Eterna Forest | 10:30 AM
Eterna Forest was known as the place where time stood still in the pokemon world. Famous for being one of the particularly large and puzzling forests to navigate through, there were countless campfire stories about trainers going in and never coming out.
Cyan Marcet, on the other hand, had dismissed these so-called warnings as urban legend and bullshit. Eterna Forest was a forest just like any other, and they lived in the wonderous age of technology where devices could pinpoint location from anywhere in the world. How could anyone get lost in Eterna Forest when there were perfectly capable cell towers just over in Eterna City? Perhaps there were odd spots and areas where signal couldn't reach, but just walking around could remedy that. A year and a half into their pokemon journey, Cy had navigated through enough woodland to understand the basic approach to any forest. Any trainer worth their salt could figure their way out, really. Have a fully charged pokedex, a back-up battery, a few local maps downloaded in case cell service was lost. Follow the route laid out, and if you lost service, use the local maps. It was that simple. Throw in a childhood of running around one of the largest and complex port cities of the region, and all the signs pointed to Cyan Marcet being perfectly capable of navigating a forest. Because that's all Eterna was, not some fabled place shrouded in mystery.
Yes, it was a large forest and maybe Cy had forgotten their back-up battery but they should have been able to find their way back. They hadn't ventured that deep— had they? Signal had been spotty from the get go, but Cy had been fairly confident that the pokedex had been doing an accurate job of tracking their location. The dex hadn't reloaded and updated as consistently as they hoped it would, but it had seemed fine.
"Daru? What do you think?" Cy directed their question towards the ice-type in question. He was a stout, round little ball of white, snowy fur with ice crystals and a perpetual frown.
"Da?" Daru waggled his arms and blew out a gust of freezing air, creating a small snowball. He promptly threw the snowball at a tree and jumped around furiously.
"You weren't paying attention? Daru!" Cy was more than irritated now. Daru was a more recent addition to the team who didn't listen all the time and regularly skirted around the rules. The little creature had pounced upon them around Snowpoint City after Cy had offered some food, and Daru had decided to stick around thereafter. But he had a wild side to him and liked to challenge Cy when he could.
"Piiiii!" Triton the Piplup, a proud little puff of a light blue down and watery eyes shrieked at Daru for not listening to Cyan.
"Triton, no-"
"Iiiiiii!" Triton ran towards Daru, beak glowing with the indication of Peck.
"No, don't start fighting-" Cy reflexively grabbed the Piplup with his left arm and scooped the Darmanitan with his right. "We don't need this right now." Their voice was firm. Triton, ever obedient, immediately sunk with a disappointed expression on his face. The proud little penguin had been more than dissatisfied with this new team mate since he'd joined, and it was all Cy could do to stop Triton from picking fights for no reason. Meanwhile Daru was content to ignore Triton and keep throwing snowballs into the distance. At least it's not attracting any angry wild pokemon, they thought, but this wasa tad excessive. Cyan patted Daru on the head coaxingly. "Why don't you take a nap or something? You're going to wear yourself out. And you don't have to go in your pokeball..." Cy unzipped their backpack. "You love being in here, right?"
Daru glanced at Cy and the backpack a few times before leaping in and retracting his limbs. His eyes shut slowly, and soon he looked just like an icy tumbler doll in Cy's backpack.
Triton let out a huff and Cy scooped him onto their shoulder. "Come on. We've got to find a way out of here, not that we're lost. I mean we're not that lost. Triton, I know you were paying attention." They'd find their way out.
@Typical