“Okay, so we’re not going to find Pokemon to eat this time around,” Virah reminded everyone for the sake of clarity if anything else.

She looked behind her and saw Whitney and Grene putting on their forest wear, with Whitney’s pink ranger’s outfit and Grene’s oddly practical looking civilian clothing, the two looked ready to go.

“So, anyone wants to say what’s the kind of Pokemon they want to catch?” Virah asked.

“A Poliwag but if it’s possible, then I think I want to catch something like a Tyrogue,” Grene answered.

“... I don’t think there are Tyrogue’s here though?” Whitney said thoughtfully, “aren’t most of them up in Mt. Silver or something?”

“They rarely do it-” Virah started, “- but occasionally, a Tyrogue can go down from the mountains because their entire… clan? Dojo? What do you call a group of Hitmons?”

“A... group?” Whitney supplied unhelpfully.

“That? I guess- anyways, yeah, sometimes, when a Tyrouge loses its entire clan, they go down from Mt. Silver to grow up and train in places like Ilex Forest, kinda like a revenge plot of sorts,” and Virah swears she’s seen a book with that exact plot in some store somewhere, “once they evolve and grow strong enough, they go back up the mountain and either die while fighting the Pokemon responsible for their clan’s death or they become victorious and start a new one,”

“Romantic.” Grene drawled. She didn’t look like she believed Virah.

Virah giggled, “yes, yes- I know it sounds like a fantasy but it can really happen!” Virah defended, “and it’s more common than you guys think, there are a lot of martial artists out there who had to go up to some random area in Mt. Silver because their Hitmon wanted to get their revenge, it’s very weird,”

“Fair enough, I believe you,” Grene sheepishly smiled, “so what? If I get one of those it means that I’ll get a Tyrogue with the same work ethic as your Kakuna?”

“Yeah,” Virah nodded, “a Tyrogue who, even when his legs are missing, will still try to train anyway because they’re just that dedicated to becoming stronger,”

Seriously, even if he’s just a Kakuna, Nitro still hopped around as an exercise, and the distances that he covered when doing them weren’t short either, and sometimes, he’d even try to shoot a strand of string at a tree branch and then scale the trunk like he was some sort of mountain climber.

Her Pokemon was either a battle junkie or an adrenaline junkie. Whitney said he was one of those two and Virah thought that what the pinkette said made sense.

“So Poliwag and Tyrogue,” Virah turned to Whitney, “you?”

“I already have a Pidgey and Kitten is a good combatant already…” Whitney trailed off, “but if it’s possible, then I think I want to capture something like a uhm… Clefairy? I guess?”

“How about a Munchlax?” Virah suggested.

Whitney perked up, “are they even here?!”

“I think so,” Virah answered as she got out of their tent, followed shortly by Whitney and Grene. She turned to the pinkette, “Ilex Forest is pretty big, and honestly? That kind of size often means that anything can be found here, save for the rarer species of Pokemon obviously,”

“Or the ones whose habitat aren’t forests, like Magnemites and Goldeens,” Grene said.

“That.” Virah nodded at the martial artist. “Also, how about a Heracross? That one sounds like a good option no?”

“Can we even fight one?” Grene asked.

“... no,” Virah admitted, “but hey, maybe we can find a young one just walking around the exam area, who knows?”

“Well, I’m hoping that I do get a Heracross because capturing one sounds…” Grene’s eyes lit up in expectation, “... it sounds great,”

“Heracross sounds great, yeah,” Virah smiled, “personally, I’m looking for either a Nidoran-”

Stolen story; please report.

Which she knows one of them could possibly be nearby thanks to the information the rangers had given her at the start of the exam, but then again… maybe the Nidoking and Nidoqueen who were the potential parents of the Nidoran would hate her since it was her brood that intruded on their territory?

Virah frowned, “-... or maybe a Zubat or something,”

Koffings and Grimers were rare in forests so chances are, those couldn’t be found anywhere near here, and it’s not like she wanted one of them…

“Okay! Let’s go find one then!” Whitney’s sudden declaration broke Virah out of her thoughts and she stared at the pinkette, who was marching forward with her finger raised to the sky.

Virah met Grene’s eyes, “come on,” she sighed, “we need to catch up,”

“She didn’t even go that far yet,” Grene rebuked.

Virah laughed, “I know! It just felt right to say!”

The martial artist watched the poison specialist turn her bright smile towards Whitney before running away. All the while her ears felt oddly hot…

Grene pushed the conversation she overheard earlier this morning out of her head and chased after her friends.

And together, they walked along the unmarked parts of Ilex Forest in search of Pokemon that would fill up a slot in their team.

They searched for a good while and Grene neared every possible Poliwag to ask them to be a part of her team but almost all of them refused, and even with Machop helping her in convincing them, the Water Types simply shook their heads with a few of the meaner ones outright spitting water at Grene’s face.

The martial artist sighed as she wiped some water off her cheeks, “is there something wrong with me?”

“I think it’s just that the Poliwags are more than content to live in their little ponds instead of going out into the world and exploring it,” Virah said, “it’s why we battle them to catch them,” the poison specialist hummed, “how about you do that? Fight one of them?”

“... should I?” Grene met Virah’s eyes.

The green head nodded, “I think it’s a good idea,”

“I don’t think I want to,” Grene shook her head, “it’s- if possible we should just ask them, you know? I don’t want to hurt a Pokemon if I can help it,”

Virah shrugged, “fair enough,”

After that conversation was more walking, and all the while, Virah kept her eyes up in the canopies.

Most of the Pokemon that she saw were Spinaraks hanging around their series of webs or Metapods sleeping in contentment while waiting for their evolution but the typical marks of Zubats were spotted on occasion too and those are what Virah kept her eyes on.

From half eaten berries that had fallen to the ground to sucked out Pokemon- these were the common things that Zubats leave behind after they finished eating and the latter was so unrecognizable that Whitney didn’t even look twice to see if they were truly the corpses of dead Pokemon or not.

And that was more or less a good thing, because the Pinkette looked quite happy as she helped Virah search the trees for Zubats, and from time to time, she would even point at the ones she spotted.

“That’s not-” Virah squinted her eyes at the Zubat hanging upside down ways away from them.

“It’s not that big for its species-” but that may just be because it was young, but Virah couldn’t tell without checking its wingspan first which is impossible given that the Pokemon had curled them up, “- but it definitely looked decent enough, it’s not what I want though,”

“Okay! Let’s keep searching then!” Whitney moved forward with energy.

Eventually, they got into the more darker parts of the forest and here, the Zubat species reigned.

Despite their obvious supremacy though, some of them got caught in the webs of Spinaraks and the Bug Types did the same to what all those Zubats in the areas they passed by did to their fellow Spinaraks- suck their prey dry until there was nothing left but an empty husk.

“There’s a good chance that we can find a Zubat that I want here,” Virah said while looking around the branches for any possible match of the traits that she wanted. “If you see a Zubat with a body that’s half as big as their wings, tell me okay? And their tails too, I guess, if the two tails behind them are long and wavy, then also tell me,”

“Got it~” Whitney said with a grin, which quickly dropped, “wait- how do we actually tell?”

“It is too dark,” Grene nodded, then she perked up, “maybe we can sense their Aura?”

“Won’t we be just as blind?” Virah asked the martial artist.

Grene shook her head, “not really,” she answered, “Ilex Forest is dense enough that the trees will most likely block the Aura of Pokemon from far away, allowing us to focus on the ones close to us which…” Grene blinked, “... is bright enough to allow them to be spotted,”

Virah did the same and saw a color of purple and green streak across a branch- then a scream.

The Spinarak in her line of sight tightly held on to the struggling Zubat in its mandibles while shaking it around, “that’s… pretty useful actually,” Virah admitted, “can we use this in caves too?”

“I don’t think so,” Grene shook her head, “unless you know how to tell when someone’s Aura is far away, we’ll just be confused about the distance between us and the wild Pokemon since to us, their Aura will always look the same,”

“That's… too bad,” Virah replied, her voice breathless from the colorful sights before her.