Boop

'Ugh, was it...? No, no, 'cause that way was... No. Maybe?' Adrian flipped the map in his hands again, tilting his head. The bizarre shapes and symbols made no more sense than they had a moment ago... or a half-hour ago. He must have been wandering around for hours by now because he could hear his stomach rumbling. No, wait. Wrong again. He felt a raindrop land on his head, then another on his nose as he looked up to the overcast skies. He sighed, glasses already fogging with the humidity, and folded up his Battle, Listen, Shop!!! 'Welcome to Goldenrod' brochure. The friendly smile of the petite blonde on the cover seemed almost taunting to him as he stowed it away and adjusted his overstuffed pack, squinting around for some cover.

Normally, he didn't mind the rain one bit. He'd camped his way through hurricanes, floods, snowstorms... The problem was, he couldn't very well pitch a tent in the middle of a bustling thoroughfare. He'd learned that a long time ago, the hard way. Uncharted jungles? Check. Precarious precipices? Fine. Pitch-black subterranean aquatic caverns? Basically home. The problem was the city itself, convoluted and unnatural, crowded with buildings and people. He always, always lost his way in big cities like this- something about them just made his infallible inner compass go haywire. And the stupid guidebooks were just as confusing, all bright icons and grinning Sunflora cartoons. He'd take yellowed parchment and elevation markers over them in a heartbeat.

Adrian wiped his spectacles on the cleanest corner of his shirt only to succeed in adding to their opacity, smearing them with dirt. He was practically covered in it head to sandal, still fresh from the Ruins that he was itching to get back to. But this was a precious opportunity, as he reminded himself. It wasn't often both Adrian and Bill were in the same hemisphere. Their travels took them both far and wide so an instance like this was almost like a lunar eclipse. And he had backlogs of journals full of notes and theories he was eager to dissect with him.

If only he could find the house in this mother-Sludging piece of Muk labyrinth of a Marshtomping town. As far as he was concerned right now, the whole place could go suck a Cacnea.
He continued muttering to himself, noticing neither the commotion up ahead nor the blurry person-shaped thing he was about to run into. He collided with Force=(Sp: brisk walk)x(Wt: Adrian+backpack)

which was

Pretty Damn Hard.

Sage was livid. Her eyes narrowed as she crossed her arms. 
“I simply will not do it, Jasper. You know how I feel about cargo pants!”
Jasper, her bodyguard/agent sighed, taking a seat next to her on the highly-decorated sofa. 
“I know, dear, but remember what your fans will think. This is a brand new design, and you have such a great relationship with the store-“
“You mean my PARENTS’ store?” She pursed her lips and let out an exasperated sigh. “Look, Jasper, I need some air, yanno? Give me five.” 
Patting down her knee length, frilly red dress, she stood up and stormed out of the set, waltzing through the Pharmacy that was blocked off from the plebeians that adored her. She smiled and waved at the crowd, blowing a kiss and winking at her followers. She felt her ego rise as usual, filling the void.

She was about to leave through the emergency exit to get some fresh air when suddenly she saw someone barreling through the masses. Sage’s eyes widened when she saw the tall brazen girl pushing her people to the side. She stepped in front of her, blocking her path.
“Oh, it’s so nice to have one of my fans get through the barriers! I’ll give you a special photograph, please come with me!~” She grinned and waved at the jealous fans.

Sage pulled this mysterious, obnoxious tall girl into the hallway alcove and began her storm.
“Um, I don’t know who you think you are ma’am, but you need to leave. This is off-limits for my photoshoot” 

Jasper caught up with her in the alcove, knowing full well what kind of ruckus she would start. Already infuriated, she forced a smile before her guardian could say anything to her. “Oh, Jasper! Please take care of my number-one fan who made it through the crowd just for me! I was just leaving.”…not without twisting her face into a scowl at the intruder.

She flounced out of the emergency exit, forgetting her annoyances. How dare they ask her to wear pants for this photoshoot? She did not care how much they wanted her to. She could probably convince them to let her wear her dresses… like she always did. She tiptoed down the stairs and slammed the back door of the very tall department store. Finally Sage could take a breath. She breathed in slowly, looking up at the bright sun. I am the most beautiful person in the world. I get paid to just get my photo taken! Ahh, think about how much my fans will love me after this photoshoot… Her mind continued to flood with such thoughts until she felt someone run into her. She gasped, ripped from her narcissistic thoughts.

 Filled with rage, she turned around to face a very dirty young man. Disgusted, she flippantly waved her hands at him, “Um, EXCUSE me? Can I HELP you?”


Adrian adjusted his glasses, nearly knocked off his nose by the impact, and squinted down at the predominately red blob in front of him. A little girl? Maybe? Hopefully her tender young ears hadn't picked up on his language.
'Wow, geez, my bad! Apologies, little lady, didn't see you there. Actually, yeah, I'd love some help-' He eased his pack off his shoulders, let it drop with a heavy whump and whipped out his brochure again. 'You see, I'm looking for this house. My friend lives there- well, sort of. Not so much a friend as a colleague. And he's not there normally. I guess he doesn't really live anywhere in particular- kind of like me. We're sort of like vagrants, or nomads!'
His brown eyes flashed with the beginnings of a tangent. If this were a musical, he'd almost certainly have broken into song.
'Always traveling the Earth, the wilderness, the Great Wide Everything. Restless and starving, risking life and limb. Forever seeking, craving stories, devouring information as if it were our very sustenance. Striving through thick and thin to learn more about the mysterious creatures that made us who we were. Who we are. Who we're going to be!'

He finished grandly, a bold fist raised to the sky and his glasses askew.
Wow. He'd fired himself up so much he was out of breath. He slowly refocused on the nonplussed crimson shape before him and gave a slightly bashful chuckle. 'Haha, anyway. I was wondering if you could help me with this map. I can't seem to make head nor Taillow of it.'
He held out the pamphlet, damp and smudged, leaving a big dirty thumbprint right on the face of the girl on the cover.

Boop

Sage was repulsed by how many sins this guy committed within the short time she listened to his drivel. She narrowed her eyes and lifted her finger, ready to give him a piece of her mind.

Suddenly, however, the tall intruder from before appeared, falling on top of both of them before she could get a word out. The luxury ball she was holding that held her prized Tsareena flew out of her hand onto the ground. Before she could grab it, the girl swiped it right in front of her! She rattled off some ridiculous nonsense and took off quickly.

Despite the fact that this disgusting boy had done so much, this girl had trespassed against her not once, but twice. She had no time to waste with this weirdo, she had to chase after her to get back her Pokemon. Who did she think she was? Grey eyes blinked back angry tears.
“Hey!” Sage yelled, pulling her hair quickly back into a ponytail. She ran after the thief, shouting, “That’s my Pokemon! Come back you treacherous monster!” 

Great. So many things wrong today, and if her beautiful dress got even a little dirty, she was suing. Both of them.

Adrian took a bit longer to collect himself after being dogpiled, his heavy, overstuffed backpack acting as the shell on a bespectacled tortoise. It took him a few seconds of rolling around on his back to figure out that he could extract himself by simply removing his arms from the straps. He got to his knees and felt around in the mud for his glasses.
What the hell could that have been? A giant? It sounded like a... A giant woman?

‘Hey, did you see who-?’ He looked around for the little red girl but she was already taking off screeching something or other about monstrous treachery. As she bolted past him he caught the sound of a gentle crunch. His heart sank as he reached for what he was desperately hoping weren’t his glasses.
And, of course, they were his glasses.
He sighed and propped them back on his nose where they now hung crooked and muddy, one lens irreparably cracked, and continued picking up his scattered items. The brochure was saturated, completely ruined. He gathered up the two pokeballs and clicked them back into place on his utility belt.

Huh. That’s weird.

He ran his fingers over the pokeballs again for a quick recount. He thought he’d only brought Eureka and Flappy with him- and then he’d caught Query… Oh well. He shrugged off the discrepancy, chalking it up to his own absent-mindedness, and bent over to heft his pack over his shoulder.
Ugh. He couldn’t see a thing. At least he had his spare pair of- oh. Wait. These were the spare.
‘Just not my day, I guess.’ He murmured to himself.
He allowed himself just a split-moment of self-pity before taking a deep breath and straightening up, the frying pan and coffee pot tied to his bag clattering together. Even with the state of his murky, shattered vision, he could see that the sky had cleared up.

He continued wandering (quite literally) blindly around town a while longer until the owner of the bicycle shop he accidentally walked into took pity on him and pointed him in the right direction. At long last, he turned down a side street, rounded a corner and- voila!
He was so happy to see the the familiar slate roof that his knees almost gave out beneath him. Relieved tears welled up behind his broken frames as he went to knock on the door.

A young brown-haired man in a button-down shirt answered the door, his friendly smile turning to concern when he saw the state his contemporary was in.
‘Took you long enough- what on earth happened to you?’

Adrian gave a dopey, weary smile as Bill ushered him in. ‘I got lost,’ He dropped his pack next to the couch with a dull thud. ‘But I’ll tell you about that later. First, I have something incredible to show you, Masaki. I found it at the Ruins near Violet. You know I’ve been doing field research there for the last few weeks. I was just playing around with some glyphic tiles in between translating text and, ah, I’m getting chills just thinking about it! The floor suddenly collapsed beneath me and I fell maybe twenty feet into a sealed underground chamber.’ Adrian ran his hand through his wild hair, his brown eyes sparking as he became enraptured with his own retelling. ‘It’s breathtaking. Corridors and staircases, every wall inscribed. And that was where I found… This.’

He took a pokeball from his belt, hesitating for a moment. Was it this one? Normally he marked his pokeballs with symbol so he could tell them apart, but he hadn’t had the time yet. He took a chance, releasing the mysterious pokemon inside.
Unfortunately, it was not the mysterious pokemon he was expecting.

‘Uh…’ Bill squinted at the Amaura between them as it looked around in confusion.

‘Uh…’ Adrian seconded. “This… this isn’t the pokemon I found. H-hold on a sec- return!’ He called the pokemon back to its ball and looked at it, slightly disturbed. He took the other unmarked ball from his belt and cleared his throat, attempting to recapture the atmosphere of scientific excitement.
‘And that was where I found… This.’

The room was suddenly very uncomfortably full of Onix.

Boop