The road out of Violet City was quiet this time of morning.
Kai had left after saying goodbye to Ethan, watching his friend head back toward the city as he continued down the other fork in the road, heading deep into the countryside. Kai had already filled up his supplies: more Pokemon food, his own food and a few potions and such—everything he would need for his next adventure.
Now the city was a couple of hours behind him, and the road had long since given up being a road. It was a dirt track now, wide enough for two people walking abreast but not much more, cutting east between the tree line and a low ridge of open hillside. The morning air was cool and smelled of earth and wet grass.
Sandshrew was on his shoulder. Naturally.
It had become such a fixed point in his daily life that he barely thought about it anymore — just this small warm weight on his left side, claws barely hooked into the seam of his jacket, riding the rhythm of his footsteps like it had always been there. Which, Kai supposed, it kind of had. At least in every version of this that mattered to him now.
He thought about Ethan as he walked.
The egg was the thing that kept coming back to him. He'd made the right call — he knew that. Ethan had more time, fewer Pokémon, and wasn't about to start covering ground at Kai's pace. The logic was clean. Still, he found himself imagining it: the egg sitting in Ethan's hands, wherever it would eventually hatch, some quiet moment he wouldn't be there to see.
He shook the thought off. It wasn't grief. Just that specific, low-level ache you got from giving something up that made sense to give up.
The ridge to his right tapered off as the morning wore on, and the country began to open up around him.
By mid-afternoon, the track had dipped away into a wide, shallow valley, and the whole world seemed to exhale.
Kai stopped walking.
The grassland ahead of him rolled out in long, gentle waves, the kind of landscape that looked like it had been combed from a great height. The grass was thick and a deep, living green, interrupted every so often by clusters of wildflowers — yellow, white, a stubborn purple that caught the light differently from the rest. The slope of the valley funnelled a warm breeze across it all, and the whole thing moved in slow, continuous motion, like something breathing.
Off to his right, a river. Not wide — maybe fifteen feet at its broadest — but clean and bright, running quick over a bed of rounded stones. He could hear it from where he stood, the sound comforting.
Pokémon sounds drifted from the tree line on the far edge of the valley. Something trilling, high and clear. A lower call he didn't recognise, somewhere in the middle distance. The occasional rustle in the long grass nearby that could've been the wind but probably wasn't.
He stood there for a moment, just looking at it.
After everything in Violet City — Falkner's gym, the tower, Silver, the elder's Noctowl throwing Snubbull around like a rag — this place felt almost inappropriately peaceful. Like the world had no idea what the last few days had involved.
"Yeah," he said quietly.
Sandshrew looked at him.
"This'll do."
He found a good spot against a shallow bank near the river, sheltered by a cluster of large rocks that blocked the prevailing wind, and set his pack down.
"This looks like a great spot to set up camp, don't you think, Sandshrew?" Kai said.
"Shrew!"
Camp took him about forty minutes. He'd gotten quicker at it.
The bedroll came first, then the tarp pegged across the rocks at an angle so that it made a proper lean-to rather than just a piece of fabric flapping about. The fire he built in the small stone ring he assembled from the riverbank — flat-bottomed stones, dry on the underside, laid in a tight ring before he stacked the wood inside. He'd gone further up the tree line for the wood, looking for deadfall that snapped clean rather than bent, stuff that would actually burn rather than smoulder and fill his eyes with smoke. He'd made that mistake enough times now.
The fire caught on the second strike of the firestarter. Small, steady, no drama. He was almost proud of that, knowing a fire type Pokemon would come in handy for this sort of thing.
Once it was going, he sorted through his supplies: the dried food parcelled into the correct bags, the team's food in the separate waterproof pouch, the potions pushed to the side of the pack where he could get to them easily. Everything that had jumbled together during the day's walking, reorganised back into sense.
Sandshrew helped by sitting on the rock above him and watching everything.
"I'm doing fine," Kai told it.
"Shrew."
"That wasn't a compliment, was it?"
"Shrew."
He fed the team in turns, letting them out one at a time into the early evening light while he portioned the food. Rattata ate fast and tidied up after itself. Totodile tried to eat Rattata's portion as well as its own and got pulled back by the scruff. Snubbull ate methodically, jaws working, eyes half-closed with the quiet satisfaction of something that had decided this was the best thing that had happened all day.
Mankey ate standing up. Zubat hung from the overhang of the tarp and made very pointed noises until Kai held the food up to it, and then hung there in silence, eating, which was an image he was going to need to get used to.
He ate something himself while the fire settled into coals — one of the proper meals from the city, rice and something with it that was actually warm. He hadn't realised how hungry he was until he started eating, and then he'd emptied the whole thing before he'd meant to.
The valley had gone amber by then, the long shadows stretching out from the trees in slow lines as the sun dropped behind the ridge. The wildflowers caught it differently now — more orange than yellow, more copper than white. The river sounded the same as it always had. Louder, maybe, in the quiet.
Kai sat for a while with his knees up, watching the fire, letting himself just be still for a bit.
He thought about the next gym. Azalea Town. Bugsy. Bug-type Pokemon.
Zubat would be good there, if it kept developing. Maybe Snubbull. He turned it over without any real urgency, the way you thought about things when there was no immediate pressure to act on them. Pleasant thinking, rather than planning.
And then there was Sentret.
He'd been putting it off without quite meaning to.
Not avoiding it — just prioritising the settling-in, the fire, the team. But there was a Ball on his belt that hadn't been opened since the tower, and that felt like something to address.
He took it out and turned it over in his hand.
The monks on the upper floor had called the Sentret a problem Pokémon. The broader one's exact word had been "grief" — giving the other wild Pokémon a great deal of grief— and had said it with the flat certainty of someone reporting a fact. Always picking fights, never backing down. Kai had liked that. Still did.
He clicked the button and held it out, deciding to let Sentret out of its Pokeball.
The light hit the grass and solidified.
The Sentret landed on all fours, low and immediate, head up before it had even fully materialised. Not the startled, uncertain pose most newly-caught Pokémon dropped into. It just arrived, ready, scanning its surroundings in a quick, economical sweep — the river, the rocks, the treeline, Sandshrew on the stone, the fire. All of it processed in a couple of seconds. Then its eyes found Kai.
It was bigger than most Sentret. Kai had noticed that in the tower, but it struck him again now, outside, in proper daylight. The fur was slightly rougher in texture than you'd expect, less groomed — the kind of coat that said this one had been sleeping rough for a while.
There was a small, neat indent in the cartilage of its left ear, old enough that the fur had grown back around it but not over it. And along its left wrist, just above the forepaw, a pale stripe of scar cut across the darker fur in a clean, healed-over line.
It watched him. Not with fear. Not with hostility, particularly.
It was the look of something trying to take a reading.
Kai found himself holding still under it. He wasn't sure why — it was a Sentret, not a Dragonite — but there was something in the quality of that attention that made him want to meet it properly rather than brush past it.
He set a portion of food on the grass between them, at a reasonable distance.
The Sentret glanced at it, then looked back at him.
But it didn't move.
"Not hungry?" Kai said.
Nothing. Just that same steady look.
He tried once more, nudging the bowl a fraction closer. The Sentret tracked the movement, considered it, and then deliberately looked back up at his face — as if to say that wasn't what this was about.
Kai sat back on his heels. He'd had this before, with Mankey at the start, with even Snubbull in the early days — that specific resistance from a Pokémon that hadn't decided yet. Most of them had come round with time and consistency. A few had needed something else to tip them over.
He studied the Sentret for a moment. The set of its shoulders. The way it held its tail — not up and alert the way a nervous Sentret would, but low, coiled, ready. It was relaxed in the way a fighter was relaxed. Coiled. Waiting for something to happen.
I see... Kai thought.
A slow smile pulled at the corner of his mouth.
He'd seen it battle in the tower. The way it had gone over the top of Sandshrew's scratch and come down with both forepaws working. The way it had slapped its tail across Sandshrew's flank. The way it had used Defence Curl instinctively, mid-impact, not as a decision but as a reflex — the body knowledge of a Pokémon that had been in enough fights to stop thinking about it. Even against Snubbull, even with Intimidate dropping its legs out from under it, it had snarled and held its ground.
That's a Pokémon that trusts itself, and doesn't rely on others for help.
This Sentret may have eaten with the other Pokémon in the Pokémon Centre before, but even then was it just biding its time until it was out of the city.
He reached up and pulled Sandshrew's Ball from his belt, returning it with a soft click. Sandshrew had a look on its face as it dematerialised that said it had already worked out what was happening and wasn't entirely impressed.
Kai turned back to the Sentret.
There is only one way to do this. Kai settled in his mind.
"How about a training battle, then?" he said.
It was a casual question. The same tone he'd use to offer someone a cup of tea.
The Sentret went very still.
Not tense, not startled — just still, clearly having caught its full attention for the first time. Its ears had shifted forward without it seeming to notice. The low-set tail came up a fraction, curling at the tip.
Those sharp, watchful eyes locked onto him.
And for the first time since coming out of that Ball, something shifted behind them. Not friendliness. Not trust.
Interest.
Kai held its gaze and felt the smile widen across his face properly now.
Yeah, he thought.
That's the one.
"Let's have a battle. I wanna see what you've got, Sentret." Kai said as he stood up, looking down at the Pokémon.
Sentret had a hard look in its eyes, clearly accepting his challenge, its tail nudging ever so slightly.
"Alright then. Let's do this."