Regitnui

Pokémon: Hoenn - Make a Wish

discord.gg/9F4w72

Pokémon: Hoenn - Make a Wish

The sableye stared at Robin. Robin stared back. It wasn't hostile, or Keoni would have recalled Robin already. The two ghost types were just watching each other. And Asuna was sitting next to the table with papers, notably not looking at him. He'd never thought he'd be the type to become annoyed over being left to his own devices, but having spent more time touching her than not, he could clearly feel the lack of it. Keoni flipped open the tourist brochure that'd been on the desk, searching for something that was actually something worth visiting, and not an incidental function of the city's location.

Rustboro seemed to be a university town, at least at first, so most of the brochure had to talk about was academic in some way. Museums of history, art, a garden with rare plants... All in some way related to an ongoing function of the university. He stretched, and Katherine took the opportunity to nudge him with her nose. "Ai! Careful there." He flinched away from the sudden cold, scratching her behind the ears as he pulled his shirt to cover the spot. "You know that's chilly."

The ninetales growled mischievously, though that turned a little harder. He looked up to see Asuna had been distracted from her studies. "Don't worry there. I just got a reminder that I wasn't paying my other favourite girl enough attention lately."

A strange expression crossed her face before Asuna replied, "I think both your favourite girls want your attention today, but one of us has a job to do first." She stood, settling the Unovan-cut clothes around her waist more appropriately, then patting them looking for a pocket that wasn't there. Katherine nudged Keoni's hand again, as it had stopped moving. With a sigh, Asuna fished a handbag from her luggage and dropped the other two pokeballs into it before recalling the sableye. "Come on," she looked over at Keoni.

"Oh, am I coming?" he said, lifting himself off the couch. Asuna's eyes drifted from his face a little, as he buttoned up again. "Sure I won't get in the way?"

She tossed Katherine's ball to him, remarking, "Well, if you'd rather sit here all alone while I go do dangerous things in seedy parts of the city..." Apparently she'd picked up something objectionable in his tone.

Keoni stood, recalling Katherine and Robin. He put his arms around Asuna's waist, though she stopped him from kissing her. "Makeup, right," he muttered. "Never understood why the Nimbasa girls wear so much of it. Halfway through a tour you'd see them desperately trying to patch their faces up as the heat got to them." He instead kissed her forehead, up near her hairline where there was only foundation. "If this is some sort of Dark spy mission, I'd stand out. Though you always stand out and..." He stopped as he understood. "Oh, that is the disguise."

Asuna laughed, pulling away and taking his hand with her. "Mm-hm. Now let's go before I decide to stay in today." He let her pull him outside the room. "Don't forget to lock it," she reminded, and soon they were out in the plaza streets of Rustboro. The height of the city struck him most of all. The Haina had dunes that loomed over you like this, stone formations that rose high, but this was something altogether different. These skyscrapers were almost deliberately vertigo-inducing, square on the top as they were on the bottom, close enough that they were probably leaning on each other.

He didn't notice the circuitous route Asuna was leading him on, nor that his gawking at the skyscrapers and billboards was doing quite enough to disguise her careful, searching looks. It was on a wide balcony, plants growing in a small garden with a bench, that he noted, "I don't know how people live so cramped. Maybe they've got a secret or something."

Pokémon: Hoenn - Make a Wish

This is actually back? Now I gotta remember what i was doing...

Pokemon: Life [Always Open]

Title:
fontmeme.com/permalink/180710/28d51b0…

This woman was beginning to strike him as a problem. Not that Quilo was prone to rash action. Nevertheless, his instincts told him it would be safer for his town if she went in a different direction. "Who's to say I don't have those things? A gym must earn its keep somehow, and I'd much rather have the building be useful. In fact," He turned back to face her, Haze drifting to hover behind his shoulder as if asked to, "why not visit? I'll be having a Challenger's Day soon. If you have sufficient skill, you're welcome to test yourself against my gym. You can decide then if you think my gym is not 'fun'." He rested his hand on his sword hilt, nodding respectfully to her. "Maybe I'll give you a tour, and you can find any Team Rocket corners I may have missed."

Haze murmured something, an odd whisper that barely seemed like a pokemon sound. Quilo turned his head to her, reading his longtime companion's intentions. She felt as uneasy as he did; the delphox would be an even match for any of his pokemon alone, and though she had some experience with those types, Haze didn't feel she could protect him alone. "If you'd like to walk with me," Quilo said, cuing a surprised sound from the froslass, "I can escort you to Viridian unmolested by any other wild pokemon. I'd just ask that you leave the local children and League-goers alone. That's heavily regulated, after all."

@Seirei No Hai

Pokemon: Life [Always Open]

Hey, I'm still here. I've been waiting for Serei.

Pokemon: Life [Always Open]

The woman seemed... Unbalanced. Maybe there was a good reason why her Pokémon was so uncontrolled. They did reflect their trainer and methods, after all. Quilo felt a small amount of trepidation at leaving the woman to her own devices, but he had to confirm that the carnivine would no longer be a problem. "Come, Haze," he ordered. The froslass drifted along at his shoulder height, what she thought was proper, but kept an eye on the delphox.

Though Haze could move through the bushes, Quill had to push his way through, feeling the burned vegetation crack under his weight. "The previous leader would have cleared that out," he responded. "I just run a clean gym and community centre." An unstable woman asking about Team Rocket... That couldn't be a good sign.

Pokemon: Life [Always Open]

His eyes narrowing, Quill dug his fingers into the back of Katana's head, just behind his skull. It was one of the few vulnerable points on a sandshrew, and kept the furious Pokémon from attacking. "Wasn't a hunt," Quilo explained. "That carnivine you set the forest on fire for was bothering the local children. I was getting rid of it. Now I've got to come out here again tomorrow and make sure it's gone." He was too used to Haze's tricks to feel much anything but relief when she settled a cold arm on his left shoulder. He returned Katana, who left with a final cry of challenge, then examined Haze's half-solid body.

"You'll want to keep those blasts down to a minimum, though," he cautioned the woman. He was never a great judge of character, but she seemed positively pleased at the small fires around them. The forest would smother them soon; it was too thick and green to burn for long. Still. "Viridian City is about two hours that way, if you're needing accommodation. Less if you have a Pokémon to ride. Maybe come by my gym. You look like your delphox could learn some restraint."

Pokemon: Life [Always Open]

Katana had long, painful experience with fire, and dug his hooked claws into the soil to stop before he was caught in it. The normally quiet pokemon let out an odd, buzzing bark, challenging whatever let off that flame. Quilo caught up to him a moment later, putting a hand on the blue fur of his head. "Wait, remember?" A higher, almost human scream came from somewhere in the canopy, and Quilo tensed. "Hello?!" He shouted, proceeding forward carefully, Katana keeping close to his right side. "Someone in the forest?" It wouldn't be the first time he'd encountered trainers unexpectedly. The deeper reaches of the forest were popular with fire-type and flying-type trainers looking for a challenge. "Haze!" He called for the froslass, walking into the clearing from where the flamethrower had come.

@Seirei No Hai

Pokemon: Life [Always Open]

The crunch of leaves punctuated the silence under the canopy of Viridian forest. An Aurorus, a creature this area had likely not seen since prehistory, lazily munched on the most tender leaves, stripping them off their branches with a single-minded lassitude. Occasionally, the soft munching would change to hard cracking, as the pokemon froze sticks and branches, swallowing them whole as gastroliths. At the base of the creature's neck, Viridian Gym leader, Quilo Kitamura heaved an annoyed sigh. For him, that was practically screaming to the unseen sky. He'd been in here for three hours trying to hunt down a carnivine that had been attacking children's bug types. He'd never seen the appeal of those types, but there was a devoted group of children who bragged incessantly about their weedles and caterpies. When some of their parents had shown up at his home, distraught children in tow, he'd had no choice but to go find this fearsome killer of the children's beloved worms.

Not their fault that their pokemon's natural predator had moved in, and their pokemon weren't smart enough to not wander into a sweet-smelling trap, but such were the duties of a gym leader.

"Austrum, try a frost breath around the trees again. Maybe we'll finally flush it out." The aurorus swallowed the last mouthful, then dutifully summoned elemental cold from somewhere deep within its long throat. Unlike the last twenty times he'd tried it, this attack was met by an odd chirrup of pain, and the canopy came alive with movement and unseasonable flashes of red as the hidden carnivine made a run for it. Austrum blasted it with frost breath again, but Quilo already had a different plan. "Haze, Katana!" he said, releasing the froslass and sandslash from their pokeballs. "Follow and stop it." Haze had already taken to the air, moving at a speed the landbound and competitive Katana did his best to match. "Come on, Austrum, we'll need you on the other side." With a low rumble of protest, Austrum nevertheless allowed himself to be returned.

Quilo took off at a run, using the glint off Katana's icicle-clad back to track the pair. He'd get that carnivine. Maybe get a ranger to relocate it further away from the Trainer Route, where the bug catching kids could play and train without worrying about their bugs. First of all, though, he needed to catch the damn thing.

Pokemon: Life [Always Open]

@Vertigo I'm going with the "make an appointment to challenge the gym", because Quilo rents out the gym as a wedding venue and community hall.