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“Watch out!”
Between Tomoya's shout and the sudden rumbling of the earth under his feet, Satoshi was annoyed but not entirely surprised to find himself with a twisted ankle and the air knocked out of his lungs from his sudden crash to the ground. He threw his arms over his face as clods of dirt and rocks rained down around him. If he had the air to do it, he would have whined; only a couple of Pokemon could do something like this, none of them good. Not when Satoshi was still too winded to call on his own Pokemon.
“Akihide!”
Tomoya's Riolu landed next to Satoshi with a little bark, almost as if he was trying to reassure him. It was a nice thought, although Satoshi was worried even Akihide wouldn't be enough to take on the Onix towering over him. Sure, Akihide had the type advantage, but that wasn't going to help much if the Onix had enough levels over them.
“Protecting him now? Your friend's a dirty cheat and I'm going to report him to the Pokemon League.”
“He is not, but even if he was, that wouldn't give you the right to attack him when his back was turned,” Tomoya countered, stepping up beside Satoshi.
“He's right, you really should withdraw.”
If he could have, Satoshi would have groaned. Instead he settled for squeezing his eyes shut and taking a deep breath. Just what he didn't need – his so-called rival taking his side.
“Who even asked you?” the hiker with the Onix challenged.
“No one. He's a lot of things, but he's too much of a filthy casual to actually be a cheat,” Satoshi's rival said, managing to both scoff and sneer at the same time.
“Not helping,” Satoshi coughed, pushing backwards across the path on his butt and trying to ignore the screaming pain in his foot and ankle.
“He used a Bidoof and won!”
“Which makes him a lucky idiot, not a cheater,” the pink-haired trainer (Satoshi really needed to learn his “rival”'s name, even if he thought the whole rivalry thing was bullshit) said, pulling a Pokeball from his jacket. “Are you backing off or do we need to settle this like trainers?”
“This has nothing to do with you.”
“You attacked a civilian with his back turned right in front of me, so yeah, it kind of does. Tsuzuku, come out.”
The Gyarados that materialized with a challenging roar was far from comforting, though it did make Satoshi very glad he had declined to duel with this guy in the past. Shay was the only Pokemon who might be able to take on a properly trained Gyarados, only zie still wouldn't listen to him.
“Last chance,” his rival said, a smug little smirk curving his lips.
“Still reporting him to the League,” the other hiker muttered.
Satoshi couldn't help a little flinch as the Onix retreated, but at least the guy was leaving. How the other hiker expected to report him without knowing more than his given name … Satoshi wasn't going to ask that question out loud. Now, if the Gyarados and his stupid so-called rival could also leave so he could take a look at his foot.
“Stop moving, idiot casual.”
“I have a name, you know,” Satoshi muttered, tossing a quick glare up at the other trainer before going back to poking at his ankle.
“And a broken foot and oh my god, stop doing that!” his rival insisted, swatting Satoshi's hands at the same time as he crouched down next to him.
“Pretty sure it's just a twisted ankle,” Satoshi mumbled.
“Pretty sure you aren't the one with a dragon who says it's broken in three places, so unless you've got a healer Pokemon shoved up your sleeve, shut up and stop moving.”
More than anything, Satoshi wanted to argue, flinching when a bunch of sticks clattered to the ground next to him, but he didn't have any Pokemon with healing powers. And neither did Tomoya. Although if his foot really was broken, he wasn't sure how they were going to get back to town.
“Um….”
“What? Do you have a healer Pokemon hidden up your sleeve?”
“Well, no,” Tomoya admitted. “But if his foot is broken, shouldn't we be calling an ambulance or something?”
“Stop asking stupid questions so I can splint his foot and then I can fly us to the local hospital. Much faster than waiting for them to get to us, trust me.”
“… why are you helping us? I thought you hated me,” Satoshi said.
“Yeah, well … he threw an Onix at your back,” the pink haired trainer said, pulling a couple of ace bandages from his bag and then starting to go through the sticks.
“Um … okay, well … I'm Satoshi and this is Tomoya.”
The other trainer froze for a second, as if he hadn't been expecting them to introduce themselves. Was it really that weird? Then again, everything about this guy had been at least a little weird from the start, so….
“Koichi. Now stop talking.”
Satoshi bit back an impulse to huff. Still rivals, apparently, as stupid and useless as that felt to him. What did it even get either of them? Satoshi knew he wasn't professional league caliber – he didn't have the time or the team. Koichi had the advantage on him in everything – experience, team building, badges – so why did he persist in acting like Satoshi was some kind of threat? He really didn't get it.
Koichi didn't say another word until he was finished splinting Satoshi's foot.
“All right, well … Tsuzuku, swap! Kyuhyun, flight mode.”
Satoshi couldn't help a little tingle of awe, watching as the Gyarados started glowing, vanishing with a flash to be replaced by a much smaller Tropius. The sauropod-like Pokemon had a harness already strapped in place at least … except it was very clearly a harness meant for one. Oh this … this was not going to be fun.
“What do you want from me? Look, just … cling to his neck and try not to fall off, yeah?”
Satoshi was not feeling terribly reassured about any of this, but he also didn't know what else they could do. So he let Koichi and Tomoya help him up, pressing his face into the leathery brown skin of Kyuhyun's neck and closing his eyes. He had no idea how fast Tropius could fly or how far they were from the closest hospital, but hopefully it wouldn't take long.
Too fast. The answer was Tropius could fly entirely too fast, judging from the way Satoshi felt like he had left half his innards behind him somehow for how quickly Kyuhyun was up and away, wind blasting past them. He clung as tightly as he could, making a mental note that he never wanted to travel this way again.
“You puke on me, I'll never forgive you!”
Satoshi didn't see the use in pointing out that he had nothing in himself to puke, even if it was an otherwise valid point. The way the air was whipping past them, if he did puke, it would probably get on all of them.
Soon enough (and yet not nearly soon enough), he felt his heart trying to crawl out his throat as Kyuhyun made his descent into town. Satoshi still waited to be completely sure they were on the ground again before risking opening his eyes, though. Never. Again.
“Oh my goodness! Sir, are you all right?”
“Not exactly,” he said, giving the nurse his best smile even as Tomoya helped him down. “A dragon I know says it's a broken foot.”
“Oh my! I'll go get a wheelchair right away!”
Satoshi actually shivered a little from the whoosh as Kyuhyun went back into his Pokeball.
“Hey. I still think you're a filthy casual, so don't go thinking this means anything.”
Satoshi just stood there, leaning against Tomoya and watching in some sort of shocked disbelief as Koichi turned and walked away. It wasn't even like anything the other man had just said to him was a surprise, and yet….
“Lady doth protest too much?” Tomoya mumbled, giving Satoshi a thoughtful look.
“You think?”
“I dunno, maybe? He seems like the type.”
“True,” Satoshi agreed, sighing. “He's not wrong about me being a casual trainer.”
“Which just makes it all the weirder.”
“I guess,” he agreed.
Satoshi plastered on another smile when the nurse came back with a wheelchair for him, grateful to be able to sit down again, even if it wasn't all that comfortable. Random chance that he and Koichi had even run into each other today. He wasn't ungrateful for the other man's help, though he still thought he and Tomoya could have handled the situation themselves. Still, total fluke. Didn't mean anything.
And if his foot really was broken in three places, well, what was another setback in his Pokemon journey at this stage? It wasn't a race. Hell, maybe the break would make Koichi forget all about him? A trainer like that had to have better things to do than hanging around Sinnoh, haunting local trails and being weird, right? Maybe, hopefully, Satoshi taking a break would get Koichi to move on.