Chapter 4 — Outlaws
"Ethan!" Helioptile called from down the hallway in the dormitories of the Academy. "Fennekin! There you two are!"
"What?" Fennekin drawled, still half asleep. "What's up?"
"The Academy meeting's happening, they're waiting on you!"
Fennekin practically jumped, almost as if a jolt of electricity shot through her. "Academy meeting?" she echoed, all tiredness in her voice gone as if it was never there. "I didn't know about any meeting!"
Helioptile placed a hand over her mouth, stifling a giggle. "Yamper was supposed to tell you after your mission yesterday, that explains it. We haven't been waiting too long, we can walk there together."
"What's the meeting for?" Ethan asked as Helioptile turned around and started walking back the way she came.
"We have a meeting on this day every week, just so they can fill us in on anything that's happening. They usually don't last very long, but sometimes they have really important info to give us."
"What are they saying today?" Fennekin bit her lip, then began almost half-walking half-pacing with them. "Are we missing anything?"
Helioptile turned to Ethan, then let out a few soft giggles. "No, they're waiting. They don't want you to miss anything."
It wasn't a long walk to the main room of the fourth floor, but it was a much different sight than it had been the past few days; Pokémon of all different shapes and sizes filled the room, and Ethan only recognized a few of them; Roserade was standing in front of the crowd, and Cinccino was further back towards the stairs. He found Yamper, Aipom, and Emolga in the crowd, but they were all talking with Pokémon he didn't recognize. He could see now that it wasn't a huge crowd, maybe about a dozen Pokémon total including him and Fennekin, but it was still overwhelming since he didn't know most of them.
"Everybody's here!" Roserade spoke from the front of the crowd, almost instantly causing all side conversations to cease and look at her. She didn't exactly yell, but her voice was strong and clear, and even though she was not much taller than some of the Pokémon in the crowd, something about her made her seem to be almost looming over them.
"Thank you," she continued, her voice quieter but still firm and clear. "Now, as I'm certain you're all aware, we have two new recruits to the Academy: Ethan and Fennekin, of Team Stargazers. Some of you have already met them, but for those who have not, we will be relying on you to help them when they need it, and we will be directing them to many of you either to aid their explorations or have them aid yours."
As she was speaking, Luxio seemed to almost appear out of nowhere on the top few steps, exchanging small smiles with Cinccino before very fluidly and gracefully standing next to him. Why was she downstairs? Perhaps she was updating the missions on the ground floor, or preparing the arena for another exercise with them today. Whatever it was, he hadn't heard any indication that someone was on the creaky stairs of the Academy.
"Second," Roserade with an almost smug smile, "an update on the mentorship program. Having two new members has made us need to look for another team, although we have one that has said they would be very excited to work with our newest members; we are finalizing details with them now. We are hoping to introduce you all to your mentors at the next meeting."
"Mentors?" Fennekin whispered to Helioptile. "What's she talking about?"
"They're finding real exploration teams who've agreed to help us out and teach us what they know," she explained. "They're even finding ones that are good at certain things that we do well so they can help us become even better!"
"That concludes this morning's meeting," Roserade finished. "Good luck, all of you!"
"What do we do now?" Ethan asked Helioptile as most of the Pokémon went towards the stairs or started looking for others in the crowd.
"You two!" Luxio called out before she could answer. She was walking towards them, flanked by two Pokémon. The one on the right, a round, dark blue Pokémon with what appeared to almost be a flower on its head had...drool, coming out of its mouth. Was it polite to not look, or was it rude to not look? He settled for looking at the one on Luxio's left, which was pale pink and seemed almost like it was walking with its pastel blue hat instead of its legs that dangled just above the ground. "Yamper told me your mission yesterday went well. How do you two feel?"
He and Fennekin exchanged sideways glances with each other, both apparently not wanting to be the first to say something. What was it about Luxio that was so intimidating? "I think it went well," he admitted.
"Yeah," was all Fennekin responded with.
"Good," she smiled before gesturing to the Pokémon on the right. "This is Gloom, and you'll be helping him today with a mission." She looked to the Pokémon on the left. "But first, I asked Hattrem to show you our library and help you learn how to prepare for missions."
"Hi!" Hattrem beamed, almost bouncing in her strange hat-leg configuration. "It's so nice to meet you, it's been a while since we had a new recruit!"
"H-hi…" Gloom said with a very slight and shaky wave.
"I'll let you all get to it," Luxio said as she turned around. "Make sure to fill them in on your mission, Gloom."
Fennekin looked to Hattrem and Gloom, then smiled warmly. "Nice to meet you two! What's the mission Luxio wants to help you with, Gloom?"
"A bounty…" He seemed to shiver out of fear, and shifted uneasily on his feet. "I just hope it goes well."
"Bounty?" Ethan asked. "What does that mean?"
"A bounty mission is a mission to take down a lawbreaker," Hattrem spoke, almost as if reciting something from memory. "The sheriff in town works with the Exploration Society to help take down criminals outside of Pokéopolis by issuing bounty missions. Sometimes individual Pokémon will issue them as well against Pokémon who've robbed or attacked them, but they all involve tracking another Pokémon down and defeating them in battle."
Worry seemed to grow on Fennekin's face, although not as intense as Gloom's. "Taking down a criminal? An actual criminal?"
"Luxio wouldn't have given us a mission she doesn't think we could do, right?" Ethan asked. "How hard are these missions usually, Hattrem? And Gloom, did she say how difficult this was going to be?"
Hattrem thought it over, while Gloom nervously rubbed his hands together. "She said it would be a good mission to bring you two along on."
"They're no harder than an exploration mission, I guess," she responded uneasily. "It's hard to say. Some Pokémon have an easier time with bounty missions, and some do better at explorations. I think that's why Luxio's sending you with Gloom; he's really strong!"
Color rushed to Gloom's face after Hattrem's comment. "I'm not really all that strong."
"Gloom's super strong," Hattrem winked. "He's just really modest! He even helped me learn about bounty missions when I was starting out."
"Are you coming along with us?" Fennekin asked.
Hattrem shook her head. "No, Luxio wants me to show you the library and give you a journal. It's downstairs, let's go!"
"Journal?" Ethan asked. "What kind of journal, and for what?"
Gloom turned around and started walking towards the stairs, and Hattrem did the same so Ethan and Fennekin followed. "It's to help you keep track of your explorations," she explained. "It'll make sense when you see it."
"What's in the library?" Fennekin asked. "I've never been to one. It's like, a lot of books, right?"
"Never even been?" Hattrem exclaimed. "Are you not from Pokéopolis? They have a lot of books, yes, but they're also places for Pokémon to come together, do research, and trade knowledge. The one in the Academy is open to any official exploration team to use, and sometimes they're willing to share their discoveries or trade items!"
She smiled, but it seemed somewhat uneasy. "That sounds like fun! What kinds of research do you do there?" Ethan wasn't sure why, but he noted that she didn't answer Hattrem's question of where she was from. He knew she wasn't from Pokéopolis, of course, but she sounded nervous responding and mentioning nothing. He was probably just looking too much into it, but he couldn't shake the feeling.
"I love just studying everything there is to know about exploring, from moves and strategies to different places people have explored. If you have any questions about how to prepare for a mission or an exploration, I'd be happy to help!" Hattrem led the group down the stairs to the third floor, then went to the room on the right, opposite the training yard where they met Luxio yesterday. "Go on in," she said, standing beside the door and gesturing towards it.
Ethan and Fennekin looked at each other, then he shrugged and opened the door to let her in first; she did seem kind of excited to see it, after all. He was too, but being an explorer had been her dream, so he figured even little things she should get to experience first.
She walked into the library. "Oh, wow!" she half yelled before even getting fully through the doorway. "I'm surprised you can fit so much in here, there must be thousands of books!" Ethan peeked inside, and she was right; even though the room was no larger than the small training yard they were yesterday, shelves encircled the room, each one of them packed to the brim. He wondered how anybody was supposed to take a book out without having the whole row pop out with it. A few small tables were in the middle of the room, nearly all of them stacked high with books and papers. It wasn't hard to see why Pokémon even outside of the Academy would come to use this.
"If you want it," Hattrem said as she walked in, "we probably have it here! I have your journal on that table near the back, the one without a ton of stuff on it. Go on, check it out!"
They walked over to the one table that wasn't just a mass of paper, a lone book and a small wooden case on it. On both, in very clean looping letters: Team Stargazers.
"Your journal is where you can keep track of where you've been and all of your missions," Hattrem explained as Ethan opened the book to the first page. It was blank, but had plenty of boxes and spaces for all sorts of information. Dungeon name, location, floors, Pokémon encountered, even a spot for their accepted missions. "That box also has some writing utensils, so you can fill it in. Just make sure to not write your missions in pen so you can erase them once you're done! You'll want to be able to add and erase them once you've completed them."
"We'll probably want to write down everything about the Misty Forest and Dark Cavern," Ethan thought out loud. "Or are we able to get it from someone else? Will they share?"
"Anyone in the Academy shares what they have with everyone else. Most other exploration teams are willing to share, but they might ask for something in return; money, items, or they might have a mission they need you to do. If they have a really rare find, though, they probably won't share it with just anyone. It's no hard feelings; we're all explorers, after all! We understand that sometimes you need to keep something to yourself until you can get enough to pay off your hard work."
"I can probably fill in a lot of what we did in those dungeons," Fennekin interrupted. "I have a really good memory for that kind of stuff! Would we have time for me to fill it out, Gloom?"
Gloom flinched, almost as if not expecting someone to address him, then rubbed his hands together nervously. "I don't know. Why don't we just plan to go tomorrow? You two can take as long as you need to till that out, and then we can—"
"I can fill it out on the road!" Fennekin chirped. "I'd hate for you to have to put your mission off because of us! Besides, if it's a bounty mission, I'd want to make sure we can go after this outlaw quickly."
"Are you sure?" Gloom asked. "I wouldn't mind waiting for you two."
"You'll be fine, Gloom," Hattrem giggled. "He just gets nervous, he doesn't know how strong he is."
"We'll be fine since we're all together!" Fennekin beamed. "We're chasing an outlaw, let's not lose a second more!"