[X] My Assistant

[Living Arrow]

Travelling back to Port Barley after the events at the Petropolis Grand Invitational had been a long and gruelling affair for Lori. Well, it had involved public transport which inevitably meant sharing elbow room with all manner of undesirable and social reprobates. If she was not worrying about her bag being stolen from off of her shoulder, the young Trainer was replaying the events of the tournament again and again to find the moment that had made her act so foolishly.

*Who really thinks they can play the hero and go down some stupid hole to save random people they’ve never even met before!?* She demanded of herself for the fiftieth time as the stench of body odour from her latest ravel companion drifted her way. Holding back a gag, she politely turned her head the other way and cried inwardly. *At least Cesc smelled good!*

*Hey! Stop thinking about him, dammit!* Lori blushed in spite of herself, heat rising in her cheeks to decorate her skin with blotches of ruby embarrassment.

The coach pulled up to a stop at the edge of the town in the later hours of the sunny morning, a couple of miles from her final destination, and freedom announced itself as the coach doors clunked open.

*Close enough!* Lori told herself, springing up from her seat without a backward glance for the stinking hobo next to the window. Cuddling her bag close to her chest with one hand while squeezing the length of her intensely red hair in the other, she hurried to the front of the vehicle.

“Thanks!” She smiled and bowed her head politely to the driver (a sweet old man who she doubted spoke any English) and skipped down the steps to the sidewalk. The coach pulled away with the hiss of its brakes releasing to leave her drinking in the fresh air of the coast. It had been a while since she had been in Barley, and the town hadn’t changed a bit, but she felt like a different person to the rookie that had picked fights with bullies on her first day in the town.

*Never again, Lor.* She reminded herself of the boys that had threatened to cut off her hair when she’d defended another beginner trainer at the bus station. She shuddered at the memory, pushing those thoughts down to her toes where they couldn’t plague her thoughts anymore.

“Pipster,” Lori clicked open the green-capped Pokeball of her Piplup and grinned as he materialised in front of her, “we’re back in Barley.”

“Lup, Piplup!” His cheery reply was a welcome change to the dismal mutterings of the ‘people’ on the coach.

“And you know what that means, right?” She prompted him. A blank expression was her response. She rolled her eyes and pumped her fists energetically, the infectious enthusiasm of her naturally bold demeanour finding its way back to the front of her otherwise woolly teenage brain. “It means we get back on a ferry and go to Fidona! That Gym badge won’t win itself, y’know?!”

“Lup!”

“So, let’s go!” Lori cheered, breaking into a run down the final slope into the town with her Penguin Pokemon close on her heels.

[Huntress Wizard]

“There’s gyms in this region?” Roxxy asked, though not to anyone in particular. Maybe coming here wasn’t a waste of her time and money after all. While the girl – who announced her name as “Lori Pardare” – challenged the man whose Slowbro had nearly Water Pulsed them into a wall, Roxxy took another stab at deciphering the map. So there were gyms here, four of them if she was reading right (always a matter of question, and especially now with a throbbing headache). And there was indeed one on this island that Lori was trying to get to, this “Fidona.”

Lori also found it worth mentioning that the reigning champion of Sinnoh was her sister. Roxxy frowned. “Kino Pardare. Kino Kino Kino...” she muttered, trying to remember if she’d heard that name back in Sinnoh. Nothing was coming to the front of her mind. That might’ve just been the lingering migraine, though. Or the fact that she hadn’t had a chance to challenge any of the gyms in Sinnoh, much less the Elite 4 and the champion. All her time had been spent tracking down and attempting to capture a Shaymin, and ultimately getting her butt kicked by it and its friends. She shook her head, grimacing when it momentarily doubled the pain inside her skull.

The guy with the face tattoo stepped backwards, leaving only his Slowbro and his Mienfoo on the field, and told Lori to send out her second pokemon and make the first move. Now that was a gutsy course of action if ever Roxxy noticed one. The rest of his team responded to his body language, halting their separate training battles and falling back with him. It reminded her of the way Epsilon would seem to know what she wanted him to do, even before she realized it. She slumped, her posture, impossibly, becoming even more horrible. No good dwelling on that, she told herself. Look, the kid’s trying to talk to you. Better respond.

“You’ve traveled all over the world?” Roxxy said, sizing him up. “What are you, like, nineteen? Twenty?” He was only a few inches taller than she was; if she stood on her tip-toes, they would be at eye-level. Messy black hair, green eyes – and a red blush steadily splotching its way over his cheeks. She chuckled.

“Nah,” she decided, “you’re sixteen, seventeen tops. But wow, that was quite the infodump. Gimme a minute to process.” She scratched an itch on her arm while she thought. It sounded like he had much more of a plan while travelling than she did. Her methodology was, when one got right down to it, don’t be stupid and don’t get hurt. He, at least, was having a proper adventure, if she had heard right.

And of course, he had to be from Unova. Another region where one of her old team member had come from, Atlantis to be exact. Though back then he’d just been a scrawny, half-feral Eevee trying to steal some berries from out of her pouch. Roxxy curled her toes inside her shoes and allowed the twinge of guilt and regret now chewing a hole through her stomach to settle down again. When she came back to the current time and space, the boy, Marwan, was just wrapping up a request to battle.

“Sure, I’m game,” she said, rolling her shoulder and neck so that Zeta was forced off. The Zubat tumbled for a moment, then righted herself and hovered at chest-level. Roxxy made a vague gesture away from her. “If you wanna take a few steps that-a-way,” she said, bringing her knapsack around to the front and, once she’d shoved the brochure she’d picked up into it, digging through it, “we can get started.” As an afterthought, she added, “I’m Roxxy. From Lilycove.”

At last, she came upon what she had been looking for: her old Pokedex. She flipped it open and hit the power button. Nothing but a damp-sounding fizzle and a hearty effort by the screen to turn on. “C’mon,” Roxxy said, banging it against her palm a few times. Surely sticking it under the tap in a drunken haze the other day hadn’t been the death of it? “You’re supposed to be waterproof. Able to withstand up to thirty meters of depth and ten percent salinity. Turn on!”

The yelling worked; the ‘dex powered on, albeit with a bit of glitching around the edges of the screen and a burst of static or two. But she could work around those issues. Roxxy pointed it towards Zeta, and it spat out the list of moves she had at her disposal. Supersonic, Astonish, Leech Life, and Gust. Quite a useful application, and a godsend for trainers with poor memories, like her.

“Okay, Zeta, you’re up first.” Roxxy said. The Zubat looked as worried as she could with naught but a mouth for a face, but flapped forward a few feet anyway. Silently thanking Arceus for the large font option on the Pokedex – something the brochure was sorely lacking – Roxxy pondered briefly which move to select. What a silly question: the only starting move Zeta would accept was Supersonic. “Yell when you’re ready,” Roxxy called to Marwen. To Zeta, almost a whisper, she said, “You know which move to start with, Zeta. Use it as soon as he picks a pokemon to send out first.”

Wow, look at that. I can make posts longer than five paragraphs if I give myself more than 15 minutes. Who'd'a thunk it.

A Kitty Cat (or anyone, really), how should the battle be done? I've seen suggestions that it be done over some sort of instant messaging thingie, does that still hold true?

[Living Arrow]

From the moment tag announced his own intention to go for the Taminagi Badge, Lori began to regret her decision to challenge him to a battle. Not because she was scared of losing (she was quite used to that by now) but because she was scared of losing in front of other people. As usual, her big mouth and happy-go-lucky nature had drawn the attention of onlookers which meant she was going to be surrounded by pitiful eyes if she lost.

*C’mon, Lor! Woman up!*

The brute of a man stepped back, clearing a space for his Slowbro and Mienfoo to get ready for battle while Lori edged backwards to allow Pipster his own space. Her knees wobbled slightly – a combination of excitement and nerves – but the second Pokeball still remained tightly in her grasp as the battlefield was drawn out.
Lori’s initial thoughts (that the tattoo-clad man was a simple thug) were rapidly withdrawn when he spoke, offering her a new perspective on the guy. He was formal and well spoken despite his tiki-appearance which threw the teen for a second, her expectations of the battle dwindling by the second.

*He talks like a proper adult... not like a lowlife... crap!* Lori squeezed her hair in her free hand irritably. *Who knows what other stuff he has up his sleeves?*

That familiar thrum-thrum-thrumming of blood rushing to Lori’s head whenever she took part in a Pokemon battle came back to her as soon as Tag invited her to make a move and by golly did it overwhelm her. A wide grin broke out on her face, in spite of her natural worry that she had already bitten off more than she could chew, and her arm drew back. She kicked off of the ground into a pirouette that she had seen so many times on TV by all of her favourite female Gym Leaders and her green-capped Pokeball was thrown out into the ‘arena’.

“I call, Triss to the field!” She cried, the ball clacking open to reveal her proud Snivy. The Grass Snake lowered her body the instant she was free, calculating eyes taking in her battlefield and opponents swiftly.

“Lup!” Pipster nodded to his partner who gave a curt “Sni!” in response. Lori’s grin widened further and the grip on her fiery hair grew even tighter. A battle was underway!

“Okay, guys! Let’s start this thing off! Water Pledge, Grass Pledge, go!”

As one, Piplup and Snivy lowered to one knee, hanging their heads solemnly while blue and green auras took over their bodies respectively. There was a faint rumbling from the ground for a moment before jets of water and cyclones of leaves burst out from the field towards their opponents.