"Well, I need a place to get B.B. used to being a Loudred, and that's going to be noisy, so keeping myself away from living things that can file noise complaints is probably for the best," you explain, poking at some of the leftover yolk on your plate. "The ocean's always been a place I go to cool my head, so there's another point in its favour. My Pokemon both enjoy the water, and last but not least, while there's bound to be wild Pokemon underfoot no matter where I go, I think I'll take my chances with annoying a Magikarp or a Remoraid over whatever B.B. might summon out of the tree line on this island."
Twenty minutes later, Shou gets a call from Kylie where the trademark roar of a pissed-off Gyarados can clearly be heard in the background.
Shou hums. "Would you mind if we exchanged contact information?" he asks, "just in case something happens here, or vice-versa, so one of us can reach out."
You blink. Why, this sure sounds like Shou's looking out for you here, or failing that, trusts you to be willing to help him if he asks for it.
"We probably should have shared this kind of thing when we were first paired up," you note idly, reaching down and hauling your P★DA out. Looking back over at Shou, you find him holding a PokeGear encased in some kind of protective foam case. "So why not?"
The two of you extend your devices out, and with a bit of fiddling, you've traded contact information.
It's all over now, Shou, we have your contact information!
But yeah, gonna echo Kylie in that we probably should've done this a while ago, huh?
First and foremost, you'll need food; B.B. needs the extra nutrients after his evolution, and Urchin could do with a little extra to help make up for the energy she's spent on healing, not to mention they both missed their afternoon meal yesterday. You make a mental note to stop over at the local corner store on your way out; they stock iapapa berries and you'll want to pick up several for today. The berries aren't purely in celebration for his evolution, but also because B.B. is going to be low on a lot of basic nutritional needs, and that includes sugar and vitamins that can be found in those berries, while his kibble should cover any other deficiencies.
A sour feast for a sour king! It's what he needs at the moment and it's also just nice to occasionally treat our Pokemon to a right and proper meal with some extra bits and bobs.
You start work on B.B.'s berries first, tugging them out of their bag and going at them with the knife of your multi-tool, chopping each one up into quarters. You leave the skin on, this time around; B.B. is... generally pretty indiscriminate in his eating, but he has eaten around the skins of iapapa berries in the past, probably due to them being hard for him to chew up properly. That said, the skins are rich with nutrients that he absolutely needs right now, and hopefully he'll be too hungry to be picky about what he's inhaling.
Considering the sheer difference in mouth size and structure between a Whismur and a Loudred, I don't think B.B. is gonna ever have a problem with eating the skins again. With his mouth now being a lot closer to Hippo than Rabbit, I'd give even odds to him being able to just slam an entire watermelon in there and crush it to bits through sheer jaw strength alone.
Once properly broken down, you toss the quarters into a container you brought with you, then move on to the kibble, pouring each of your partners a sizable portion. Two more bowls come out, and you fill them each with a good amount of water from your supply of fresh water, before pairing them off, one for each kibble bowl.
With B.B. having gone through an evolution, I'm reminded of one of the unasked question the Pokemon World, namely at what point does a Pokemon become human enough that feeding them kibble and water out of a bowl turns into an awkward affair (such as the Mr. Mime owned by Ash's Mother sitting on the floor to eat food out of a bowl alongside Pikachu despite being humanoid and clearly able to sit at the table)?
Food taken care of, you grab the bucket and jog your way down to the waterline, filling it up to its rim with seawater. Once you've hauled it back, you spend a few seconds driving it into the sand next to your towel, until it's not at risk of tipping over if pushed. It'll be a great place for Urchin to hang out in, if she wants to keep close to you but get her tendrils wet.
I always seem to forget just how small Urchin is. So large in personality but so small in stature and the eventual evolution into Toxapex doesn't even really change that much, at least in comparison to your average human!
His mouth is huge and pale yellow, as is standard for the species, and though only the top two teeth - almost tusks, really - are visible with his mouth shut, you know there's a matching pair on the bottom. The mouth sits beneath a somewhat pig-like nose and a pair of narrow eyes with pinprick pupils. In place of the floppy ears he had as a Whismur are a pair of round ears attached to stalks on the top of his head. Where once there was dense fur is now thick, leathery, blue-purple skin. It has, you notice, a distinct, textured quality to it, being somewhat wrinkled, with creases found most prominently beneath his eyes, around his joints, and beneath the stalks of his ears.
Teeth like a Hippo and with skin like....well, I was gonna say Rhino but Hippo might honestly still fit!
A closer inspection also reveals a set of three scars running diagonally along his left forearm, a paler blue-purple to the rest of his body. That is from Old Storm's talons, you suspect, as injuries taken during evolution tend to leave their mark. They're so faded they look years old, and don't seem to be impacting the mobility of the arm, but you make a mental note of it all the same, just in case they start irritating him later.
Huh, our little man now has some war scars. At least they don't seem to be bothering him due to the evolution he was undergoing when they were applied. Bonus points, our starter now has an extra hit of spice whenever he wants to break out the gun show.
Those same narrow eyes flick around in the seconds after he fully materializes, partially confused; the pupil fluctuates, growing and shrinking in size as they adjust to the light, before they swivel back over to you. B.B. stands stock still for a long moment, processing the world around him.
Then, his ears twitch, a swivel of his left ear stalk, and comprehension flashes over his features. A breath later, and he's rushing towards you.
Huh, I didn't imagine that a Loudred's ears could swivel. They always struck me as stationary but that's basically due to in-game sprites not usually showing off the full amount of motion a Pokemon could have.
Planting your feet, you open your arms as B.B. barrels into you. Despite your better efforts, taking a stance is not enough to stop his sheer extra weight and strength from sending you tumbling onto your ass, a laugh on your lips as B.B. clambers unceremoniously into your lap. His hands reach out, grasping anxiously at your body as his face comes in, sniffing aggressively at every place he can get access to, inspecting you in a furor.
Your little baby isn't so little anymore, is he? It's a melancholic note, but one that vanishes quickly.
Breathing out long and slow, you reach out and gently wrap your arms around B.B., hugging him. "Oh, sweetheart, I'm sorry I worried you," you say, feeling him lean aggressively against you in reply.
How do you stop a stampeding Loudred? For a woman such as Kylie, the answer is 'you do not (yet)'. A lapful of chonky Loudred is a wonderful place to be, even if he can basically pick us up just like we use to do with him.
"LouD," B.B. rattles out, and you wince as the sound carries deep enough into you to be felt in your spine. You feel B.B. go a little tense against you, aware of just how loud he was and evidently upset about it.
You give him another rub on his shoulders. "Buddy, don't you worry, we'll be working on that today. You'll get it all under control, alright?"
Loudred, otherwise known as Loud as Fuck even when they don't plan to be. Oh well, it's something we can work on and it's not like we were particularly stealthy when Urchin sounds the bugle horn whenever someone so much as opens their mouth.
Nudging your newly-evolved Loudred with your knee a few times, you start the unenviable process of moving four-something-feet worth of Loudred off of you. "Hey, stinker, you gotta get up," you say teasingly, even as B.B. very stubbornly resists doing just that. "Food's a-waiting."
B.B. keeps resisting your efforts to remove him from your body, his still-grubby hands tugging stubbornly at your arms and legs in mild protest, but eventually, with enough poking, prodding, and annoying, you do manage to slide him off of you and onto the sand, where he goes stubbornly limp in protest.
Pulling yourself to your feet, you nudge him in the ribs with the toe of your shoe. He doesn't respond for a while, clearly set on showing just how much he does not approve of his cuddling time being interrupted, but with a few more prods, he eventually gives in.
Good to know the physical changes and new maturity hasn't stopped B.B. from being the grumpiest thing in existence when he thinks its called for.
You take the opportunity while he's still to reach up and adjust his sunglasses. A few tugs on the strap's buckle means it's no longer clinging so aggressively to his head, and with a gentle knock of your knuckles, you slide the sunglasses back down over his eyes.
A Loudred without his goggles is only half-dressed at best!
With B.B. occupied with his food, it's time for Urchin. You pull her 'ball out from your pocket and expand it, but hesitate for a moment.
Urchin is... in a similar if somewhat different state to B.B., in terms of the aftermath of that fight. B.B.'s pokeball never put him into stasis, so when you retreated him, it would have felt like - to him - retreating to a safe den after losing a fight, and his consciousness would have remained unbroken until you got to Pokemon Centre, where they would have put him under for treatment. Still, he would have a pretty understandable line of cause-and-effect.
Urchin will not have that. What Urchin will remember is being injured, then nothing, before she likely came to at some point last night, finding herself suddenly completely healed and in her 'ball, but with no idea how she ended up there. This is further complicated by the fact that B.B. is a lot more used to pokeballs than Urchin. She's got more of a chance of being skittish, but she does still need to come out, do a check-in, and get comfortable again.
Truth be told, Urchin was the one I was more worried for between her and B.B. The latter obviously went through an evolution and there was going to be some issues that popped up due to his new form but Urchin gave us one hell of a scare there during the fight against Old Storm.
It's nice to know she isn't going straight from 'I'm in a hideous amount of pain' to 'it's two seconds later as far as I'm aware, I'm no longer in pain and I'm at the beach now', what with the way Pokeball stasis works.
Immediately, she is on edge. She puffs her spikes out, and her tendrils sink quickly into the sand, burying themselves and letting her lower her body further down, shrinking her profile. Her eyes, when you catch them through the gaps between her tendrils, are narrow and wary, staring out at the world around her with visible hesitation.
From somewhere deep inside her, Urchin lets out a sharp, half-hissed gurgle. It sounds more confused and anxious to your ears, but there is an undeniable agitation behind it, one you see B.B. instantly pick up on, freezing mid-meal.
Yeah, this kind of behavior was what I was expecting, maybe a little bit worse since the last we saw of Urchin was her flailing and screaming with broken tendrils.
Urchin's eyes shift from your face to the doll, and her posture changes; interest rustles through her tendrils like an ocean-borne breeze, shifting the sand around her. Before long, she's pulling her tendrils back out of the sand and creeping towards you, shuffling forward. When she's finally close enough, one of her longer front-facing tendrils reaches out and cautiously grabs the doll, then reels it in quickly, trading it over to one of the smaller tendrils right above her head, which curls tightly around it, pressing it close to her forehead.
Urchin's eyes waver, fluttering, and finally the last of her anxiety bleeds out of her. Her spikes pull almost fully into her body, and the tension in her tendrils goes with it.
Doll in-hand, peace of mind.
"Maaar," Urchin croons, staring up at you.
"There you are, princess," you coo at her.
I love the various nicknames Kylie has for Urchin. Princess, Sunshine and I'm sure I'm forgetting another one or two.
The babbling continues as she clambers over your body, every so often pausing to stick her face right up next to some part of you she finds fascinating, before moving on. You let her tangle herself up in your arms, your hair, stick to your back and even start wiggling her tendrils into your pockets, not that she finds anything in there.
This pattern continues for the next little while, and you don't really find a good reason to stop her, given how important it seems to her. Urchin climbs all over you like a sticky-fingered toddler in search of treats, babbling a chorus of Mareanie noises that you've come to associate with her being social. You're not sure why, precisely, she's yapping her little head off, but none of it seems agitated, so it's not really something you bother to worry about.
Cute!
She stops, at first, a short distance away from him, squinting warily. After a few moments of pause, you see her tilt her head back and huff at the air. Then, her eyes pop open a little, and with a very curious gurgle, she moves in again, right up to B.B.'s side.
B.B., turning from his food, gives her a look, but does little else than that, returning to his food without so much as a noise.
Tentatively gonna throw out a "Progress!" here because lord knows B.B. could have had worse reactions to Urchin waddling on up to him.
Urchin, being Urchin, takes this as an invitation for play and reaches out towards one of B.B.'s arms. It takes her a little while, a fair amount of hesitation accompanying the movement, but she eventually reaches out quickly enough to catch B.B.'s arm as it comes down from moving food into his mouth, wrapping one, then several tendrils around his forearm.
B.B. pauses, staring at Urchin as another tendril works its way up and tangles itself between his fingers.
Our Pokemon are holding hands, jesus christ.
There's a brief lull, your two partners sharing stares, before B.B. clearly decides he's had more than enough of this, and tries to pull his arm away. Unfortunately for him, he takes Urchin with him, who shrieks in delight as she's lifted up into the air, her many other tendrils now converging on his arm as she latches on tight, careful to pull all of her quills in.
This is the point where you get up and start moving in, and B.B. starts shaking his arm like it owes him berries. Urchin bellows and cries in excitement, while B.B.'s impressive show of tolerance begins to visibly break down, and his shaking becomes even more aggressive. His shaking intensifies until his arm is a blur, and that's finally enough effort to detach playfully-tangled tendrils, spiking Urchin back down into the towel with a dull thud and a cackle of joy.
One of our Pokemon just Super Smash Bros spiked our other Pokemon into the dirt, jesus christ.
Finding a place between the two of your partners, you sit down. "Today, we're going to work on getting B.B. comfortable in his new body, both in terms of agility and his voice," you explain, glancing between them as the two eat. "Urchin, you'll be part of that too. I can't exactly scold you for something that happened a day ago, you won't understand why I'm scolding you, and you'll probably just attribute it to something else. That said, I can keep deepening our bond and work on getting you to the point where you trust me enough to listen, even if you're really overwhelmed."
Urchin, like a dog or a goldfish, only has so much of an attention span to hand out over any specific amount of time. That clocks.
You jog along the beach, toes kicking up damp sand as you go. "Keep pace and follow!" you repeat, throwing a glance over your shoulder.
Behind you, Urchin scuttles after you. She easily keeps pace, crashing through the surf like some kind of multi-legged tank, but behind her...
B.B. stumbles over his own feet again, toppling forward and landing face-down in the wet sand and surf. "DrED!" he barks in surprise, making the sand near his head explode into clumps.
Welcome to the wonderful world of having beefed-up legs and feet, B.B.!
"Sound off!" you bellow.
"LoU-dRed!" B.B. cracks back, easily twice your volume. Somewhere off in the distance, a very fed up Wingull screeches angrily back.
"MAR-EA-NIE!" Urchin crows from her place in the bucket, which you're carrying with you at the moment.
"Again, baby! You know how to do this!" you instruct, standing on the other side of the beach to him.
Thank goodness we're a few miles out from Reedpier. The only person of note we piss off now seems to be a poor, singular Wingull who, unfortunately for it, isn't going to win in a shout-off to Urchin, let alone B.B.
'I'm going to keep my promise about walking you through the League's roster when we next have the time, however, given how things are going back at base, you'll need to know this in advance, so I've left you a link covering the Hoenn elite four. Please read the entire article before you return.'
Shou looking out for us so we don't spill a mountain of spaghetti by messing something up with a member of the Elite Four. Good guy, that Shou!
Sidney, dark-type specialist... Phoebe, ghost-type specialist... Glacia, ice-type specialist, Drake, dragon-type—hold on what—
A record-scratch so hard you can feel it in your collarbone.
You freeze, staring at the image that came with the description of Drake. Aside from him not wearing a shirt in this one - and wow is he built for a man of his age - this is, in fact, exactly the Drake you met up at the shrine and back down at the hotel. But he acted like he was just a League official, which... which...
Is not inaccurate, you guess.
You stare at it for a long moment, processing.
Huh.
Yeeeeeeep.
Taking in a breath, you dive back beneath the waves.
Beneath you, Urchin scuttles along the seafloor, kicking up sand as she barrels over seaweed and rocks, while next to you, B.B. coasts through the water with ease, even if it has taken him a bit to get used to his new weight and reduced buoyancy.
Figure that those newly-enhanced legs and arms are gonna be killer weapons for swimming, even if B.B.'s breathing might be a little different since the intake hole is near the bottom of his body instead of above his head. The lung capacity might just make up the difference or more though.
Smiling, you drop a little lower, then kick off of the muddy seafloor, rising up to the water's surface and breaching past it. You take in a steady breath of air, listening to the tides.
A moment later, you feel Urchin latch onto your leg and begin climbing.
The one time that feeling something touch your leg while you're out in the ocean is a good thing.
Urchin finishes her climb, emerging up along your back and arriving properly on your head. She stands there and crows, a mighty, gurgly noise of triumph, before sweeping her body around. You feel, more than see, her tense, then hop. Pulling your arm back, you smother a laugh as Urchin tumbles right onto B.B.'s head, landing with a splash and a splat as she stretches her tendrils out and clings on tight.
B.B. shakes his head vehemently, spluttering water as he tries to voice his complaints. When that doesn't work, you see a flicker of thought go through his eyes, then he dives again, clearly intent on getting her off using other, probably rather more rough, means.
Getting a laugh out of Urchin treating us like a springboard, cuddling up to B.B.'s head and B.B. planning to scrape himself against the seafloor or a rock in his attempt to try and shake her off.
B.B. has adjusted as much as he can, given the time you have available. He still has problems with his volume, making it hard for him to be quiet, however he's no longer a danger to others, and he's started to get a grasp on controlling the sounds his ears make. He's also a lot more comfortable in his body, and while he's still a little clumsy and doesn't quite understand his own strength, he's no longer tripping over his feet every other minute, so you'll take that as a win.
A little clumsy and loud is more than acceptable considering he just evolved and we had about a day to try and get him up to stuff. I'll certainly take it!
B.B. isn't the only one to gain something, though, as you've also noticed with B.B. being more relaxed, Urchin has too, becoming more clingy with both you and B.B. in general. She's shown more physical affection today than she normally would, and you think part of that is B.B. no longer being so on edge around her passively, which means she probably feels more confident in engaging with him. It's also just a good sign in general, you think.
I eagerly look forward to more moments of Urchin being far more physically affectionate than you'd ever expect a Crown of Thorns starfish to be.
Loudred do not need to stomp their legs to use sonic attacks, but it does make them more powerful when they can. It's an advantage B.B. is going to instinctively try to exploit, as even Whismur will show stomping behaviour - even if it doesn't actually help them - when trying to put their all into a sonic-based attack. For the future, it's going to be an important thing to remember, as if you can get B.B. into a position where he doesn't need to dodge, he has the opportunity to hit above his weight class with sound-based moves, and do so in ways you suspect very few Pokemon will be prepared for.
These Loudred biology moments are really cool to read! The fact that B.B. can now make sound from his mouth and his ears is interesting enough, especially since forcing his mouth closed won't stop him from attacking in retaliation anymore, and B.B. having a little bit of distance to work with to freely stomp his feet and give himself a biology-assisted power-up is dope as fuck.
I just have the image of B.B. picking up one of the dancing moves like Revelation Dance or Quiver Dance and doubling down on the benefits his own biology can lend him and the magnification of power-ups that Titanic Bearing can throw in for quite the bang for one's buck. Not sure if it's in the cards but it's a fun thought nonetheless.
"Old Storm remains the biggest threat to our efforts at this point, as there's no reason to believe his mental state will have stabilized since we last saw him. It's reasonable to assume that he will become aware of any attempt to remove the munitions, and will act to stop people from getting close to them, which could mean forcing his way into the munitions storage and attempting to put people to sleep. Understandably, we cannot even risk this happening, nor can we let him interfere in any other ways; he represents not just a danger to people, but to the munitions themselves. That said, we also can't just leave the munitions, as the storage area is in the process of flooding with rainwater as monsoons continue to come in, and they are now increasingly at risk of detonating if left unattended due to weathering. If they go off, the full extent of the damage is unclear, but it would likely undermine the cliffs and exacerbate any existing damage earthquakes caused."
Bit of a real nail-biter. Need to take care of the munitions but Old Storm is guarding them but we can't take out Old Storm or there'll be a hierarchy collapse so we need to find some kind of compromise that both gets the liable-to-explode munitions out of there while leaving Old Storm still intact and willing to lead his flock (or at least properly govern them so the entire island doesn't fall to pieces).
Drake looks Captain Yasuda's way, and his expression is a mixture of surprised and wary. Still, he glances back, then sighs. "If I used my Salamence, North Star, I could almost certainly defeat Old Storm in a one-versus-one fight, yes. I would need to mega evolve him to ensure his safety, but it can be done. That said, this does not solve the major issue of a full-on assault: North Star is an incredibly powerful Pokemon, and while alone he may draw in fewer Altaria than the entire 32nd would, his presence will still bring a great many Altaria flying towards him, especially once he mega evolves. Additionally... I'm concerned for the safety of Old Storm, in this case; Old Storm will likely attack North Star intending for it to be a fight to the death, and while North Star is well-trained, I cannot prevent him from very literally ripping Old Storm's head off if he feels like he needs to. Please understand, competitive battling is different, and North Star knows that; he is more than willing to avoid lethal attacks in them, because he knows those battles are for him to get stronger and show his strength, but that privilege will not be extended for something like this."
Awww, Drake calls his Salamence North Star. That's adorable for such a salty old curmudgeon considering the North Star is what (as far as I can recall) sailors rely on to stay on-course and find their way home before GPS or more fine-tuned directional ability was a thing.
