"...probably? The way it feels like you want to jump, right—or, maybe when you're chopping vegetables it feels like you could chop your finger off on purpose if you wanted to—those things.

"I've read a bunch about what Dark types themselves say about it. And they say it feels like that. It's not what they want, any more than you want to jump or cut your finger off or anything like that. It's just—there was this one blog I read where the author said she gave those thoughts a name, she called it Natsu, and she thought of it as being followed around by this Natsu who kept saying those very very dumb things, like, sure Natsu I could totally trigger a Tauros stampede, you can keep talking to the hand.

"You know?"

"I don't know. I just feel like I don't need help thinking up nasty things."

Nigel rubs Edmund's hair placatingly.

"I'm—what I mean is—I'm not trying to convince you of anything. I just mean that sometimes stuff happens in your brain that's not you, you know? And other than the intrusive thoughts the way the Dark types themselves say it goes is just that they're kind of sarcastic? Which isn't evil."

"I know. It's - I don't know. Maybe I'm being silly. It's also... people look at some types different. You know?"

"That one is... yeah. Kind of another part of why I wanna be Normal. People can think I'm boring 'cause of it and then they'll figure out that I'm not but." Shrug.

"Yeah. You can prove you're not boring pretty easily."

"I think so!"

Suddenly, out of the underbrush comes a Bellsprout. It waves its vines threateningly.

"...not another of yours, right?"

"Very much not!" says Tōkan taking a step back so Charmander is between him and it.

"Go, Nigel! Confuse it!"

Nigel hops down to the ground, horns aglow. There's a flash of psychic energy, and the Bellsprout makes a whining sound before lashing out with its vines.

Tōkan opens his mouth to shout a command but before he can do that his Charmander is already throwing embers at it.

That... will be a problem

It's at least the right attack type for the enemy at hand! It's... not being as careful as it might be about not also scorching Nigel, though. Edmund twitches, struggling between A) the urge to scoop up his 'mon and keep him from getting hurt and B) the knowledge that this is a staggeringly bad idea.

The Bellsprout runs off quickly, not interested in a fight against two 'mon with type advantage. Nigel and Charmander are left in a tense standoff. Nigel growls, more intensely than might be expected from a tiny fairy-creature.

"Charmander." It ignores him, turning to face Nigel and growl. "Charmander," he repeats, more forcefully, and it ignores him again. "Fine, if you want to play it this way."

Tōkan drops on all fours, arches the top of his back up and lifts his butt, pushing his torso as far from the ground as it will go while still being on all fours, and hisses at Charmander.

...and Charmander turns to look at him and hiss back.

This is not an improvement!!!! Edmund tries to figure out if he should tackle Tōkan to make sure he doesn't get burned, and eventually decides to instead just scoop Nigel up to remove at least one chaotic factor from the situation.

("Raaa!" Nigel complains.)

It turns out to be unnecessary. Whatever Tōkan is doing seems to actually be working because after a few seconds of what looks like a stalemate with some hissing and growling from both parts Charmander reluctantly submits and stands down, landing on its butt and looking away.

Tōkan sighs and straightens back up. "Well, that could've gone better."

"From where I'm standing it looks like you managed to prevent our 'mon from fainting each other. By way of an Arcanine impression?"

"...oh, no. That was a Charmander impression. I was doing the Charmander body language for showing dominance so that it would know who's at the top of this particular pecking order."

("Pah," says Charmander.)

"Oh. I suppose that makes more sense. I just think of Charmander as bipedal usually, but of course their battle display is lower to the ground... Were you hoping not to have to assert dominance? Is that why it could've gone better?"

"Yeah. I mean, I thought I'd need to, because Charmander seemed the type, and that kind of thing is why I, um..." Memorised the dialects of every pokémon species he was likely to run into at the start of his career. "Learned how to do this."

"Well, it was more useful than I was prepared to be."

He pets Nigel, who has entirely forgotten the earlier drama and is humming through his horn.

"Anyway, shall we keep going?"

"Yeah, sounds good."

They keep going.

"What's Sako like?" Edmund asks as they walk. "Since you've known her longer."