“Ember!” Fletchling spat an ember at Thorondor, who used Agility to barrel roll around the fire type attack before closing in and charging at Fletchling with a Zen Headbutt.
The robin Pokemon met Thoron’s attack with a Flame Charge. The two crashed into each other, pausing midair as each side struggled to gain ground.
“Use your claws!” I advised the eaglet.
Thorondor reached out with his talons, trying to grapple the smaller bird, but Fletchling’s trainer called for it to Aerial Ace away before sending a series of Air Slashes at Thoron.
This time the eaglet wasn’t able to dodge all of the attack, and there was a small puff of feathers as one of the Air Slashes hit him and sent him tumbling in the air.
The smaller bird darted in for an attack with Flame Charge.
“Redirect it with Tailwind!” I ordered.
Thoron created a gust of wind that was just strong enough to blow Fletchling off balance, giving him time to recover and get out of the way before he used Tailwind again to boost his speed. He was making good use of the move he had learned a few days ago.
I nodded approvingly before shouting, “Grapple! Get in there fast!”
“Get out of the way!” Fletchling’s trainer shouted in response.
Using Agility, Thoron swooped in before Rufflet could gather the energy for another Aerial Ace and grabbed the little robin in his claws.
Fletchling squawked in pain as Thoron gripped it hard, making sure to dig his talons in. He still hadn’t learned Crush Claw yet, but due to training during the past few days, his claws were much stronger than before and still able to deal damage.
“Burn it!” Fletchling’s trainer motioned a ball throw.
Fletchling spat a bunch of Embers into Thoron’s face, making the eagle screech in surprise as his face was burned by hot coals, and his grip loosened enough for the smaller bird to wriggle free.
“Aerial Ace!”
“Zen Headbutt.” I countered, hoping for a flinch.
Fletchling circled around and darted straight at Thoron. The eaglet mirrored his opponent’s moves, creating a shield of psychic type energy in front of his head. The two collided and passed each other.
Both had dealt and received damage, but it wasn’t enough to create an opening for another attack. My eyes narrowed as I observed the two birds. They were both tiring out, so the next big exchange would decide the battle.
“Air Slash! Wear Rufflet down!”
“Fletch!” Fletching chirped in response to its trainer as it sent a barrage of Air Slashes at Thorondor, who was able to avoid the first two slashes before being hit.
Thorondor squeaked as he was thrown by the hit, but quickly recovered. There was a glint in his eyes as Fletchling shot another barrage of Air Slashes at him.
“RUFF–LET!” The eaglet screeched as he copied Fletchling’s wing movements and shot his own Air Slash. The newly learned move wasn’t as powerful or as precise as Fletchling’s, but it was enough to negate the incoming Air Slash.
I pumped my fist in the air, “Yes! Fantastic job Thoron! Look at you go!”
Flethling’s trainer issued another order as I shouted encouragement to Thoron. The robin Pokemon chirped as it fired up another Flame Charge. It was taking a bit longer to use the move than before in order to intensify its flames.
Can’t let them have all of the momentum. “Tailwind boost! Then Zen Headbutt!”
Thorondor boosted his speed before covering his head with a layer of psychic-type energy and charging.
“Rufflet!” Thorondor screeched a war cry. Fletching chirped in response as it charged, “Fletch!”
There was a small explosion midair as the two collided. Then a streak of smoke fell from the impact area and bounced after hitting the ground.
Both birds laid on the ground in a tangle of wings and feathers, both of their eyes spinning. It was a tie.
Fletchling’s trainer and I both returned the birds to their Pokeballs before shaking hands and going on our merry ways.
I woke Thoron with a revive, which worked kind of like those smelling salts used to wake up an unconscious person. The eaglet woke up with a snort, fluffing up his feathers and shaking himself as he tried to get the harsh smell out of his nose.
I treated him with a potion and fed him some cut up sitrus berries that I had prepared that morning.
Thoron eagerly devoured the berry, but began complaining about how he didn’t win. Winnie (who was disguised as a Kantonian Ninetales today) reassured him, “battles aren’t all about winning, and besides, you learned a new move!”
Rotom gave the eaglet a cheerful “bzzt!” of support and flashed the success baby meme on its screen.
“Ruff rufflet!” Thorondor preened his feathers and grandly waved a wing, “Ruff rufflet ruff ruff rufflet.”
Rotom sighed and flew back into my pocket while Winnie rolled his eyes. After a few days with the little fella, I could tell when he was about to go on a rant about his noble lineage. I really hope he grows out of this.
I quickly redirected the topic of conversation as I gestured for Rufflet to hop onto my shoulder.
“So Thoron, now that you’ve learned a ranged move, I’ll have you start training that with Glados. I also want you to keep at it with your training to learn Crush Claw, you almost have it down.”
During the past few days of travelling, I had assigned Thorondor to finding and breaking down large rocks or logs with Zen Headbutt into smaller pieces. Then he’d break these pieces by crushing them in his claws. He’d already gotten the hang of adding a bit of normal type energy into the attack, but it wasn’t nearly enough for it to be the real move.
Other than trying to learn Crush Claw, Glados helped the eaglet improve his flying by shooting Shadow Balls at him and having him dodge them midair. The bird Pokemon’s normal typing made it so that even if he got hit he wouldn’t have taken any damage.
I’d have to admit, despite his tendency to brag for hours about how noble he was, he had earned the team’s respect with his diligent training and knowing to shut up when Sahara began to look annoyed.
Speaking of the landshark. Despite being eager for a battle, Sahara had scared away almost every challenger we had encountered. I didn’t blame them since most of the trainers on Route Four were novice trainers, but the landshark was rather disappointed at the lack of action.
The only other Pokemon she had battled in the past week so far were a Pyroar, who was too proud to back down from a fight despite its trainer balking at Sahara’s challenge roar, and a newly evolved and overconfident wild Noivern looking to prove its own strength.
Basically it was like taking an end game boss to the beginner area.
Winnie had much more luck finding opponents to battle. He experimented with a few other type energies, and had found that it was easier to make the opposing Pokemon think that it had been burnt or frozen than poisoned or paralyzed. Though he could paralyze them with fear if he was able to correctly guess his opponent’s fears. He and the rest of the ghost gang made a game out of psychoanalyzing people and Pokemon to try to guess what they’d be most afraid of.
They’re gonna be absolute menaces in the future if they somehow learn to predict a target’s fears just by observing them for a few minutes.
Aaaaand there hadn’t been anyone annoying enough for me to sicc Kaiju on them, so he had to stay in his dusk ball in busier areas of the route, lest he eat some young trainer’s newly caught Fletchling and I get in trouble for being unable to control him.
He was getting better with his impulse control, but we had a long road ahead. I had messaged a few people who worked at Opelucid Gym and they had basically told me to keep up with the discipline and that teen dragons would grow out of their wild behavior once they evolved as long as the trainer kept up with reinforcing proper behaviors.
Zweilous were notorious for being hard to control, so as long as I was being responsible with Kaiju, I was doing a good job. That was pretty reassuring.
Otherwise, the past week had been normal. Just walking down Route Four, training, the occasional battles, and hanging out with my crew. I got a call or two from Justine and talked with Kenta about his progress in the Indigo League. He had gotten a Bagon from his uncle and was raising it in hopes of being able to mega evolve it once it was fully evolved. Being part of Johto’s most influential clan gave him almost instant access to a Keystone and Salamencite once he proved himself worthy of it.
Lucky bastard.
I could’ve gotten through Route four a lot faster, but I wasn’t in any hurry. I took my time battling other trainers and having the ghosts go out and do a sweep of the surrounding area at night to search for mega stones, but they didn’t find any, which was to be expected, but it didn’t hurt to look.
Once we got to Santalune City, Glados made use of the Pokemon center’s free wifi and began downloading a shit load of publicly available high ranking VS recordings to analyze. Rotom came up with the idea to analyze other Pokemon battles and using the data for future battles and was quite happy to help out its bestie.
I had been considering challenging the Santalune Gym to get in some more battle exp for Thorondor, but all of the available sessions were completely booked out for two months, it was the most popular gym for new trainers in Kalos to stop by, so I scrapped that idea.
Plus, I didn’t want to stay in a crowded Pokemon center for the night, and I quickly realized that I really could not stand most bug types. Ones like Snom or Scizor or Vivillon were fine, but then noped out of the area once I saw a Sizzlipede scuttling by. I felt a bit bad about it, but all those scuttling legs, urgh, nope, nada.
Santalune was a city made for and by bug types, with a lot of its buildings being incorporated with the type of structures a bug type Pokemon might make, like the trypophobia inducing pattern you’d find in a Beedrill nest, because there was just a massive nest of Beedrill in the local park that the park caretakers had built into the park information center.
The city and its inhabitants had no problem with this, and neither did the Beedrills, seriously, who would wanna live next to a hive of giant wasps with giant stingers for their hands?
I ended up staying just long enough to restock on supplies and buying a heck ton of bug repellent before heading to route three to check out Santalune forest. I wasn’t super interested in going there, but Winnie wanted to study bug-type energy and find a suitable bug-type Pokemon to copy, and it was a good place for Thorondor to train.
Plus, I’d honestly rather train somewhere in the forest rather than in the crowded city. At least Santalune Forest didn’t have any Centiskorches living there.
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Despite its reputation for being a bug type paradise, Santalune forest looked super normal. No giant creepy crawlies scuttling around everywhere, though there were a lot more “normal” bugs like spiders, ants, bees, moths, and beetles than I would’ve found in a typical New England forest.
That brought into question how many “normal” animals existed in this world, but I put that question off to the side, I’d go down that rabbit hole when I had the time and energy for it.
There was a decent amount of traffic in and out of the forest, with most of the people there sporting bug-catcher outfits and giant nets.
A few Poke-scout groups marched past me as I read the warning signs outside of the forest entrance. Judging by the nets and clipboards they were holding, as well as what the Rangers were saying to them, it seemed like they were there to catch and record the data on the Pokemon in the forest.
I went back to reading the signs, they mostly warned about certain areas to avoid at certain times of the year.
An area in the forest that intersected with a mountain contained a population of Talonflames that was to be avoided during spring, as they got very aggressive during mating and nesting season and would set people on fire if they got too close to their nests.
There was a super big tree that was home to the largest Combee nest in the region, it was illegal to go within five hundred meters of the nest unless they were a registered honey collector, and it was suggested to stay a thousand meters away for safety reasons. There was a viewing area that had telescopes for the public to view the nest’s activity and honey collectors from a safe distance.
A few other areas on the map marked a few different Beedrill hives and the territories of any alpha Pokemon. A newer notice warned people not to feed any of the wild Pansage, Pansear, or Panpour, they’ve been having a problem with the the young monkeys stealing stuff or even small Poke, or children and holding them hostage until they were given food. It was a problem that the rangers were working on resolving permanently.
The last warning in bright and bold red and yellow letters warned people to refrain from using powerful fire type moves, because the forest was prone to forest fires at certain times of the year, and setting a large Beedrill nest on fire could result in the rangers evacuating the forest for a day or two while they dealt with the angry and homeless wasp Pokemon.
I briefly shuddered as I remembered the scent of burnt wasps when I’d swat them with electric fly swatters. An utterly disgusting burnt rotten rubber scent. Blegh.
I’ll ban electric-type moves too.
Once we went into the forest, we almost immediately came to a fork in the road. The one on the right was a somewhat big road that would lead to Route Two and Aquacorde Town, and it had a steady stream of people walking through it.
I decided to take the left path deeper into the forest and away from more populated areas. I wanted to find a place where I could let Kaiju and Sahara out to walk with us without either of them being a safety hazard to other people and Pokemon.
So we kept taking paths with less and less people until we got down to there being no people. There were little to no bug type Pokemon in busier areas besides a bunch of Vivillon and Beautifly, the weaker or less social bug types were more prevalent in these quiet areas. I spotted a lot of Scatterbug, Spewpa, and Wurmple just chilling in the area.
A monkey trio, a Pansage, Panpour, and Pansear had followed us and I could tell that they were eyeing Thorondor. Winnie informed me that they were chattering about snatching the eaglet. I told him to keep an eye out for any monkey business and gave my team a quiet order to take care of the three stooges if they made a move.
Rotom gleefully played the Pokedex entries for the three monkey Pokemon.
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
“Pansear, the high temp Pokemon. When it is angered, the temperature of its head tuft reaches 600° Fahrenheit. It uses its tuft to roast berries.”
“Pansage, the grass monkey Pokemon. The leaves on its head provide energy, and relieves stress.”
“Panpour, the spray Pokemon. The water stored inside the tuft on its head is full of nutrients. It keeps itself damp by shooting water stored in its head tuft from its tail.”
Shortly after, we came to a large clearing full of tall grass. There were a bunch of tween kids in Pokescout uniforms quietly weighing the Scatterbug and Wurmple that were in the area before feeding them a small treat and letting them go. It was pretty cute.
The scouts were supervised by a few adults, probably their parents, also dressed in Pokescout uniforms. They were accompanied by three Pokemon, a Slowking, Drampa, and a Swanna.
Slowking gave me a dignified wave as I walked through the clearing, I smiled and waved back. Despite having a rather goofy face, the water-psychic type had the aura of a king. Cool beans.
There was a swoosh as one of the three stooges, a Pansear, made a dive for Thorondor. The eaglet hissed, ready to lash out with his claws. I flinched as the side of my face was hit a few times from Thoron’s wing flapping.
There was a loud screech from the Pansear as it was hit by a nasty Hex from Winnie and thrown to the ground, its eyes spinning.
“that’s what you get when you go looking for trouble kids.” Winnie cackled as he looked up and leered at the other two monkeys.
Glados zapped out of my watch, eyes glowing a horrifying red. The AI picked up the fallen Pansear, spinning it around a few times before yeeting it straight back into the forest where the monkey crashed and disappeared into a bunch of thorny bushes.
“My turn buckaroo.” Banette said as she formed out of my shadow. The remaining two stooges comically scrambled to get away but were caught by Banette’s Psychic.
Rotom flew out of my pocket and gleefully began playing circus music and blew a raspberry.
The voodoo puppet snapped her fingers, tying the tails of all two remaining monkeys together before spinning them around like they were just shoved into a demented washing machine.
Then she released them and cheerfully waved as Panpour and Pansage were also thrown into the same thorn bush that Pansear was thrown into.
“Lol, now if we could do that to everyone who annoyed us.” I chuckled.
“Ruff.” Thorondor added while he proudly preened his feathers. Winnie laughed, “rotom should’ve taken a video of that.”
“Bzzt!” Rotom buzzed, flashing a few blurry pictures on its screen and a short blurry video.
Winnie wrinkled his nose, “aww, everything is blurry.”
I shrugged, “Well that’s better than nothing.”
We all looked over as one of the Pokescout troop leaders, a tough looking lady with a sleeve tattoo on each arm, laughed loudly and shouted to us, “Good job! Those little bastards needed an ass-whooping!”
The troop leader standing near the tattoo lady gave her an annoyed look when she heard the swears.
Then one of the Pokescout kids trotted over to me, he had a Spewpa held in one arm like it was a baby. With his free hand, he fished a ranger pamphlet out of his bag pocket and handed it to me. “You should probably keep your Rufflet in its Pokeball if you don’t want them to keep bothering you. They tend to target people who aren’t from the area cause they know strangers aren’t wise to their tricks.”
“Spew.” The Spewpa he was holding sagely nodded.
Another Pokescout kid with a Drampa the size of a Yamper scoffed, “No, you should keep your Rufflet out as bait and keep yeeting those stupid monkeys. If they won’t listen to the rangers, they’re gonna have to learn things the hard way.”
The first Pokescout kid shrugged, “Maybe, they’ll probably end up escalating and getting one of the Simi’s to attack.”
“If they try anything else I’ll just feed em to my Garchomp.” I said with a shrug.
“or kaiju. i’m pretty sure he’d be more keen on eating a few unruly monkeys than sahara. she’d probably bury them.” Winnie commented.
I nodded and replied, “Yeah, that makes sense but Sahara is more intimidating.”
“Wait, YOU HAVE A GARCHOMP?!” Tiny Drampa kid shouted in excitement, scaring the Spewpa in the first Pokescout’s arms.
“Shhh!” Another Pokescout shushed Tiny Drampa kid with an annoyed look that was shared by a few other kids. Now they would have to coax the scared bug Pokemon out again.
Then a few of the Pokescouts realized what Drampa kid was shouting about and then moved closer to listen in.
“Sorry!” Drampa kid whisper-yelled, “But can we see?”
Seeing my hesitance, Drampa kid looked behind at tattoo lady and the adult Drampa approaching us and asked, “Mom! Do you think Minty could beat a Garchomp in a battle?” Drampa kid gestured at the adult Drampa.
“Probably,” Tattoo mom said with a grin, “she’s beaten a few Garchomps before during conferences.”
Minty let out a happy grunt and proudly raised her head.
I raised both of my hands and waved, “Uhhhh, sorry but my Garchomp isn’t particularly fond of children, and I don’t think this is a good place for a battle.”
Tattoo mom nodded in agreement, “Yes, this young lady is correct, this isn’t an appropriate place for two fully grown dragons to be fighting in an area like this. Plus,” Tattoo mom gave her kid and Minty a somewhat stern look, “It would be pretty hard for Minty to beat a Garchomp in the shape she’s in now. She’s been getting rather heavy from all of the bacon you’ve been feeding her.”
She then pointedly poked Drampa’s belly fat, making it jiggle like jello.
Some of the kids made an “ooooooo” sound. Drampa kid’s face turned red, he’d been completely caught off guard, while Minty the Drampa looked a bit offended and smooshed its face into Tattoo mom’s back.
I chuckled and then nodded at Spewpa kid, “Thanks for the pamphlet.” I waved the pamphlet and tucked it into one of my bag pockets.
Spewpa kid smiled and nodded, “You’re welcome miss!”
I turned to go back onto the trail, “Have fun with your Pokescout duties.”
“Thanks, have fun exploring the forest.” Spewpa kid replied.
I glanced back at Drampa kid trying to scoot away from his mom while the tiny Drampa trailed after him like a clueless puppy. His mom was now in a pushing match with her Drampa, with the dragon easily winning the match. The other Pokescout troop leaders were cheering for Tattoo lady, and the kids were cheering for Drampa.
Then I glanced at Winnie and teasingly poked his side, “You’d better watch what you eat too.”
Winnie huffed, “you and banette both eat sweets too. you literally ate an entire cake when we were in lumiose.”
“You mean the mini cake that I ate over three days?” I asked.
“it’s a lot for a tiny human who doesn’t like to exercise.” Winnie retorted, poking my side.
“Sure, sure.”
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The trail narrowed as we went deeper in. Glados had its scanners open for an open area similar to the area that the Pokescouts were in where we could train and for any mega stones. I was pretty sure that there are bug-type mega stones that could be found in this forest in the games, but who knew if we’d be able to find any here?
Half an hour into the hike I deemed the place deserted enough to let Kaiju and Sahara out to walk with us.
Now that Kaiju was finally allowed out of his dusk ball, Rufflet had fluttered over to the teen dragon to perch on one of his heads. The two had somehow worked out a symbiotic relationship after Thorondor had convinced Kaiju that he was not edible. That was quite the achievement considering Kaiju was the type to consider even inorganic objects as edible material.
Thorondor now got a free ride that didn’t mind him yapping about his “noble lineage”, he could get a PHD in yapology.
Kaiju’s boons from the deal included him getting free food in the form of whatever Thoron picked up when he would occasionally fly around. These objects ranged from one of the many non-Pokemon bugs roaming the forest, to fruit, sticks, random plant leaves, mushrooms, and even rocks.
Yeah, thankfully I caught onto their little antics before Kaiju could gulp down a rock that Thoron had found. Winnie and Glados had to help me pry open Kaiju’s mouth to get the stone. After that, I gave both of them a stern talking to about how they should not eat rocks, unidentified plants, fungi, or bugs. Just don’t eat stuff that isn’t familiar to you, like wtf these kids were driving me crazy.
We hiked for almost two hours in total, spending most of the time looking for mega stones. Glados was getting signals of one coming from the west side of the forest, but according to my map that was where a massive Beedrill nest was, like hell we were going there. Sadly, we ended up not finding any other signals to follow.
Once we found a suitable area to set up in, I got the team’s attention and began giving out training tasks for everyone, this was gonna be the first day in a long while where we’d gotten to do a full out training session without any distractions.
After these past few days of battling other trainers, I had a good idea of what each member of my team should work on.
Winnie would be training with Banette and the other ghosts. They needed to get the new recruits up to scratch, and Winnie wanted to experiment with creating convincing illusions of moves like Sticky Web and String Shot.
He also wanted to start learning Low Kick and Low Sweep as counters against any future dark-type opponents. It would be pretty useful in future battles for tripping his opponents up while they chase a fake version of him.
Sahara already had a pretty solid moveset, but she wanted to learn Liquidation. Its secondary effect of decreasing an opponent’s defense would be super useful for taking down tanky Pokemon, or Pokemon with abilities like Stamina.
I unfortunately didn’t have the TR for the move, and Santalune didn’t have it in stock, so she settled on teaching herself the move. I had no idea if she’d even be able to learn Liquidation by herself considering she wasn’t familiar with water type energy, nor was any member of my team a water type. But since she seemed pretty determined to learn it, so I assigned Glados and Rotom to work with her and try to come up with a solution using information from the Pokenet.
Meanwhile, Glados had expressed its interest in upgrading Double Edge into Giga Impact and trying to learn Electroweb. Who better to try to use them against but Sahara? She was always up for a physical fight. It probably wouldn’t be too hard for Glados to learn Electroweb, the AI’s favorite typing was electricity afterall.
I took Kaiju and Thorondor with me to train them myself. Kaiju needed to be supervised while Sahara was busy, and Thoron needed one-on-one coaching.
Right now, my goal for Thoron was for him to improve Air Slash and learn Crush Claw. As for Kaiju, I just needed a way for his heads to be able to coordinate with each other a bit better during a battle. It wasn’t hard to get them to work together by saying that the opponent was yummy, but his attention span was too short for that trick to work for long periods of time.
I gave them the task of sparring each other, but with handicaps. Kaiju had to have both heads shoot an attack at Thoron at the same time. He’d get a treat every time he did so as a form of positive reinforcement.
Thoron on the other hand had to use Tailwind and Agility to help maneuver himself around Kaiju’s attacks and try to use Crush Claw. He’d then back away and do one attack with Air Slash, then get close again and repeat.
The training was a bit monotonous, but Rotom helped make it less boring by blasting training montage music. I had no idea when it took the liberty of downloading its own playlist, but I appreciated it. Plus, the plasma Pokemon had a pretty good taste in music.
We were interrupted by a sudden Flamethrower directed right at Thorondor. Thanks to his dodging practice with Glados, the eaglet had no trouble flying out of the way, though he made his displeasure at the dishonorable attack very known before he landed on Kaiju’s right head.
The Simisear who had launched the attack looked quite annoyed at the bird Pokemon’s ranting and screeched while accusingly pointing between me and the three stooges who were perched on branches behind the fire monkey, “Simi! Simisear sear Simisear!”
Small embers began to rise from the fire monkey. Simipour lightly sprayed the area to extinguish the embers before they could light something on fire.
Rotom scanned the fire monkey:
“Simisear, the ember Pokemon. It loves sweets because they become energy for the fire burning inside its body. It scatters embers from its head and tail to sear its opponents.”
A Simipour and Simisage hopped out of the trees and perched on adjacent branches. Simisage grunted and crossed its arms, “Simisage simi.”
“Simisage, the thorn monkey Pokemon. Simisage are known to fight by swinging their barbed tail around wildly. The leaf growing on its head is very bitter, but has revitalizing effects.”
“Simipour, the geyser Pokemon. This Pokemon stores water in its head tuft. When the level runs low, it replenishes the tuft by siphoning up water with its tail. The high-pressure water expelled from its tail is so powerful, it can destroy a concrete wall.”
Winnie and Banette were immediately on the scene to see what the commotion was about.
I turned to the ghosts and whispered, “What are they saying?”
Winnie shrugged, “Something about us unfairly attacking the brats.”
“What?” Banette huffed, “They attacked us first!”
“Pansear sear!” Pansear huffed, the little monkey couldn’t conceal its shit eating grin. Pansage looked rather bored, it was picking out thorns from its head fur while Panpour looked away and cringed from embarrassment.
I sighed and called out to the monkey gang, “Hey! I’m not sure what your kids told you but they attacked us first! We threw them into a few thorn bushes so they’d leave us alone!”
Simisear rolled its eyes and growled, “Seeeeear, seeear.” The fire monkey then jumped to the ground and began stomping towards us, despite Simipour and Simisage half heartedly trying to hold it back.
Bruh, it’s just looking for a fight at this point.
The fire-type only made it a few steps before Sahara made her presence known with a deep growl as she stalked out of the trees with Glados floating behind her. They didn’t notice the situation as fast as the ghosts did because they were placed further away than Winnie and the ghost gang were. Or more likely, they knew the monkeys weren’t a big enough of a threat to interrupt their training and rush over here.
Simisear’s hackles raised. The fire monkey spit a short stream of fire in Sahara’s general direction, then visibly gulped and backed away, hurriedly climbing back up into the trees. Simisage looked rather annoyed at its fire-type counterpart, while Simipour kept its cool.
Kaiju unhinged his mouth like a muppet began edging towards the tree cluster that the monkey crew were perched in, undoubtedly in an attempt to get a taste of the new guys. Thorondor grabbed Kaiju’s head tufts and pulled him back Ratatouille style. It surprisingly worked. I was gonna have to take a few Kaiju taming lessons from the eaglet.
While that was going on, Pansage rolled its eyes like an angsty teen and jumped away as if this wasn’t worth its time. Panpour was frozen in fear.
I crossed my arms, “Look, I have no reason to be going around and picking fights with Pokemon that are way below my team’s power level. We’ve been minding our business the entire time. You guys should really teach your kids to be thieves who go around taking small Pokemon hostage.”
“Pan! Sear!” Pansear spat.
“Yeah I heard you talking about snatching my friend here.” I gestured at Thorondor, who glared at the monkey.
Pansear made a face at Thorondor and leaned forward to say more, but Simisage grabbed the little red monkey by its ear and began dragging it away.
“Simipour simi simipour.” The water-type monkey said with a slight bow of apology before grabbing Simisear and Panpour and leading them away. Simisear huffed but followed the blue monkey’s lead.
“Jeez, and I thought it would be impossible to be pulled into drama in the middle of the woods.” I sighed.
“yeah, unbelievable.” Winnie agreed as he trotted away, making a head nod at Banette to continue with training the new recruits.
Sahara looked a bit disappointed about not getting to battle Simisear, but at least she could get back to working on learning Liquidation with Glados.
I turned back to Thorondor and Kaiju, “Aight, let’s get back to work fellas.”
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Training time was put on hold at noon. Kaiju let me know the know the moment the clock hit twelve by drooling all over my shoes, and Winnie was impatient to get to the Vivillon themed cookies I bought for him in Santalune City.
Winnie helped set up the table and everyone’s bowls as usual while Glados and I prepared the food. Sahara, Thoron, and a few of the ghosts wanted to keep training for a bit longer, which wasn’t an issue cause they didn’t have any prep tasks assigned to them.
Thorondor was a rather picky eater, but after a taste test the first day I got him, I was able to figure out what food mixture he liked the most. He ended up requesting that I add extra, extra spice to his food, not because he liked it (birds are immune to capsaicin because they don’t have the same receptors that mammals do), but to discourage Kaiju and the ghosts from stealing his food when he wasn’t looking, which was quite clever of him to do.
Once I was done making sure everyone got their food, and that Kaiju was keeping his nose in his own food bowl, I quickly got to making my own food so that I’d be able to get a few bites in before someone complained about something that I would have to deal with.
Just as I finished making my delicious prosciutto sandwich, Winnie padded over to me, trying to stifle his laughter.
I sighed, “What is it?”
“Thoron is doing it again.” The illusion fox said, subtly pointing at the table where Thoron was perched.
Sighing again, I grabbed my sandwich and walked over with Winnie.
The eaglet was standing in front of the bowl and staring at it intensely, with his mouth open as if he was expecting the food to march into his mouth. For a bird as clever as he was, it was a bit strange that he didn’t have a good grasp on how to eat food.
Sometimes he’d eat food normally, he had no trouble with eating berries and would fling the berry seeds and juice around like a typical bird, but a bowl of food? That was rocket science.
He can talk about his extended family history but can’t seem to grasp the fact that food doesn't just march into his mouth whenever he’s hungry.
I stifled a laugh and sat down at the table. Thorondor saw me trying not to smile and grumpily chirped.
I raised an eyebrow and chided, “Thoron, you’re a big bird now, try eating like how I showed you the other day.” And every day before that.
The eaglet huffed as if what I had suggested was atrocious, but his stomach rumbled.
Winnie ate a mouthful of food, “you gotta feed yourself kiddo, none of us are gonna feed you like mommy dearest.”
I lightly elbowed the fox, “And you should remember not to talk with a mouthful of food. That’s gross.”
Winnie gulped his food and grinned and sarcastically replied, “sorry mooooom.”
“Rufflet!” Thoron chirped indignantly. The bird flapped his wings and leaned forward into his bowl just a bit too fast, faceplanting into his meal with a loud SPLAT!
There was a pause as the eaglet tried to decide what to do next while his face was still in his food. Thoron gingerly got back up and pecked a few times at his food, trying not to show his embarrassment. Then he looked at us, “Rufflet ruff.”
Winnie snorted, “Yes, of course you meant that.”
Thorondor huffed and began eating normally, well normally for a bird so despite getting food into his stomach, he was also getting food all over the table and into Winnie’s food too, much to the fox’s displeasure.
Winnie shifted his bowl away from the eaglet and shielded it with an arm.
I had to shift away from the bird so that he wouldn’t fling his food all over my sandwich. Thankfully we were outdoors, so I didn’t have to place any newspaper down to prevent being charged for making a mess indoors.
And I thought Kaiju was a messy eater. As soon as I finished thinking that, there was a commotion to my left. I didn’t even have to look. Kaiju’s heads were fighting eat other over their food yet again, and had flipped one of their bowls over.
It wasn’t uncommon for Kaiju to fight himself over food despite being given two bowls, and his food going to the same stomach no matter which mouth it entered through. He would just decide that one bowl was better than the other bowl and would start a petty fight over it.
I watched resignedly as he walked over his spilled food while his two heads kept biting and nipping at each other. I stand corrected.
I sighed, “Ugh, okay, Glados, can you make him another bowl? ”
“PORY-ZZZZ.” Glados was already on it.
I gave the AI Pokemon a thumbs up, “Thanks, you’re the best.”
Lunch was peaceful after that, and I scrolled through the new messages Expedition Group Chat. Ben had posted a picture of the Larvesta he had recently captured, and a few more pictures of him and Collin in the Battle Subway. They looked like they were having a blast.
There was a blurry and rather creepy picture from Abigail. Her Froslass had taken a selfie at night with its trainer sleeping in the background. The following picture was even blurrier, and showed her Corvinknight angrily pecking the ice ghost.
Leo’s Zoroark joined in with its own selfie, a few pictures of Houndoom and Meowscarda arguing, and then close up picture of Leo’s mouth and nostril.
I snapped a picture of Thorondor and Winnie to share later. Reception in the area was just bad enough that sending pictures would be slow af.
I looked up from my phone at the surrounding forest, something was off. I tilted my head and looked around again. “Hmmm.”
“it’s quiet.” Winnie commented as he finished off the food in his bowl. Despite having a relaxed demeanor, his ears were rotating, ready to pick up any noises that sounded just a bit too off.
He was right. The forest wasn’t completely silent, but it had basically muted itself. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up as the forest went fully silent. The everpresent Ninjask cicada hums, and scuttling of Santalune forest’s inhabitants were suddenly all gone.
There was a quiet clack of claws on the table as Rufflet shuffled closer to us. Glados beeped and began scanning the forest with its sensors, but didn’t find anything dangerous in our immediate surroundings.
That’s weird. That is not a good sign. Shit, I’m not even done eating.
I sharply looked up as a large flock of Fletchlings burst out of the forest and flew into the sky, chirping warning sounds to each other.
Rufflet let out a squeaky chirp of confusion and fluffed up his feathers. Winnie put his bowl down and jumped off of the table seat, Banette and a few other ghosts appeared out of his shadow and they began whispering amongst themselves.
Kaiju was completely undisturbed and unaware, he was eating his spilled food instead of the new bowl that Glados had given him.
Can’t I finish my lunch in peace? “What is it now?” I asked with an irritated grumble. “Did one of the ghosts anger a Beedrill nest or something?” The last thing I wanted was to have to deal with an angry swarm of bugs.
“it’s not one of mine. but i do sense a lot of ghost-type energy north from us.” Winnie said.
I frowned, “Hmmm, that’s weird.” I don’t recall Santalune Forest having any large ghost populations. Or a coven.
“It’s probably just a trainer with a ghost type Pokemon.” I said with a shrug. Occam’s razor is usually the right answer.
“Yeah, I haven’t heard anything from the locals about this place having any ghost inhabitants.” Haunted added.
The mood relaxed as the others were reassured by our words.
“Gar!” Sahara growled, “Garchomp chomp!” She walked over and dropped her empty bowl on my table and mimed a boxer stance. She was hoping for a worthy opponent.
“I know you want a good battle Sahara,” I sighed as I began gulping down my meal, “but lemme finish eating first. Glados, begin cleaning up.”
The virtual Pokemon beeped and began collecting empty dishes.
“Gar, chomp.” The landshark replied with a sigh and eye roll as if to say, “you eat too slowly.”
“I eat slowly because I like to enjoy my food Sahara.” I replied with a bit of attitude. The landshark scoffed and walked away to do some stretching and prep for a battle.
“I wonder what type of ghost it is.” Banette wondered aloud.
“It’ll be a troublesome one.” Misdreavus replied, “Who the hell disturbs an entire forest like this just for the fun of it?”
“someone who wants to show off.” Winnie answered, creating a Shadow Ball and spinning it around like a basketball.
We all froze as we heard a scream echo through the forest. This wasn’t a normal scream, it was the type of guttural, animalistic scream a prey animal would make before they were brutally killed and eaten.
Well shit. What the fuck was that?