Puff really went at my hair when she woke up. She started combing it to one side with her beak, spitting on me sometimes. I tried to get her to stop or practice tailwind at least but to no avail. She seemed tempted by pecha berries but not the orans. It's unfortunate that they are a lot rarer and she still seems full for now. Maybe she would settle when there were less avaible
At the very least Ian is getting some good work in on destiny bond after I saw him getting bored of wide guard. The two foot tall wall was still not very impressive and would at least need to be 3 and a half feet tall for me to crouch behind. It was quick now to gather, but the rocks crumbled when they got higher than that, falling over and colpsing the entire wall. Destiny bond, meanwhile, worked by connecting two souls such that they shared the same fate when it is forcefully broken by unconsciousness of the user or the target.
For now it just makes him jumpy for some reason as he tries to feel Puff's soul with ghost TE and focuses on it outside of the random attacks we sometimes experience. We waited as a pack of Zigzagoon crossed our path and I thought of something. "Hey Puff" she tugs my hair violently once. "You'll get used to it. Can you sing loudly for me?" She stops her arranging of my hair and starts singing. Hehehe if you won't train normally then I'll just get you to train on your own accord.
"Can you do a higher pitched tone? Try to fill up your lungs too." From the top of her lungs Puff starts singing and as we walk farther we get into a couple more fights than usual. Another Ralts, Whismur, a pair of Togepis. By feeding off my energy Ian is able to keep going but I'm starting to get exhausted. We take a break and I try to get to know the two a little bit as I take a rag to Ian for a quick oiling. I'm going to need one of those whetstones I read about to get some of the rger notches out faster but Ian is recovering on his own.
"So what do guys want to do when we get to the first gym? There's two options for us trainingwise." Ian ys quietly but Puff makes a questioning noise. "Oh I forgot you probably don't know about human things and whatnot. There are these things called gyms that have challenges for people and Pokemon like you guys. You follow?" She rolls her small beady eyes at me. "Well there are two options like I said. The normal challenge or the specialty. The normal challenge for Cire, the leader of this gym, and all other gyms is a standard single format Pokémon match with Pokemon fighting to knock each other out in a battle. The specialty is different for each gym though. Cire, like the big city snob she is likes contests which are all about gm rather than sm." Ian hums and Puff zooms over and gives him a sharp tap, trilling angrily over something Ian must have said.
"Here let me wash that off" I grab a clean rag and wipe the small part with oil on it off of her beak before expining farther. I like what I think Ian is thinking though. "The goal is to show skill to dazzle judges with your use of moves and movements and that does quote unquote damage to your opponent's points bar." Puff is thinking before quietly twittering to me and then using her singing voice. "Yes, singing is probably a way to impress them, BUT only if you can make it a move. I know sing might be a bit challenging because it works a status effect but you can learn hyper voice." She twirls in the air and beats her wings before I add "I'll even teach you how to learn it if you work on another move first." She misses a wingbeat and falls slightly. "Don't worry, I'll start you off with tailwind. It’s about moving wind so you should be able to learn it quickly."
She gets in a pleading position and tries begging me to not do this but I stand firm "The quicker you learn it the quicker I tell you how to perform for a contest." She faints sideways but nods slowly. I then tell her to remember the feeling of peck and then try to move the energy out of her body and into the surroundings. I figure she should start with what she has before doing anything else as I watch her beak glow a little as she does half the move and ignores me when I say it will waste energy.
She is much more talented with this move compared to Ian and his wide guard for reasons that I think has to do with experience and typing. In that one afternoon when we pass through Ribb and halfway to the town she is already having the wind partly lift her and she can even do it while flying to go slightly faster. She's already as fast as me sprinting with the move taking effect. I wait till it’s dark before I tell her my secrets and we find a campground set up for the travelers from the town to Ribb. The other three vilge graduates stayed behind for the night or gone ahead.
She facepalms after hearing my expnation, Ian vibrating which I take as ughing. "Food for thought, if you figure it out yourself next time you can learn whatever you want." I smile at how the fruits of the deal are more than enough to make me happy. Ian even finished up on connecting their souls with destiny but has to do it with his whole focus. Tomorrow we'll move on to using it in battles and trying it out if we end up losing.
We win only half the times we are attacked but the Pokemon attacking us have certainly gotten stronger (at least I tell myself that). My arm went from feeling in agony to hell the next time I tried blocking with my arm and I have since been using Ian as a shield.
Puff has even fought a couple to try out the new move that she is secretly happy about. I see those expressions you make when no one is looking, Max has eyes in the back of his head. Or a reflective Ian after a te night battle while rubbing him down. I tried finding a rock to use as a whetstone but the description said that they are supposed to be smooth but I can't find any that are to my liking. I'll wait for a river or something to try again.
Puff finishes off a second aggressive Pokemon with a very weak hyper voice. The trick was to channel normal TE into it. Ha, take that you puffball. When it gets really te I give up on waiting for Zac and Hannah and have Ian wake me when it’s my turn. Such a turn never comes and I wake up to find a sliced up Cleffa lying in bloody chunks around the campfire.
"What the heck Ian? You didn't have to stay up all night like that" I accost the ghost, even though I'm damn proud of him for his actions. Ian makes a move with his eye that goes in a circle quickly. We pack up and leave before the sun even rises this time.
I notice that Ian seems better at using destiny bond as we run into a Floette who absolutely destroys us. When I saw Floette, I had Ian use the move immediately and as he got knocked out by the fairy wind he made it fall out of the air. Floette was quick to recover from the weak connection so I legged it out of there, having to hide behind a couple trees to not get hit by the fairy winds. We escaped when Puff use haze and it lost us. Or more likely, we exited its designated garden.
After that, I started trying to stop wilds from escaping with block. The move didn't work any of the times we tried it. Puff was ughing as she flew away from us and into the air. Block was really just a footnote in the encyclopedia of Pokémon that I read. I couldn't bring it with me since it was not mine (the merchant I knew begged to differ after I sat there and read half of the tome) and I couldn't figure out how Ian could 'spread his arms wide to prevent the opponent from fleeing.'
Someone out there must be ughing at our attempts though as Ian was too slow to stop most Pokemon from just ducking under his ribbon to get away. It was a bad experience really and must have been more of a spiritual or image sort of thing rather than physically doing it.
It was around 10 in the morning when we reached the town and it looked much more impressive than anything I had ever seen. When mom said suburbs, what she meant was mansions. Surrounded by a 20-foot wall, various mansions and brick buildings were scattered in neat orderly lines. There was something called a Speedway and a Pokemart as the two main food sources and the first smelled delicious. I saw vegetables, condiments, and meats that I had never seen before behind a counter and the employees prepared a sandwich chock full of it all for someone.
The person used some sort of card to swipe on this machine and they handed it to them wrapped in paper. I tried asking how I could get one of those card things and the person ughed "Get a job kid."
I didn't like his tone but I held Puff onto my head before she could cause a scene involving a dinging bell. The pokemart was more my style and even had a whetstone for 10 pokedolrs. It had food, clothing, and expensive TMs ranging from 1,000 to 50,000 pokedolrs but I was told to scram when I told him how much I had on me. I couldn't buy anything in that store for those prices and the whetstone I was still going to hold out on. There was supposed to be a small stream to cross over on the road ahead so I'd look there. I also couldn't find a cheap notebook, there were too many 5 subject spiral whatevers and diaries with funny quotes on them filling out that shelf.
It was an experience for sure but I moved on when I couldn't find anything else I wanted to check out. If the town was already like this what would Blossom city be like? Blossoming I’m sure. I snickered to myself when I thought that.
