Tamin the minccino, Locke the shinx, Armin the lucario, Max the arcanine and Rustin the meowstic walked through cleared roads. These roads left the forest and continued through the prairie. No longer in the forest, the floor of fallen leaves and whispers of wind through wood had gone away, but without the trees to block the way, the frigid wind beared down on them harder.
"How long until we get to the guildhouse you mentioned?" Tamin asked as she had her paws around her and had her tail slightly wrapped around her body, "It's cold out here."
"Should be about a quarter-hour away at this point," Armin answered.
"Aww, can't be another full hour? At this rate we'll still just get to normal skin-deep chilled. If we stay out here for longer we can have the chill get deeper and enjoy the song of our bones singing," Locke replied.
"What the heck," Tamin replied, once more appalled by Locke's humor, "Although, I suppose it could be worse."
"Yeah. Believe me, you haven't seen the worst of it yet. Just wait until winter hits. Or you fight an ice type pokemon. Or a combination of the two!" Locke said, "Although in seriousness, you'll get used to it like I have."
"Don't push it, I don't want to think about the temperature anymore," she complained.
"Honestly, I'm not sure your best fit for this guild if simple cold is too much for you," Armin the lucario said, "We could just escort you back home,"
"I'll be fine, I know this is what's right for me," Tamin argued back, "I am set."
"Alright then. Now I don't know much about you, but I hope you don't expect any special treatment. You will be in danger like the rest of us," Armin continued.
"That's not me at all," Tamin said, "I'll be fine. I know how to adapt."
"Well you didn't really know what a mystery dungeon was before this today and did fall into a trap, so I don't think you're off to a great start," Locke said, speaking in a tone more earnest than accusatory.
"Stop talking! That's not it-"
"I'm going to cut you off right now, I don't want a stupid child argument to break out." Armin interrupted, "This isn't the time or place to act like toddlers. How old are you two, even?"
"Four," Locke responded.
"Five since last week," Tamin followed up, being specific, as she knew that made it more believable.
"That's… obscenely young," the lucario responded.
"Woah woah, that's not young at all. It's over quarter-aged for a minccino's lifespan," Tamin argued back with a bit of added passion.
"I'm am really not that young for my species either," Locke said.
"Oh...right...yeah," Armin said, fidgeting with his baseball cap to readjust it.
"Do you not know how ageing works-" Tamin said before interruption.
"Hey, since you two are cold, you could be hugging me a bit. I'm a fire type, so my fur is pretty warm." Max stated, interrupting.
"Nag, I think I'm good." Locke responded, actually putting another step of distance between himself and the arcanine.
"I'll be fine; probably should be getting used to these temperatures anyways." Tamin said, getting quieter as she spoke the second part of the sentence.
"Okay then. Suit yourself," Max said.
"It's just a little over ten minutes. Let's not get into any fights in that time," Rustin the meowstic commented.
They continued walking in mostly silence for a bit longer. As they drew closer to their destination, they saw buildings and were able to get a closer look at the details and shape of them when they got there. There was a town with quite a few buildings, over a decade old but not historic. They went to the Northmost part of the town, where two of the largest buildings in town stood.
"We're here," Rustin said upon arrival. "This is the guild,"
The place had two main buildings. First was a large rectangular and wooden building that had two big floors, with the second floor having some porches on the north and south sides. It also had a greenhouse set up on the northside with a small glass hallway leading to it from the inside. The second building was a large treehouse to the east of the main building that exceeded the height of the main building as well as most of the buildings in the town. Surrounding it were many roads and paths that went on for a very long distance, leading to different settlements and landmarks.
Continuing forth, they entered the main building guildhall, and after entering they saw several pokemon wearing scarves inside that looked back at them. Tamin awkwardly smiled and waved at them while Locke looked around with intrigue. The scarved pokemon didn't seem to pay them much mind, however.
"Follow us," Rustin said as they entered the building through the front doors. He placed his paw on the shinx to ensure he would stay with them and not get lost in the rather large structure.
The inside made the place look even bigger. The hallways rooms were large enough to let the arcanine among them exist there comfortably, which by proxy had the effect of making Locke and Tamin feel small in the architecture around them.
The group navigated the building for a small time before reaching one door close to the center of the first floor. Armin raised his paw and knocked on the strong wooden door.
"We're back, and we have something to show you," Armin said, his voice mixing with the sound of the knocks.
"Alright, come on in," a male voice from inside of the room said.
The lucario opened the door, and everyone except Max entered the room, as the arcanine didn't want to overcrowd the room. The room was an office with many shelves, books, papers and other materials around. On the other side of the room across from the group was a desk, sitting behind it was an espeon with a chatot beside him.
"Ah, You finished your mission?" The espeon said, "How did it go?"
"We got the item and completed the mission, but there is a more important matter we must discuss," Rustin said.
"Oh, what would that be?" the espeon said as he began to notice the minccino and shinx in the room with them.
"On the way back we found this minccino and this shinx, both of which told us they wanted to join the guild, so we escorted them back to here,"
The espeon and the chatot raised their eyebrows when they heard this, but it was the chatot that spoke first.
"Ahh, so we have some aspirants I see. You know there are a lot of pokemon who want to join guild like this, but many fail at passing even the preliminaries-"
"Not really. We actually get a good amount of requests every year that get-" the espeon interrupted, but was interrupted himself.
"And not many of those requests go through," the chatot continued ignoring what the espeon said, "Only the cream of the crop get to join-"
"Again, not really. We do more accepting than not when it comes to the pokemon who come requesting to join-"
"So please tell us, what makes YOU in particular worthy of this difficult job?" the chatot finished. He stopped looking at Locke and Tamin and started digging through a drawer for some papers.
"I am Locke. And as I have told to these other pokemon, I have been going into mystery dungeons by myself for a while now. I have all the skills for the kind of missions you do," Locke said.
"I know how to follow orders and get jobs done well enough." Tamin stated, not feeling confident in her words but not letting that show in her tone or body language, " And while I admit I might lack some skills that are favored for these kinds of things, I know how to avoid being a burden on your business and can learn."
"Good to know," the espeon said with a smile, "This is my assistant Niot. My real name is Herald, but you can just call me 'Espeon'. I am the main guildmaster and operate the guild at daytime hours. My sister Eryth handles the guild at night, but she isn't awake right now."
Tamin and Locke nodded to affirm.
"Regardless, if you truly do want to join this guild, then let us begin the registration," Niot said as he pulled out two papers from a drawer.
The two papers were identical to one another. He placed them on the other side of the desk, closer to where Locke and Tamin were.
"These are the registration forms. Please take a seat and fill them out," Niot said.
"Seems like everything is handled from here, I'll head out now," Armin the lucario said as he turned around to face the office door out again.
"Same," the meowstic said, "Say, do you think they'll actually join the guild?"
"I don't really care…" Armin replied as he opened the door to exit.
"Alright. I haven't exactly formed an opinion of them either, but I think they could be useful," Rustin said as they left.
Espeon used telekinesis to move two chairs in front of the desk. Locke and Tamin both came up to the chairs and hopped up onto them. Just as he got on, Locke began reaching into the pouches he had on his side.
"Wait a second, I can show you that I'm skilled," Locke said as he pulled a compass from his bag.
"Uh, okay?" Espeon said.
Locke set the compass flat down on the desk, with everyone shifting their gaze towards it. The needle pointed to the North and straight towards Espeon in the process. The shinx then put one of his claws on the edge of the object, and after a second, the needle shifted positions to point towards where his claw was instead.
"I'm precise enough with my electricity that I can make the pin follow my claw using me," Locke said as he moved his claw along the edge of the compass, showing that the needle was following it.
"...At the top of your head do you know how difficult that is for an electric type to do?" Niot asked as both him and Espeon closely observed what Locke was doing.
"I've seen Olivia do that before as a sort of party trick, but I'm not sure how long it took for her to be able to do that," Espeon replied.
Locke took his claw off of the compass, causing it to reset back to pointing North. He then retrieved the compass and put it back into his pouches.
"Well I do appreciate that you can show off your prowess and your eagerness to do so, but we really do need you to write your information down," Espeon said, trying to maintain a smile.
"Alright then. I suppose we need to do some paperwork because our lives might just be a little too exciting without it. Where would the world be if we didn't know the feeling of wrist pain?" Locke said jokingly.
Tamin took a pen that was on the desk that she managed to hold in one paw while Locke grabbed an ink vial which he dipped a claw into so he could write with it.
"Just a formality, we'll need to know some things about if you become a part of the guild," Espeon reassured while both him and Niot looked down at them with the papers.
Each paper contained information to fill in. It started out simple with places to put in names, gender, species and age. It contained both a first and last name section at the top, but the shinx skipped over the last name section to move onto the rest of it. Tamin had a pause when she reached that particular section, wondering if it would be better for her to write it down or leave it blank. But she took a glance at Locke's writing to see he had left it blank, and that gave her the confirmation to think it was okay to leave it blank herself. The last thing on the top was a checkbox to indicate if they would prefer being referred to by their species names instead of their actual names, which neither of them checked off.
Beyond the simple identity information, the rest of the paper contained places to put down skills, strengths, and weaknesses. Locke had a breeze putting down information, checking off highly on the skills put down and expressing how good he was at exploration, fighting in mystery dungeons, pathfinding, effective item usage, gathering resources and endurance. Locke tried to express how tough and independent he was, but his penmanship left it as barely legible. He had some trouble thinking of what to put down for the weaknesses section and wondered if it would be best for him to leave it blank. But after some thought, he wrote down "haven't worked with teams much". Tamin had a tougher time, being unsure on what to put for much of it. Right off she knew that it would be beneficial for her to exaggerate how good she thought her own skills were to appear better, but she knew she shouldn't overdo it. She put most skills down as slightly better than what she thought it was, doing so with little remorse. When it came down to strengths, she wrote down "smart, resourceful, cleanly", as she felt it wouldn't be a good idea to share what she actually felt were her greatest skills. Then at weaknesses, she figured the rest of her paper would be more believable if she was more honest in this section. She wrote "minimal combat and mystery dungeon experience", but before she fully raised up her pen, she had the idea to follow it up with "bad at filling out papers," so she wrote that as well.
The final section just asked "why do you want to join the guild?" Locke was able to write down "to have a place to stay, a reliable source of food, and people to make friends with" down on his section. Tamin initially planned to write "protection", but she realized that sounded extremely suspicious. So the minccino instead thought of what the most generic and acceptable thing would be, and wrote "to explore the world."
As they each filled out their papers, they occasionally glanced over on what the other had. Locke was surprised by how well Tamin was writing when she only gripped the pen with a single paw. She seemed to have a level of precise dexterity with her paws that he had neither seen before now thought was possible.
"Are you two done?" Espeon asked.
"Yeah," the two affirmed as they pushed the papers forward.
"Great!" he said as he took a hold of them, "Niot, put these two through the yard tests while I look over these papers."
"Understood, but are you sure you don't want to do the tests yourself? I think I would be a better fit for looking through papers," the chatot responded.
"It wouldn't be fully safe for me, you know that," Espeon said, "I can do fine looking through these."
"As you wish,"
Niot got up and flew across the room to grab a specific bag. Afterwards he flew over Locke and Tamin to get to the office's door.
"Come with me, you two," he ordered.
"Okay," Locke said while Tamin stayed silent.
Niot opened the door out and they traveled through the guildhouse again, following the chatot. They went back outside to a specific straight path that had posts set up at it. Once they got there they stopped and Niot pulled a stopwatch out of the bag he brought with him.
"From here to the signpost over there is exactly fifteen meters. At my signal, you are to sprint there and back on my command. Any questions?" Niot said to them with the stopwatch in his talons. He has one of his wings pointed out straight to show where the starting point precisely was.
"I don't think so," Locke said as he got right behind the invisible line Niot was pointing out and into a position ready to sprint.
"I don't have any either," Tamin said as she got down on all fours right beside the shinx.
The chatot spent a moment looking at his watch as he slowly raised his wing up. Locke and Tamin further tensed up in those few seconds of suspense.
"Go!" Niot shouted as he quickly lowered his wing and started the timer.
Locke had superior reflexes and reacted a split second faster, claiming an early lead and quickly building up momentum in a proper running position. Tamin tried her best as well, having motivation and a degree of skill to put into her step as well. Two seconds into the race, the minccino started passing ahead of the shinx on the road. Locke got a look of frustration and Tamin got a look of surprise when this happened, but neither made the mistake of turning their heads in the race. Tamin got to the pole first and slammed her legs into the ground to break up her momentum so she could turn around and run the other direction. But when Locke reached the pole, he had a different plan in mind. Locke extended his claws and grabbed onto the pole, then swung his body around in an arc by holding onto the pole. Once he had swung around a hundred and eighty degrees, he let go to throw himself back towards Niot while retaining most of his momentum. Niot briefly considered whether to allow such a trick or not, but decided to allow it as he wanted to reward ingenuity. With the race over half over, Locke put extra effort into his sprinting to try to keep his lead. Tamin slowly regained her advantage and came up close. In the final moments of the race as they closed in on the starting line, the minccino came ahead and crossed half a second before the shinx did.
"Good job," Niot said as he clicked the stopwatch the exact moment Tamin passed by him, then clicked it again when Locke passed, "Interesting results, I'd say. Locke, your speed is about average for a first stage evolution- perhaps a bit better. Moreover, you have also proven yourself to have some skills with dexterity and acrobatics in this test, which I shall ensure the guildmaster is aware of. As for you, Tamin, your speed is exceptional.
Also, this goes without saying but this is a test and not a competition. You're racing against the clock and not each other, with it being entirely possible that both of you succeed or both fail. Although if viewing this as a competition helps motivate you to do better, then by all means continue."
Niot pulled out a pad and pen from the bag and wrote down the test results on it.
"That concludes the speed test. Now, let's try the attack test," the chatot said as he finished writing.
He put the pad and pen back into the bag and retrieved a colored sash from the bag and put it around his neck.
"Hit me with your strongest attack you can muster, and I will do my best to fairly judge its strength."
"Aren't you worried about getting hurt?" Tamin asked cautiously.
"I have more toughness than you'd think," Niot responded, "That is also what the focus sash is for. It will ensure the attack cannot be-"
Locke lit up with electricity coursing through his fur. He discharged a thunderbolt at Niot, making a direct his. There was a flash of yellow light, and a grunt of pain through a closed beak.
"Ah!" Niot shouted in pain as the electricity crackled through him. He staggered backwards and his limbs were twitched or paralyzed.
"Did I do good?" Locke asked.
"Why the hell didn't you wait for my signal before you attacked!" Niot scolded.
"I didn't think I had to. I just wanted to be quick," Locke argued.
"You should not have done that without warning!" he shouted again.
Locke rolled his eyes and then spoke again.
"But was my attack good?"
"Yes, it was powerful, but the guildmaster will know about this!" Niot scolded further.
Niot looked into the bag to pull out a sitrus berry, which he quickly ate. The berry causes his wounds to be healed, with him being returned to the state he was in before Locke attacked him. He wrote down on his notepad some more and then turned to Tamin.
"Alright, now that we're done with that diversion, it would be your turn now, Tamin."
She nodded, although unconfident in her head, she made sure to not let that show in her face. She walked up the chatot, put her paws together, raised them far into the air and slammed them down as Niot braced. As the attack connected, Tamin felt pain surge between the parts of her paw, enough to make her grimace.
"Okay," Niot said as the attack ended, "Not exactly impressive, but I suppose you are new."
Tamin backed away as her ears dropped down. Niot took some more notes on their performance.
"Anyways, the guildmaster has ordered a stop to all defense tests, so that will conclude the tests for today. Let's head back inside."
The two nodded and followed the chatot once again. They navigated back to the office they were before and met with Espeon once again.
"Ah, you're back. How did the yard tests go?" Espeon asked as he saw them come in.
Chatot flew over to get onto the desk and retrieved the notepad he had been writing on, which he set down.
"I wrote down my full notes there. I'd call the shinx above average, but appears notably unruly. There's not much special about the minccino I have seen, aside from her being quite swift," Niot explained.
"Good to know, thanks for that," Espeon responded, "While you were gone, I checked the rooms states for the guildhouse, and I found we had two rooms left. Both are on the first floor and cleaned out, so they can stay in those rooms for the night."
"You know you seem to be thinking they are guaranteed they will get in despite the fact that we haven't really tested them too much," Niot pointed out.
"They need a place to stay tonight. I'm giving that to them. There's nothing wrong with that." Espeon explained himself.
Niot sighed before he spoke, "Alright. Let's show them their rooms then."
Locke and Tamin were brought across the halls of the guildhouse to two rooms that were side-by-side with one another. Each of the rooms were rectangular, with about three meters from the door to the wall on the other side while the room was four meters from across the two side walls. They were carpeted and had straw beds, but empty on the inside besides that. Each had a single window, blocked by a thick curtain.
"We have some unused furniture for you to rummage through in the basement. We'll do a proper test mission tomorrow, but for today, use what you can find down there and rest for the night. You deserve it," Espeon told Locke and Tamin.
"Thank you very much for this," Tamin said while giving espeon a slight bow.
"You are welcome," Espeon replied.
Locke didn't say anything before he wandered into his room, locked the door behind him and collapsed on the bed. Tamin did the same just not as suddenly.
It was not long before they were both sleeping. Dreaming about how tomorrow would go as they slept.
End of chapter 2.