I must have stood there, grinning like a mad man, for a few minutes before Anna eventually decided to clear her throat. Glancing over my shoulder, I smiled sheepishly at her half-amused and half-impatient expression.

“Sorry, it’s just… It’s been a while,” I said after a moment, taking one last look at the view before making my way towards where she was waiting. “So, I’m not great with distances, but I could have sworn there was at least half a day's travel from here to Oreburgh,” I said, pointedly glancing at the setting sun.

She agreed quickly, “Yeah, that’s about right. We’re gonna have to camp just a little farther down the path, and we should get there around midday.” She glanced over at me with a raised eyebrow, “I kinda assumed that wouldn't be an issue? What with you spending a lot of time in there,” She jerked a thumb back at the cave entrance.

I shrugged, “It’s not. I’m just a little eager, I guess. But I can wait for tomorrow if I must.”

“Excellent. I’ll introduce you to the rest of my team when we stop for the night. Maybe I’ll even get to see the mysterious pokémon that has been helping you out, hmm?” She couldn’t quite keep herself from showing her disappointment when I just shrugged.

The two of us walked down the rough path as the light slowly died. Eventually, it was getting dark enough to start warranting getting out my lantern, and Anna decided it was time to find out camp for the night. After another few minutes finding the best site for that, I watched in interest as she released the rest of her team.

A relatively tall and impressively muscular Machop came out first. The height and muscle tone made me suspect it was close to evolution. It looked at me and talked with Aro for a few moments before shrugging. Immediately after came an Azurill, whose size again made me suspect it was close to evolution. This one quickly bounced over towards me.

I smiled at the little pokémon, and after it inspected me for a moment or so, it grinned happily and started joyously bouncing around the campsite, making Anna roll her eyes while smiling.

Once she was done releasing her team, she looked over towards me. I rolled my eyes at the obvious curiosity before letting out a loud sigh. I had to feed them anyway, so why not was my reasoning in my head.

“Alright, I actually have two pokémon. I’m going to release the one I… Well, I didn’t catch them. They really chose to come with but whatever.” I shrugged, “Anyways, both of my pokémon could be considered somewhat intimidating, so I just wanted to warn you about that.”

Anna raised an eyebrow, “Okay… That’s odd, but alright. Come here, guys!” She called out to her pokémon, who quickly gathered closer to her, giving me plenty of room to release my pokémon.

I hesitated for a moment but ultimately decided to hell with it. I quickly released Adamant first. They appeared out of the red beam of energy, their size bigger than any of Anna’s pokémon except the Machop. I watched with interest as Adamant’s brilliant red eye looked curiously at Anna and her team before floating around, investigating our little campsite.

Anna just stared at Adamant for a moment before slowly nodding. “Okay, I can kinda see it. That’s not too bad, though. I mean, you’re lucky as hell, but not too bad.”

I frowned in confusion, “Lucky as hell? What do you mean?”

Anna glanced at me in disbelief, “Wait, you don’t know?” When I just stared at her confused, she laughed in disbelief again. “Metagross, Beldum’s final evolution, is to Hoenn what Garchomp is to Sinnoh. They’re ridiculously strong, and you just stumbled across one that decided to come with you?!”

I blinked, “Oh….” Even I could tell how surprised my expression must have been. Every region had our sort of signature pokémon and then our strongest. For Sinnoh, our signature pokémon was a Shinx, but our strongest was Garchomp and its line. I had known that Beldum’s evolutionary line was a strong one from Hoenn, but I didn’t realize it was considered their strongest!

Anna snorted, “Yeah, oh!” She shook her head, still glancing at where Adamant was floating around curiously. “Alright, let’s see this mystery pokémon that saved your ass.”

I hesitated for a moment, not sure how she’d react to Ladon being part of Unova’s strongest pokémon line. And that’s not even mentioning his King nature! Eventually, I sighed and released him from his luxury ball. After a short second, Ladon formed into his now familiar but still massive four foot and seven-inch height. He stretched his neck for a few moments, glancing at Anna and her team before simply laying down beside me, keeping an eye on where Adamant was. I had a feeling Ladon’s role in my party would be that of a guardian, watching over my other team members.

Looking back to Anna, I stifled the grin that wanted to stretch across my face. I was admittedly used to Ladon’s huge size, so seeing not just her’s but also her pokémon’s dumbfounded expression was nothing but funny to me.

Anna stammered after a few seconds, “But– but what?! How?! I just—” She cut herself off, just staring at me. Her Azurill hid behind Aro while the Machop stared at Ladon with a mix of wariness and eagerness. After a minute of quiet staring, I shifted uncomfortably.

“Anna..?” I spoke hesitantly, trying to interrupt her stare.

“You lucky motherfucker,” was her only reply. I dipped my head in acknowledgment.

“Trust me, I know. Luck was the biggest reason I’m still here. You won’t find me denying it.”

Anna sighed after a moment, almost sounding defeated in a way. “That’s not a normal Deino, is it?”

I smiled as Ladon’s head perked up for a moment and glanced over towards us for a moment. “No, he’s not. He’s a King.” I waited for a moment before continuing, “Anna, meet Ladon. Ladon, this is Anna.”

Anna threw her hands up in resignation before shrugging and just waving to Ladon. Ladon just looked at her for a few moments before returning to watching Adamant float around.

“And over there is Adamant. They’re pretty curious about… Well, everything,” I gestured towards Adamant as they flitted back and forth, looking at everything around our camp.

“Well, I was worried about my trip through Mt. Coronet being boring….” Anna muttered to herself, barely loud enough for me to hear. I couldn’t resist the smirk that crossed my face. The two of us talked a little more, but eventually, we simply brought out food for everyone and turned in for the night.

When I woke up the next day to sunlight on my face, I came to wakefulness faster than I ever had in the mountain. After a quick morning meal for everyone, we packed up camp and started making our way towards Oreburgh. I was planning to leave Ladon and Adamant out as we traveled, but when Anna explained that we’d probably come across others on the path, I decided to return them. I wasn’t unaware of how rare, and eventually, powerful my pokémon were after all, no need to let everyone know.

After just an hour of travel, Anna was proven right as we started passing people traveling back the way we came. When I asked Anna why we hadn’t seen anyone the night before, she explained the route.

Because of the roughly half-day of the path before entering Mt. Coronet proper, almost everyone set out in the first half of the day and camped for the night in either the first or second cavern that dotted the underground route beneath the mountain. Anna had just been the last one of the day and was running behind.

Slowly, the cityscape of Oreburgh grew larger and closer. I could see the rough gravel paths that made up the roads within the city. The buildings were made from a grey stone that made the city slightly dull to look at but at the same time fit the city in a way I couldn’t quite put my finger on.

There were only a few splashes of color in the grey buildings throughout the city. One of the buildings had a blue strip of stone running around it, indicating that it held the city’s Pokémart. The Pokécenter building had a similar red strip of stone, making it obvious as well. Matching the previous two was a much larger building with three stripes of green stone to match its three floors, showing that it was the city’s Ranger Station.

It was the last building that caught my attention, though. With a rounded arena shape, the grey stone was complemented with a brown pattern resembling rocks falling across its walls. I could only assume that the massive building that dominated an entire block of a street was the Oreburgh City Gym. Once I tore my eyes away from the recognizable buildings, I looked over to see Anna waiting for me. I mumbled an excuse that she waved away before the two of us began descending the last hill that had been giving us such a good view into Oreburgh.

After twenty minutes of walking, the two of us passed the first building of Oreburgh City, making me relax fully as I accepted that I really was no longer alone and in the wilderness.

After another few minutes of walking, Anna spoke up, “We should head to the Rangers, let them know what happened, all that.”

“Yeah, that makes sense,” I agreed quickly, “Besides, I want to see if they can find Nathan for me. I wanna give him back his stuff and also explain what happened….”

I could see her glance at me for a moment, “You know, you should probably be ready in case this Nathan guy is upset….”

Frowning, I asked, “What? Why would he be upset that I’m fine?”

“Oh, not about that,” She hurried to correct herself as we dodged someone who wasn’t looking, “I mean about your Dei— Ladon. I mean, from the sounds of it, he got himself a Deino egg, which is no small effort, that also happened to be a King.” She shrugged as I started to understand where she was coming from, “And then, through some weird twist of fate, it hatched and imprinted on you instead. The guy’s probably not gonna be thrilled about it, even when if he gets reimbursement of some kind from the Rangers or something.”

I grimaced as I thought about her point. “But, they won’t take Ladon away, right?”

She looked over to see my worried expression before shaking her head, “Nah, you don’t have to worry about that. Ladon imprinted on you; the only way he’d obey another trainer is if you told him to. So even if they wanted to, it wouldn’t be worth it.”

I nodded slowly, not really happy with it but not seeing a way to change it. “Well, I’ll just hope he cares more about being the cause of my survival than about losing a potential pokémon,” I said as I decided not to worry about what I couldn't change.

Anna hummed softly before evidently deciding not to say anything, simply guiding me towards the Ranger station. I might have seen generally where it was from the hill outside the city, but I was glad for her help navigating the streets.

I’d heard Oreburgh was one of the smaller cities in Sinnoh, but it was still much bigger than I thought it would be. Sure, Crown City, where I was from, was much larger, but I was so used to it I didn’t even really notice. I wondered what it was like for Trainers from the smaller towns in the regions, traveling through the cities so often.

It didn’t take long for the two of us to find ourselves in front of the Ranger’s building. Walking in, I looked over the interior quickly. The entrance lobby was a large square with two doors on either side of the room. Towards the back was a line of three desks with a receptionist sitting behind them, working away on the computers in front of them. A few rangers in their distinctive green uniforms passed through the lobby every once in a while, making the building seem busy.

Anna led me towards the third desk, towards the right. When the woman behind the desk looked up, smoothing her brown hair behind her ear, she asked kindly, “Hello, how can the Rangers help?”

Anna glanced at me for a second, something the woman seemed to have noticed. “I was just starting to enter Route 207 when I came across Daniel here. He apparently was victim to a disrupted teleport that dropped him in Mt. Coronet.”

The woman blinked in surprise for a moment before looking me over. I shifted in place, a little self-conscious of my worn-down clothing. “I see, that’s definitely something to bring to us.” She turned to address me, “Is there anything else that we should know right away?”

I nodded quickly, “Um, yeah. There was a trainer, Nathan something. He helped me out,” I gestured towards the bag on my back, “This was his. We got separated by a cave-in; if you can find him, he probably can help? I think he had an Alakazam, Charizard, Roserade, and a Blissey. At least going by the pokéfood in the bag.”

She nodded while typing faster than I’d ever seen before, “Yes, that should help quite a bit. We’ll see about contacting him then.” She looked up as one of the side doors opened and a middle-aged Ranger started walking towards us. He was tall with short brown hair, his face creased as though from smiling. “Ranger Dilan here will guide you to some of our rooms in the back where we can get the full story. Is that alright?”

Anna and I both agreed before exchanging a few pleasantries with Ranger Dilan. We followed behind as he led us through the door and up to the building’s second floor. Once there, he guided us through some cubicles and into an expansive lounge-like room dominated by a coffee table and two couches.

He must have seen the confusion on my face as I sat on the couch beside Anna because he chuckled, “Yeah, we find that it helps to make anyone we’re talking with comfortable. Especially if they survived something like it seems you did.” I mouthed an ‘oh’ in understanding, making him smile gently as he sat down.

He let out a long breath before smiling at the both of us once more, “Alright, how about you go first? Let’s get your part of the story out of the way first, then dive into the rest.” He said while looking towards Anna, who promptly began describing what happened from her perspective.