Marcy and Conner flew to Saffron to catch up with Luther and Kyle. Since she had the most money, and since she wanted to celebrate having just gotten her eighth and final gym badge, Marcy bought a large feast for everyone. Luther tried to chip in, as he was celebrating having gotten his fourth contest ribbon, but Marcy wouldn't hear of it.
"If you insist." Luther conceded after a small debate over the payment of their massive meal. "Anyway, what do you plan to do now? You've got three months until the League battles start up." Luther said.
"Well, training obviously." Marcy said with a chuckle, "But there is a small problem." She said. "What's that?" Kyle asked, "Can we help in any way?" "No, it isn't a real problem really. There are a lot of places I want to go in the region for training," Marcy said, "So I was thinking that I'll be splitting off from our little group."
"Really?" Luther asked, Marcy nodding, "If I'm going to be battling in the Buko League, I've got to get a lot more training in, and in a lot of different places. Colin still needs to evolve again, so do Rook, Kest, and Gabriel. Arti can get me across the region no problem, but it'll be too much of a hassle for him to fly my across the region to train for the day then fly me back to the group afterwards. I'll catch back up with you later, and until then we can still talk over the phone if something comes up."
"Well, if you really think it's for the best, I say go for it." Kyle said, Luther nodding in agreement. "Conner?" Marcy asked, "I was hoping you would come with me. I don't know if you had somewhere else you were hoping to go, but if you do, I could drop you off with Arti."
Conner smirked, "I don't have anywhere to be but with you." He said, Luther and Kyle resisting the urge to go, "D'aww~!" and start laughing. Marcy smiled, leaning over to give Conner a kiss. "We're gonna head out tomorrow, I was thinking of starting at Cinnabar island."
Conner nodded, "Sounds good to me." "If you're heading that direction anyway," Luther said, "Would you mind taking me and Kyle to Viridian City? There's going to be a contest there the day after tomorrow. I didn't even think about going at first since it's too far away, but Articock could get us there no problem right?"
Marcy nodded, "Sure thing, so long as you promise to win and get your fifth ribbon after we drop you off. The Grand Festival comes right before the Buko League battles, so I plan to see you performing there, got it?"
Luther chuckled, nodding, "Sure thing. And if you're going to be leaving us for so long, you'd better be some kind of buko battling guru afterwards. The League isn't gonna know what hit them right?"
"Right." Marcy nodded, smiling. "And you'd better get stronger to." She said, turning to Kyle, "I know battling isn't really your thing, but you've got a lot of great buko, and I don't wanna come back and see them all exactly like they were before because you were too caught up studying about their evolutions to evolve them."
"I wouldn't do that." Kyle pouted, Luther giggling at this. "No, you won't, 'cause Luther's going to look after you while me and Conner are gone." Marcy said, "So, with all that cleared up, what do you think she should do now? We've got one more night together."
"Well, how about we take a mission from the town board?" Conner suggested, "Between the four of us, we've got enough people and buko to make up a full party." He was right, the others realized, wondering why it hadn't occurred to them before.
Every town had a board near the center of town with a list of missions on it that needed to be done. Most of them were taken up by travelling tamers, who sued the missions as their most immediate source of income, as battling didn't always cut it when you weren't around a ton of other tamers.
They all went to the board and looked for a mission together. After looking over all the missions that required a group of at least four, they decided to take a bounty mission, one to clear out a nearby Blade Bunny den.
Blade Bunny, the death lepus buko. This evolution of the Bunny Boy is triggered by being infected with the Wabbit virus, a disease that comes from feralborne Blade Bunnies and spreads to Bunny Boys, transforming them. They use their bladed tails for combat and are extremely vicious creatures, living in packs and killing any who enter their territory.
According to the board there was a den of ten Blade Bunnies and a feralborne too close to the town, and they would get a collective bounty of $500,000 for clearing them all out. With all their buko, it would be a piece of cake.
They followed the coordinates given to them to the location of the Blade Bunny den. Marcy let out Kest, Colin, James, and Richard. Kyle let out Aquarius, Lee, Magi, and Dylan. Luther let out Mike and Leon. And Conner let out Richie, his Psybro Sam, and his Primplove Jacob. Marcy still wanted to get the job done fairly, but still had Articock in the air above them just in case things turned sour.
With everything set, the attack begun. Colin, Lee, James, Sam and Magi all attacked at once, firing flamethrower, ember, rapid fire, psy-wave and mana wave respectively. The three attacks combined and fired into the entrance of the den.
Two of the Blade Bunnies were knocked out by this, and nearly all of them were injured. As they rushed out, Kest, Mike, Aquarius, James, Richard, Leon, Richie, Jacob, and Dylan attacked together with feather shuriken, razor leaf, water gun, magic bullets, confusion, chain lash, ice beam, and super sonic. This secondary assault knocked out another four of the Blade Bunnies before they had even finished getting out of the cave, hissing and snarling in anger at being disturbed.
The remaining five Blade Bunnies rushed forward, the buko all trying to keep them at a distance. The tamers knew that their buko were very capable of fighting them in hand to hand, but they would rather keep as far away from the savage rabbits' tail blades as possible, especially as they were already dripping with blood.
Two of them made it into close quarters range, James slamming the handle of his gun into the first's head and firing point blank into his face while Mike wrapped the other his vines, lifting him into the air and slamming them hard into the ground.
The whole battle had only lasted about ten minutes, but it was ten minutes worth five hundred thousand credits. They captured all the fainted buko, Colin and Lee using their fire to kill the feralborne (he would have been put down anyway if they turned him in, made sense to at least let him go in his sleep, plus they would get an extra $100,000 for a confirmed kill).
Conner decided to keep one of the Blade Bunnies for himself, figuring it would be worth shot to try taming the aggressive creature, if it could be done with a Domino it could be done with anything he figured.
And with that, the group turned in the Blade Bunnies, collected their money, and promptly went on a shopping spree.