over its own feet and landed on its rear, kicking up a puff of snow.
The young man wasn’t in much better shape.
He stared blankly at Ralts for several seconds before awareness slowly returned to his eyes, followed immediately by a flood of memories that very clearly weren’t his.
Jun winced and pressed a hand against his temple.
The boy whose body he’d inherited had grown up in an orphanage in Wedgehurst.
Life hadn’t been particularly good to him, but it had at least been stable, and for as long as he could remember he’d wanted only one thing: to become a Pokémon Trainer.
Unfortunately, wanting something didn’t mean the League would hand it to you.
He had never received a Pokédex, nor had he qualified for a starter Pokémon, so he’d taken the much harder route instead.
He worked, saved money, trained his body, and studied everything he could about Pokémon until, at sixteen, he’d finally bought enough camping equipment and Poké Balls to head into Dappled Grove and catch his own partner.
Then an avalanche triggered by a Dynamaxed Pokémon had killed him before his journey even began.
“You could’ve just adopted one…” Jun muttered, rubbing the side of his head.
Even if the boy had hated the idea of buying and selling Pokémon, breeding facilities and shelters weren’t exactly uncommon.
There had been other ways to find a partner.
Apparently none of those had been good enough for him.
He’d been stubbornly attached to the idea of meeting a wild Pokémon, forming a bond with it, and eventually catching it himself.
It wasn’t the smartest decision Jun had ever heard of, considering where it had gotten him, but he couldn’t bring himself to mock the boy for it either.
Refusing to treat Pokémon like merchandise was something he could respect.
“Ral!
Ralts!” Jun looked up just in time to see the Ralts bristle.
A small flame appeared around its right fist.
His eyes widened.
“Wait, Fire Punch?
You can actually—” Ralts stamped down and launched itself at him with an aggression completely at odds with its species’ timid reputation.
Jun tried to dodge, but after spending who knew how long buried in snow, his body had all the responsiveness of frozen timber.
The tiny burning fist smacked him directly in the cheek and sent loose snow tumbling from his clothes.
He waited for the pain.
It never really came.
There was heat, enough to be uncomfortable against his half-frozen skin, but the punch itself had felt more like a child giving him an angry swat than a real attack.
Maybe his face was still numb.
Maybe Ralts hadn’t mastered the move properly.
Judging by the way it had attacked him without any real hesitation, though, Jun suspected it had simply held back.
Ralts landed in front of him and glared from beneath its bangs, amber eyes full of hostility.
Jun stared back for a moment.
It was absurdly cute.
Above them, two Corviknight swept across the moonlit sky, their wings stirring the cold air as they passed over the forest.
A few Skwovet emerged from hiding and scrambled up a nearby tree, cheeks stuffed full while they watched the strange pair below.
Elsewhere, a Bunnelby’s ears poked out from beneath the snow; it took one cautious look around and immediately disappeared underground again.
A palm-sized Joltik clung to the shadowed side of a tree trunk.
Its huge blue eyes seemed to be watching Jun and Ralts, although with that vacant expression, it might just as easily have been staring at nothing.
Jun couldn’t help himself.
He started laughing.
Not because of Ralts.
Not because anything was particularly funny.
There were Corviknight flying overhead, Skwovet hiding in the trees, a Bunnelby beneath the snow, and an actual Joltik staring at him from a trunk.
This really was the Pokémon world.
“Ral!
Ral!” Ralts’s little face flushed red.
Jun’s laughter stopped when it threw itself at him again.
Apparently Ralts had reached a very different conclusion.
He’s laughing at me because I’m weak!
“Hey, what did I do!?” Jun caught it awkwardly as the Pokémon began pummeling him with tiny fists.
“You’re a Psychic/Fairy-type!
Why are you so obsessed with punching people?” “Ralts!” “And aren’t you supposed to be scared of humans?” That earned him several more hits.
Ralts wasn’t in good condition to begin with.
It had clearly gone hungry for quite a while, and there wasn’t enough strength behind its attacks to seriously hurt him, so Jun ended up laughing again as the two of them rolled around in the snow.
At least the struggle got his blood moving.
By the time Ralts finally stopped trying to beat an apology out of him, some feeling had returned to his frozen arms and legs.
Then a man’s voice carried through the trees.
“It’s here!
I’m sure of it!
This is where I saw that Shiny Ralts!” Jun’s smile vanished.
Ralts went still on top of him.
The crunch of heavy boots grew louder until two men emerged through the falling snow.
Ralts’s horns twitched the moment it saw them, and it immediately jumped off Jun, planting itself in front of him as it stared at the newcomers.
Ralts could sense human emotions, and whatever it felt from these two was enough to put it instantly on edge.
It had attacked Jun because it was wary of him, then gotten angry when it thought he was making fun of it.
Even at its most hostile, though, it hadn’t sensed anything from him that truly repulsed it.
These men were different.
Both were large and heavily built, but the one in front had gone to some effort to hide his appearance.
Heavy winter clothing covered almost everything except his eyes, which passed over Jun’s thin, battered figure with mild confusion before settling on Ralts.
The confusion disappeared.
Greed replaced it almost instantly.
Ralts was already an uncommon Pokémon with plenty of value to the right buyer.
A Shiny one was something else entirely.
On the black market, a Pokémon like this could easily be worth more than a million Pokédollars.
The man reached behind his waist and drew a Poké Ball.
A flash of light spilled across the snow as a small fox Pokémon appeared before him, its reddish-brown fur broken by white across the belly and black around its eyes, ears, legs, and bushy tail.
Someone had tied a green ribbon near the end of that tail, giving the Pokémon an oddly decorative appearance that didn’t match the arrogance in its narrow eyes.
A Nickit.
They were common throughout Galar, but the important part wasn’t the species.
The man was a Trainer.
Before Jun could decide whether that made their situation better or worse, Nickit suddenly crouched and sprang sideways.
Its jaws closed around the second man’s throat with a wet crunch, spraying blood across the untouched snow.
The victim stumbled back with both hands clamped around his neck.
His eyes bulged as he stared at his companion, apparently unable to understand what had just happened.
He tried to speak, but blood filled his mouth instead, and after a few choking noises his legs gave out beneath him.
Nickit landed lightly beside the body and licked the blood from the corner of its mouth.
Its Trainer hadn’t said a word.
Whatever this was, the Pokémon had done it before.
“One less person who knows means one less problem,” the man muttered with a shrug, never taking his eyes off Ralts.
That was enough for every wild Pokémon nearby.
The Skwovet scrambled away so quickly that several Berries fell from their stuffed cheeks and disappeared into the snow.
Joltik buried itself as deeply as it could, while whatever else had been watching from the trees wisely vanished.
Within seconds, the forest had become eerily quiet.
Jun watched the poacher for a moment, then glanced at Ralts.
The little Pokémon stood its ground, staring stubbornly at both man and Nickit without giving an inch.
Its body was trembling, though.
Maybe from the cold, maybe from fear, probably both.
Jun pushed himself upright and brushed the snow from his clothes.
There wasn’t much left to figure out.
The dead man had been a loose end, and Jun was another one.
Once the poacher had Ralts, there was absolutely no reason to let him walk away.
A straight fight wasn’t an option either.
Nickit’s earlier burst of speed had already shown that it was trained, while Ralts was hungry, exhausted, and apparently still struggling with Fire Punch.
Jun had no Pokémon of his own.
That left bluffing.
He reached into the backpack beside him and pulled out one of the Poké Balls the body’s previous owner had bought.
Then he forced an awkward, almost ingratiating smile onto his face and held it out.
“Look, I’m not stupid enough to fight you over this.
I got lucky and caught that Ralts a little while ago.” Jun raised the ball slightly.
“This is its Poké Ball.
Take it.
I just want to leave.” Ralts blinked at him.
Caught?
When had that happened?
More importantly, Jun sounded suspiciously like he was offering it to the man who wanted to capture it.
But if that were true, why couldn’t Ralts sense any malice from him?
Its expression slowly turned confused.
The poacher, on the other hand, seemed to find the explanation perfectly reasonable.
A timid species like Ralts normally wouldn’t hang around a strange human in the middle of nowhere.
If Jun had already caught it, that answered the question.
His eyes narrowed as he studied the Poké Ball.
For several tense seconds, nobody moved.
Then the man’s eyes curved into a cold smile above his mask.
“Fine.
Saves me the trouble.
Give it here and I’ll let you go.” He looked at Nickit.
“Go.” Nickit immediately lowered itself into a crouch.
Jun saw its teeth beneath the moonlight and knew exactly how much the poacher’s promise was worth.
The fox sprang.
Jun had hoped the man would come for the ball himself, but he’d never really expected someone willing to murder his own accomplice to be that careless.
Fortunately, getting him closer had never been the important part.
Jun only needed both of them looking somewhere else.
He threw the Poké Ball high into the air.
The poacher’s gaze followed it immediately, and Nickit’s did the same.
If Jun had been telling the truth, that ball was the easiest way to secure Ralts.
If he’d been lying and another Pokémon was inside, ignoring it could be even more dangerous.
Either possibility demanded attention.
Jun ripped one foot free of the deep snow and kicked as hard as he could, sending a cloud of powder straight into Nickit’s face.
It wasn’t Sand Attack, but snow in the eyes worked well enough.
Nickit flinched at the worst possible moment.
Jun threw himself aside as the fox sailed past, then lunged before it could recover and grabbed the loose fur at the back of its neck.
“Nick!?” Nickit’s narrow eyes went wide.
A human had grabbed it.
For a heartbeat, even the poacher seemed too surprised to react.
Ralts wasn’t doing much better.
Nickit recovered first.
It twisted around and sank its teeth into Jun’s forearm, drawing blood almost instantly.
Jun gritted his teeth but refused to let go.
Oddly enough, the bite reassured him.
A trained Pokémon should have been more than strong enough to break free from an ordinary human if it had used its body properly.
Nickit had panicked and resorted to biting instead.
Jun wasn’t Ash, and he certainly wasn’t some superhuman from Hisui.
If Nickit remembered that it was a Pokémon and started fighting properly, he wasn’t going to win a wrestling match.
Before that could happen, Jun grabbed its huge tail with his free hand.
Nickit’s entire body stiffened.
Its tail was both a point of pride and a sensitive part of its body, and the sudden grip made its fur stand on end.
Jun used that instant of weakness to drive a knee into its midsection and force it down beneath his weight.
“Ralts!
Fire Punch!” Ralts hesitated for only a moment.
This was hardly the time to argue about whether Jun had technically become its Trainer in the last thirty seconds.
Flames burst around its right fist, noticeably stronger than the tiny flicker it had used against Jun earlier.
Ralts rushed forward and slammed Fire Punch directly into Nickit’s head with a heavy thud.
The fox’s pupils lost focus.
Jun felt its jaws loosen from his arm as its struggles weakened.
So Ralts really had held back before.
Unfortunately, the poacher had recovered from his surprise.
Instead of wasting time shouting commands at the dazed Nickit, his hand immediately went toward the Poké Balls at his waist.
He had another Pokémon.
Jun didn’t wait to see what it was.
He grabbed Nickit by the tail, hauled it around with everything he had, and threw it straight at its Trainer.
The man barely managed to catch the fox before it slammed into his chest, and the Poké Ball he’d been reaching for slipped from his hand into the snow.
That bought Jun exactly the opening he needed.
He scooped Ralts up against his chest and ran.
Taking down one trained Pokémon had required a bluff, a face full of snow, Ralts’s help, and enough luck to make the entire plan embarrassing in hindsight.
Fighting a second one normally was suicide.
And there was no guarantee the man only had two.
Behind them, Nickit suddenly let out a furious, panicked Snarl.
The blast of sound ripped through the forest hard enough to scatter the falling snow.
Jun winced and clapped one hand over his ear, keeping the other arm locked around Ralts as he forced himself to keep moving.
Then the ground trembled.
Jun’s expression changed.
The previous owner of this body had already died in an avalanche once, and Dappled Grove was considerably larger and rougher than the neat patch of wilderness shown in the games.
The surrounding terrain sloped sharply enough that a powerful blast of sound was the last thing anyone needed.
A low rumble rolled through the forest.
It grew louder.
Jun looked uphill and saw an entire sheet of snow beginning to move.
“You’ve got to be kidding me…” The slope gave way.
Snow crashed through the trees in a roaring wave, sending wild Pokémon fleeing in every direction.
Jun only had enough time to wrap both arms around Ralts before the avalanche swallowed them.
The world vanished into freezing darkness.
Snow hammered against Jun from every direction, spinning him helplessly until he couldn’t tell which way was up.
Ralts remained pressed tightly against his chest, its amber eyes fixed on his face while he did everything he could to keep his arms around it.
The pressure was suffocating, but it only lasted a few seconds.
Then the darkness suddenly disappeared.
Jun felt open air beneath him.
His stomach dropped.
The avalanche had carried them straight over a cliff.
For one suspended instant, Jun and Ralts both looked outward.
Dappled Grove stretched beneath them in endless silver, every tree covered in snow.
Far beyond the forest lay an enormous lake reaching almost to the horizon, its dark surface broken by a shining road of moonlight.
A huge full moon hung low over the distant water, its reflection almost touching the real thing.
Then a Milotic broke through the surface.
Its long body rose cleanly from the lake, water scattering from its scales in glittering droplets.
For a moment it seemed to be leaping toward the moon itself, elegant red eyes catching the pale light before gravity began to pull it back toward the water.
Jun forgot about the cliff.
Ralts forgot about the fall.
For that brief instant, both of them could only stare.
And the same moonlit image settled into their memories.
[End of Chapter]