The "Rhydon" I had identified in my panic turned out to be something much smaller, but somehow infinitely more terrifying. As the dust settled and the creature fully emerged from the brambles, I realized my Pokédex knowledge had been slightly betrayed by the sheer, visceral reality of the thing.
It wasn't a Rhydon. It was a Pinsir.
Now, in the games, Pinsir is a cool Bug-type. In real life, it's a three-hundred-pound nightmare made of jagged exoskeleton and a pair of horns that look like they were designed by a medieval torture specialist. Its eyes weren't just red; they were glowing with the kind of "Get Off My Lawn" energy that could power a small city.
And then I saw it. The Pinsir wasn't looking at me. It was looking at the Oran Berry in my hand—the one I had just taken a giant, juicy bite out of.
"Oh," I whispered, the blue juice suddenly tasting like regret. "This was your lunch, wasn't it?"
The Pinsir let out a screech that sounded like metal grinding against metal. It didn't care about my apologies. It didn't care that I was a displaced interdimensional traveler. It just saw a hair-less ape and a glowing flower-fairy eating its favorite snack.
"Run," I told my legs. "Legs, this is the part where you do the running!"
I didn't wait for a second invitation. I tucked the Flabébé under my arm like a precious football and bolted.
"Sorry! My bad! I'll pay you back in Poké-dollars! Just give me a bank account number!" I screamed over my shoulder as I scrambled through the tall grass.
The Pinsir was surprisingly fast. For something that looked like a bipedal beetle, it moved with the momentum of a runaway freight train. Thump-thump-thump. The ground vibrated with every step it took.
I hit the edge of the meadow, diving into the denser trees of Eterna Forest. My plan was simple: use the trees as a slalom course. A giant beetle with massive horns shouldn't be able to maneuver through tight spaces, right?
Wrong. I heard a terrifying CRACK behind me. I risked a glance and saw the Pinsir simply smashing through a sapling like it was a toothpick. It wasn't going around the obstacles; it was deleting them.
"Okay, so it's a tank. It's a literal bug-tank," I panted. My lungs were beginning to burn. My suburban lifestyle had definitely not prepared me for a high-stakes marathon through a jungle.
Suddenly, the Pinsir stopped. It planted its feet, and the air around it began to shimmer with a jagged, brown energy.
"Is that... Stone Edge?!" I wheel-ed around, my eyes nearly popping out of my head. "Since when do wild Pinsir know high-level Rock moves? Is this a Boss Fight? Am I in a Dark Souls mod?!"
Jagged pillars of sharp rock erupted from the ground, flying toward me like prehistoric missiles. I did the only thing I could—I threw myself to the left, tumbling into a patch of ferns.
SHINK! SHINK!
The stones whistled past. One of them grazed my thigh, tearing through my cargo pants and leaving a burning trail of red. I let out a yelp, rolling across the dirt and coming up shaking.
"Ow... ow, ow, ow," I hissed, clutching my leg. The adrenaline was the only thing keeping me standing. "That's not fair! That's a range attack! You're a Bug-type, stick to biting things!"
The Pinsir lurched forward, its horns opening wide like a pair of hydraulic shears. It was barely ten feet away. I closed my eyes, bracing for the inevitable crunch.
"Sorry, Mom," I whispered. "Tell the internet I died doing something cool, like saving a kingdom... not being turned into a human sandwich by a beetle."
The Fairy's Secret Weapon
Suddenly, I felt a violent tug on my waist. I wasn't being crushed; I was being pulled.
I flew backward, my feet leaving the ground as I was dragged through the air. I landed hard against a thick oak tree, five meters away from where I had just been standing. The Pinsir's horns slammed into the spot where my torso had been, burying themselves deep into the soft earth.
"What the...?" I blinked, looking down.
A glowing, emerald-green vine was wrapped firmly around my belt. It wasn't coming from the trees. It was coming from the tiny, determined Flabébé sitting on my shoulder.
"Pei! Pei-Flabé!" the little one chirped, its tiny face set in a look of fierce protectiveness.
"Vine Whip?" I gasped. "You know Vine Whip? But... you're a Flabébé! You're supposed to just look pretty and smell like spring!"
The little Fairy-type didn't have time for my shock. It pointed urgently at the Pinsir, which was currently struggling to wiggle its massive horns out of the dirt. It looked like a very angry, very stuck forklift.
"Right! Heroic retreat! Let's go!"
I scrambled up, ignoring the stinging pain in my leg. We ran as fast as my limp would allow, putting as much distance as possible between us and the "Bug-Boss."
But the forest wasn't finished with us.
A massive explosion of dirt and wood behind us told me the Pinsir was free. And this time, it was beyond angry. It was insulted. Its eyes were blood-red, and a sphere of terrifying, crackling white energy began to form between its horns.
My heart stopped.
"You have got to be kidding me," I whimpered. "First Stone Edge, now Hyper Beam? Did this thing graduate from the Lance School of Overpowered Monsters?"
"Flabébé! The tree! Do the vine thing again! The Encore!" I yelled.
The vine shot out, hooking onto a high branch and swinging us sideways just as a pillar of pure, destructive white light incinerated the path we had been on. The heat was so intense it singed the hair on the back of my neck. A massive trench was carved into the earth, and a boulder fifty yards away simply disintegrated.
"Okay," I panted, sliding down the trunk of the tree. "That was... that was a lot. Flabébé, take us up! Get us into the canopy!"
The little Pokémon tried. It let out a weak, pathetic "Pei..." and slumped against my head. The glow on its flower was fading.
"Stamina," I realized, a cold pit forming in my stomach. "You're exhausted. Carrying a full-grown teenager twice is too much for a tiny thing like you."
I looked back. The Pinsir was huffing, its body glowing with a faint yellow aura as it recovered from the massive energy drain of the Hyper Beam. I had maybe ten seconds.
"Change of plans," I said, my voice shaking. I looked at the little Flabébé. It had saved my life twice. It was just a baby, really. It shouldn't die here because I was too slow to escape a beetle.
"Listen to me, little one," I said, cupping it in my hands. "You can fly. I can't. My leg is toasted, and I'm basically a giant Oran Berry for that thing."
The Pinsir began to move again, its steps slow and menacing.
"I'm happy I met you," I said with a weak, watery smile. "Even if it was only for an hour. Now, go! Fly up high! It can't catch you in the leaves!"
With every bit of strength I had left, I launched the Flabébé upward, toward the safety of the thick forest canopy.
"RUN, YOU TINY MARSHMALLOW!" I screamed.
"PEI! PEI-FLABÉ!" the Pokémon cried out, reaching its tiny hands toward me as it tumbled through the air. It tried to summon a vine, but only a few sparks of green light flickered before failing.
I turned back to the Pinsir. It was right there. It lowered its head, the white light of a second Hyper Beam beginning to gather.
So this was it. No Gym Badges. No Elite Four. Just a messy end in a forest nobody knew I was in. I closed my eyes, a weirdly calm thought crossing my mind: I hope that Oran Berry gives it indigestion.
"Sorry, Mom. I really should have finished my chores before I transmigrated."
The sound of the Hyper Beam firing was deafening—a high-pitched whine that signaled the end.
The Silhouette in the Smoke
"Staraptor! Quick Attack, then use Protect!"
The voice wasn't mine. It was sharp, authoritative, and sounded like it belonged to someone who actually knew what they were doing.
BOOM!
A blur of grey and white feathers slammed into the Pinsir a split second before the beam fired, knocking its aim into the sky. Then, a shimmering, green hexagonal barrier erupted in front of me, absorbing the residual shockwave.
I opened one eye. Then the other.
The smoke cleared, revealing a massive bird standing between me and the Pinsir. Its crest was tipped with red, and its eyes were sharp and predatory. A Staraptor. A big one.
Behind the bird stood a man in sturdy hiking gear, his arms crossed, looking entirely unimpressed by the rampaging Pinsir.
"Are you alright, kid?" the man asked, his voice booming through the clearing.
The sheer rush of relief was too much. The adrenaline that had been holding my shattered nerves together evaporated instantly. The pain in my leg finally caught up to me, and the world began to tilt.
"Yeah..." I slurred, my knees buckling. "I think... I think I'm allergic to beetles..."
The last thing I saw before the darkness took me was a tiny, blue-flower-holding Pokémon diving out of the sky and landing on my chest, sobbing its little heart out.
"Pei... Pei..."
"Don't cry," I whispered, though I wasn't sure if I said it out loud. "We... we made it."
Then, the world went black.