Chapter 10 – What He Can Do
Ryan had one day off a week.
He'd spent the first three days at the Pokemon Center learning the rhythm of the place check-ins, restocking, the particular patience required when a trainer came in at closing time with a Pokemon that needed immediate attention and an attitude like that was everyone else's problem. Theo had shown him the shortcuts. Joy had shown him the parts Theo had conveniently left out.
It was good work. Steady and simple and it gave him time to think.
But today was his day off and he'd been planning it since Tuesday.
He left the lodge before the town was properly awake, Deino's Pokeball on his belt, a bag with water and some food over one shoulder. The eastern edge of Sandgem gave way to trees quickly not the dense forest of Route 201 but something lighter, the kind of woodland that existed in the space between a town and the world beyond it. Enough cover. Enough space.
He walked until the sound of the town behind him faded to nothing.
Then he stopped and looked around at the trees and the light coming through them in long early morning slants and thought right, then.
He unclipped the Pokeball and released Deino.
The red light faded and Deino appeared on the ground beside him, head already up, nostrils working immediately. He'd gotten better at this over the past few days the moment after release used to take longer, that adjustment period where he processed where he was and whether it was safe. Now it was almost instant. His head found Ryan within a second and the set of his shoulders settled.
He looked better. That was the first thing Ryan noticed when he'd let him out each evening at the lodge the trembling was gone, the tight held quality that had been in every part of him when he'd walked into Rowan's lab. He still startled at sudden sounds and he still kept his distance from anyone who wasn't Ryan, but the constant low-level fear that had run through him like a current had quieted down to something manageable.
Ryan crouched down to his level.
"Okay," he said. "Just us today."
Deino's ear twitched.
Ryan picked up a small stone from the ground and turned it over in his hand. He'd been thinking about this how you trained a Pokemon who couldn't see. Everything he knew about training from the games assumed sight as a baseline. Target this, aim there, watch for the opening. None of that worked here.
But Deino didn't navigate by sight. He navigated by everything else.
Ryan stood up and walked about ten meters to his left, moving slowly so Deino could track him by sound. Then he tossed the stone against a tree trunk to his right a sharp crack of impact.
Deino's head snapped toward it instantly.
"Good," Ryan said.
He did it again from a different position. Then again, closer. Then further. Deino tracked every one without hesitating, head moving with a precision that had nothing clumsy about it. He wasn't guessing. He was reading.
Ryan walked back toward him. "You already know where everything is don't you."
Deino made his low rumbling sound.
"Right." Ryan picked up a larger stone. "Let's try something else."
He set the stone on top of a fallen log about eight meters away, then walked back to Deino and crouched beside him. He tapped the ground twice in the direction of the log something he'd started doing over the past few days, a direction signal Deino had picked up on faster than Ryan had expected.
Deino's head turned toward the log.
"Tackle," Ryan said.
Deino went.
Not fast not yet but direct. He crossed the distance between them in a straight line, adjusting his path twice with small corrections as he read the terrain, and hit the log with his shoulder hard enough that the stone bounced off and the log shifted sideways in the dirt.
Ryan stared at it for a second.
That log was solid. Old growth, heavy, half buried. Deino had hit it and moved it.
He looked at Deino, who had already turned back toward him, head raised, waiting.
"You're stronger than you look," Ryan said.
Deino's tail moved once. Ryan had started to think of that as the equivalent of a shrug.
They worked like that for a while Ryan placing targets by sound, Deino finding them and hitting them, both of them learning the language of it together. Ryan moved further away. Deino adjusted. Ryan changed the signals. Deino figured them out. It was less like training and more like a conversation, back and forth, each of them reading the other.
Then Ryan tried something different.
He found a clearing where the trees thinned out, walked to the center of it, and just stopped. No stone, no signal, no target.
"Dragon Rage," he said. "Whenever you're ready."
Deino stood at the edge of the clearing and did nothing for a long moment.
Ryan waited.
He'd read that Dragon Rage was one of the earliest moves a Deino could produce more instinct than technique, pure draconic energy pushed outward. But instinct and conscious use were different things and he wasn't sure Deino had ever used it deliberately.
Deino lowered his head.
The air changed. Ryan felt it before he saw it a pressure, something building, the particular stillness that came before something released. Then Deino opened his mouth and the energy came out in a focused burst that hit the ground ten meters away and left a scorch mark in the dirt the size of Ryan's spread hand.
Ryan looked at the scorch mark.
Then at Deino.
Deino lifted his head. Made his rumbling sound, quieter than usual, like he was surprised at himself.
"Yeah," Ryan said. "Me too."
They took a break after that Ryan sitting against a tree with water, Deino nearby eating the berries Ryan had packed, apparently having decided that wild berries from Ryan's hand were acceptable in a way that wild berries from anywhere else weren't. Ryan watched him eat and thought about the Dragon Breath he hadn't tried yet and whether now was the right moment or whether he was pushing too fast.
He was still thinking about it when the Starly landed in the branches above them.
Not unusual. Birds were everywhere in Sinnoh. Ryan glanced up and went back to his water.
Then two more landed. Then four.
Deino's head came up.
The Starly dropped from the branches all at once not attacking, more like mobbing, the particular aggressive curiosity of territorial birds who had decided something in their space needed investigating. They swooped low, loud, wings beating close to Ryan's head.
Ryan raised an arm to cover his face.
Deino moved.
He didn't make a sound. He just stepped between Ryan and the nearest Starly and opened his mouth and the Dragon Breath came out not a burst like the Dragon Rage, something steadier, a stream of dark energy that scattered the flock immediately. The Starly cleared the clearing in about two seconds, noise fading into the distance.
Silence.
Ryan lowered his arm.
Deino stood in front of him, sides rising and falling, head still raised and tracking the treeline for stragglers. Protecting. Not because Ryan had asked. Just because.
Ryan looked at the back of his head for a moment.
"Dragon Breath," he said quietly. "You've had that the whole time."
Deino's ear turned back toward him.
"You could have told me," Ryan said.
Deino turned around and made his rumbling sound, completely unbothered, and walked back toward the berries like nothing had happened.
Ryan laughed. Short and quiet, mostly to himself.
He sat back against the tree and looked up at the light through the branches and felt something he hadn't felt since he'd woken up in the forest not happy exactly, not yet, but something adjacent to it. Something that had a direction.
He looked at Deino.
Deino had finished the berries and had positioned himself between Ryan and the treeline without making a thing of it.
"You learned Dragon Breath in one go," Ryan said. Not a question. Just saying it out loud because it needed saying. "From watching one attempt. In an actual situation."
He thought about what that meant. Not just the speed of it the fact that it had come out clean, controlled, in exactly the right direction at exactly the right moment. That wasn't luck. That was something else.
He filed it away.
They trained for another two hours after that. Dragon Rage again, more controlled this time, Deino adjusting the output after Ryan's reactions. The beginning of something that might become Focus Energy Deino going still and concentrated before a move in a way that hadn't been there in the morning. Small things. Building things.
By the time Ryan called it and they started back toward town Deino was walking directly at his left side, close enough that Ryan could feel the warmth of him, navigating the path back through the trees with the easy confidence of something that had already memorised the route on the way in.
Ryan glanced down at him.
One week ago he'd been dying on a quiet street with his phone in his pocket and nowhere to be.
He kept walking.