[X] Plan More Experimentation!
-[X] Train with your Pokemon—Sparkplug and Maynot still need a lot of work before you can call yourself ready for your first gym challenge. You might as well get some training in! (May spend more than 1 AP. Begins additional training vote for learning moves and general experimentation.)
-[X] At some point, that little girl you'd met at the beach finds you again and pleads with you to allow her to take you to learn swimming. Eh, why not? You don't know what a little kid can teach you, but maybe figuring out how to not drown right away in water was a good idea. (???, Progress towards Swimming Trait?)
-[X] Those fish farms look really neat and kind of nifty with all the intricate metal stuff and other equipment seemingly laying around. Check those out, and maybe you'll even be able to talk to that Riglin kid who lost his Shinx. (???, Gain information?)
-[X] Nurse Joy seems like a really good cook, and doesn't appear to be all that busy here in Ferry Point since there aren't really any visiting trainers around. Maybe you can ask her a bit about cooking on your own? (Gain the Newbie Cook Trait.)
[X][Sparkplug] Trainer Style Interrupt (The Improviser): It's a bit harder to train Sparkplug's magnetism skills out in the middle of a forest, but you do have a lot of coins on you. You haven't figured out how you could directly apply this to battles yet...but this would probably help with anything that involves Sparkplug's magnetism powers.
-[X] Further improve general control, metal detector sense, and Sparkplug's control over the size of the metallic objects they attract.
-[X] Go beach combing to see what Sparkplug can find buried in the sand.
[X][Maynot] Maynot's pretty pleased about the vertical mobility that using his barriers as platforms grants him, but his barrier summoning pace isn't enough to keep with it yet—not to mention how he'll occasionally slide off. Better keep grinding away at that.
Bright and early in the morning, you find yourself ready to throw your team back into training...after checking with your friends, of course. You weren't really worried about Sparkplug as you've genuinely never seen the calm Pokemon balk away from repetitive work—for one thing, they'd faithfully gone trawling for coins with you in Old Jubilife for hours straight. The problem was if Maynot got bored. Considering that the Mime Jr. getting bored occasionally led to you needing to chase after the pink bastard doing things like diving into the deep end of the ocean or throwing rocks at the local Starly population, you think your concern is warranted.
Thankfully, Maynot appears to still hold a grudge over the fact that he still slips on his platforms sometimes, and revealing your stroke of inspiration for the location of today's training even earns you a delighted hug. Figures that he'd love the idea of falling head-first into seawater instead of ass-first onto grass. The little gremlin practically zooms out of the Pokemon Center afterwards, leaving you and Sparkplug to chase him from behind. The chuckling you overhear from behind you on your way out do not help your mood.
By the time you reach the small beach, Maynot was already at it with his barriers and dancing above the waves. Meanwhile, you get Sparkplug practicing his magnetism with uncovering whatever he can find in the sand. It was tempting to switch your focus to trying to narrow his powers and improve his speed, but you could always work on that another time. Control and size-sensing were too useful to ignore.
As you split your efforts between the two Pokemon, going back and forth from trying to help Maynot best time and angle his barriers and straining Sparkplug's fine magnet powers in new ways, you realize that you've finally settled into a decent rhythm with this Pokemon training thing. You think you're building a knack for it, even—easily finding the right balance between making your friends do too many things at once and leaving them alone for too long. And honestly, helping your Pokemon figure out new things and grow stronger was pretty fun!
All that time training has paid off. You have gained a new Profession Trait!
Profession: Novice Trainer
At the end of the day, and despite all the grit, creativity, and showmanship that comes with directing Pokemon on the field of battle or on the contest stage, the biggest part of being a Pokemon trainer was...well, right in the name itself! A Pokemon trainer was someone who pushed their Pokemon to be better, and to do that, even the most battle-happy trainer needed to dedicate a number of hours to the training field.
Despite being a newbie to all of this, you've found that you have a knack for this ancient and respected field. You are able to efficiently split your attention and keep track of your partners' differing progress up to a certain point, and you are much more effective when you're able to narrow down your focus to only a few Pokemon at a time.
Currently, you can train up to three Pokemon at once without any of them suffering for it, and can train up to two Pokemon at once with boosted efficiency.
Evolution Path: The ????????
Advance this evolution path by performing the following:
- Taking special training actions marked with your Base Trainer Style. (1→2/?)
- Suggesting and taking experimental write-ins for training actions. (1/?)
- ??? → Teaching Pokemon existing moves that are outside their publicly accepted movepool. (1/?)
- ???
- ???
- ???
By the time it nears noon and you're able to call for a beachside lunch, Maynot has finally stopped slipping off his barriers...well, when he isn't doing it on purpose for a joke, that is. His extra-careful footing and arm waving still keep him from making the most of his speed compared to the ground, but you proudly applaud for him after he demonstrates a swift rise to the top of a 'staircase' before diving into the water with an impressive splash.
Maynot has improved his Barrier Jumping Special Talent to Passable!
Maynot's Barrier summoning speed improves along with it.
Meanwhile, you've discovered that Ferry Point's public beach possesses...cans. Like, a lot of cans, most of them empty. There's random screws, nails, and jagged, rusty metal bits that no longer resemble anything, and lots and lots of beer cans. You guess that drinking on the beach is a thing during the holidays? That's your throwaway guess for their origin, at least.
But you are also gleeful that Sparkplug was able to find quite a bit of spare change for such a small stretch of beach—it helps that by this point, the Magnemite has pretty much memorized the specific sizes of different pokedollar coins and what they look like to his magnetic senses. It's nothing compared to what you dug up in Old Jubilife, but that was a lot of streets compared to this bit of sand. You know more than anyone that every bit counts!
Sparkplug has improved their Magnetizing Metals Special Talent!
Sparkplug has managed to dig up 193 Pokedollars!
---
You sputter out a mouthful of saltwater, coughing and hacking at the sheer awfulness of the taste. Immediately, you glare your still-stinging eyes in the direction of the hee-hoo-ha-ha-ing coming from the side. See if you'll spare the smugness for the first time Maynot gets lost in a city—you never grew up around any convenient rivers or oceans to learn how to swim in!
"Nooooo, you don't do it like that!" The little girl that you now know to call 'Sammy' mimes her arms in that strange paddling motion yet again. "Do it like this! And not like," and then she flails her arms about in a way that sets your Mime Jr. off even harder. You'd be insulted if Sammy weren't such a cute and genuine kid. You were trying your best, it was just...jeez, this swimming thing sure was tougher than it looks. This was yet another downside of growing up on the streets, you guess.
The little girl had managed to catch you on the beach after you'd all had your lunch of Pokemon Center leftovers, appearing out of the blue and sweeping you up in her wake like the other day. You were used to little kids avoiding you or calling you things, not dragging you by the hand and acting like you were the coolest thing since the invention of packaged potato chips—yet she'd cheerily pulled you off the beach anyway and onto an overgrown dirt path that was only visible if you really squinted down at the grass. Soon, you'd all found yourself at a long stretch of rocky outcroppings...only for Sammy to reveal a way through to a sight of scenery that took your breath away.
"Magnemite," says your reliable partner encouragingly from where he was hovering by the water's edge. You have to withhold a snort every time you see them—the metallic Pokemon currently acting as a makeshift rack for the jacket and hoodie you'd stripped out of, and honestly looked really stupid. Well, it was either that or letting those pieces of clothing get in the way. Your undershirt and shorts were predictably not as much of a pain while underwater.
"Try again, try again!" Sammy repeats gleefully.
"Alright, alright..." you laugh. "Take it easy on me, kid. Not everybody can be as good as you at this!"
The little girl blushes and tugs on her twintails. You grin—maybe swimming was mostly a bust, but you think you were getting better at dealing with little kids...
Innate Talent Interrupt: Keen Senses, Sharp Eyes
Which was good, considering that you were starting to come up with questions.
You are no longer utterly useless in deep water. Hooray for no longer useless!
---
Sammy was a very excitable and earnest kid. She was five years old, she loves the color blue, and she loves her daddy and big bro very, very much—as much as she can stretch her little arms away from one another. Like most kids, she loves Pokemon and idolizes Pokemon trainers. Her favorite Pokemon was her daddy's gentle Floatzel but she loves aaaaaaaalllll the Pokemon in the world and wants to become a gym leader when she grows up!
And you'd also noticed that she was wearing the exact same t-shirt as yesterday.
It's a very innocous shirt if one doesn't give it too much thought. A white t-shirt with a minimalistic pokeball design on the front—you've seen thousands of those over the years. But it was visibly patched with other pieces of white fabric in some places, and a closer look reveals out-of-place thread that was used to sew up tears. All of this combined with the simple fact that she was wearing the exact same shirt as yesterday is already enough to tell a story about her family.
It's out of no little concern that you decide to dig out a few details. Not directly—you weren't some kind of monster trying to interrogate the poor kid out of her life story—but well, you figure that there was nothing wrong to get to know the girl who kept dragging you around a little better.
It turns out that it isn't particularly difficult to get the girl to talk about her circ*mstances.
"So, what is this place? I've never seen anything it," you ask at one point.
"It's my secret spot! My daddy used to take me and big bro here before, but that when I was really, really small..." The little girl explains, smiling happily. "So you better not tell anybody, okay! It's only for cool people—like trainers!"
"Hmm...your daddy and big bro must be really cool, then."
"Yeah! Daddy is so cool, he would go out on his boat all by himself and then go vwooooosh under the water until you can't see him! He doesn't take me and my big bro out anymore cuz' he's too tired and his bed is always too cozy, but he tells me stories about what he used to see! Daddy knows the best bedtime stories. Big bro, though—" Her face puffs up. "He's always too busy doing work in town to go swimming now! He's always nagging, but I forgive him cuz' I love ice cream."
"Who else do you know? Just your daddy and your big bro?" you ask, even as your mind begins to whir with the implications of her chattering.
"Floatzel is cool and loves hugs, but big bro's Wingull is mean whenever I want to pet her," Sammy claims. "I know a lot of other kids in town, too, but the other girls don't like battling and boys suck."
"Boys suck, huh." You can't help it, you're amused.
"Yeah, boys suck..." the girl repeats, before growing quiet and eyeing away from you nervously. "Um...can you keep a secret, miss Mal?"
"Sure."
"You know all those...big, round thingies in the water? Big bro always tells me not to go near them, but..." She shifts. "I got really bored, so I decided to walk near them and then I got really far from town and then, there was this biiiig house and then I saw this boy standing outside! He looked lonely and sad so I talked to him his name was Noah and that I wasn't supposed to be there, but then he liked Pokemon and battling too! I told him I was gonna be the first gym leader out of Ferry Point and he said he'd race me and so we fought and then he said I was really good at pushing so we became friends, but big bro got really mad at me after I came back and told him and said I almost got in trouble with the 'Rig-lins' so I never went again even though I promised to." Sammy tugs on her twintails in dismay. "But it's not cuz' of him! I don't know...maybe he thinks I still hate him. I feel bad..."
Uh...huh. "I was actually plannin' on looking at those things tomorrow—"
"Really?!" The girl jumps up. "If you see him, can you tell him I'm really sorry I can't go see him? I heard his Shinx got stolen...he must be sadder now."
You guess you have a choice to make, here.
[ ][Promise] Promise to Sammy that you'll look for Noah and say sorry for her. (???, You might get into trouble from venturing too far into private property, from the sounds of it.)
[ ][Promise] Apologize to Sammy but say that you might get in trouble from the 'Rig-lins' too. (No risk of getting into trouble, but give up on getting a face-to-face conversation with Noah Riglin.)
Well, you kind of have a basic, if hazy, idea of whatever happened with Sammy's family now. It sounds like her father was a fisherman but had to stop at some point—maybe an injury or something from the mention of his bed? Your guess is that her family has been keeping things sugarcoated for the innocent little girl. Her older brother seems to be working in his place, and the state of the girl's clothing is enough to tell you about how that was going. Sammy does look pretty well-fed, though, so you'll give them that.
What other questions do you want to ask Sammy about? You can ask up to three before Sammy gets too bored.
You can propose and vote for any number of questions, and the top few choices will win. However, remember that you are trying to talk to a five-year-old kid without her getting suspicious or scared.
[ ][Question] Write-in your questions. Remember, you're trying to keep your questioning low-key!
[ ][Question] Nah, your curiosity is sated. (This is only picked if this is the outright majority.)
