Moving my chair closer to the heater, I take a look through the window as the snowstorm rages outside of this little Ranger outpost I call my base of operations. I knew winters up here get rough at times, but with this being my first winter as a Pokémon Ranger, this is the first time I'm really seeing just how crazy it gets. A part of me hopes that it'll subside soon so I can do my usual round, but I have the sneaking suspicion that this one's going to be going for quite a while. For now, I simply sit here, warming up and being ready for any calls that might come in. Due to just how vast some of this area is, we Rangers often rely on calls from others to find out whether there's trouble somewhere, so watching the phone is often as important as scouring the area.
Sure enough, I have barely enough time to finish a single cup of hot tea before the phone rings. Steeling myself, I pick it up and answer it, "Pokémon Ranger Station Mountainside, this is Zack speaking, how can I help you?"
The voice coming out of the receiver comes with the telltale grumbling of a motor—truckers, delivery drivers, and the like are the most common callers, as they cover a lot of ground and see a lot of things. "Uh, yeah, I just passed by marker 343 heading towards 342, and I saw something that looked kinda like a Pokémon walking across the road to the right and into the forest, and it looked pretty bad, like it was hurt. Just thought I'd let you guys know," the man says.
"Alright, thanks for your report, we'll look into it," I tell him, and after exchanging goodbyes, I hang up and quickly start getting ready to head out. I then bundle up with my thickest jacket, gloves, and everything, because this snowstorm is something fierce, and if there is a hurt Pokémon out there, even if it's one used to the cold, that Pokémon needs help fast. I head out of the Ranger station and am immediately assaulted by the strong winds and snowdrifts, struggling against it as I make my way over to the vehicle we have for just these cases. Once I'm inside, I'm at least somewhat protected from the elements, and I drive away from the station. The wind is ridiculous, blowing the snow all over the place, but I can at least make out the road and the road markers, so that's good enough to get me where I need to be.
Before long, I manage to make it to the road marker the guy mentioned on the phone and stop the vehicle, getting out and once again having to brave the blizzard. At least with the snow goggles I have, I can look around, but trying to track anything is a complete futility with just how much this storm is blowing everything around, so I just take a guess and head over to the right into the forest past the marker, hoping that I can find something, anything that would help me find this Glaceon. And somehow, despite all the odds being against me, I find something: a cave opening jutting out of a mountain close by. This just has to be it, there's no way it didn't try to find shelter here, unless it was too weak to even make it here... but I can't start thinking about that, this seems like my best shot.
So I make my way into the cave, the fury of the storm slowly fading away as I get deeper inside it, keeping an eye out for anything that might help me. Thankfully, I spot a snow trail on the cave floor, most likely from something tracking it into here that melted. Upon closer inspection, I also spot some drops of blood mixed in with it as well, so whatever it is, it seems to be injured. This just has to be it, I just have to keep going! Following the trail for about a minute, I finally find what I was looking for. There, in front of me, laying in a corner and clearly in pain, is a Glaceon. Looking at it a bit closer, it seems to be a male, and it's hard to miss the small puddle of blood pooling around one of his paws. It seems to have gotten cut in some way, and it looks pretty bad. But that's not the main issue right now to me, because the main issue is going to be getting close to him.
Indeed, I just get a little bit closer and he looks up at me, fiercely hissing. I can practically see his fur freezing up, a defense mechanism Glaceons have that they use to protect themselves from predators—they turn their body temperature so cold their fur freezes, turning it into sharp spikes. It's so strange... Glaceons are rare and practically nonexistent in the wild. Why would one be abandoned in this snowy forest that nobody really visits? This one seems thin and hungry; it must've been here for some time now, and we haven't had any missing Pokémon being reported in the area either, so this has to be an abandonment, right? Who could be so cruel? But I push all those thoughts back to the back of my head. I need to get him to trust me somehow... maybe food? He seems very weak, though even a weak Glaceon can cause a lot of damage with those frozen fur spikes, so I need to be careful.
Looking at the pitiful creature in front of me, I figure the best way to go about this is