Like I said, got a little slowed up with the new editor and the whole new stories and all. Still, I hope that my going back through and fixing up the chapters is appreciated. Hopefully from here on out, they'll be coming along much better.

Mitsuru woke up with a shock when her bed jolted under her. Her head whipped around as she struggled through blurry eyes to see what had woken her up. She blinked in shock when she saw the tanned, smooth, feminine thigh right next to her head. Like... right next to her head, right there! A few moments passed in which she just stared, before she slowly traced up the lovely shaped thigh to a very small pair of... panties! Further up, a tight toned stomach and even further up, a small chest covered by a small breast wrap, at that point she realized that the girl next to her wasn't in her underwear, but rather in a bikini.

Rayna.

Right, she was sleeping in Rayna's house, not her own bed. The bed her brother had been sleeping in. Well, she was leaning on it, so at least that much.

"Come on sleeping beauty, you gotta get out of my house now." The blue-haired witch said, looking down at Mitsuru. Then she cruelly twisted her hand and bright white light flared to life beside her, forcing Mitsuru to squint to avoid the pain of the light stabbing into her eyes.

"Ugh... what time is it?" Mitsuru complained at her torturous awakening.

The slut held little pity for her poor victim and answered snidely. "It's eight in the morning princess. I let you sleep an extra three hours."

"An extra three hours! The day doesn't begin until ten!" Mitsuru argued.

"Maybe not for you, but my day starts at six o'clock at the latest. Now get your ass up and at'em." Rayna pushed her toe against Mitsuru's shoulder to force her up. "I'm off on my journey today... Gonna blow them all away." She paused for a moment. "But I can't do that while some lazy bones is wasting her own journey by sleeping it away in my room!"

"Your room?" Mitsuru looked around again and then blushed. Her brother had been sleeping in this girl's room? That was indecent! She shook her head to clear it of thoughts like that and looked back up at Rayna. "Wait. You're going on a journey too? We can travel toge-"

"Absolutely not!" Rayna said firmly.

"W-what? Why not?"

"Because you're going to be slowing me down and getting me into even more trouble, I can just see it now." Rayna was frowning down at her. "Besides, shouldn't you be traveling with your own kind?"

My own kind? Mitsuru had no idea what she was saying. "And just what is that supposed to mean?"

"We're too different, get over it." She said heartlessly. "You're rich, I'm poor, you have an hour."

Mitsuru looked up at her in almost shock. She had left her family so that she wouldn't be labeled as a rich airhead, she wanted to make her own name for herself. "Is there anyway I could use your shower before you kick me out?"

Rayna looked at her for a moment before breaking out into laughter.

Mitsuru flushed red and glared at the girl. "And just what's so funny!"

Rayna eventually managed to regain control and stop laughing. She looked down at Mitsuru, her eyes scanning down and over the pretty girl at her feet. "Wow." She mouthed in shock. "You really haven't noticed?" She started laughing again and Mitsuru puffed up angrily. Rayna attempted to stifle her laughing. "Geez, I don't have plumbing in my house you idiot."

"What?"

"Didn't you see? There's exactly two rooms here. My bedroom, and the main room. Why do you think I can afford this place? I told you, I'm not like you. I never got to wake up and take a hot shower in the morning, hell, I have to walk down the street to use a bathroom!"

"But... how do you stay clean?" Mitsuru asked awkwardly.

Rayna glared at her. "You trying to say I'm dirty?" Before Mitsuru could finish stammering out an apology of some kind, Rayna continued. "I clean in the water, y'know the giant puddle outside of my door? That you took a boat you couldn't afford to cross?"

"Yes, yes, yes, I'm aware of what the ocean is. You really bathe in that?"

"Don't have much of a choice do I?"

"I'm sorry."

Rayna looked down at her with disgust before turning away and storming out of the room. "I don't want your pity." She glared at the other girl before reiterating, "One hour, then you're gone." Then she slid the door shut sharply.

Mitsuru blew out a stream of air, blowing straight up from her mouth and sending her green hair flipping about. She pushed herself up and groaned at the stiffness in her body. Bad posture while she was sleeping, but it wasn't like she had planned to fall asleep like that. She had just fallen asleep while she was fixing up the room, picking up her brother's mess.

She looked around the room as she stood up. She hadn't done that good of a job at it though. A drop in a bucket. She giggled at the joke. Rayna would probably have liked that joke. It involved water.

She lazily ran her fingers through her hair, feeling a few knots and tangles. She sighed. A shower really would have been nice, but apparently that was too much of a wish. Hopefully she'd be able to get a meal before getting kicked out. She began working through some stretches to get blood flowing through her stiff achy muscles. It had been a pretty bad place for her to fall asleep, but she had been trying to clean up her family's mess. Her brother's destruction of this girl's room.

And then, at least functional now, she turned to leave the room. She was a little surprised to see Rayna standing in the doorway. And then she blushed thinking about how the bluenette had probably just saw her bending over, stretching her back, stretching her torso with a twist, arcing her back, Rayna had just been watching her? For how long?

"Uh..." Mitsuru couldn't think of anything to say.

"You hungry?"

"Yes?"

Rayna walked away. Mitsuru followed after quickly, scooping up the necklace holding treecko and slipping it over her head, letting it rest between her breasts. Then she was chasing after Rayna, following her out into the main room of the girl's house. She was pretty surprised to find Rayna opening up the wall of her house to access the refrigerator. The food she choose was... unsurprisingly, fish and seaweed.

Mitsuru sighed, judging the frying pan and small fire on one side of the room, she was glad it was at least going to be cooked. She hated undercooked or cold food.

There was a hissing noise that startled Mitsuru, but she realized when she looked over at Rayna that it was only her dropping the food on the skillet. A moment later, her jaw dropped in horror.

Rayna had just reached over into the pool, the pool she used -the pool her feebas was in!- and scooped out a handful of water, pouring it onto the pan for steam.

"W-what are you doing!?" She nearly screamed at the other girl.

Rayna looked over at her in surprise. "What do you mean?"

"T-the water thing!"

"I think steamed fish tastes better than grilled."

"That's not the point!" Mitsuru had to stop herself from gagging on just the thought of eating that. Fish steamed in feebas grease? Ew! That was disgusting! How could somebody possibly think that's a good idea? It was just so... unsanitary to say the least!

Rayna just looked at her with honest and utter confusion. "Then what is the point? Did you want sushi?"

"No!"

"I really don't see what problem you're going on about."

"You're cooking the fish in the water your feebas was swimming around in!"

"And there's a problem with that?"

"Yes! There's a lot of problems with that! It's unsanitary!"

"Unsanitary?"

"Yes! Who knows what kind of diseases you could catch from doing that!" Mitsuru couldn't understand what was wrong with the girl so that she thought it was okay. Seriously? Eating something a feebas was swimming in. The thing looked like it could make you catch half a dozen diseases just by touching the thing.

"Diseases? I've been doing this for all my life and never got sick."

"Th-that's disgusting!" Mitsuru gagged just thinking about it. Maybe Rayna was right, maybe they were too different. It was probably a good thing they wouldn't be traveling together. Still, it would have been nice to have had a friend, even if she was weird. With a sigh, Mitsuru sat down at the table and resigned herself to not eating

She double checked to make sure that she had everything. Not that there was even all that much for her to forget. Her necklace, the loose tunic, a belt, and her little satchel. A few extra pokeballs, just in case she ran into some awesome pokemon to catch, and a couple potions, all set away safely in her satchel. Hopefully she'd have lots of use for one of them, and not so much for the other. After all, she was planning on taking on the league, on taking on the champion! She had a long way to go from where she was now, with just a little treecko and her 'rich' heritage, if you listened to Rayna.

She jumped when Rayna slipped a plate in front of her. "Here you go, a nice batch of oh-so-disgusting fish."

Mitsuru looked down at it with disgust, but while she was looking, her stomach rumbled at her. She groaned, but she was starving. She needed to eat something! And it looked like this was the only thing available. She picked up her fork and swallowed hard before moving it down to cut a piece off. Then she popped it into her mouth and was surprised. She had expected something tasting foul, like what the feebas looked like, but somehow it was filled with vast flavor.

She finished the fish before Rayna had managed to sit down with her own food.

"Are you sure that you don't want to travel with me?" Mitsuru asked again.

Rayna didn't answer, so Mitsuru assumed that she was ignoring her. She grew angry, but it wasn't helpful to grow angry. Why would she have wanted to even travel with a pretentious little bitch like her anyway?

She was wrong though, Rayna wasn't ignoring her, and she quickly made that apparent. "I don't think it's a very good idea." She sighed. "You're from a-whole-nother world than me. You got to shower everyday, you've never gone hungry, you own more than just bathing suits." She shook her head. "I don't even know what that kind of life is like."

"You only own bathing suits?"

Rayna blushed a little and looked away. "They're a lot cheaper here than normal clothes." She shrugged. "And since I spend so much time in the water anyway, it seemed like a waste to spend money on other things."

"You're going to be half naked while you travel across the continent?"

"Don't really have much choice. Besides, I'm going to be taking part in contests anyway, so I won't be staying poor for that long anyway." She grinned. "I plan on winning them all."

"Wouldn't that make you one of the rich ones?" Mitsuru argued.

"I'm not traveling with you!" Rayna snapped, standing up so quickly her chair fell backwards. "Now finish up with whatever and get out!"

Well, whatever she had been expecting, it certainly hadn't been that. Mitsuru was at a loss for what to do. So she just... went with it. It was pretty clear that she wouldn't be able to convince Rayna to reconsider, so, apparently Mitsuru would be traveling on her own. Great, no really, it was fine. That's exactly what she had been expecting when she set out. So it wasn't like it was all that surprising. She resigned herself to it. With her meal finished, and all of her stuff packed, she had no more reason to stick around wasting time.

"Fine then." She muttered as she stood up. "You can be by yourself and all moody and melodramatic. But eventually we're going to meet up again. I have to pay up that twenty thousand poké I owe you."

"You only owe me fifteen."

"I'm aware. I'm going to pay you back with interest though." Mitsuru vowed. "So look forward to it, twenty thousand coming at you."

"Tsk, I'll be lucky if I get the money back for the fish you ate." She muttered angrily in response. "And I buy in bulk."

"Fine, don't believe me." Mitsuru's response was just as curt. "That just means that when I succeed in getting you the money, you're gonna have to apologize!"

Rayna laughed, she actually laughed at her! Mitsuru flushed with a mix of anger and embarrassment. "Tell you what. You actually manage to pay all of that, I'll personally take you out on a date, and then make a public apology in the middle of the restaurant."

"A d-date!" Mitsuru certainly haven't been expecting that. "But w-what about you and my brother?" She blurted out without thought.

"Your brother?" Rayna looked honestly confused, Mitsuru unfortunately had to admit that it looked really cute on her. "What about your brother? Wait! You actually thought that me and him had a thing?" She burst out laughing again. "In case you forgot, I'm two years younger than even you are. Your brother is even older than you are. That would make a him a really really bad person if he even hugged me for too long. Besides, he's just a customer." She shrugged. "He's not even my type."

Mitsuru just stared for a moment, embarrassed even further now. "W-well... good! You're not his type either!" She immediately regretted saying that. She knew that Rayna wouldn't leave that comment alone.

She was right. "I should hope not, unless he's really into people five years younger than him." A brief chuckle. "And how confident are you in that claim anyway? Considering... wait, how long has it been since you last saw him?"

Mitsuru grabbed her bag and swung it up onto her shoulder. "I'm just going to leave now before I humiliate myself even further."

"Aw," Rayna teased. "Just as I was getting to like you."

Mitsuru took that as her cue to leave and walked to the door, slamming it closed behind her with all of her strength. She had been hoping that the shoji screen would break behind her, but unfortunately, that was not to be. Oh well, she'd settle for an angry storm out, better than nothing.

Now she had to decide where she was going to go from here. She really only had two options available to her now, land or sea. She was in Sunset Cove after all. Either she could hop onto another ship and go home to Watakashi, or Tyrannoh City. But she wanted to take on gyms, so going home would serve no purpose. And all throughout her childhood, she'd heard horror stories about Tyrannoh, and the entire island it was on. So it looked like she'd be hea-

Oh wait. She had a spark of intuition, memory to be precise. How could she have possibly forgotten that Sunset Cove had a gym of its own? Uh, smack in the middle of 'the Cove.' Looked like she would get an opportunity to check out the amusement park after all.

But she had to turn around, which she tried to do while being discreet, but of course there was no real good way to turn around in the middle of the street and head back the opposite direction. She did so anyway, choosing embarrassment over walking away from her destination. Well, further away from it anyway. She had to work hard to keep her face from turning red when she was forced to walk back past Rayna's, especially since Rayna was actually out in front of her home, turning the sign from open to closed.

The girl had added onto her wardrobe, now wearing- surprise, surprise- a black bikini that- in Mitsuru's opinion- left far too little to the imagination. Just a few inches above that she wore that same thick metal belt that looked familiar to Mitsuru, now that she was looking at it in the light. A similar band of metal was attached to each of her wrists and ankles. Above that first belt, she wore a second belt, and on this belt was where she had a full set of pokéballs attached. The rest of her body was bare, even her feet. Mitsuru noted happily that the girl wore her hair in a ponytail, one of Mitsuru's favorite styles, although she didn't like to keep her own like that.

Rayna really was pretty cute. For somebody that mean and selfish of course. It wasn't like she was forgiving her the attitude she'd been having the whole time.

The Cove, amusement park extravaganza. But before she could enjoy herself playing there, she wanted to take a chance on the gym. When she arrived at the Cove though, she was almost immediately distracted. Rides, games, contests, everything one could imagine. Over there, a bunch of mareep were milling around a pair of flaaffy and a single ampharos. Surrounding the woolly quadrupeds was a horde of children, laughing as they ran amok, chasing the pokémon and each other. Every so often, one of them would jump, shocked by the built up static, but after the initial surprise, the kids would always return laughing.

She was sorely tempted to rush right over and begin playing around, but two things stopped her. First off, she desperately wanted to face off against a gym immediately to get some experience and learning from the act. Secondly, she had absolutely no money...

So she had to do some winning to earn herself some cash!

She turned away from the exciting games and rides and headed for the 'Cove's' gym. As soon as she saw the gym, her lips spread in a smile. Looks like she was going to get a chance to ride before facing the gym leader.