Bonnibel's first capture is easy.

It's dark, near midnight, but there's half a moon and clear air. Color and detail are impossible, but she can make out a silhouette with ease.

Round head, long beak - a pikipek. They were confirmed extinct in the last mainland region a hundred years ago, and hanging out on branches instead of tucked away in a hole is one of the reasons why. There's limited real estate for them, of course, since a tree has to be pretty big to fit a pikipek inside, and it has to be dead for the wood to be soft enough to make the hole easily, and then, well, being jammed into a tight space with only one way in or out can end badly, and pikipek across the regions had felt that was what they should worry about.

Now all of those are gone and the ones here still hadn't learned the lesson that wings don't save you.

Bonnibel opens her pokeball and crouches down. "Shhh," she says first. "No barking." She leans close to get their eyes to the same angle, points, and tells him to look for the pikipek. It takes a few minutes - it is hard to do without practice, and what matters is Popplio gets it in the end. There's no rush.

"Instead of a ball, make a jet of water. Aim for the center and keep up the pressure until you see the pikipek fall," Bonnibel says. It's likely Popplio's standard blast of water will knock the pokemon off, but no reason to make room for possible failure.

The pokemon falls hard, Bonnibel throws her first pokeball, and it's done.

The pokedex chimes with an upbeat, you-did-it! kind of tone, and entirely too loud. When it's brighter she'll have to see if she can turn it off.

Pikipek are common on the islands, and it's certain Kukui already has this information. She's not quite sure what he's looking for but it doesn't matter. Bonnibel is good about following directions, her mother says, and following directions is all Kukui can expect from her. He didn't ask her for the specific things he wanted, which is perhaps connected to how Hala seemed less enthusiastic about a trainer catching them all. If Hala's the one in charge here who all the kids listen to, and none of the native Alolans have ever wanted to help Kukui get a pokedex survey done...some disagreement between the two. Well. If he tells her to do something else later, she'll start doing that instead. It doesn't matter.

"Our first new friend!" Popplio barks, and she shushes him. She'd like to get a good bunch tonight. "But you'll wake them all up if you're noisy."

Popplio claps his fins over his mouth and nods vigorously.

Bonnibel leans over the fence by the right of the path, considering the cliff and the beach below. But no. She doesn't know if the pokedex is transmitting survey data live or not, and she doesn't want to explain how she got down there if it is. If Kukui tells her mother she fell off a cliff, it'd be a disaster.

She goes off the path to the left instead, deeper into the trees.

She hears the munching first, and looks around to see a caterpie chewing his way through the leaves. It's not as if he could escape a trainer if he tried to run, and Bonnibel is pleased he makes no such attempt. The slight motion helps Popplio pick out his target a little faster this time. He hits the caterpie, the caterpie smacks into the rocky ground, and Bonnibel captures her second pokemon.

There are supposed to be ledyba here, so Bonnibel keeps an eye out for older, larger trees. When she sees a likely candidate, she heads over to the trunk and looks up. It's darkest there, but after a minute she can make out the difference in rustling between the mass of leaves and the mass of pokemon.

Bonnibel traces the outline with broad movements of her hand and says, "Aim for something on the edge."

This time, Popplio misses, hitting only leaves. He adjusts fast, overcompensating and hitting further into the center of the mass. It works, through, knocking one loose. The ledyba smacks into a branch, bounces off, and buzzes half awake just in time to avoid striking the ground as well. Before the pokemon can do more than wobble dizzily in the air, Bonnibel throws the pokeball.

The rest of the swarm buzzes unhappily, but it's dark and they might as well be blind, so they stay right where they are. If Bonnibel felt like it, she could spend an hour catching them all, the swarm tumbling over each other to try to keep someone else between them and her pokemon's attacks until there's no one left at all. But Kukui didn't ask her to.

There isn't much further she can get without trying to climb a bluff, so she heads back to the path.

Popplio's the one who finds the yungoos, when they're very nearly back to the cliffside. He's close to the ground and rams his nose into a suspicious clump of grass, then starts to bark, "Hey-" before remembering he's supposed to be quiet and cutting off. The yungoos is breathing but she seems to be in a stupor, like she's gone into hibernation despite the fact they're in the tropics. Sick or dying? Bonnibel figures it still counts.

The road to Iki Town had a branch to somewhere else, but when she tries to follow it to that somewhere, she doesn't get far before finding a barrier. It's almost as tall as Bonnibel, and when she digs the flashlight out of her pack and flicks it on, she finds it's decorated in bright triangles, similar to the island challenge amulet.

It wouldn't even take a second to climb over. But the sign lit up by the beam says something about presenting a crystal to pass, and dangerous wild pokemon on the other side, and strictly prohibited. She turns the flashlight off again. There's plenty of other places to go, for now. She turns back, heads down instead. That's the direction the city's in anyway, and the pokecenter.

The rattata is trying to avoid her but not hard enough. The smart thing would've been to hold perfectly still and just wait however long it takes a trainer to leave again, but instead, she tries to continue wherever she's going, just much more slowly and quietly. Quiet she manages, but the grass she's in moves differently than that just ruffled by the wind. Idiot.

Bonnibel points. "Soak that area."

The rattata tumbles out, the shape of it a bit different than Bonnibel expected. The pokemon recovers quickly, rearing up and squeaking. "Don't you dare fight me! I'll bite you bloody!"

Popplio is indeed bloody by the end, with one bite going straight through his left flipper and another tearing through the lip just below his nose, leaving him whimpering. But the rattata's smacked about by blasts of water and keeps flinching when Popplio cries out, pitiful and endearing. The rattata gets to her feet once again but she's trembling from ear to toe. When Bonnibel throws the pokeball, it doesn't rock even once before sealing for good.

So five. That's good enough for a while. Longer maybe, if the pokedex turns out to not have any timestamps.

"Well, Popplio," Bonnibel says loudly. "I think that's good for now. You worked hard."

Popplio hesitates, thinking, then evidently decides that yes, if she's talking it must be okay to make noise again. He barks, "I did! Is that going to be your team? Have we filled it already? Are you a very serious trainer?

"We're close to a pokecenter," Bonnibel says. She can still see well enough, but there's the bloom of light pollution up ahead she's careful not to look at directly and the noise is already creeping into her ears. "And those are usually open at all hours. I don't know if it'll be true across Alola, but I'd wager a city pokecenter in a tourist hub will follow convention."

Popplio starts barking enthusiastically, "You're so smart-" and she recalls him. She's done catching pokemon and he's too injured for more battles anyway.

The clerk at the indeed open pokemon center feels the need to remark on how late it is when she heads up to the counter.

Bonnibel makes a show of checking the clock. "Isn't it early?" she says. "It's the start of a new day."

He chuckles. "I hadn't thought of that! Well, if you want a room for the night, or the morning -"

"Maybe later," she says. "For the day." She points at her smiling face and adds, "My mother thinks I shouldn't be out near noontime until we're sure the sunscreen holds up." Bonnibel always listens, her mom says.

She turns, walking slow at first, so he'll look away, then trots past the chairs and couches and through the doors. They shut before he gets out the first word out about safety. It's funny, how things change in getting a pokemon. There's so many more places a person can go if they have a pokemon, but try to set them down for a couple minutes and suddenly even walking down a street becomes too dangerous. Do kids ever get used to having the protection of a pokemon, end up taking it so for granted they forget where the protection comes from and wander off without one in their pockets?

She would like to see that.

But nobody successfully told her to stick around and nobody else can tell the difference now to send her back. She tilts her head back, squints for sky between the lights. It's noisy - tourists - which means a lot of things likely run all night. She considers. Where would Bonnibel want to go?

Tourism bureau seems a safe start. She already knows a good deal about Alola given how long her mother was planning on coming here, but seeing things in person can show new sides to things. In this case, that side is pyukumuku. The half of the building not spent on pamphlets overflows with black and pink. She idly squishes a pillow-sized toy pyukumuku while considering a wall of commemorative plates and oddly shaped mugs. None of it seems to be selling.

Her mother has made quite a point of adopting even the less tourist-friendly Alolan customs. She's also made a habit of putting less loved decorative plates on shelves her meowth can get into, so if she doesn't like it, she won't be saddled with it for long. And at the moment, a dutiful child would be still thinking of her mother. Separation is best eased into.

"Adorable, aren't they?" says the teen at the counter. "If you're really lucky, you might even find someone to trade you a real one while you're here - oh! That amulet…"

"My mother just moved here," she says.

"Right, right, you must be Bonnibel then! I heard you'd be battling at the festival. Wish I could've been there too, but I couldn't get time off work." She sighs. "Back in the day things would just have closed down...but that was then. Well. You're sure out late."

"It's just so exciting to be a real trainer at last," she says. "And, well, I still haven't finished adjusting to the time difference."

"Well, just be careful, cousin. The tourist areas are pretty safe at night, but beyond...well, there can be some troublemakers running around. They're usually just nuisances but they can be real bullies, and with you just starting out… Well, the police stick to places like this, you know? So it's best you do too." Then she winks. "Here, since you're not a tourist, I'll use my discount for you. From one Alolan to another, right?"

"Thanks so much!" Bonnibel says, taking the bag. "And I'll be sure not to go too far at night, so don't worry."

Her pokemon may be healed by now, but if they're not she'll be stuck waiting. Bonnibel wanders into a mall instead. The air is mostly chill and tart from the air conditioning, but there's the faint smell of various foods. She passes over the probably overpriced apparel shop, a hair salon she'll never enter, and then finds the buffet.

"Hope your eyes aren't bigger than your stomach," teases one of the other patrons at the sight of Bonnibel's plate. "Looks like you got one of everything there!"

"I sure tried!" she tells them with a smile, heading for an empty table. The restaurant seems like it aims to represent every region's cuisine but Alola, but aiming and hitting are different things. The seaweed on the whirlpool sushi is wrapped like an icecream cone, and there must be meat from a half dozen different pokemon inside. The Hoenn ramen has the expected cloudy broth but it has none of the usual additions, just fragments of vegetable and meat from the broth itself, and she's pretty sure the bits are tauros and not the traditional spoink. The pizza crust is sweet and chewy, probably from taro, and it has a richness to the sauce suggesting pidgey stock was used. The tamato pasta sauce is also filled with more shreds of slow-cooked meat that she can't quite place amid the spice. And while the omelet's clearly been fried and rolled the way Johto and Kanto do it, she can barely taste a hint of sweetness to it and instead the natural flavor of chansey eggs is at the forefront.

All in all, it's far more interesting to work her way through the differences than exact recreations would've been. She'll come back during the dinner hours and see what else they offer.

Back to the pokecenter. She nods through the scolding about how she should always have a pokemon on her. "Really," the man says, "it's not safe to let all your pokemon get worn out either! What if something had happened?"

"You're right. I'll be more careful," Bonnibel promises, all wide eyed sincerity, and heads back out.

It's just before dawn. Every meal, Bonnibel thinks, tastes a little bit different, however precisely the recipe is followed, and every dawn is just a little different too. And in the broad strokes, both are always just the same, day after day and bite after bite. She cares more about flavors than hues, so she looks away from the horizon again down to the streets.

By a food stall, a tsareena is holding a basket of skewers of some sweet-smelling red vegetable, or perhaps fruit. Bonnibel approaches and gets a stick of what the tsareena's owner explains to be soaked and grilled bounsweet chunks. Even with most of the sap removed through the long soaking process, when Bonnibel sinks her teeth into the still-crisp flesh, it's so overwhelmingly sweet as to wrap around to a sort of numbness. "Whoa…" she says, slurring a little as she loses track of precisely where in her mouth her tongue is.

"And yet, there's not a ounce of sugar in it," the vendor says. "It's actually good for you! Bounsweet are such amazing pokemon."

A pair of tourists pass by, one muttering to the other, "Kind of creepy, isn't it, making a tsareena hand those out…"

"They're nobody I know," the tsareena murmurs primly.

Time to get to get a look at her pokemon, Bonnibel figures. She makes her way through the city as the sky lightens, then, still nibbling her way through her skewer, heads north. There's smaller houses here on the outskirts, probably where the staff of all those places work, and beyond that is grass and trees.

She releases Popplio from his pokeball, then starts throwing out the rest. The caterpie appears first, looking no different from usual.

Popplio barks, "Hi!"

The caterpie stares up at her curiously, then looks at Popplio. "Um. Hi."

The yungoos, which Bonnibel sees now has a strip of extra-light fur running down her back rather than the solid color pictures of them in the far south regions had, stirs a little when released but appears to still be out of it. She must be fine if the pokecenter returned her to Bonnibel, though.

The pikipek flutters a little anxiously but then settles down and just peeps a bit, "Got me, huh…" The colors of her feathers are far drabber from what the mainland pikipek had. Well, they're just normal pikipek colors now.

"My trainer has good eyes!" Popplio barks.

The ledyba looks about and cowers, drawing his legs in tight and quivering. Seems they're the same here inside as well as out. "No no no no no no no no no…"

The caterpie coos, "Don't panic yet. Most trainers won't keep using a bad fighter. It might even let you go again."

And last, the blacker and fatter than usual rattata, who glowers at her then jumps half a foot in the air at the sight of the yungoos. She begins squeaking wildly, "You! Ha! Things have turned! Haha! I'll eat you now!" She lunges for the yungoos and Bonnibel grabs her by the tail as Popplio jumps in front of her. "Aw, you don't need that loser, lady! Lookit her all dead to the world just cuz the sun hasn't risen enough! Why not just let me take a quick bite and - "

The yungoos' eyes open and she's up and running, scrambling over Popplio to jump off his head at the dangling rattata. Bonnibel grabs her around the midsection with her other hand. Startled, the yungoos twists and sinks her teeth into Bonnibel's arm.

Bonnibel waits, staring at her. The yungoos stares back in growing confusion and fear. When the yungoos releases her grip and works her teeth out again, Bonnibel says, firmly, "Pokemon don't attack people. Understand?"

"Y-yes." The yungoos nods vigorously. "Sorry. Sorry, Master." Bonnibel's fingers could tighten to crush the air from her chest, Bonnibel's arm could smash her against the ground. Bonnibel's hand could put her back in the pokeball. There's times and places pokemon are killed for a warning snap at the air.

Bonnibel sets the pokemon down. The fur on the yungoos' side twitches where the blood that ran down Bonnibel's arm has soaked in, but the yungoos makes no move to groom yet. The rattata seems to have forgotten herself as well, also staring at the blood still dripping from Bonnibel's fingers.

Popplio suddenly starts barking madly all at once, "You're hurt oh oh you're hurt it must hurt so much I'm sorry I'm sorry!"

"Shush," Bonnibel says. "There's no need to be so noisy." She examines the wound. The yungoos bit right through, and with teeth wide enough that the depth of the injury is obvious, so she can't just pass it off as a scrape. Shame it wasn't the rattata. Their teeth go in so nice and clean.

She recalls the new pokemon again, leaving out Popplio in case some wild pokemon shows up. Then it's time to dig out the first aid kit from her bag. The gauze works for rubbing off most of the blood and getting the wound dry for a minute. She squirts a line of superglue into the seam on either side. The inside of her arm begins to feel warm, then hot. She waits for the temperature to subside then fills in the top with some liquid bandage goo. There. She sticks a large bandaid on top of the outer side of the wound, just enough off-center to look like she wasn't too concerned, to complete the picture and examines the result. Yeah, that could be a cut from a tree branch, she decides, so long as she keeps her arm down so the other side isn't visible. A fall would raise questions about her safety wandering around in the dark, but she got this chasing the pikipek, because Bonnibel was so excited to get a chance to catch an otherwise extinct pokemon. The bandaid doesn't really cover it properly, but that just shows it can't be all that bad if she doesn't need anything more.

The she slathers on another coat of sunscreen to replace what just got scraped off.

She packs things back up, frowning at the liquid bandage bottle. They presumably sell the stuff here as well, but she needs it to blend in to be any use, and it's likely none of their skin tones will actually match her skin. Even the tourists come here looking to get tans, after all. She'll have to get some makeup. It sounds like people around here know about her, so there's a good chance gossip will get back to her mother. Certainly while she's on Melemele, and maybe even further out.

Bonnibel sighs. "That's life."

Well, back to the pokemon issue. Yungoos are dead to the world when it's dark? The yungoos seems like the strongest thing she's caught so far, but she's not sure it's worth it to train a pokemon who can't battle half the time. And why is that? Down south yungoos run around for days without sleep so long as it's warm enough.

She sits down under a tree and opens the pokedex. Looking it over now she can see Kukui set it, or maybe he just left it on factory default settings, to only give data about pokemon she's encountered, which is meant to encourage kids to seek out more and more. It's not really worth the aggravation of figuring out a good explanation for how and why she changed it when she doesn't need anything more.

Yungoos. Brought over here a hundred and fifty years back. The theory their activity is tied to temperature was debunked two hundred years ago; it turned out to be sunlight based, but as calibration for their internal clocks rather than light simply waking them up. Apparently the Alolan government officials hadn't kept up on research when they ordered them.

Well, that's kind of interesting. And good to know before she started any conversations about yungoos. Bonnibel reads all sorts of things, her mother says, but there's only so many times she can blame misinformation on reading an outdated library book before people start to wonder why such a voracious reader ran across so little recent writing.

She checks to see if there's anything else she needs to know about the others she has, but the only thing that stands out is the rattata here have become more social, which is weird given pokemon behavior changes usually go in the opposite direction, but not likely to matter.

Next, the pokedex's general workings. Now that it's light enough to see the buttons, Bonnibel turns it over in her hands until she finds the pinprick depression on the side. She pokes a safety pin in and watches the screen flash once. The pokedex still turns back on normally, so she repeats the process while holding down the up and down buttons, and this time the screen switches from the cheery graphical interface to a list of obtuse text options titled SETUP. That was easier than she expected.

Bonnibel begins working her way through the menu and submenus. Most of what she finds seems to be locked or disabled, but as the things she can change include setting up a password to ensure only she can modify this device, it seems like she has full access. She tries holding down buttons in different sequences but no other screen appears. The pokedex is oddly clunky, the diagnostics spits errors and complaints about how it can't identify the battery, and the sound submenu is mostly greyed out, so maybe it's just old and half broken.

All she really wanted to know was what it was sending back to Kukui, and the answer appears to be nothing. There wouldn't be much to send, either, since the GPS is one of the many things that isn't working and Kukui either didn't or couldn't install the map. That's pretty nice.

She starts north again. Popplio bounces gamely along at her side, but it's clear he's not much for land travel. She picks him up and sets him on her bag instead. He honks, "Yay rides! I love you too!" and rubs against her side.

She hasn't gone that far before she hears a delibird squawking, "Anyone? Anyone help?!" He sees her and rushes over. "Trainer! Help my trainer, please!

Popplio barks, "Oh no!"

"Aww, aren't you upset," Bonnibel says. "What's the matter? Have you gotten lost?"

"No!" he squawks again. He shakes his head back and forth. "Please come with me!"

"Oh, is it something else?"

Popplio barks more, "She can't understand us! Maybe if you pull?"

"Maybe you want me to leave? Am I trespassing?" She takes a big step backward.

The delibird keeps squawking, "Argh!" and grabs the side of her bag, tugging.

"Hey now, you shouldn't grab people's bags."

More squawking, "Argh!"

Popplio drops down, still barking, "Just go with him!" and butts his head against Bonnibel's leg. The delibird does the same, pushing against her other leg in the direction he came from.

"Oh!" Bonnibel says, exactly like it's only just occurred to her. "Do you want me to go somewhere?"

The delibird squawks more loudly, "Yes!" and Popplio honks, "Yes!" and they both push.

She goes along with it and finds there's a pair of kids dressed in dirty black outfits that poorly fit them standing in front of a disdainful man. The kids each have beanie-like shapeless white hats on top for some reason...certainly doesn't do anything to keep the sun out of their face. Fashion?

The kids wave their arms wildly, like a nervous pidgey fluffing to take up more space. One shouts, "You got a lame bunch of berries... Now Team Skull's your adversaries! Taking berries off your hands is just the start of our plans, yo!"

"I'll share my berries for free with any pokemon, but you'll not have a single one from me!" the man snaps.

"So, what? I'm lower than a pokemon?!"

Bonnibel cuts in: "Yeah, sounds like it."

They turn, and the one who spoke walks over with exaggerated steps. He tries to loom at her, but the effect's quite ruined by how for all his arms' apparently out of control motion, he's careful to never actually touch her. Like a pokemon snapping at air. "And what are you looking at, huh?! Huh? Huh? HUH?"

"You got a bone to pick with us, homie?" asks the other kid, still standing by the man.

"I appreciate your concern, child," the man says. "But these Team Skull punks do nothing but talk big and act small. You carry on with your island challenge. Don't give these washouts a moment's notice."

"Yo, we're standing right here! At least act a little bit afraid or something, y'know?!"

"Oh! Is there something around we should be afraid of?" Bonnibel asks, turning her back on them to look behind her.

"For real?!" shouts the kid. "Yo, you think you can say that to us?"

"Let's get figy with it! We're gonna hafta take your pokemon before we nanab some berries!" agrees the other kid.

Bonnibel considers and replies, "Rather drash, perhaps you should chilan? Thinking you can beat me is rather eggant, yago?" The man snickers, while the two kids stare at her. Well, they may not appreciate her puns, but that opens up a more fun avenue anyway, if a risky one: "So, were you guys just too lazy to pay attention in school or is this a learning disability kind of thing? Wouldn't want any bitterness between us over you guys getting burnt!"

The man laughs while the kids' faces are flushed and angry. Bonnibel grins. Seems she judged her audience well.

"Yo, check out how hardheaded Team Skull grunts can be!" snarls the kid.

Popplio jumps out in front of her and the kid seems to suddenly notice him. "Yo, hold up, you're-"

"What?" says the other kid. His companion gestures at Bonnibel and Popplio, raising his eyebrows. "That don't mean nothing!" he snaps, heading over as well to wave his hands almost but not quite in Bonnibel's face. "You think you're so smart, kid? You think you're tough? Go, Drowzee!"

It's a far quicker battle than Bonnibel expected. His drowzee goes down and she looks at him expecting more pokemon he doesn't have. Her mother mentioned Alolan trainers were like that, she remembers, and apparently even kids like this still stick to tradition.

The kid stomps the ground. "You best stop trying to act hard, kid!" He turns to his friend. "Yo, I'm so annoyed right now, homie! Let's go mess with Ilima again!"

"Aww yeah, let's do it! Verdant Cavern is pretty close by anyway. And you! You better listen to what my boy says and drill it into that thick skull of yours! For real! You'd better not forget, numskull!"

They run off. The man laughs again and says, "Ho! You and that popplio there did quite the number on him!" He invites her into his house and gives her a bag of berries. "It's the least I can do to thank you for teaching those numskulls a lesson."

Then she tries to keep going north, only to find another fence.

Bonnibel's skin twitches. She'd hop this one, but now that it's day someone could see.

She was planning to stay in Alola a bit after she formally finished, but this… If this is how the islands are she's not going to stick around. Bonnibel will be so excited by her successes and so in love with pokemon training she'll rush right off to a new region.

Grudgingly, she turns her back. Which region? One not so far her mother would worry, of course, so not Kalos, and Johto's entirely too close, and...well, of course all that business in Unova was just an oddly convoluted attempt at theft, but what they said...it's unpleasant to think about, so no, not there. Hoenn. She'll go to Hoenn when she's done here.

She starts toward Hau'oli again. The sun's getting higher in the sky. She'll try another restaurant for breakfast, then take a room at a pokecenter to wait out the noon, head to Hala's for the ring later and…is that Lillie? That's Lillie.

"Bonnibel!" Lillie calls, sounding relieved. "Popplio!" She starts waving madly, like she's worried Bonnibel won't be able to see her at this distance, then runs toward Bonnibel, which seems like a terrible idea unless she got a new, competent pokemon sometime between midnight and ten AM. Nonplussed, Bonnibel stands there.

Popplio barks back at her, "Hi Lillie hi! Nebby, are you there? Hi too!"

Lillie stinks of marigold, mint, pepper, and grapefruit when she arrives, which explains how she could get this far from a city without another pokemon. Popplio sneezes.

She's puffing from the run and also looks rather frazzled. "I was supposed to get you before you left but your mom said you already left last night so I thought maybe you'd gone to Kahuna Hala's but Hau said he hadn't seen you so I went to the beach by the city but you weren't there and I thought you wouldn't be in the city because you're a pokemon trainer now so you were probably training around Iki Town so I tried to leave again but there are so many places and I got lost and ended up at the docks and I had to run away from these guys and then I found the path out and - " She stops, panting, then blinks and takes in Bonnibel's appearance. "Oh! Oh no, what happened to your arm? Does it hurt?"

"It hurt at first, but it's fine now," Bonnibel decides. "Don't worry about it, I was just very clumsy. I'll remember to be more careful now. Why did you need to find me?"

"You weren't clumsy. You were so brave, stopping her from eating the rattata!"

"Oh. Um... The professor woke me up and said… 'Hey there, Lillie! Bring me that great new trainer. Woo!' So I'm here to show you the way to his pokemon lab, if you'll come with me. It's, um…" She looks around anxiously. "It's...to the left?"

"We're on Route Three right now," Bonnibel says. She's seen a map.

"Oh. So...that's…the lab is at the bottom of Route One...so we'd have to go...um..."

"Back down to Hau'oli City, then to Route One on the other side of it."

"Oh…" She slumps. "I...I don't really know the way through the city. I always get lost and take forever."

"Don't worry about it," Bonnibel says. "I'm sure I can find my way through."

She starts walking and Lillie follows. "Um… So have you seen a lot of wild pokemon? Or, um, caught any?"

"A couple," she says. "What's your favorite pokemon around here?"

Lillie's bag makes a spitting cough, "Me!"

"Um, I don't really, um, I think any pokemon can be great. I don't really have a favorite, a favorite species."

"Not even whatever's in your bag?"

"No!"

Bonnibel stops and regards Lillie, who's balled her hands into fists. Bonnibel hadn't even been trying that time.

"I didn't - that isn't - it doesn't matter to me if Nebby is rare, or cute, or anything! It's my friend no matter what! I wouldn't do anything differently!"

Right, so she's touchy about it, and unlike the stoutland last night, it's something it's okay for people to say they believe. Bonnibel decides on, "That's really nice of you," because it would have been if that were true, which leads to, "You really care about pokemon, don't you?"

"Yes." No.

Bonnibel weighs the pros and cons of spending the rest of the walk in silence. But no, Lillie is Bonnibel's friend. Bonnibel is making new friends already because her mother's decision to move here was a good one. "I feel like that about my mother's meowth," she says. "My mother caught her back as a trainer. She never did all that well in battles and my mother stopped using her, but when my mother quit, she was the one who was kept while all the others went off to keep battling under other trainers. She's known me all my life." The words feel odd on Bonnibel's tongue and she keeps going to see where they'll take her. "I'll miss her."

"I-I'm sure it'll only be for a little while," Lillie says. "Alola isn't so big as other places and you seem like you know what you're doing. It won't take you too long to complete the island challenge."

Popplio barks, "And you have me!" and butts up against her leg.

She pets his head. "Yeah, I'm sure I will." She wonders suddenly if she should've picked the litten. He was more reserved, quieter. And this all is better when it's quieter. But he was only reticent because he was fragile. Her gummy popplio is a better choice than a crisp-shell cookie cat that shatters in her hands, and she's not quite so selfish as to try not to break what she touches.

A distraction nobly slouches into view. His shape's familiar, and the colors are not exactly unique. Guess Alola has a lot of construction, because there haven't been ones like that in most places for a while...Bonnibel's seen them in some history book, an artist's recreation because colored photos weren't around yet. And of course the stench of Lillie's repel wouldn't be noticed by a grimer.

"Nearly to Hau'oli, it looks like," Bonnibel says. "Popplio, water gun! Aim for the bottom left side!"

As she expected, the lower section is less well held together, and the jet of water removes a good chunk.

The grimer bellows, "Aaaah!" and spits a white crystal that shatters right under Popplio. Bonnibel makes an educated guess and holds her breath. Popplio reels back, trying to cover his nose and mouth as a thin vapor rises up. It feels astringent against Bonnibel's eyes - but then there's a gust of wind and it's gone. She uses the breath to say, "Water gun again!"

Popplio's aim is wild and it just flattens the head a bit. The grimer retaliates by spitting a wad of black sludge into Popplio's eyes. To his credit, her pokemon doesn't panic at all. He blows out a bigger bubble of water and crams his head into it, shaking back and forth to clear the goop.

It's a good idea, but while he's doing so, the grimer glides forward, bellowing once again, "Stop hurting me! Go away and leave me alone!" and then biting down on his tail. That does startle Popplio. He lets out in a bubbly scream, and then the water ball collapses into the ground for him to take a breath.

"Smack your tail up and down like you're swimming," Bonnibel says, and watches the grimer deform for a second before the tail tears loose, sending gunk splattering everywhere and crystals plinking to the ground. Some bits nearly hit her. She decides to switch from orders to pokeballs and flings one.

It rocks back and forth for a bit, then opens. The grimer barely has a chance to form before she smacks him with a second one, and the third one closes for good. The pokedex is silent so she must've been successful in muting sound effects.

Popplio's panting on the ground, a flush to his skin and greenish swelling around the wounds on his tail. There's tears dribbling from his eyes where an irritating black smudge remains. Bonnibel pops a general antitoxin pill into his open mouth and orders, "Swallow," then wipes his eyes clean with a cloth.

"What happened!?" Nebby screeches. Bonnibel looks up to see Lillie is rooting around in her bag and Nebby is floating next to her.

"I won. I won and got my trainer a new pokemon! She won't regret picking me!"

Lillie extracts a potion from her bag and kneels next to Popplio. It's so incongruous that it's not until Lillie breaks the seal and sprays it onto the bite marks that Bonnibel can understand what's happening.

"Those are expensive," Bonnibel says. "You don't need to do that."

"I never spent my allowance before," Lillie replies. "And...I know you're a trainer...and you didn't have any choice about fighting that grimer...but seeing a pokemon in pain makes my own heart seem to ache."

Popplio waves his tail up and down and barks, "Don't be sad! I feel fine now! Thank you!" He spits out another bubble of water and balances it on his nose, then jumps up so he's standing on his damaged tail. "I'm happy, see?"

Lillie laughs, sounding relieved. Nebby huffs, "You sure?"

"Really! I feel great!"

"I can help out your grimer, too," Lillie says earnestly. "I have plenty more."

"It's only...sometimes you'll feel bad later…"

"That's very nice of you to offer," Bonnibel says, "but newly caught pokemon can be unruly, and grimer can make you sick easily. It's safer if I just drop him off at the pokemon center. There's one right by the entrance to the city, so it won't be far."

"Are you sure? I thought...I was pretty sure it was on the side near the professor's lab…"

"There's two pokecenters in Hau'oli," Bonnibel says. "The other one's next to Route One."

"Oh."

Bonnibel recalls Popplio. The opiates won't last forever, and from his antics, he has no experience with them. If he injures himself further in the meantime, he could be useless to her for days.

"Oh, Nebby, you've got to go back in the bag…"

Nebby swooshes back and forth in the air, peeping, "Nobody's around!"

"Come on, we've got to go to the city and get that grimer some help, and we can't do that if you're out."

"Oooohhkaaaaayyy." The pokemon finally shoves herself back inside.

"Thank you," Lillie says. "You can come back out as soon as we get to the professor's lab, okay?"

The bag quivers. "When ya get there next week."

Time is a consideration. And Bonnibel is also a considerate child, her mother says, who wouldn't want her new pokemon friend to suffer longer than he had to. "Look, that's the pokecenter up ahead!" she says, pointing at the very distant red roof. "Let's go!"

She doesn't run too fast. She's not sure how athletic Lillie is, and the girl's obviously worn out already. Luckily, Lillie doesn't seem too observant either, so it's pretty easy to always be just a step ahead, slowing down as Lillie does, while still pretending she doesn't see how much Lillie's struggling beside her.

"Here we are!" Bonnibel says with delight. Lillie says nothing but gasps. "Oh, are you okay?" Lillie nods desperately. "Great, let's go in." She grabs Lillie's hand and yanks her through the doors.

Lillie freezes up, wrapping her other arm around her bag and clutching it to her chest. Huh. Bonnibel lets go and heads up to the center counter and offers up two pokeballs. "My grimer and popplio are a bit beat up," she says. "Can you help them?"

"Of course," the woman says. "Aren't you out bright and early! Do any of your other pokemon need a rest?"

"Oh no, they haven't been out at all. I've got to go somewhere, but I'll be back soon for Popplio. He's my starter pokemon!" It doesn't matter that everyone already knows. Bonnibel is just so proud to be part of this she has to share, so worthy of the gift they gave her, so good and trustworthy and lovable. "But I'd like to deposit the grimer. I already have a full team to train."

"Well, I promise we'll take good care of them."

Lillie is still rooted to the floor, trembling. Now seems like a good time to try out the cafe then. "Hey Lillie, want a drink? They have cocoa!"

Lillie makes an inarticulate squeak.

"Right. Two cocoas, please!"

"Tapu cocoas for the girl who met Tapu Koko!" the man says, sounding delighted. He cautions her they're hot as she wraps her hands around them. They are. The paper of the cups does almost nothing to muffle the heat radiating from them.

"Come on, Lillie, let's get going."

"R-right!" Lillie sprints through the doors, letting out a relieved sigh as they close.

"Are you scared of pokemon centers or something?" Bonnibel asks. "I'd have thought you'd like someplace that helps pokemon."

"I do! It's just… People there know a lot about pokemon. A-and about Nebby…" Her voice, already quiet, drops to a whisper. "I meant what I said before, but you should probably know… Nebby… it seems to be a very rare pokemon. It came from far, far away."

Her bag squeaks. "Not far! Different! Dif-fer-ent!"

"If Nebby comes out there and somebody sees…"

"I know better!"

"Somebody who knows a lot about pokemon especially…They could notice, and tell somebody else."

"Oh. I hadn't thought about that. Sorry about dragging you in there."

"It's okay. It's not your responsibility to worry about that stuff." Lillie sighs. "Nebby… It seems to have a very strange power… It used that power to save me once when I was in danger. But some...other people want Nebby for themselves, to use that power. That's why only the professor and Kahuna Hala and other people I can trust know about it… That's why it's so important you keep this a secret, and don't tell anyone else about Nebby or what happened on that bridge. Please…"

"Of course," Bonnibel said. "I promised already, just like you did for me." She wonders if both promises will run out together. Bonnibel almost fell into the river yesterday and Bonnibel almost fell into the river last month are very different. And she can't picture the girl keeping hold of the pokemon much longer than a month or two more, at which point there's no secret for Bonnibel to keep. "Well, at least we've got drinks now!" She offers one to Lillie, who tries to take the cup only to drop it with a yelp. Right, hot. Bonnibel catches it relatively smoothly, with only a little splashing out onto her hand.

"I'm so sorry! It was just, it felt burning hot!"

"No harm done," Bonnibel says. "Try holding it at the rim, the paper's thicker there so there's more insulation."

Lillie gingerly takes the cup and takes a breath of steam. "You must think I'm such a wuss."

Bonnibel licks the drips off her hand, tasting the momentary sweet-bitter of cocoa and the lasting soapy-astringent of sunscreen. There's red marks left behind where it touched, but it's only visible close up, and the scalding won't be enough for noticeable blisters. "No, they're real hot. I just don't mind hot things is all." She'd blow on the top too, because she wants to be able to taste it when she takes a sip, but with the sunscreen still slick on her tongue, she'll have to wait a while regardless.

They walk a while with Lillie drinking the hot cocoa a millimeter at a time.

Lillie slows a bit by the clothing store to look at the outfits in the window. "Oh. Bonnibel... Tell me, do you pick out all your own clothes?"

"My mom does it."

"Oh, your mother must have a great sense of style then. I love the way that you dress. I...I've always just worn the clothes that my mother wanted me to wear. I don't really know what kind of thing would suit me..."

Bonnibel considers suggesting she visit Bonnibel's mother, get some of Bonnibel's extra clothes or go shopping together. And perhaps her mother would have fun with it, be distracted from Bonnibel. But on reflection, it's probably best not to shove another kid Bonnibel's age at her mom. It'd invite too many comparisons, and it's not like it's over just because she's walked out the door. Instead, Bonnibel goes with, "I think you look pretty too. Like -" Bonnibel casts about for dates and decides that's a bad idea, so she continues with the vague, "Like someone from a fancy painting. Like you stepped from the frame."

Lillie smiles, but not without reserve, so that wasn't quite the right thing to say. Perhaps Lillie heard and didn't like the implication of old-fashioned, but Bonnibel in her modern shirt and shorts can't be expected to know the difference between the original dresses and the slimmed down, machine-sewed recreation Lillie wears. Or maybe she just doesn't like how she looks now, and wants a reason to change it. "Anyway," Bonnibel tries, "if you try out lots of different looks, I'm sure you'll get the hang of it. People aren't born knowing about fashion. Adults just had more time to figure out what they like."

Now Lillie's smile looks relieved. "You're right. I'll...I'll go in there again sometime!"

Lillie's bag hisses, "Gotta find it again…"

"Nebby, you've got to stay quiet." She strokes the bag anxiously. "Oh! At the pokemon center, you said you had a full team of pokemon already, didn't you?"

"Kind of," Bonnibel says. "I've caught a bunch of pokemon, like Professor Kukui asked. I'm not sure which ones I'll raise yet. The yungoos...well, here." She pulls out the pokeball and taps the button. "She's probably the strongest one I've caught." At her feet, the yungoos rears upright, head swiveling from side to side. Bonnibel bends down and grabs her, then twists her arm around to let the yungoos stand on her palm and wrist. She holds her out for Lillie's inspection.

"Oh, hello!" Lillie says. She holds out her own arm. The yungoos sniffs, then glances back at Bonnibel, who shrugs. The yungoos scampers across and runs over Lillie's shoulder. The girl giggles.

"I caught a rattata as well. I'm thinking of training those two. I liked the story about them."

"Really? What story?"

"About why they're here."

Lillie looks more lost than usual. "Because of boats?" Her hair chatters, "To kill the rattata!"

"Oh, you know…" Bonnibel pulls her thoughts together and starts, "People brought rattata here, and the rattata were happy here. Then, people decided they didn't like how happy the rattata were here, so they killed them, but no matter how many they killed, there were still rattata alive. So people decided to get another pokemon, one that would kill all the rattata and be killed too, so the island would be back the way it was before either of them, and they brought the yungoos here. But the rattata still didn't all die, and then the yungoos didn't die either. And now, they're both here. It's such a nice story, isn't it?"

"I guess…" Lillie said, clearly dubious. "Um, but nobody meant for the yungoos to die." Behind her mouth, behind her head, there's silence.

"You don't think so?" Bonnibel says, as if she's surprised. "But if yungoos did only sleep when it was cold like people used to think, and it's always warm here, they would've all been dead before long. But maybe you're right and they just didn't realize that."

Lillie's silent for a few moments. "No...when you say it all like that...it seems they must've." Then more quietly, "It's sad we did that. All of it."

The cup in her hand feels only warm now, not hot. Bonnibel rubs her tongue against the roof of her mouth and finds the sunscreen seems fully gone, so she sips her cocoa. There's a faint hint of spiciness to it, perhaps to offset the warmth of the drink in such a hot climate. Or maybe just as part of the pun? Spicy cocoa, electric Koko?

There's a muffled cacophony of children shouting up ahead, behind stone walls.

"...and fingers legs and lips, legs and lips, and eyes and ears, and mouth and hips, hands and fingers legs and lips, legs and lips!"

"Oh, there's the school," Lillie says, craning her neck to try to see better as they approach the open gate.

"Keep going!" cries an adult voice, and then everyone shouts, "Head and shoulders knees and toes, knees and toes, head and shoulders knees and toes, knees and toes!"

It looks like the little kids are out for exercise in the courtyard.

"And eyes and ears, and mouth and nose, head and shoulders knees and toes, knees and toes. Feet and tummies arms and chins, arms and chins, feet and tummies arms and chins, arms and chins, and eyes and ears, and mouth and shins, feet and tummies arms and chins, arms and chins!"

Lillie hesitates in the middle of the gate. "They look like they're having fun."

"Hands and fingers legs and lips, legs and lips, hands and fingers legs and lips, legs and lips, and eyes and ears, and mouth and hips!"

"Sure," says Bonnibel, not stopping, and Lillie runs a step to catch up.

"Hands and fingers legs and lips, legs and lips!"

"Was your school like that?" Lillie asks. "Shouting and jumping and singing?"

Bonnibel considers. "Yeah, sometimes. Yours wasn't?"

"Head and shoulders knees and toes, knees and toes, head and shoulders knees and toes, knees and toes!"

"Oh, um, I didn't go to school. My mother thought it was better for u-um, me, to learn at home. But so, um, they have that song in Kanto too? Did you learn the song about the shinx at school too?"

Bonnibel, focused on the faint spice of the cocoa, almost says, "Sometimes." She catches herself and says instead, "Yeah. There's lots of songs."

"And eyes and ears, and mouth and nose, head and shoulders knees and toes, knees and..."

"What's your favorite one to sing?"

"Oh," says Bonnibel cheerfully, "I hate songs."

"Oh." Lillie is evidently feeling comfortable enough that after a couple seconds she decides to continue the topic. "But you know them?"

"Sure. Lots of them. People sing all the time. Sometimes -" she gestures behind them, in the direction of the school "- I sing along with everyone else. Other times other people do all the singing. Either way the song goes on." Bonnibel pauses, but then decides, "It's no different than what I said about fashion. If you listen long enough, you'll learn all the songs."

Lillie laughs. "There's too many for anyone to ever learn them all."

"I'm sure it's not that hard," Bonnibel says. "Once you listen to a bunch, you'll find they're really all the same."

"Really? I - oh no, there's the pokecenter again!"

"That's the pokecenter by Route One," Bonnibel tells her. "Professor Kukui's house is southwest from here, isn't it?"

"Um…"

"Forward along the road, and then to the right from there?"

"Oh, yes! It's down."

It turns out to literally be downhill, which is perhaps why that much has stuck in Lillie's memory. A grassy path winds along the curve toward the beach Lillie squares her shoulders and takes a deep breath. "You can only reach the professor's lab by treading through a lot of tall grass." There's also a ledge, but evidently Lillie's fear of heights isn't limited to fatal drops if she prefers the grassy route. "He says he can research moves better when he is so surrounded by pokemon. He's a great trainer himself, you know. Since I'm not a trainer, though, I have to rely on using repels all the time." Despite bringing it up, Lillie doesn't seem to realize the last spray has faded. Bonnibel supposes it doesn't matter.

Sure enough, as Lillie walks as quietly and unobtrusively as she can manage through the grass, she accidentally startles a wingull. She yelps as he explodes from the grass in a flurry of disgruntled feathers. "What? Who? Don't you dare attack me!"

Bonnibel looks to the yungoos still on Lillie's shoulder. "Sand attack."

The yungoos runs down and tries to jump at the wingull. Her teeth clack shut below his tail as he flies up. "Go away! Nobody wants you here!"

"Sand attack," Bonnibel repeats icily. The yungoos glances back at her, anxious, then spins and starts kicking up sand.

Pellets of water shoot out from the sandy cloud. One strikes the yungoos, knocking her to the side.

"Sand attack." The yungoos scrambles upright and gets back to kicking. Unable to see, the wingull won't risk flying. "Now, get in there and bite." The yungoos shoots into the mess. After a couple seconds, there's a shriek. Bonnibel throws another pokeball at the sound, and there's a flash of light.

The sand settles to reveal the yungoos sitting proudly next to the pokeball. "I could've finished him off, too!"

Bonnibel bends to stroke the top of her head, feeling the strange texture of the lighter fur. "Good job." She adds the wingull's pokeball to her bag.

Lillie says quietly, "Why are they so aggressive? I wish… I just wish… I don't want to hurt them..."

"Didn't anyone tell you the story about that?" Bonnibel asks. "Your mother, or your tutors?" Lillie shakes her head and Bonnibel huffs in disapproval. "They should've. Pretty much everyone everywhere's heard some version of the story about people and pokemon and tall grass. It goes like, 'Long ago, all the wild pokemon gathered. One pokemon said to the others, "I have been to the villages and seen the pokemon humans have taken into their homes. Those pokemon sit under their chairs, and eat the scraps from the humans' table." All the pokemon agreed they should do something to repay the humans for this. So a pokemon proposed to the others that they should always be ready to appear before humans always. That way, the humans would never go hungry. And they would fight the pokemon who lived with humans, so those pokemon should grow stronger and be able to do more for the humans. Thus, to this day, pokemon appear when people venture out.' And also thus, people shouldn't feel bad about any of it."

The yungoos chitters, "That's stupid. I've never heard anything like that."

"But that's just something made up," Lillie says, frustration obvious in her voice.

Bonnibel shrugs. "It's something that's been told lots of times, and lots of ways," Bonnibel says. "Maybe a long time ago, the story was true, however it went."

"No it sounds super fake," the yungoos squeaks.

"Aw, look at my yungoos squeaking away," Bonnibel coos. "Such a cute little baby! Do you think widdle Yungoos knows all the different stories and how they changed? Because then it'd be such a shame we can't understand her, since her thoughts about it would matter."

"Hey!"

"But...but what matters is what's really happening! If I knew, maybe things would be different."

Bonnibel would laugh, but, well, a laugh's as bad as a sob. Instead she shrugs. "Or maybe it wouldn't. And it's not like you could ask that wingull, after all."

After a moment, Lillie asks, "Did you want a wingull for your team? Are they a good pokemon?"

"He wasn't very, not compared to my yungoos here. But gotta fill the pokedex, right?" Bonnibel hasn't decided yet how far she's going to go with that, but it's the right thing to say.

"Yeah…" Lillie manages something more like a smile and continues, "The professor will be happy you're working so hard on it! It's really important to him, but he can't just go out and do it himself."

Down at the beach, Bonnibel can see a pair of slowpoke lounging on rocks, tails moving about with the waves. She'd have to swim out to catch them, and she won't be doing that for a few days.

The building looks like it was expensive - large, well built, bright paint - but is currently in the process of being ruined by nailing large planks of unfinished wood haphazardly onto the structure.

"Oh my," Bonnibel says, all earnestness. "Was there a bad storm recently?"

Lillie laughs painfully. "Oh, um, you see… It's just part of the hazards of pokemon research! The Pokémon Research Lab has its own unique charm, as I think you might agree. I've actually been, um, imposing on the professor here for the past three months. I'm not much of an assistant, but it's the least I can do to pay him back for letting me stay." She sighs. "Maybe I'd be more help if I were a real pokemon trainer, too..."

They're nearly at the door as she says this, and in answer, Kukui's voice booms out. "Oh yeah, Rockruff! Let's go! Give it everything you've got! My body is ready. Woo!"

"Ah… There they go again…"

The rockruff barks madly, "Are we teasing Lillie again? Okay!" and then there's a crashing sound.

"The professor... He never stops researching moves. Not even...inside the lab itself. Looks like we'll have to patch the roof again…" Lillie sags. "And I had just washed his lab coat and finally gotten it clean, too. Now it'll be in shreds... and I'm no good at mending clothes... so he'll just have to buy another new one… We should probably go in before he does any more damage..."

Bonnibel recalls her yungoos and climbs up the porch steps.

Things look neater through the door. There's a glass tank built into the floor that takes up a quarter of the room and no sign of damage to the smooth hardwood floors. There's just the wood fragments from the roof to ruin the picture.

"Hey there, Bonnibel! Thanks for getting her for me, Lillie!"

The rockruff starts barking again. "You smell so weird! You smell like you took a bath in sunscreen! You smell like you took five baths in sunscreen!" It's hard to fit with the idea Kukui is any sort of great trainer. Either this is a pet, which still doesn't speak well to his attitude, or Lillie considers just about anyone amazing at pokemon training.

Further in, a snubbull grumbles, "Of course she did, dummy. Don't you remember Lillie's skin turning all red? And this one looks like she's made of snow." If Bonnibel wasn't a person and could understand the noises pokemon made, she'd be offended by the turn of phrase. She's no snow child; Bonnibel's coloring marks her as her father's daughter.

"Of course. However I can be a help… I am supposed to be your assistant, right?"

"Rockruff's moves were just so stylin', and I was making good progress with my research. Say, Bonnibel, lemme see your pokedex for a second, yeah?"

Bonnibel passes it to him with a smile.

"So what do you think of the place? Not bad, right?"

"It's nice. And everyone's been so nice," Bonnibel says.

"Nice!" He gives her a thumb's up. "But that's not why I called you here, eh? Here! It finally arrived!"

"It…?" Lillie repeats.

"What's wrong, Lillie? Don't make me do all the talking!" Without pausing for breath, he continues, "See, there's this pokemon inside your pokedex called rotom…"

"Really?" Bonnibel says.

"Oh," Lillie says with relief. "I can tell you about rotom. They're peculiar pokemon, with bodies made up of something like electricity. They can take up residence in machines."

Lillie has such interesting viewpoint on cause and effect.

"Yeah, buddy! And to put that crazy skill of rotom's to work… It's the next generation of pokedexes, but it's only complete once a rotom has gone into this body specially developed for it! A whole new way for people and pokemon to communicate. Woo!" He grins and Bonnibel smiles back. "And there's only a few of these beauties out in the world so far!"

Bonnibel says, "How exciting!"

"And now if I power up your pokedex with the replacement parts that I just got in…"

There's suddenly a buzzing rotom floating in the air next to Kukui. Bonnibel smiles at them, expecting little difficulty. Rotom don't exist apart from people. They know their place better than most pokemon.

"Hey now! Sorry 'bout that, Rotom. Guess I surprised you?"

"Huh?"

"Here, boy! I powered up your favorite 'dex! Given Bonnibel here a helping hand, yeah?"

"That!" They vanish again, and then the whole pokedex floats back up into the air. The clunky form makes more sense now.

Static hisses, "Nice to meet you, pal! Gentle on the goods, okay?" and then from the speakers, "Nice to meet you, pal! Gentle on the goods, okay?"

"See, Bonnibel? Now Rotom can talk right to you!"

"How amazing," Bonnibel tells him. She supposes they're meant to nag her about what pokemon she still needs to catch. Can that be muted too?

"I know, right? From what I can tell, yeah, it looks like Rotom has taken a liking to you!"

Bonnibel nods. "I'm sure we'll be great friends."

"And this will help how exactly?" There's disapproval, but Lillie's voice is mostly just bafflement.

"Bonnibel hasn't been here in Alola too long yet. So I decided to give her this special rotomdex to help her navigate around."

"Thank you very much," Bonnibel says. It probably won't matter - she doesn't intend to stop off at her mother's house, and nobody else will care about enough about a trainer's travels to listen to what a pokemon has to say.

"You can see where you're headed just by looking at Rotom, and if you give it a little tap, you can check out the full map!"

Bonnibel is about to tell him how terribly useful that sounds when Hau bursts in. "A-lo-la! The salty breeze sang to me and brought me here to you!" This is easily translated: "Someone told me you were headed here." She's curious if it went straight from someone in the city to Hau or if it passed through his grandfather, but there's no opening to pry, as Hau is already distracted by the fact there's a loft. Doesn't come here often then...things aren't very good between Hala and Kukui. Bonnibel hopes that doesn't cause any tension as her mother settles in.

Lillie's also distracted in keeping him from climbing up, flinging herself between him and the ladder. "It's private!" she shouts, voice high.

"Sorry! Okay!" Hau backs away, hands up.

"If you see a person or a pokemon who needs help, you just help them…" Kukui says breezily. "Right, Bonnibel? Hau? And that's why I'm letting Lillie stay up there in the loft." He turns to Bonnibel. "So, Bonnibel, I'm leaving this rotomdex in your hands! Rotom, you look after Bonnibel, yeah?"

"Yeah," Bonnibel echoes, smiling.

"Right!" Hau says abruptly, snapping his fingers. "My grandfather has a gift for you ready too, yeah! He worked hard all night and the z-ring's ready!"

Kukui laughs. "You've got a lot to do, Bonnibel, yeah. But you were able to fully use your pokemon's moves in your very first battle. I think you must have a talent for drawing out pokemon's strengths, yeah, and you should have no problem mastering the z-ring too. The island challenge will be your chance to become the strongest trainer around - the island challenge champion, woo!" He gives her a dramatic wink. "Especially if you remember to keep catching pokemon along the way. A trainer's only as good as their pokemon, after all! It seems like you're pretty talented in that respect too."

"You've caught a pokemon already?" Hau says. "Wow!"

Lillie opens her mouth and says, "Bonnibel didn't catch just one!" Oblivious to Kukui's meaningful glare and moving eyebrows, she continues, "She's caught six!"

Hau doesn't shout, or throw up his hands, or do any of the exaggerated theatrics Bonnibel's seen from him this far. He stops for an instant, then looks rapidly between Bonnibel and Kukui. Finally, "Six?"

"Well, I was out all night," Bonnibel says. "I'm still jetlagged, so I figured better to get an early start instead."

There's something Hau wants to say, but it doesn't come out. Instead his mouth closes, his lips draw back into a toothy smile, and when he opens his mouth again it's to say, "Haha, wow! That's amazing."