As if a dead taillow wasn't bad enough, he was getting closer to her with it still in his mouth.
"No, no." She told him, "That's okay, you can have it."
Roran stopped his approach to consider her words, before bounding forward the rest of the way and dropping the taillow at her feet.
"Shrew!" He happily told her.
"I don't know what that means! Look, we can even wait a little longer for you to eat it, 'kay?"
Roran shook his head, which made no sense to him as a way to communicate, but that's what the dark-haired male's grumpig had told him to do.
"I don't want it! It's gross and dead and still has feathers and everything!" She wailed
"Shrew." He told her again, poking her in the leg.
"How about this, I'll put it in my bag, and then you can eat it later. How about that?" She asked.
Without waiting for a reply, she opened her pack and gingerly placed the dead taillow on top of the rest of her stuff. She gave her hands a thorough wipe on her trousers, then closed her pack again and put it on.
"Let's go." She told him, before setting off back into the forest.
Roran quickly set off after her and, upon catching up, tried to climb up her leg. If she could carry his taillow, then she could carry him, right?
"Nuh uh, you're walking today. It'll make you stronger, and my bag's heavy enough as it is." She said while picking him up and putting him back down on the ground.
Roran snorted before obediently following her on his own feet.
"So, we should get to Petalburg by tonight, and then we'll get to sleep indoors!" Gracie interrupted his musings with a squeal of delight.
It was drier when they stopped for lunch. The air was less humid, the dew had long since dried up, and there were a lot less ponds about. However, the lack of ponds didn't stop Gracie from relaxing next to one while eating her, now squished, sandwiches.
She lay back against a tree, eating what had been a fat sub sandwich when she made it, but after being crammed in her pack for a day and a half, it looked more like a crumpled up pancake than anything else.
She vaguely considered taking off her socks and shoes to dip her feet in the cool water, but then they would be wet, and didn't want to dig through her pack again to find a towel. The breeze was nice though, and refreshing.
The major upside of stopping for a lunch break, was that Roran was eating that taillow he brought back that morning. The loud crunches as he chewed through the bones was not the most pleasant sound in the world, but at least it meant it wasn't in her pack any more. Her tent already had a big fat stain on it from the blood.
A sudden movement immediately to her side made her glance over. A lotad had just crawled up out of the pond to sun itself on a rock. She turned back to her sandwich. As much as a duel grass-water type would rock, she was pretty sure she wanted one that was smart enough to not lie down less than ten feet from a strange human and a sandshrew.
Roran apparently wasn't nearly so inhibited. Leaving the gory remains of his meal behind, he meandered over to the lotad, clambering over Gracie's legs in the process.
The lotad didn't seem to care, or even notice Roran's approach, even when he reached it and started flicking the back of its giant lily pad with one of his claws.
Gracie facepalmed, though she wasn't sure whether it was over Roran, or the lotad's lack of response.
Well, she decided, she might as well get him to fight it. She was doing it a favour, really. It should know better than to be so oblivious to its surroundings.
"Roran, use scratch on it." She told him, after standing up.
There was no way she was going to have her first pokemon battle while sitting on her butt.
She thought he was going to ignore her, but after giving the lotad another firm prod and still getting no response, he scratched its leg.
The lotad squealed and tried to jump up, but only managed to fall off its rock and onto its leaf. It waved its stubby legs around to try and flip back over, but it had nothing to get a grip on.
Roran happily scratched it again, this time on its belly, getting not a squeal, but a low growl in response. He immediately jumped back and rolled into a ball to protect himself.
"Roran, it's just a growl!"
He didn't budge from his ball.
"It's a lotad. You can't have a draw with a lotad! All they can do is growl and use astonish! They aren't even strong enough to use absorb around here!" Gracie yelled
Roran uncurled enough to look at her, before re-coiling himself.
"Ugh, you're lucky you haven't rolled into the water." Gracie told him.
Absolutely refusing to have anything other than a win against a fricken lotad, she dug in her pockets for an empty pokeball. A capture was just as good as a win, maybe even better, and hopefully it would become more self-aware as it got stronger.
She maximized the pokeball and threw it at the lotad. It was sucked in, then, as it wobbled around, it rolled into the pond before becoming still with an inaudible 'ding'.
Gracie stood at the edge of the pond, Roran still rolled up at her feet, and stared at the pokeball with her new lotad. It wasn't all that deep where it had stopped rolling, but it was still deep enough that her feet would get wet, and too far out for her to just reach out for it.
"I don't suppose you want to get it?" She asked Roran sarcastically.
He did actually uncurl himself from his ball this time, even if he did take one look at the water before trotting past her to a bush and lying down. Obviously he had no intention of getting wet.
Looking around for inspiration, Gracie grabbed a long stick and tried to push the pokeball back towards her. It wasn't nearly as easy as she thought it would have been, and she almost managed to flick it deeper into the pond, but after a couple minutes, she eventually managed to get the ball close enough that she could pick it up.
She carried it over to Roran while shaking the water off it.
"Look, this is our new teammate." She told him, bending down so that he could sniff the ball.
She left him rolling the ball between his paws as she went back to her pack to grab her few oran berries. Lotad really weren't all that strong, so one or two should fix him up.
She opened her berry pouch and was startled to find it empty.
"Roran! Those berries were for if we needed them, like right now, not for you to have a midnight snack!" She yelled, startling him into rolling up again.
With a sigh, she picked him up as he started rolling past her, back towards the pond.
"You startle easily, don't ya?"
She tucked him under her arm as she went to pick up the lotad's pokeball and shoved it back into her pocket. She had to put him back down when she pulled her pack back on, but carried him away from the pond, if only so that he wouldn't roll back in it.
Once they got back to the path, she put him back down. He slowly uncurled himself, before scampering to the edge of the path to sniff a bush as though nothing had happened.
Gracie set off down the path, relieved when she heard the patter of Roran's feet as he ran to keep up.
He seemed incapable of walking at the same pace as her. He was constantly either behind sniffing something, or running ahead to find something else. He rolled down any hill, no matter how shallow, sometimes zooming around a corner or into the undergrowth. She panicked each time it happened and ran forward to find him, but he was always fine, and somewhat puzzled at her worry.
By the time they arrived at Petalburg City, she had given up on keeping him within eyesight. He always came back, or let her catch up, and, to be honest, her pack was way too heavy for her to be chasing him all over the place.
She was a little more worried about him running off in the city itself. Teams Magma and Aqua had long since been disbanded, but that didn't mean lone pokemon were entirely safe from thieves. Fortunately, he stuck closer to her once they left the trees. Whether it was just from a lack of stuff to smell, or if he was genuinely worried, she wasn't sure, but she appreciated it nonetheless.
The sun was setting once she finally got to the pokemon centre, it was just at the right level to shine in her eyes, but she wasn't about to stop to dig her sunglasses out of her pack when she was this close. She swore that tomorrow, she would put them in one the outer pockets.
The lobby was practically empty when she entered it, and she could smell the food from the cafeteria, wherever they had hidden it. The receptionist was sitting behind the desk, typing away on a computer. Other than her, the only other person was a teenage boy sitting on the floor in the corner, surrounded by a multitude of fire pokemon. She tried not to stare at him as she went to the receptionist's desk. Type speciality trainers weren't all that common these days, excluding bug catchers, of course. He was kinda cute, too.
Gracie jerked her gaze to the desk and pulled out her two pokeballs. She returned Roran and set them both down on the desk, before pulling out her wallet.
"Trainer's card." The receptionist requested, still not looking up from the computer.
"Here." She replied, handing over her card.
The receptionist sighed, not even to pretending to be polite, and ran it through the scanner.
"I'd like my pokemon healed and my lotad registered, and a room." Gracie added.
"Fine. The longest you can stay is seven days, then you have to find somewhere else."
Gracie nodded, mutely, though the receptionist still hadn't looked up from her computer, so she wasn't sure if she'd seen it.
Her licence was thrust back at her, before both her pokeballs were placed on the machine behind the desk. It momentarily lit up, then both her pokeballs were handed back, too.
"You're lotad is male, weighs five pounds, is about six months old, has the Rain Dish ability, and performs photosynthesis." The receptionist rattled off.
"Photo-what?"
"It eats sunlight." She snapped. "You're in room three, down the hallway, on the left. The cafeteria is at the end of the hall."
"Thanks..." She muttered, before grabbing her balls and heading through the door with the 'Trainer Dorms' sign.
Room three was painfully boring. The walls were plain brick covered in whitewash, though from the number of stains and chips in it, it was probably due to be painted again. The floor was cheap linoleum, and the long, fluorescent bulb on the ceiling flickered badly. There were four sets of metal bunk beds, with vinyl-covered, foam mattresses in a multitude of bright colours.
The top and bottom beds of the bunk on the far wall had already been claimed, with a pile of stuff on each bed and a sleepy zigzagoon guarding them both. So, too, had the top bunk by the door, this one with a delcatty watching her over the edge.
She took the top bunk by the lone, rather dirty window. She left her bag on it, and let out her lotad to guard it. She figured he wouldn't go anywhere, not with what was left of the sun shining on the bed. Leaving Roran in her pocket, she left for the cafeteria.
The cafeteria was a lot more crowded than the lobby. It was only about half full of people, though a lot of the extra space was filled with pokemon, many of which she'd never seen before in real life.
In a bit of a daze, she went to the buffet table and grabbed a tray and three plates. One she filled with a generic, carnivorous-pokemon kibble, one with spaghetti bolognaise, and the last with a piece of cake, a biscuit, and a generous dollop of blue ice cream. After grabbing cutlery, she scanned the room for an empty seat and found none that were easily accessible.
She shimmied down the gap between two benches, trying to avoid trainers and pokemon alike, before placing her tray down at a free spot and sitting down. She let Roran back out and gave him his plate of kibble, which he didn't really seem all that interested in. She really hoped that he would eat it because she really didn't want to get into the habit of carrying dead pokemon everywhere.
Deciding that she couldn't do much about it, she dug into her ice cream with gusto before it melted on the rest of her dessert. When it was gone, she decided that her spaghetti wasn't about to suddenly go cold, and ate her cake too.
By the time she left the cafeteria, Roran hadn't eaten a thing, someone had bumped into her and made her spill her drink down her shirt, and her muscles had decided that they hurt.
She limped back to Room 3 with Roran following behind her, looking no worse for wear from their two days of walking. When she opened the door, the bunk with the zigzagoon had two girls sitting on the bottom bed, gossiping with each other. They looked up when she entered the room, but quickly ignored her in favour of their chatter.
She went to her claimed bed, only to groan at her still unpacked bag with the wet tent inside. She stood on the bottom bunk to reach easier, and pulled out the tent, letting it fall on the floor with a loud smack.
"Do you guys mind if I set up my tent for the night? It's soaking wet." She asked the two girls
"Pft," one of them replied, "it'll be fine for a night or two. Just take it out to a route tomorrow and let it dry then." She was then ignored again in favour of their chatter.
It was a good point the girl made, but it was a rude way to put it, and she really wished that she had the guts to reply in kind.
With uncomfortably warm cheeks, she turned back to her bag and started digging out her sleeping bag, pillow, pyjamas, and book. When she'd dug them all out, she pushed her bag next to the wall, grabbed her pyjamas to go change, then realized that her lotad was gone.
"Have either of you guys seen my lotad?!" She yelped to the two girls, interrupting some joke or other.
"It wandered into the bathroom a little while ago and hasn't come out since." The other girl replied, a lot nicer than her friend did.
"Thanks." She replied, before heading into the bathroom to get changed and bring her lotad back.
Her lotad, it seemed, upon discovering that the sun was gone, had searched out a source of water instead, and had somehow climbed the toilet and was now floating in the bowl. Gracie prayed that whoever had used it last had done a really good job of flushing.
"Hey you..." She tried to coo at him, he wasn't in trouble, as such. "Do you wanna get out of there?"
He examined her for a second, then started swimming in tiny little circles. Frankly, Gracie was surprised he was small enough to make circles without bumping into the toilet seat.
"C'mon dude, that's pretty gross." She said, conveniently ignoring that the pond she had found him by likely had way nastier things in it than a little bit of pee.
She got changed and, after he still refused to climb out on his own, gingerly picked him up and dumped him in the sink. She turned the on tap, right on top of him, and scrubbed her hands with the cheap bar of soap the centre provided. Once she deemed herself decontaminated enough, she started giving him a rub down too.
He squirmed when she started rubbing him with the soap, but apparently enjoyed the cold water too much to put up too much of a fight. However, he still managed to splash enough water on her pyjama top that she was going to change it when they were done.
Once he was decontaminated enough that she wouldn't mind him sleeping on the same bed as her, she turned the water off and he immediately started squealing at her. When that didn't work and she started towelling him off, he growled at her. When she continued drying him, he used what must have been astonish. All Gracie knew was that one minute she was trying to dry under his leaf, and the next she was startled enough that she jerked her hand away and bashed it on the counter.
"Stop that, Rolf!" She yelled from habit, before she realized that this was her lotad, not Mark's drifblim.
Well, bummer, it was stuck in her head now. He would certainly be pleased to know that she had named a pokemon after him. Hopefully her lotad wouldn't turn into as big a prankster as the drifblim was.
"Whatever. You're now 'Rolf', okay?" She asked him, scooping him up and carrying him out before he could reply.
She put him on top her her bag, before looking around for Roran to put him up there as well. He was nowhere to be seen, but she did hear something scratching around under the bottom bunk. She bent down to have a look, and found Roran and the girl's zigzagoon eyeballing each other. She rolled her eyes and pulled Roran out of there before they actually started fighting. She dumped him up on her bunk before climbing up herself.
It was still rather early, but she couldn't be bothered to shower, or organize her stuff, or even move her tent from where she'd left it, so she flattened out her sleeping bag, crawled inside it, then started reading. She would only stop once the lights were turned off.
Lights off was a long time coming.
The girl with the delcatty didn't come back for another hour, arms full of freshly dried laundry. She ignored everyone and folded her clothes before climbing onto her own bunk. She spent the rest of the evening grooming her pokemon. First was the delcatty, then that was switched out for a mightyena, then a manectric. If Gracie wasn't impressed with her pokemon before, she certainly was when the manectric was switched for a vaporeon.
The two zigzagoon girls spent the entire time talking, not shutting up for a moment. At some point, they pulled out a magazine and started giggling over some actor.
When they were on their third personality quiz, this one determining what season they represented, the vaporeon flicked the light switch with its long tail, plunging them all into darkness.
Gracie didn't really mind, she'd read over three chapters already, and had enough light by the window to put her book away and lie down without bashing her head on the headboard. Rolf hadn't moved from his spot at the base of the bed, so she left him there, confident that if he wandered during the night, he could only go around the room and into the bathroom.
Roran, however, had curled up on her chest, so she awkwardly picked him up and shoved him down her sleeping bag. She knew she wouldn't be able to sleep with him after he evolved, he'd be too big for that, but he was just so cosy that she couldn't help herself. Chances are, he'd climb out again while she slept, but as long as he didn't try to escape the room or pick a fight with the other pokemon, then she didn't mind.
The two girls, however, were not happy at the lights out, but were not really brave enough to risk the vaporeon's wrath by turning them back on. One clambered up to the top bunk in the darkness, and, after she got herself comfortable, everything was silent for a whole minute or so. Then, the whispering started.
They were too loud for Gracie to just ignore and get to sleep, but were still sufficiently quiet that she felt shy about telling them to shut up.
The whispering got louder and, when they started approaching a normal talking volume, a loud growl interrupted them.
"If you two don't shut it, I'll have Joshua use water pulse on your bunk." The lone girl snarled
"Yeah, but then you'll be the one in trouble!" Retorted the snarkier of the pair
"I'll tell them that your friend's marill did it. I've got five badges to the three between you two. It'll be my word against yours."
"Yeah, but with her in the other bunk," Gracie had a sinking feeling they were talking about her, "that'll be three against one!"
Gracie froze, she really didn't want to get into an argument between a bunch of trainers she'd never met before, and definitely not on her first night ever in a Pokemon Centre!
"Well, it sound's like she's asleep already." The lone girl was starting to sound less annoyed and more malicious with every word.
Fortunately, with that threat in the air, no one else spoke another word, and Gracie eventually managed to get to sleep.