The group silently walked into the Adventuring Academy, the sky above them a bright orange as the sun set over Pokéopolis. Practically nothing had been said since capturing Ariados; he, predictably, didn't want to talk to them, and Decidueye was a rather somber Pokémon. He radiated intensity, intimidating Ethan and the others into not talking. Fennekin especially was uncomfortable with the silence; did she know Decidueye? He seemed to be watching her more than anyone else, including Ariados. Mostly, though, his gaze was straight forward.

As they all walked into the lobby, which was now notably less crowded than Ethan had ever seen it, Roserade looked back from the bounty bulletin board and had a confused look grow on her face. "I see you've captured Ariados," she said before looking to Decidueye. "You'll have to forgive me, I don't believe I've seen you around before. You are…?"

"Decidueye. Bounty hunter." He turned around and started walking back towards the door. "Ariados tried to run away after your trainees defeated him, so I stopped him." He continued walking, and Roserade ran up to him.

"Wait! There is a bounty on Ariados' head, I'm sure we can come to some agreement to split the reward."

The door opened again, six small, round Pokémon walking in and going towards Ariados. "No," Decidueye responded. "I don't need the bounty, give it to your trainees." Before she could respond, he caught the door as it was closing and walked out.

"Good day to you, citizens!" one of the round Pokémon proudly proclaimed as they all walked up to and surrounded Ariados. "I am Falinks, the Sheriff of Pokéopolis. These are my Deputies: Falinks, Falinks, Falinks, Falinks, and Falinks. Roserade told us a new trainee had joined, and we were all ecstatic to come and meet you!"

"The Sheriff and his Deputies always work on every case together," Roserade explained as she walked back to the group. "Sheriff, did you recognize that Pokémon who was leaving as you came in? He said he's a bounty hunter, but I've never seen him here taking or turning in missions."

"We've seen Decidueye before," Falinks confirmed. "He doesn't come by the station much; mostly, we see him coming and going from Ninetales' tower."

"Ninetales' tower?" Roserade repeated to herself, raising one of her flowers to her chin. "Fascinating. Regardless, he said that he doesn't care about the bounty, so that leaves it solely for our trainees. And Gloom and I agreed that Team Stargazers would be allowed to keep the entire bounty."

"Can do!" Falinks chirped before tossing a bag of what sounded like coins to Ethan. "Your share: 1,000 Poké! Don't spend it all in one place now, you hear?"

"1,000?" Fennekin echoed. "I thought the bounty was for 2,000?"

"The Exploration Society has a commission on all cash rewards for missions it distributes," Roserade explained as she took another, similar-sized bag from Falinks. "The Academy additionally has a commission of its own. Without the Society's commission, we would not be able to fund the infrastructure we have, and without the Academy's, we could not afford to stay open and continue training the exploration teams of tomorrow. Item rewards are a different story; you may keep anything you earn from those." As she spoke, all six Falinks surrounded Ariados, escorting him through the lobby and out of the front door of the Academy.

Ethan patted Fennekin gently on the shoulder. "A thousand gold is still a lot more than we had this morning. And if we really want to keep everything we earn, we can always just look for item missions!"

"You also won't have the Academy commission after you graduate," she pointed out, "so that is all the more to look forward to!"

Almost immediately, Fennekin perked up. "Yeah, you're right! When do we graduate, anyways? I don't think anyone's ever mentioned it."

"Not for quite some time, I'm afraid. Graduation occurs when Cinccino, Luxio, and myself all feel that you are experienced and prepared to take on difficult missions and train on your own; if we are all in agreeance, we will meet with you and discuss graduation. Whether or not you have a graduation exam is not set in stone; some trainees have proven themselves more than worthy, while some we felt needed definitive proof that they were ready."

"We'll just work hard and try to graduate as soon as we're able," Ethan nodded.

"Miss Roserade!" a young girl exclaimed before Fennekin could respond. A small, black and light blue Pokémon on four legs ran up and hugged Roserade tightly, sending her back a few steps to catch herself from falling. She returned the hug, laughing lightly as she did so.

"Where are your parents?"

"Shinx!" a man called from near the stairs, preceding a long and tall Pokémon with alternating brown and white stripes running to them and scooping Shinx up in his arms. "I'm sorry if she interrupted anything important, Roserade. What do we say when we interrupt people, Shinx?"

"I'm sorry," she mumbled.

"That's better." He looked to Ethan and Fennekin, and a large smile almost instantly grew on his face. "I'm Furret, it's nice to meet you. Luxio told me they just got two new trainees in."

"How do you know Luxio?" Ethan asked. "Are you an explorer, too?"

Furret laughed, then started rubbing Shinx's back. "I stopped being an explorer years ago. I'm her husband! And this is our daughter, Shinx. Can you say hi to the nice explorers, sweetie?"

Shinx twisted around in Furret's arms, a smile almost as big as her father's on her face. "Hi!" she waved. "Were you on a mission today? My mommy says I can't go on missions or become an explorer until I'm older."

"We fought a bad guy!" Fennekin beamed. "Everyone's a lot safer, now."

"Can I fight bad guys, daddy?"

"Not until you're older, sweetie. Then you can enroll at the Academy and become a famous explorer!"

"I see you've met my family," Luxio said, silently appearing from the stairs and placing a kiss on Furret's cheek. "You two weren't being too much of a handful for Roserade now, I hope?"

Laughing, Furret reached out and returned the kiss. "No, just introducing ourselves to the newbies. It was nice meeting you two, but we should probably get home. It's getting close to someone's bedtime."

"I'm not tired!" Shinx protested.

"We'll see about that," Luxio muttered so softly that even Ethan could barely make it out. "You three are back in one piece and holding a bag of money, so that tells me all I need to know. Good work; the rest of this week we'll spend learning fundamentals. Moves, types, items, Pokémon, those sorts of things. Oh, and Roserade'll probably rank you up. See you all tomorrow."

"Yes," Roserade confirmed as Luxio and Furret began walking out of the lobby, "having completed an exploration and a bounty mission, you've amassed enough points to rank up to Beginner Rank. There are a few items that come with the rank, so we'll have them sent to your storage. I still have a few mission complete forms I need to fill out, so I will let you all take off for the night."

"I'm probably going to go to bed," Gloom yawned. "That was a hard day. This is why I don't usually take bounty missions…"

"You did great!" Fennekin responded, jumping onto the stairs. "You really took some hits from Ariados, but you didn't give up! And those are some really cool moves you know!"

"Any Gloom knows them," he dismissed, also stepping onto the stairs. Ethan followed right behind, Fennekin continuing trying to compliment Gloom as they ascended the staircase to the second level.

"Fennekin!" he heard Helioptile exclaim as she finished climbing the stairs. "And Ethan! Come on, I want to introduce you to my friends!" Almost as soon as he finished climbing the stairs, his arm was grabbed by Helioptile as she led them to a table, small cardboard box on top, and with two Pokémon sitting at it: a spider-like one with a bubble around its head, and one with a long tan body and large green wings. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Gloom rushing up the stairs. "This is Dewpider and Vibrava; they're really excited to meet you! Dewpider is kind of new like me, but he's already really smart and knows a ton about battling! And Vibrava is good at almost everything; if you have any questions, she can totally help out!"

Fennekin took a seat at the table, then waved enthusiastically. "It's nice to meet you both!"

"Good meeting you," Ethan said through a sigh as he sat down between Fennekin and Helioptile. "Sorry, long day."

"You were with Gloom, right?" Dewpider asked.

Before he could answer, Vibrava leaned in close and spoke softly. "Gloom's a great guy, but adventuring with him can be...tough, as you probably saw. He's really good at battling, but he thinks he's really weak. He usually takes a lot of the really easy missions off the bulletin boards because he's worried about messing up anything that could challenge him."

"Yeah," he chuckled, "sometimes it felt like we were in charge of him, and not the other way around."

"He's saved me a lot, though," Helioptile chimed in. "One time we were assigned to a dungeon full of ground types together, and I swear, he knocked out practically every single Pokémon we came across! And then at the end, he apologized for having me take on a Skarmory since his moves would be really weak against it."

"You should've seen the critical hit he got on a Slurpuff that was trying to hit me with its fairy moves!"

Dewpider raised a...leg? Hand? Hand, very slowly. "Um, guys? I hate to be that Pokémon, but can we eat now?"

"Eat?" Fennekin asked.

Helioptile grabbed the cardboard box, then dragged it to the center of the table before opening it. Craning his neck for a better view, Ethan looked and saw six donuts, mostly glazed with different colors, inside the box. Only one looked like the one they had the other day with Helioptile; two had a yellow glaze, one red, one purple, and another blue. "We all found some gummis and paid Alcremie to make us special donuts!" She announced their owners as she passed them out: the two yellow went to her and Ethan, the red to Fennekin, purple to Vibrava, and finally blue to Dewpider. Almost immediately the rest of them started eating; he and Fennekin looked to each other, then shrugged before taking bites of their donuts.

The one he had the other day was delicious, but the one tonight was somehow even more captivating; the glaze seemed to almost tingle in his mouth, but it was a good sensation. His cheeks went...numb was the wrong word, but they felt much more sensitive than they otherwise were. His heart started to feel more alert, whatever that meant, and the feeling began spreading throughout his body. It was strange for sure, but not bad.

"This is delicious!" Fennekin exclaimed. "I've had red gummies before, but this is even better than they are by themselves! Did these come from the café you brought us to the other day?"

Helioptile wiped a bit of glaze off her lower lip as she nodded. "Yup, I told you Alcremie worked really well with glazes!"

"She's the only one in town who incorporates gummis like this," Vibrava said. "She's the best baker in the city if you ask me, and being the closest to the Academy makes it that much nicer! She'll also make any type of glaze so long as you supply the gummi, which is what we did. I usually just keep any gummis I find and bring them to her instead of eating them normally. Helioptile, on the other hand…"

"Hey! I saved two yellow gummis for these donuts, didn't I?"

"Didn't Vibrava make you?" Dewpider asked.

She scoffed. "I was gonna do it anyways, you know. Vibrava said that after I already planned to."

"You didn't even have any gummis when I told you to save them!"

"Well I was gonna get some!" She sighed, then looked at Fennekin. "Sorry for having that come from your question...we've just got a weird friendship."

A big smile started spreading across Fennekin's face, and it looked like she was actively working to keep it from growing larger. "No, it's fine. Were you guys all friends before you joined, or did you meet here?"

"We all met through the Academy," Dewpider answered. "Vibrava helped me out on my first mission, and she introduced me to Helioptile."

"And Helioptile and I joined around the same time," Vibrava continued, "so we went on a lot of missions together at the start. We're both taking on a lot of solo missions now, but we still try to adventure together when we can!"

"Feel free to ask us if you need help, by the way," Dewpider interjected. "No promises we'll be free, but we can try to do what we can."

"Really? You'd do that for us?"

"Of course!" Helioptile beamed. "It's what friends are for, right?"

The smile on Fennekin's face was no longer contained. "Yeah...I guess it is."