“So, we need to find you a fitting name, don’t we?” I mused aloud as I walked along Route 1 towards Viridian City.
“Kiii~” Fennekin squeaked in reply, trotting by my side. A hint of annoyance seemed to have crept into her attitude lately.
We had been spending every waking moment together ever since meeting at Professor Oak’s lab. It was a real treat, of course, but my indecisiveness seemed to annoy Fennekin, especially when it came to choosing her name.
On the other hand, I had learned quite a bit about her personality. While she had the playful nature of a Fox Pokémon, she was much quieter than average and tended to go with the flow. That didn’t mean she was particularly easygoing, though. She had definite opinions about how she thought things ought to be done, even if she didn’t usually make a fuss about them. She was surprisingly particular about certain things, too. She liked having a comfortable place to rest, hated being rushed and had very little patience for dithering. That last one was unfortunate, given I was… well, me.
Which brought us to the current predicament. She had taken to sitting down, wrapping her tail neatly around her paws and staring me down with an expression that told me a whole lot about her thoughts, considering she couldn’t speak a human language.
Despite that, she was a sweetheart. She’d nudge my hand when she wanted attention or settle against my side when she wanted to stop for a rest. She followed me around like a faithful little knight, yet never seemed to become unbearably clingy. She was remarkably observant for someone who spent half her time asleep; she’d know when I needed space and when I needed a little company.
Of course, none of that stopped her from looking thoroughly unimpressed whenever I did something stupid, or remained indecisive, for that matter. Like right now.
I looked at her, head turned away with a huff and ears tilted backwards. She was utterly adorable. I could barely hold back a giggle. Oh goodness, no. Vexing her now would only make things worse, wouldn’t it?
We walked in silence for a while longer, listening to the wind ruffle the leaves of the trees along the path. Pidgeys and Pidgeottos were busy making their nests now that spring had returned, and I was beginning to wonder whether I’d ever settle on a name when a random falling leaf made me blurt out, “Maple!”
“How about Maple?” I asked, turning to Fennekin, whose ears twitched.
She stopped and looked at me, as though checking whether I was actually being serious or just firing names at random. I held her gaze, smiling a genuine smile. I was being serious, after all.
“It fits! Maple syrup is deliciously sweet, like you. And it looks beautiful. Lighter varieties are close enough to your pelt, and darker ones will look like your pelt once you evolve. I daresay it’s perfect,” I declared, proudly and confidently.
My enthusiasm seemed to convince her. Her ears twitched again before she started trotting around me, yipping happily and making me heave a sigh of relief. With this out of the way, the walk to Viridian City would be far less stressful.
Or so I would have liked to say. But I just had to walk too close to a nest of Rattata, didn’t I?
“Yes, Maple, I know, you warned me!” I complained aloud as we ran.
Thankfully, these little pests were territorial, if I recalled my classes properly. Once we were far enough away, they should let us go, or at least split up so the nest wouldn’t remain undefended. I told Maple as much, which she seemed to accept, albeit without looking happy about it.
Seriously, though, did she expect to hold her own against more than a dozen of them when we’d literally never fought together before?
“Fine, fine, I get it! Stop yipping so angrily. I’ll take the lead once they split off!”
I had no idea how far or how long I ran before the split finally happened. The last ones on our tail looked like younger Rattata. Disposable, I suspected. Rattata were notorious for their incredible reproductive rate.
I finally slowed to a stop, gasping for breath. My heart was pounding, and not just from the running. I’d studied territorial behaviour, encounter management and the importance of keeping a cool head. I knew all this. So why did having a dozen angry Pokémon at my heels make it so difficult to remember any of it?
Maple stopped between me and the half-dozen Rattata that remained, her ears pulled back as she growled adorably. The six of them fanned out, tails held high, squeaking angrily.
“Well,” I huffed, trying to sound more confident than I felt, “time to get to it, sweetie.”
As though muscle memory had kicked in from the hours spent in simulations at school, I adopted a commanding tone. “Start with a Wish, Maple. Some of them might already know Quick Attack, and you’ll need to hold out.”
Maple yipped in acknowledgement and began to glow faintly. One of the Rattata seized the opportunity to launch itself at her in a blur of dust and grass.
“That one’s using Quick Attack, Maple! Copycat!”
In response, she shot forward even faster than the Rattata and rammed hard into it, sending it flying into its kin.
“Ember them!”
She breathed in and blew little motes of fire at the bunched-up pair. They screeched in pain.
The sound froze my blood.
I’d seen animated projections of battles, studied damage assessments and memorised the signs that indicated a Pokémon was nearing its limits. But those sounds had never been a part of the simulations. This was different. Those cries came with pain, and I was the one who had ordered Maple to cause it.
I barely had time to process that thought before hearing Maple yip as a Rattata tackled her. Worse yet, two others had used the opening created by her Ember to distract her with Tail Whips, leaving her vulnerable to the attack.
“Maple!”
I’d been so focused on the ones she’d hit that I hadn’t even noticed the others closing in. So much for my excellent situational awareness, I spat at myself in my thoughts. The simulations had never quite captured how quickly a battle could turn into a mess. Trainer battles were orderly, when compared to this. With threats coming from several directions at once and no convenient pause button to give me time to think, I felt… overwhelmed.
I was already imagining Maple hurt, lying helplessly in the grass, when a shooting star materialised above her. The faint gleam of her pelt intensified for a moment before fading.
Wish.
I let out the breath I hadn’t realised I was holding as she got back on her paws. Relief washed over me so intensely that my knees nearly gave way. She was all right. I nearly cried. She was all right, and I needed to concentrate before I got her hurt again.
“Make another Wish, Maple!” I commanded, forcing myself to look at the whole battlefield rather than just her. “Prepare an Ember, but hold it in as long as you can while focusing on avoiding getting hit. Wait for their leader to use Quick Attack, then repeat the Copycat and Ember trick.”
She did exactly that, settling into a rhythm. She dodged the Tackles, rammed the leader into its kin and fried them together. Another two hits took down the leader and two of the weaker ones, leaving three demoralised Rattata looking ready to flee.
I should have felt triumphant.
Instead, I was painfully aware of how close I’d come to losing control of the fight. If Maple hadn’t known Wish, if I’d misjudged the timing, if she’d been a little slower to dodge… I gulped. There were so many little things that could have gone wrong, and I’d been treating them like neat little variables in an exercise rather than the very real possibilities that could leave my partner injured.
But Rattata didn’t abandon their own. They’d go down trying to recover the fainted three, I knew.
Now came the difficult part.
I remembered my lessons at school. Rattata weren’t dumb; they remembered. And they grew fast, both in numbers and strength. If I let them go now, they might come back. If not after us, then after the next Trainer who happened to cross their path.
What’s more, Maple was a predator. These were her prey.
I looked at the three Rattata. They were still making little, agitated noises, glancing between Maple and their fallen companions. They looked so small now that they were no longer charging at us. I knew what the textbooks said. But that hadn’t prepared me for how awful it felt to stand here and decide what happened next.
Was I being responsible by ending the threat? Or was I simply afraid of what might happen if I let them go? Could I really call myself a good Trainer if I made Maple fight on when she’d already done enough?
My fingers dug into my palms. I wanted someone else to make the decision for me, someone older and wiser who could tell me what the right thing to do was. But there was no instructor watching from the sidelines here. Only me, Maple and the three Rattata waiting for us to decide their fate.
With a resigned sigh and guilt in my heart, I gave her the order.
“Maple, hunt them to the last.”