For a fleeting moment, moonlight was all Jun and Ralts could see.
Then the wind tore past them, the sudden weightlessness dragging both of them back to reality.
They were falling from a cliff dozens of meters high.
There was nothing along the bare rock face to grab, and the trees and deep snow below wouldn’t be enough to save them from a fall like this.
With no time to think of anything better, Jun pulled Ralts tightly against his chest, curled around the little Pokémon, and twisted so his back would take the impact first.
Ralts felt every bit of it.
When the avalanche had swallowed them, Jun hadn’t let go.
Now, plummeting toward the forest below, his first instinct was still to shield a Pokémon he’d met only minutes ago.
The Pokédex described Gardevoir as a Pokémon capable of predicting the future and willing to exhaust all of its psychic power—even creating a small black hole—if that was what it took to protect its Trainer.
Ralts wasn’t a Gardevoir.
It didn’t have anything close to that kind of psychic strength yet, and Jun wasn’t even its Trainer.
But the instinct behind it was already there.
Temperamental or not, this Ralts was still a Ralts.
“Raa!” Brilliant blue light flared beneath its bangs, flooding its amber eyes before spreading over Jun’s body like ripples across water.
Only after he was completely covered did the same glow wrap around Ralts.
The two vanished in midair.
A moment later, the avalanche thundered over the cliff and crashed into the forest below without them.
Jun reappeared somewhere among the trees and dropped straight into a bank of snow.
His vision went black on impact, and a wave of nausea rolled through him so violently that for several seconds he could do nothing but lie there and wait for his head to stop spinning.
When the sickness finally eased, he became aware of the cold against his cheek and something soft beside him.
Jun opened his eyes to find Ralts lying on its side only a short distance away, its large amber eyes staring directly into his.
Moonlight filtered through the branches above, falling across the two of them as they lay there in the snow.
Jun looked at Ralts for a moment, then laughed softly.
“Teleport is already a pretty ridiculous move, but a Ralts bringing a person along with it?
That’s a new one for me.” “Ra…?” The little Pokémon clearly had no idea what he was talking about.
It was hungry, exhausted, and had just burned through what little psychic strength it had left.
All it really wanted to do was sleep.
At least it wasn’t cold anymore.
Ralts’s body naturally warmed when it sensed positive emotions from someone it liked, and there was certainly no shortage of those coming from Jun now.
As for how it had managed the Teleport, Ralts didn’t know that either.
It had only wanted to protect him.
By the time it understood what was happening, the two of them were already lying safely in the snow.
Jun rolled onto his back and took a few tired breaths while staring through the branches at the moon.
Ralts shifted beside him and did the same, the two quietly watching snowflakes drift down through the pale light.
After a while, Jun spoke.
“Ralts…
want to come with me?” The little Pokémon turned its head and studied his profile without answering.
Jun didn’t press it.
He simply waited, and after several quiet seconds, a tiny hand settled over his own—the same little hand that had spent a good portion of their first meeting punching him.
A smile tugged at his lips.
With his free hand, Jun rummaged through the backpack until he found a white Poké Ball.
“This is a Premier Ball.
I spent forever working to afford—” Soft, even breathing interrupted him.
Jun looked over.
Ralts had fallen asleep beside him.
He couldn’t help smiling as he gently touched the Premier Ball to its head.
Red light drew Ralts inside, and almost immediately the ball gave a soft chime confirming the capture without so much as a single shake.
Jun held it up beneath the moonlight.
“Guess I finished your dream for you.” The words were meant for the boy whose life had ended beneath the avalanche, although Jun knew that wasn’t the only reason he’d caught Ralts.
He tucked the Premier Ball away and finally turned his attention to his own condition.
Bandages, antiseptic, and other emergency supplies came out of the backpack one after another as he cleaned and dressed the worst of his injuries.
Nickit’s bite was the main concern.
His heavy winter clothes had kept its teeth from reaching bone, but the wound was still ugly enough to bleed freely.
Losing a little blood wasn’t what worried him most; wandering around a forest full of wild Pokémon while smelling like fresh meat was a much worse prospect.
Fortunately, the previous Jun had prepared seriously for this journey.
Between his wilderness training and the medical supplies he’d packed, Jun had his arm cleaned and bandaged before long.
He rested just long enough to catch his breath before forcing himself back onto his feet.
A forest full of wild Pokémon was dangerous enough during the day.
At night, injured and exhausted, staying out in the open would be asking for trouble.
Plenty of aspiring Trainers had gone into the wilderness chasing their dreams and never come back.
Jun had already inherited that fate once.
He wasn’t interested in repeating it.
He needed shelter.
Some time later, a small fire crackled inside a narrow cave, filling the cramped space with warmth.
Jun had gotten lucky.
The cave was empty, dry enough to use for the night, and small enough that he didn’t have to worry about something enormous already calling it home.
He’d sprayed Max Repel around the entrance as an extra precaution before settling down beside the fire.
The stuff wasn’t cheap.
That single can had cost the previous Jun seven thousand Pokédollars, while an ordinary Poké Ball was only two hundred.
Tonight, Jun wasn’t complaining about the price.
Once he was satisfied that they were reasonably safe, he pulled a container of high-quality Pokémon food from the backpack and emptied a generous amount into a bowl.
Only then did he release Ralts from its Premier Ball.
A flash of light deposited the little Pokémon on its side beside the fire.
It was still asleep.
Jun had just started wondering whether he should leave it alone when Ralts’s eyes suddenly opened.
Its gaze immediately locked onto the food bowl sitting beside it, nearly as large as the Pokémon itself and filled to the top with food that smelled far better than anything it had encountered in the wild.
“Ra?” It looked up at Jun.
“Go ahead.” He rubbed its head.
“It’s for you.” Ralts approached the bowl and reached inside.
One piece of food was large enough that it needed both hands to hold it comfortably, and the smell alone made it swallow hard.
Until tonight, the best thing the wild Ralts had ever eaten was probably a particularly good Berry.
It had never seen prepared Pokémon food like this before, much less something of this quality.
And it was starving.
Ralts brought the food toward its mouth, only to stop.
Jun was busy digging through the backpack for something he could eat when Ralts shuffled over and raised the piece toward him with both hands.
“Ral.” Jun paused.
He looked at the food, then at Ralts.
After a moment, he pulled out a loaf of packaged bread and tore off a piece.
He pinched the Pokémon food from Ralts’s hands, popped it into his mouth, then offered the bread in return.
“Fine.
We’ll share.” Pokémon food wasn’t exactly designed with human taste buds in mind, but Jun found himself enjoying it anyway.
Ralts brightened immediately.
It accepted the bread and began nibbling at it in small bites, alternating between Jun’s food and its own while Jun occasionally reached over to rub its head.
The previous owner of this body had lived frugally, but apparently he’d never been stingy when it came to Pokémon.
Most of the money he’d earned had gone toward supplies like these or books and materials for studying Pokémon.
Jun was beginning to like the guy.
Still eating, he pulled out his phone and started looking through it.
Galar’s network coverage was apparently impressive enough to reach even this far into Dappled Grove.
One headline immediately caught his attention.
Lumiose Conference Concludes in the Kalos Region!
A photograph beneath the headline showed three teenage boys.
Jun’s eyes went straight to one of them.
A familiar face beneath a cap, wearing a blue shirt and black pants.
He looked somewhere around fifteen or sixteen.
Jun stared at the picture.
The legendary ten-year-old with twenty-five years of battle experience—although apparently he was closer to sixteen in this world.
Ash Ketchum.
Jun slowly lowered the bread in his hand.
So this wasn’t merely a Pokémon world.
He was living in the same world as Ash.
[End of chapter]