CHAPTER 8: AN ELECTRIFYING TRAINING SESSION

Moon Continent Explorer’s Guild, West Coast Branch

Although he tried his hardest to forget about the strange beldum the quartet had seen last evening, Ryan still vividly remembered that encounter when he woke up the following morning. The eevee decided that he would warn guildmaster Felix, and Team Waterburn, to be wary of any shiny beldums they see.

On this calm, sunny summer morning, Ryan was the second of the quartet to awaken, doing so just as the sun started to rise. He had always been an early riser, and becoming an eevee hadn’t changed that. The only other one who was up at this hour was Ben, who was impatiently pacing the room, wanting desperately to wake the others himself, but, at the same time, wanted to respect their beauty sleep. He took notice that Ryan was no longer asleep.

“Yes, finally! You’re awake!” Ben whispered excitedly. “I’ve been wanting to go down for breakfast for probably an hour now; I mean, it’s our first day as a real exploration team!” The litten gradually got louder as he kept speaking. “It’s so exciting; I’m hyped up and ready to go!”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Ryan said as he tied his silver scarf around his neck, “but could you keep it down? I may be up, but our teammates aren’t!”

No longer caring about keeping his voice down, Ben cheered, “I’ll be as loud as I want to be!” He hurled a paw into the air, jumping up excitedly.

The yell caused both Lena and Terry to snap awake exclaiming a shout, with the latter falling out of his bed.

“Wow, that was loud,” Lena said groggily. “Please keep it down in the mornings; we can’t do our best work if we’re too tired to, you know.” She shook her head. “Whatever, coffee is a suitable substitute for sleep, at least for me, so as long as they have some I should be fine.”

“Och, that smarts,” Terry moaned while rubbing his head as Ben picked him up off of the floor. The litten glared at the pachirisu with annoyance.

“You fell maybe six inches from the bed,” Ben said. “You’ll be fine. Now let’s get going!”

The quartet headed down to the mess hall and found that they were the first ones there on that particular morning. Today’s breakfast was blueberry waffles, and a drink choice of either orange juice or, to Lena’s delight, black coffee. Since, unlike dinners, breakfasts are first come first serve, each pokemon requested a plate of waffles and their desired drink at a counter that wasn’t opened last night. After a short wait due to nobody else being there yet, the quartet downed the baked, waffled breakfast food and their choice of beverage before leaving the room.

“Well, the morning announcements don’t start ’til nine, so we’ve got a couple of hours to kill,” Lena said, fully awake now thanks to the coffee, as the quartet headed out the front door of the guild into the balmy morning air. “What should we do in the meantime?”

“I, for one,” Ryan answered, “think that my uncle should really learn how to use his new electric powers, not to mention practicing gliding.”

“That’s probably a good idea,” Terry agreed. “I’d hate to be a dead weight in those dungeons I’ve been hearing about, and I doubt tech-savviness will come in handy in there.”

“But the next question is, how would we even do it? If we go through Coral Cove again, we might not make it back in time for the morning announcements!” Ryan looked over to Ben. “Do you have any electric-type friends, by chance? Maybe they could help my uncle learn how to be an pachirisu… at least as far as knowing electric moves goes.”

The litten thought for a moment before his expression lit up. “Well, I don’t know if he’ll be awake at this hour, but I know just the mon! Follow me!”

Ben’s companions followed the aforementioned litten to a rounded house with ears shaped like almonds and a tricolor exterior: one part brown like peanut butter, another black like blackberries, and a jagged stripe in between that was a pale yellow like the inside of a banana.

Clearly, whoever lives here painted their house on an empty stomach… Ryan thought.

Ben walked up to, and knocked on, the rounded door on the front. However, neither him or Terry, who was still riding his shoulder, certainly didn’t expect to be sparked by a small rodent with glowing red, angry eyes, and two black sections of fur divided by a jagged purple stripe of fur.

“Ack!” the small fire cat yowled. “Harry! Get off of me! You’re in hangry mode again!”

Terry, who had now scampered out of the way on all fours, turned back and remarked, “Wait, did you just say ‘hangry’?”

Still pinned to the ground, Ben said to his companions, “Don’t just stand there, do something!”

Ryan prepared to lunge forward with a quick attack. “Well, if you say so.”

Ben facepawed. “I don’t mean attack! Give him a berry! Or an apple! Something!”

As Ryan rifled through his bag, Terry snickered at the fact that he was called hangry.

“I don’t see what’s so funny about our teammate being attacked,” Lena responded as Ryan pulled a big apple out of his bag, which was a part of the welcome package for all new explorers, as mandated by the Exploration Society. He tossed the large red fruit Ben’s way, and the litten shoved it into his electric friend’s mouth. The morpeko finally started calming down, moving off of Ben and allowing him to get back up. His eyes stopped glowing red, and the guinea-pig pokemon’s fur changed to look more like the colors of the house he had emerged from.

“Mmh,” the no-longer-famished morpeko said after he finished the apple, tossing the core aside. “Thanks for the apple, eevee.”

“Please, call me Ryan,” the eevee said.

“I gotchu, Ryan,” Harry said, pointing a fingergun his way before apologizing to Ben. “By the way, Ben, sorry for tackling you like that. You know how I get when I’m hungry.” He chuckled.

“Yeah,” Ben said, his fur having poofed out some from the static, “it still hurt though.”

The guinea-pig then noticed Ben’s badge. “I see you joined the guild.”

“Oh, yeah! We’re Team Seekers now!” Ben struck a pose as he said that. “We don’t have a motto yet though, but I’m sure we’ll come up with something.”

Lena sighed impatiently. “Need I remind you why we came here in the first place?”

The litten facepawed. “Gah, right! Harry, I need to ask you a favor.”

“Sure thing, but… what could you possibly need when it’s barely seven in the morning?” the morpeko asked.

“Well, we were already awake, and Terry here wanted to learn how to use electric moves.” Lena gestured at the pachirisu. “You see… he doesn’t actually know any and Ben thought that you, as another electric type, could possibly help him?”

“What!” the morpeko said, shocked. “What electric type doesn’t even know moves of their own type?!”

Ryan started, “Well, he isn’t normally-“

The morpeko shrugged, interrupting the eevee. “It was a rhetorical question, but I’ll take you up on your request, I guess. We can’t do it here when my neighbors are all still asleep, though. We’re gonna need to head to the beach.”

---

As the quintet stepped out onto the beach once again, this time on the north side of the old, abandoned lighthouse, Harry asked what Terry wanted to learn.

“Well, what move was it that you used on Ben?” Terry asked in response.

“Oh, spark? Good choice, seeing as pachirisu are a pokemon that relies on physical attacks most of the time,” Harry said. “I think. I don’t know a lot about them since not many live around here…”

The pachirisu hopped off of Ben’s shoulder and onto the sand, and Ryan wondered how his uncle seemingly has quadrupedal movement down so easily already as the two electric rodents adopted battle stances opposite each other several meters apart.

“Okay,” Harry shouted across their makeshift arena, “so what you’re gonna want to do is to-“

“Lemme guess, feel the electricity within?” Terry said.

“What? No!” the morpeko shouted, then paused for a moment. “Well, that might help, but it’s not required. What you actually need to do is to simply charge forward at your target, as fast as you can.”

“That just sounds like tackle!” Lena called from the sidelines, frustrated. “What a waste of time this is!”

Ignoring what Lena said, Terry replied to Harry instead. “Alrighty then.” He got back down on all fours and rushed towards his opponent. As he did, tiny crackles of electricity began to fly around his body. Soon, his body was entirely surrounded, but not obscured, by a yellowish glow, as he tackled the morpeko. Due to his type resistance, Harry wasn’t hurt very badly, but the significant knockback he experienced as a result surprised him as well as Terry’s teammates. After the morpeko landed back in the sand, Ryan rushed over to his side, ears flattened.

“Sorry about that,” the eevee apologized. “My uncle was always a fast learner, you know.”

“It’s alright, Ryan-” Harry paused in shock. “Wait, he’s your uncle?! He is one seriously strange pachirisu.”

Ryan sighed. “Oh, you have no idea…”

After the bell of Luneria’s clock tower went off eight times, Harry opted to teach Terry a move that won’t end in the morpeko getting hurt: charge.

“Sure, that spark of yours is already powerful, but if you charge it up, it’ll hurt your opponent even more!” the gerbil said. “It’s really easy to use, too: all you need to do is to rub your electric sacs.”

“You mean these yellow things I saw on my face in Lena’s mirror?” Terry asked for clarification, pointing to his cheeks.

“Pretty sure he does,” Ryan stated.

The electric flying squirrel nodded, rubbing his cheeks and building up a charge surrounding himself. He then rushed at morpeko again, noting that his own movement speed was faster this time. Despite his speed boost, Harry leapt out of the way just in time, causing the pachirisu to crash right into a nearby palm tree. Ryan cringed from the thud of Terry’s head against the tree, nervously tugging at his neckerchief with a digit.

“Wh- t-that’s not fair!” Lena shouted.

“Chill out, Lena,” Ben replied. “He seems fine to me.”

Terry got back up, holding a paw to his head and groaning.

“And that was to show you that the enemy isn’t just gonna stand there and take a hit most of the time.”

“…noted…” Terry muttered as Lena handed him an oran berry from her bag.

Ryan walked up to Harry. “Okay, this was a good training session and all, but we should really get going. Morning announcements start soon, and this’ll be our first time, so I’d really like to make it on time for that.” At that, Terry hopped onto Lena’s shoulder.

“Can’t you walk?” Harry asked the pachirisu.

“Yeah, but I can’t keep up with the others and their longer legs with these stubby things!” Terry replied, pointing to a foot. “By the way, Harry, I appreciate the training. Now I won’t have to feel like a deadweight to the team.”

“Uncle, you’re not a deadweight anyways,” Ryan said sympathetically. “But we should really get going.”

“Right,” Ben said, dashing towards the town with Terry scaredly clutching onto his arm, and Lena and Ryan rushed after him, quickly falling behind the fast rabbit.

“You’re welcome!” Harry shouted after them. “If you ever wanna train just hit me up!”

---

“Where were you?” Sofia asked as Team Seekers entered the main hall, which was also where the morning meeting was held. Ryan was about to answer when the sprigatito stopped him. “Actually, I don’t really care. I mean, it’s not like you’re late or anything,” she continued. “In fact… Felix isn’t startin’ for another half-hour! Why are you here so early?”

“Couldn’t we ask the same thing about you?” Lena replied. “Especially since Felipe and… uh… the other one… they aren’t here. What’re they up to?”

“You’d never guess this with how energetic he is, but Felipe is a very heavy sleeper. Quincy’s still in there too, only, instead of sleeping himself, he’s trying to wake Felipe. Sent me down to save a place for us to sit together, in fact.”

“I see. How considerate.”

Just then, a soaking wet fuecoco stomped into the room, with his quaxly companion following behind, a smug look on his face. Felipe flopped down next to Sofia, and he folded his arms while glaring at her.

“I can’t believe you would leave me out to dry! Well, not literally, thanks to Quincy, but you know what I mean!” he growled.

“Hey! You were the one who just wouldn’t get up!” Quincy fired back.

“Can both of you stop?” Ryan said, wedging himself between the two pokemon. “Arguing solves nothing.”

Felipe grumbled. “Maybe if Quincy didn’t shoot a water gun at me when I was sleeping, I wouldn’t be in a mood to argue.”

“By the way,” Ryan added, changing the subject, “I noticed that pretty much everyone in the guild is here already. Why is that?”

His question would soon be answered as just then, the eevee’s attention was drawn in front of him due to microphone feedback. Only, instead of Felix, there stood a white-furred meowstic with a pair of bottom-rimmed eyeglasses perched on its nose, a microphone held in her right paw. Ryan immediately recognized her as the same one who ran the shop last night.

“Hold on,” Ryan whispered to Quincy, “isn’t that the shopkeeper?”

“Yeah, she owns a shop, but that’s a secondary business for her. She’s also the guildmaster’s assistant, and, back in the day, her and Felix came all the way from Miobach City to create this branch of the continent’s guild with him,” the quaxly whispered back.

“If I may have your attention?” the she-meowstic began. “My name is Erin, and as you may already be aware, Felix has volunteered me to take his place as guildmaster temporarily. You see, he learned that there were several cases of humans being turned into pokemon, and that all of those pokemon live in this very area.”

It was then that the muttering began.

“Humans? Here? I thought they were just a myth!”

“Don’t humans only come when there’s a disaster to be stopped? What’s going on?”

One line in particular caught Ryan’s attention, and not in a good way, given that he was trying to keep a low profile: “Maybe that new eevee is one of them? You don’t see many around here…”

Erin tapped the head of the microphone with her free paw to create more feedback, intentionally this time in order to grab everybody’s attention.

“As I was saying before you all rudely interrupted…” the psychic cat snapped, “Felix has left me in charge while he performs some independent research on the subject of human-to-pokemon transformations at Miobach Library, but he left me with instructions.”

She listed off what each team would do for the day: Team Makers would gather more sitrus berries to restock the infirmary, Team Legion, as usual, would get kitchen duty, Team Waterburn has a special mission that she will take them aside for after this meeting, and Team Seekers still has to do their entrance exam.

“As for everybody else,” the she-meowstic finished, “take a job, any job, from any of the job boards! But please leave easier jobs to newer teams. And to those same newer teams, please don’t play hero, and take a job you’re actually capable of handling. I would prefer to not have any deaths on my watch.” She adjusted her glasses. “I believe that concludes this meeting. That means most of you, get to work, Waterburn, come with me, and Seekers, wait until I’m done with them.”

As the rest of the guild went their separate ways, taking jobs and eventually leaving the guild building entirely, Team Seekers simply waited for Erin to finish up with Team Waterburn.

“I wonder what that Erin gal could possibly want with Team Waterburn,” Terry thought aloud.

Lena shrugged. “Eh, probably just some secret mission that we have don’t need to worry about.”

Ben was so excited for the entrance exam that he didn’t care what Team Waterburn were up to, or even that Erin was right behind him, sending the aforementioned exploration team on their way. “Ooh, I wonder what our task’ll be. I’m working myself up just thinking about it!”

“And that’s what I’m here to tell you, litten and friends,” the meowstic said in a surprisingly friendly tone.

“Gyah!” the litten said, hopping back in shock. “Don’t sneak up like that!”

“So you’re the team with an eevee… not many live around here, so it’s a surprise to see one join our guild.”

“Leave him be,” Lena said. “He’s new to the area.” The sneasel placed a claw on her hip. “So, Erin, what’s our exam?”

The meowstic cleared her throat and pulled out of her bag a sheet of paper with footprint runes on it. “According to Felix, all you need to do is make it to the end of Bamboo Backwoods. There’s a box of special stones placed there, and those stones can be embedded into each of your badges; owning one makes your guild membership official. Each of you are to grab one, and if you do, you pass the exam and are an official team. Also, you can try as many times as you need, so don’t get too upset if you don’t make it the first time.”

Talk about low stakes, Ryan thought. This’ll be very straightforward, I bet.

“Okay, then,” Ben said, almost disappointed. “Was hoping for a bit more of a challenge, but I’ll take it, I guess.”

“Oh, you may find it to be more difficult than you think,” Erin replied with a wink. “But I’m getting ahead of myself. Now go and take on the dungeon!”

The quartet nodded obediently and headed out the door.