“Sure,” said Darren. “But there’s not all that much to add. It didn’t take us too long to get to where we are now, and we set up camp with the idea of waiting for you all here. Jade is right, though; the Masquerain in the moonlight are something to see. So, what adventures were you up to?”

  The heaviness listening to their stories had dispelled returned in full force as I was reminded of our experience. After a brief silence, Luca took the lead in telling our part of the tale. I took in what she said with one ear, as I stroked Mankey’s pokeball with my thumb. She was quiet. Part of the reason for Mankey’s and their evolution’s aggression was that they were hypersensitive to stimuli. This manifested in a rage towards anything that excited them. I was thinking her stillness was because she was enjoying the seclusion of the pokeball. Good. The longer she stayed in there, the better. But she needed to eat, and as much as I disliked her, I wasn’t going to starve her. Still, I wasn’t looking forwards to trying to feed her.

  Luca made everything we went through sound far more exciting, and less terrifying than it felt. I agreed with the lavish praise she heaped upon Sunny, but I didn’t know why she was making me out to be brave, and Clair did literally nothing the entire time. It was a better story than I could have told, and when she came to the moment when I caught Mankey, everyone wanted to see her.

  “I have to feed her now anyway,” I said. “But she’s probably going to attack me and ignore the food if I let her out.”

  “Always an issue with Mankey,” said Baltazar. “They’re fiercely loyal, but have funny ways of showing it.”

  “Loyal?” I asked, wholly unconvinced.

  “Oh yes. They see their trainer as the one who bested them in a fight, and their instinct is to attack them to keep them sharp. Or that’s one theory I’ve heard. It’s hard to tell with Mankey. What I do know is they love nuts. Here, put these in a pile. We’ll clear the area and you can release her when we’re all a comfortable distance away.”

  He fetched a bag of assorted nuts from his backpack and handed them to me. Following his instructions, I put them some distance away from the campfire and let Mankey out once I’d backed away myself. She appeared in a red flash next to them. Her veins bulged, and her eyes connected with mine for half a second. Then she saw the nuts and ripped into them in a frenzy. I breathed a sigh of relief and looked at the empty pokeball in my hands. Now was my chance. I only had to break it, and I wouldn’t have to deal with her anymore. Surely, she could find her way back to her fury by herself. I’d wanted a third Pokémon from the Greenforest I could rely on, not the loose cannon Mankey was. I came close to snapping the bond then and there, but in the end, it didn’t feel right to make the decision alone. I tiptoed trepidly towards her until I was about three metres away and crouched down. She gave me a wary side-eye, but continued eating.

  “Mankey, I need you to take this seriously. I caught you by accident, and I’m not sure you would be the best fit for my team, but I would like your thoughts. You can go back to the forest as you were before, or you can come with me, fight battles, and work as part of a team.”

  I didn’t think any of my words were getting through to her, so I mimed breaking her pokeball in front of her. As soon as I did, I received a mouthful of damp fur as she wrapped herself around my head, screeching. I screamed back at her and threw her into a tree. The tussle lasted another thirty seconds before I could recall her. Darren whistled.

  “Junior is pretty clear on her answer to your question,” he said.

  “I guess,” I said, then his words caught up to me. “Wait, who?”

  “LBR Junior,” he said. “I know you don’t usually give names to your Pokémon, but she’s just like you.”

  “No,” I said as Sunny struggled to contain her laughter and the others looked on with bemused expressions. “Just, no.”

  As amusing as this is, said Gallade. You are under no obligation to take Mankey with you. They are stubborn creatures that function an twisted logic. She’ll be fine if you let her go here and now. And as a trainer, you have as much right to refuse her as she has to refuse you. What you cannot do is postpone your decision any longer. The longer you stay with her, and especially once you take her out of her habitat, the more cruel and irresponsible it becomes to release her. Separation is a delicate process.

  I considered his point. It probably would be best to stop any sort of bond from forming. But I felt the weight of Junior’s pokeball in my hand, and I had the feeling it was too late. Darren’s joke nickname for her, as much as I disliked it, was already sticking in my mind. It made it so much harder to not see myself in her. Which was silly. I had much better rein on my temper since I’d set out into the wide world.

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  In any case, Mankey stayed, and as the night set and the moon rose, we gathered on the shore of the lake to watch the Masquerain dance. They rose over the water like smoke. Their wings glinted silver in the moonlight. It was too dark to see their masks clearly, but now and then, a ray fell in such a way to reveal orange ogre faces peering out of the night. I gazed at the carnival, enthralled by their dance. I understood the appeal of wanting to collect the masks. Each was unique, with different patterns for the eyes. I squashed the thought as soon as it emerged. They were pretty, but that didn’t excuse cruelty.

  “Sunny, can I ask a favour?” said Jade, approaching Sunny, who was sitting on a rock next to me. She spoke low, but more so not to break the stillness of the night than to keep their conversation private.

  “Sure,” replied Sunny.

  “It’s about this little guy,” said Jade. She gently collected the Dewpider that was still clinging onto her hair and held him up for Sunny. “This is the guy we saved from the bounty hunter. He’s very brave and adventurous, and he says he wants to explore more of the world. As much as I’d love to take him, my team is full. But you said you specialise in water-types, and Dewpider has agreed that if I vouch for you, he’s okay with travelling with you instead of me. What do you think?”

  “You want to come with me?” asked Sunny. “I guess I can take you, but how about you meet the rest of my team first? You must have seen them before when we were eating, but you should get to know them better before deciding.”

  Sunny proceeded to introduce Dewpider to each of her Pokémon. He was generally well accepted, only Caviar seeming dissatisfied with him, though he didn’t make a big deal out of it either. The only other Pokémon with a problem with him was, embarrassingly enough, Comfey, and that was because Dewpider also seemed to think Hector’s head made for a good seat. After a short screeching match over who could claim the spot, Comfey slunk off sulkily and came back to her old spot around my neck.

  “There, there, girl. Life’s tough,” I said. She squealed in agreement.

  “Congratulations,” I said to Sunny and Dewpider.

  “Thanks,” said Sunny. “Any ideas on a name for him?”

  “I’m probably not the best to ask. Can’t be worse than Junior.”

  “Maybe. Are you actually keeping Junior as her name?”

  I shrugged.

  “Why don’t you name your Pokémon anyway?” asked Sunny. “I mean, I know not everyone does. I just feel it makes things easier.”

  “You’re going to laugh at me if I say,” I replied.

  “I won’t, I promise.”

  “You can, though, it's silly. It feels weird for me to give my Pokémon names. Like, it's like I’m saying they’re mine now. And I know they’re part of my team, but they don’t belong to me, as in, they’re still their own being. I can’t claim them in that way. I’m not their parent, I’m their partner.”

  Not far away, Clair snorted. She was cut off by a swift kick from Luca. She should probably start wearing shin guards by this point. Sunny put her arm around my shoulders, and we watched the Masquerain fly.

  We left early the next morning. I was still feeling queasy. Not ill, exactly, but somehow there was a fuzziness both in my muscles and my brain. I recognised I was putting a lot of stress on my body and not giving it enough time to recuperate, but I didn’t say anything because I’d rather not delay anymore within the Greenforest.

  More than that, I was trying to recapture the energy I had in the morning earlier. I saw a brief vision of who I could be in that period. Confident, motivated, and most importantly, active. The world outside the farm was bigger and more complicated than I had expected. I didn’t understand it before I left, and I barely understood it then. But I was a quick learner. I told myself all this because there was one thing I could do, and I had to psyche myself up for it.

  Feeling ready, I let Junior out of her pokeball. As expected, she came at me with a Scratch. I was building quite a collection already, and I’d rather not add to it. I parried her attack and twisted her around until I had her by the tail. I managed to maintain the positional advantage for a little, but then she got free and grabbed onto my hair. She got a couple of screams out of me before I elbowed her into the snout, dazing her enough for her to let me go.

  I’d done a little bit of research the previous night. Like I’d known, Mankey were fairly unpopular Pokémon among trainers for a variety of reasons, from being difficult to train, to only having one, not particularly impressive, evolution. There wasn’t a huge amount of data on them because of that. They were common enough, however, that my research wasn’t completely fruitless. The best method, or rather, the only method that seemed to create trust between a Mankey and their trainer, was to spar with them often. They needed release from the stress that built up quickly in their little spherical bodies, and the ones they would most fiercely defend were the same ones they would most frequently attack.

  It wasn’t as if she was facing me with everything she had, either. They only lost control of their strength when they were truly angry, and sparring with them would prevent that from happening. As it was, our fight barely slowed down our pace as we marched through the forest. It was a pain, both physically and mentally, but it distracted me from feeling sick, and even if it annoyed some of my companions (and amused others), I was determined to follow through on my decision to train Junior.

  During my research, I’d begun to take it more personally that people said Primeape weren’t great. People said the same thing about Mawhile and Sableye, and they turned out to be champion material. There were all sorts of debates on which Pokémon were worth training. I was a firm believer in the naive philosophy that any Pokémon could be great, and Junior was going to help me prove it.