....
The quiet only lasted a little while.
Before long, the sun slipped lower, and the Pokemon living throughout the forest settled into the last meal of the day.
The Rattata were no exception.
They had thrown a huge feast at noon, and every last one of them had stuffed themselves silly. But after spending the whole afternoon burying Arbok's body and sealing up its den, they were starving all over again.
Dinner turned into another lively affair.
With Arbok gone, the Rattata could gather berries and food without constantly looking over their shoulders.
So this meal was every bit as generous as the midday celebration had been.
Compared with the days right after he woke up, Julian's status in the colony had climbed fast.
At mealtime, every Rattata now made sure the big, fluffy guest of honor was fed first. Only after Julian had eaten did they split into smaller groups and dig into the rest of the food themselves.
As the minutes slipped by, the Rattata gathered together again after the meal.
Those with similar strength levels held exhibition matches for one another.
It helped them work off dinner, and just as importantly, it gave the others something fun to watch.
Naturally, that idea had come from Julian too.
Back when everyone had been racing against the clock to prepare for Arbok, even the time spent digesting after meals had needed to count for something. Julian, drawing on all his old experience as a Trainer, had put that window to use.
Now Arbok was dead, but the colony still could not afford to get lazy.
There would always be stronger enemies somewhere ahead.
So one casual suggestion from Julian had quietly become a new tradition for the whole pack.
After one round of exhibition matches, the Rattata headed back into their burrows to rest.
But for most of them, sleep was not going to come easily tonight.
At noon, Patch had already said that after fighting Arbok, he had felt himself brush right up against the threshold of evolution.
He was expecting to break through tonight.
And when he did, the colony would have a new Raticate leader.
Julian lay on the dry straw bedding in his den and slowly closed his eyes, ready to finally rest.
Then it happened.
A surge of energy rolled through the Rattata territory, thick and powerful enough to fill the entire clearing.
Julian's eyes snapped open.
At his current level of strength, that much energy did not feel inspiring.
It felt dangerous.
It pressed down on him with a strange, invisible weight. His vision swam. His chest tightened as if a heavy stone had been dropped on it. His limbs felt drained all at once, and weakness washed over him so fast he could barely move.
"One Rattata evolving should not gather this much energy," Julian thought with a weak smile. "Looks like tonight has more surprises in store."
He lay there, pinned to his bedding, unable to do much but wait.
It was not until well past midnight that the thick energy finally began to thin and fade from the territory.
The way things were developing had gone beyond even Julian's expectations.
Judging by how dense the energy had been, Patch was definitely not the only one evolving.
Then, just as that surge was finally fading, another wave of power gathered.
It was just as unmistakable, even if it was a little less intense than the first.
One after the other, the bursts arrived like thunder rolling across the same sky.
They carried the same clear meaning.
More Pokemon were evolving.
Julian was not the only one who felt it.
The Rattata felt it even more sharply than he did.
They belonged to the same species, and that kind of pressure from bloodline and evolution was something Julian, despite living in an Audino's body, still did not experience in quite the same way.
So for most of the colony, this was never going to be a restful night.
The younger Rattata did not really understand what they were feeling. They only knew that the air was heavy with something strange and frightening. And with the memory of Arbok's death still fresh in their minds, there was no chance they were going to sleep soundly.
As for the adults, Patch had already warned them that evolution was coming, so they were not especially shocked at first.
Of course, none of them knew Patch would not be the only one evolving tonight.
If they had, they would not have been curled up so calmly inside their burrows, whispering soft reassurances to their pups and trying to coax them to sleep.
...
Morning came wrapped in dense fog.
Mist floated through the clearing and over the grass, hiding the shy Oddish tucked among the weeds. Every now and then, a breeze would stir, lifting fallen leaves from the ground and dropping them onto the leafy tops growing from the Oddish's heads.
Whenever that happened, the Oddish would give a little shake, toss the leaves off, then toddle over on their tiny legs to gather them beneath the nearest tree, turning the fallen leaves into future nourishment.
When Julian woke, the world was still a blur of white haze.
But he could tell it was already fairly late.
He had gone to sleep far too late, and the hunger in his stomach made the timing even clearer.
After stepping outside and stretching, he turned back into his burrow and pulled out the berries he had hidden away over the past couple of days.
Living in Rattata territory had taught him one of their best survival habits.
Always keep food tucked away for later.
His old human experience helped too. He knew how to store the food more carefully than most of the colony did.
If you looked closely, you would notice that Julian's stash was not fresh fruit at all.
They were dried berries.
The upside was obvious. They lasted much longer. Fresh berries could spoil after only a couple of days. The Rattata did not care much about that sort of thing, but Julian still had enough lingering human instincts to worry about upsetting his stomach.
Of course, the downside was just as obvious.
Once dried, the berries had lost nearly all the energy stored inside the fresh fruit.
Fresh berries filled a Pokemon up quickly. The energy spread through the body almost immediately, bringing with it a clear feeling of fullness.
Dried fruit did no such thing.
Eating it was just eating dried fruit. The energy payoff was basically gone.
If Julian ate fresh berries, a dozen or so could leave him satisfied.
The dried ones felt more like absentminded snacking.
They were the Pokemon equivalent of munching sunflower seeds.
Not enough to really fill him up, just enough to keep hunger from becoming a problem.
Even after Julian had dealt with his empty stomach, the territory remained strangely quiet.
Very few Rattata were moving around outside.
Most of the colony was still sound asleep, which made sense. Like Julian, they had not gotten much rest during the night.
And the ones who were up and about were all Rattata that had not evolved.
Julian guessed the newly evolved ones had burned through a huge amount of stamina during the process.
The fastest way to recover from that kind of drain was simple.
Eat and sleep.
So for now, the ones who had evolved were probably still too wiped out to leave their burrows and move around normally.
As it turned out, Julian was exactly right.
It was not until the afternoon, when the fog finally burned away and sunlight once again came filtering down through the trees in broken patches, that the first newly evolved Raticate stepped out of a burrow.
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~Support with 200 PowerStones = 1 Bonus Chapter
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