It's a comfortable, albeit unfounded belief to think all the people you've held dear are waiting home for the day you return from your long journey.

For you, it seems every year you've spent away has gone faster than the last. You're not sure how long it's been, you were never sure how you ended up like this. Fact is, you made a promise before you left for good, and an honest man doesn't go back on his word.

"...hey there."

While sunlight caked his back his face was somewhere several inches inside a warm mound of sand. Not too far from where he lied was the sound of waves crashing against a shore, and from said direction he felt the cool ocean wind breeze over him. It could tell it was a pleasant day, but as for himself he'd reckon he felt horrible. Usually beaches weren't prime real estate for the helpless traveler to find a good night's rest given the possibility of tides threatening to sweep any and every pokemon away under its waves, but for reasons he couldn't comprehend at the moment, he can't recall ever heading out to a beach of all places nor everything for that matter. There was always the idiotic theories were rolling in his head about how he could have gotten here, but other than chocking up everything to sleepwalking. The chances are, he'll never care enough to find out.

This was of course, ignoring whoever was talking to him. The voice wasn't of anyone he'd met before. He spoke in short quips as though he never took little time between even the pauses in his speech to even breathe, and never once did the voice chance its perturbed inflection.

"Is he...?" the voice pondered, "His clothes aren't wet, so he couldn't have fallen off a ship if there's even ships that go this way. Maybe he's just really tired after a long day, it's not like its my business to be bothering him, it's not like he might be hurt or something."

"No, no. That can't be true." he panicked, "I just happened to stumble onto a stranger who's lying head-first on a beach, never mind the fact he could've drowned! I should turn around; let the guild handle this!"

"I can't leave him there, I gotta do something." the voice is heard trotting off then sliding back with the additional sounds of an object being dragged across the sand, "He's a big bird in some funny clothes, he's twice my size, but he ain't scary, not at all! It's only this, then I can say I didn't try helping h-"

A particularly long piece of driftwood poked into the side of the sleeping pokemon's cheek, and suddenly he didn't feel like staying on the ground anymore. He was under the assumption whoever was prodding him would leave him there, it was simply what he'd come to expect after what felt like a lifetime of waking up in strange places, but he didn't hear them scurrying off – not yet. The one good jab was all he needed for his head to start digging itself out of its own sand-heap alongside him as his head lifted out from the dirt, his tired eyes adjusting to the red sun cresting over the endless sea. Standing between a vivid horizon and his spot on the black shoreline was a pokemon no less than three feet struggling to hold an especially long piece of driftwood in their flightless wings.

Even for a species he hadn't seen before, the blue pokemon seemed slim, and their wings, or fins looked longer than they'd ought to be. The pokemon's feathers were of a deep, navy color, lacking in any sort of pattering save for his pelt becoming a bit lighter around his aqua eyes. There was this strange tuft tied around his neck in a color not to similar to yellowing paper, something tied around his hip. Whether he'd say it looked more like a fancy handkerchief, or scarf; the one tiny addition to him was fairly distinct for anyone outside the blue pokemon's town.

"Okay, good!" the Prinplup dropped the driftwood he'd been lugging around, and breathed a deep breath"I thought for a moment there you were a gooner..I didn't want to have to start my day finding a pokemon beached up on the shores, uh, even if a flying type could wind up stranding themselves like a Wailord, but we'd be getting in semantics at that point. You're alive, right?"

He'd like to think he was. His lungs weren't filled to the brim with water, he wasn't cold like all dead things are supposed to be, and he wasn't suddenly in paradise – all were surefire signs pointing at the fact he was had at least one foot in reality.. That said, he was fine for a pokemon who was nearly convinced he died the night before.

"For starters, I can't say I know what being dead feels like," the pokemon grumbled, "but I ruled out you being a figment of my imagination after you poked me with that stick over yonder."

"Are you well at least?"

"Financially? Haven't had a coin to my name in years. Physically? I doubt it." it would take all he could muster for the pokemon to pull himself onto his behind, and when he finally settled upright he could swear he heard something in his back snap, "So I reckon I feel the usual, how's about you?"

When he expected an answer from Prinplup what he got was a thousand yard stare. It was like he had said something truly horrible in what little words his head managed to squeeze out. The water-type would keep staring, not for long, but when he encroached the minute mark he shuddered and whipped his head away. Prinplup's feathers began to bristle to a point where he nearly looked his height in width before they flattened out after a nervous sigh from the water pokemon. With all this talk about seeming dead for the last minutes or so, he sure looked as though he had seen a ghost, but despite being far from the the groggy pokemon already knew what he really saw.

"You.." Prinplup's beak began to move, "You're okay, right?"

"Yep."

"T-that's not new?"

"I've gotten used to it."

Prinplup continued to stare, and well before the beached pokemon could decide to go anywhere off the shore, he was interrupted.

"C-Can get a better look at you?" Prinplup stuttered, "Before you wander off?"

"Whatever it takes for us to go on with our days."

Nervous to even lay a finger on the strange fellow, Prinplup waddled only about a foot or two closer then proceeded to gawk aat the man. He was a Braviary, that was pretty easy to tell by his fathers alongside how large of a fellow he was. The pokemon's vivid blue, yellow and red quills have grayed – some of which appearing to be missing altogether. He sounded, looked, and pretty much behaved as though he were a fairly old pokemon. Were it not for the fact he looked so utterly miserable in his tattered poncho it wouldn't be hard to see his mangled left wing hidden underneath the patterned material, rendering what would otherwise ferocious creature to nothing less than a one headed Dodrio who couldn't run nearly as fast on his massive talons. Yet Prinplup hardly paid any attention to his scars or his ridiculous hat, he looked entirely focused on the solid brass badge holding his raggedy clothing together.

After what felt like hours of weird looks, stares, worried glances and an overwhelming unease from Prinplup, a wide smile spread over the pokemon's small beak. He waddled a foot closer to him only for Braviary to decide he was abit too close to comfort as he rose up onto his feet, hiding the small badge he seemed so fascinated by under his massive, remaining wing. After which Prinplup stood back and looked to the stranger with child-like glee in his eyes.

"I-uh, I haven't seen one of those in ages." Prinplup nervously tugged at his yellow cravat, "You're part of the guild, right?"

"What guild?"

"You don't know what guilds are and you're wearing that? Nobody simply finds those things! Genuine badges like yours aren't just given to anyone who comes knocking – not to say you're unremarkable, they're just hard to get."

"I know what a guild is," Braviary sighed, "now could you stop beating around the bush? It looks to me you want something, and I reckon it has to do with this here badge."

"Is it for sale?"

Braviary's tired look turned into a disgruntled scowl so intenese were he not lying face first on a beach earlier, Prinplup may have been intimidated by the massive Braviary staring him down. Without another word Braviary looked down the shoreline which snaked at the foot of a rocky precipice, and locked his tired eyes on what appeared to be a path of stone outcroppings leading up and away from this peddling prinplup. The conversation was over now, but Prinplup wasn't going to let his opportunity wander off.

"I know you broke - you just said you were!" Prinplup kept up with him, "I may not have much in the way of money, but with your badge I could get entry into the guild, and I'll just give you all I had saved before I found you. I was gonna use it to get my way in there, so you can have it – most of it."

"What sorta guild makes you pay for admission?"

The two pokemon stopped in their tracks along the black shore. Cold waves rolled onto the sand, settling gently only to be stoked again by next wave following suit. Littering their surroundings were pieces of driftwood, clumps of dark seaweed, and whatever oddities the waters felt like raking onto dry land on this particular morning. Looking ahead they could see the black earth going as far as their eyes could see, broken only by the irregularities in the surrounding cliffs and tall structures of stone whittled down to misshapen spires crowned with mossy shrubbery. The bright sun still bared down on his old feathers, but he could still feel the occasional gusts of cold, sea winds creeping up from the dark waters.

There was a pause long enough for Braviary to take a good stock of where he was, and in a similar way Prinplup had broken the silence earlier, the water-type slowly began to move his beak again.

"That's what all guilds do!" Prinplup spoke innocently, "At least, those I've heard about around here. I don't get around very often, and I especially don't wake up on random beaches like you do."

"Good to know, still ain't much of an answer."

"From what I get from the people there it's a – a recruitment process. If someone's really serious about this guild thing, they shouldn't have a problem throwing down some money first to show they're committed to the life." Prinplup points a wing at the old badge, "Were you to come wearing one of those then there's really no point in giving them money, they already know you were brave enough to earn it from somewhere else."

"Then what's the guild for: adventurers, rescue pokemon? From what little I've seen of here I can tell plenty of nothing around these parts, so there can't be much in the way of treasure-hunters."

"Scholars."

Braviary walked off again.

"Hey!" the little bird scrambled after him.

Braviary didn't care to pick up his pace, he just wasn't having this conversation, the poor man was too tired to deal with the talk of guilds this early into the morning. Exploration, and Rescue guilds were easy enough for him to already understand understand since both were a necessity, anything else was a chore Explorers brought business to whatever towns they were stationed in by bringing an influx of like-minded adventurers more than willing to buy from the local artisians, a town with one was usually a good sign it was more than a squabbling settlement. Rescue guilds guilds, though not nearly as lucrative as the former, were often key to keeping far-off towns from becoming overtaken by the brutal wilderness. He'd personally consider both to be integral to keeping most places from falling apart, but guilds are everything if not one thing – a hive for hopeless adventurers.

The stranger's badgering was quickly lost on the noise of waves crashing onto the long, ashy shore. In the minute or since he tuned out Prinplup he'd gotten far enough to see what he thought was his path up over the cliff was little more than a series of jagged footholds, large enough for a pidgey or two, but way too dangerous for a bumbling old man to think about climbing.

"- than you think they are."

He caught the tail end of whatever Prinplup was rambling about, sighed, and answered him.

"What?"

"Look," Prinplup pretended as though he didn't know Braviary was ignoring him for the better half of a full conversation, "You're pretty much the most interesting that's happened this morning, scratch that, this entire month."

"I wish I could say the same."

The would-be scholar's eyes sunk like brick, and before he could speak again he passed a heavy gulp down his throat.

"I get it though, I reckon you're trying to get friendly with me so you can just ask me for the badge again, right?" judging by the Prinplup's silence, Braviary seemed right, "I don't want to patronize you, or something, so pardon my rudeness when I say you're not gonna get anywhere sucking up to someone like that. I hardly know you, and you sure don't know me either. At the very least should at least tell a man your name before you go begging for favors."

"Prinplup." he stutters.

"Now I what you are, but I still don't know who you are."

"Prinn" the Braviary was waiting for him to add a plup at the end of it, sure enough, Prinn was the fellow's name.

"I suppose there's a reason why folks call you Prinplup, right?"

"Other than being the only one who's really around, yeah." Prinn held a wing up to head, "I um, well my parents were never known for being a creative type."

"Noted. Unless you want to inform me of a whole flock of Braviary being out there, just call me such."

"Yeah, noted too."

Braviary looked ahead to see the miles, upon miles of beach stretching on ahead. Compared to what could potentially be hours of searching for a way up, he might be better off risking breaking his spine on that climb.

"Well Prinn, since I certainly don't know how I ended up on a beach smack in the middle of nowhere, how did you find yourself wandering down miles of coast to this here spot? We'd have to be pretty far off if all it seems like it's just the both of us."

"A bit off from the nearest town, maybe a six hour walk. It's not that long."

"Did you leave at the crack of dawn or something?"

"If you're worried about me, I did make sure to sleep early the day before. As for why, well, there's a reason nobody's really out this way: much of this beach is still uncharted."

When Prinn walked he could hear the sounds of a small, bamboo tube jostling around. Braviary looked to see a wooden tube, painted over to match Prinn's cravat tied around his waist.

"There was still some danger coming out all the way here, but nothing ventured, nothing gained." he laughed to himself, "I had planned on mapping out this side of the shore so I could present my findings to the guild, and I probably would've if I hadn't seen someone passed on on the beach. It seems like a good enough reason to make a change of plans, right?"

"Personally I'd have left the man to sleep if he was still breathing," Braviary huffed, "It's still a good thing you did or else I'd have no reason to get on with my day. Y'all have this whole leg of the beach recognized, don't you?"

"Yeah." Prinn smiled wryly, "I guess it makes me king of however-many miles of totally uninhibited coastline is on this end. I can show you the way I took here, it should lead us straight to town. There's just, erm..."

"I know I haven't encountered, and I'm thinking it's just an excuse some of the big guys made up so nobody'd ever know they got roughed up by some feral wingul, but I'm only being sure when I tell you there's some unsubstantiated rumors about bandits out here." despite being in a presence of a pokemon known for their bravery, Prinn still asks, "If it ever comes to it, I know you can fight, right?"

"I can tussle about as good as any pokemon up in their years. How else you'd think I got these scars?"

"If you'd let me take a look I could perhaps tell you."

"It's not worth your time." Braviary dismissed him, "Let's just get a move on, I think smell of saltwater's starting to plug up my nose."