I woke up fully rested to sunlight flittering through the window. I felt pleased that I hadn't had any nightmares last night, and the effects were obvious. I felt rested and raring to go, ready for a day of activity. I looked over at Alex, who was still sleeping soundly. I decided to let him sleep in a little longer as I planned out our activities for the day. The band on my foreleg glinted in the sun, reminding me with a blush about the events that took place last night. When I started thinking about it, my heart started to beat a little faster. I shook my head, refocusing on planning the day. If I remembered correctly, the guild expedition would be announced sometime soon, and Team Skull's arrival with it. The prospect of an expedition was kind of exciting… but I knew that Team Skull would mess up our mission to get perfect apples. Would that even happen this time? I wasn't sure, but it couldn't really hurt to have some extra insurance just in case. We should go to Apple Woods ahead of time and stock up on some perfect apples for when the occasion happens. Apple Woods wasn't really a difficult dungeon, though; there should be a solid bit left in the day after that. In that case, should I pay a visit to the library? I had a lot of questions, especially ones that Alex can't answer, that could be answered there. I wasn't really sure what Alex would do, whether he would accompany me to the library or not, but I'm sure he'd figure out something to do otherwise. I glanced over at him peacefully sleeping, curled up on his bed. I didn't want to wake him up, but we should probably get going soon if we wanted to make it back at a reasonable hour. I gently nudged him with my paw.
"Alex, Alex wake up!" He mumbled something and then turned the other direction. I nudged him a little more forcefully. "Alex, get up!" Finally, he sat up and rubbed the sleep out of his eyes.
"Huh… what? Emilia? What's up?" He still sounded tired, which made me feel a little bit guilty about waking him. He started stretching his limbs.
"I have plans for today, and we should probably get going if we want to get everything done within a reasonable hour." He finished stretching and turned to face me.
"What do you want to do today? It's our day off, right?"
"Yeah, but I was thinking we should bolster up our supplies." He furrowed his eyebrows.
"What do you mean? I think we're okay… or actually, maybe not." I nodded. We still hadn't restocked our supplies since we left for the waterfall cave. We were pretty low on… just about everything.
"Yeah. I was thinking maybe we should stock up on some food supplies. If we go into longer dungeons, having a good stock of food will be crucial for getting us through. We could just buy from Kecleon, but since it's our day off, I thought maybe we could go to a dungeon to get some." He nodded after a pause. "Do you know any dungeons around here that might have a lot of food?" I felt bad for essentially baiting him into saying Apple Woods, but it would be impossible to explain the whole story behind it. He looked deep in thought for a moment before responding.
"Both Apple and Oran Woods are relatively close. If we're going for food, I think Apple Woods would be best. There should be some perfect apples at the end that will keep us filled for a while." He climbed to his feet, raising his arms above his head in a stretch. He grinned at me. "Shall we go then?"
Like Alex said, Apple Woods was really quite close to Treasure Town, and Oran Woods only a little further. I was surprised Treasure Town wasn't more populated with it being near a lot of dungeoneering hot spots. The dungeon itself was fairly easy, too. Alex and I made quick work of the bug and grass type pokemon that inhabited the woods. There were a lot of apples scattered around that made great additions to our food supply. After only about an hour, we reached the clearing at the end of the dungeon. A huge tree loomed over us, and brilliantly red apples hung temptingly from its leaves.
"Look up at that tree. Those are perfect apples, right?" Alex squinted at the upper branches, and nodded in confirmation. "Only question is, how do we actually get them?" One of us could try climbing up the tree, but neither of us were really built for tree climbing. Alex seemed to be stumped, too. "Maybe you can try just… smacking the tree really hard? Some loose apples might fall from the branches." He looked at me in surprise and laughed. "What? Was it really that bad of an idea?" I pouted. He shook his head.
"No, just something that only you could think of. Let's give it a try. I'll use force palm on the tree, and you can pick up any apples that drop down." I huffed. I still didn't know what he meant by "only I could think of it." He walked over to the tree, surrounding his palm in a blue energy that I've come to understand to be force palm. He smacked it into the tree, causing it to rustle greatly. An apple dropped down from the branches, landing softly on the forest floor.
"It worked! Keep hitting it!" We repeated the process until enough apples had dropped that we practically filled our bag to the brim. I wasn't totally sure how the bag storage worked, since it clearly carried more than it should normally be able to, but it seemed like it had a limit regardless. Packed up with perfect apples, we started back towards Treasure Town. I suggested Alex put most of them in storage, since it wouldn't do us good to hold on to all of them at once. He agreed, and I invited him to the library with me. He awkwardly declined, saying that he would take care of stocking up on other items. It wasn't a bad idea, so I didn't push. It probably wouldn't be interesting watching me pour over random books in the library anyway.
The library was a large building that stood on the outskirts of town. The outside of the building looked quite neglected; wear and tear collected visibly all around the dilapidated brick walls. The words "TREASURE TOWN LIBRARY" hung proudly in a sign hung above the front entrance. I wondered if the library wasn't particularly frequented around these parts. I tentatively stepped up to the entrance and pushed through the door. Immediately upon entering, I was hit with the distinct smell of old books that permeated through the library. Lines upon lines of bookshelves filled the first floor, and a staircase in the center indicated even more would be upstairs. Despite the rather neglected outside, the inside seemed to be well-kept and was an impressive sight. I don't know if it was just my significantly smaller size, but the scale of everything felt huge to me. I walked over to the librarian's counter, where an intelligent looking Meowstic with a pair of glasses that seemed to accentuate her intelligence was buried deep into some book.
"Excuse me?" The Meowstic didn't even bat an eye. I moved a little closer, craning my head over the counter. "Hello?" She finally looked up in shock, putting down her book.
"Oh, I'm sorry dear. It is not so often we get visitors here. How can I help you?" I smiled. Her voice was exactly as I'd imagined it to be, soothing and intelligent.
"I'm new around these parts and I was wondering if you could help me find a couple of books." Her eyes glinted behind her spectacles at the mention of books.
"Of course! What kind of books were you looking for today?" I thought briefly. There were plenty of books that I could use, being a completely new resident of… well, this world. History, geography, culture… all of these were things I'd have to learn one way or another if I were to spend a long time here. I did also want to do some genuine research into my ability. Dusknoir had to have learned from somewhere - I wondered if I couldn't learn more details myself. I also wanted to learn more about my evolution paths and how I would actually go about evolving. I wasn't sure if it was the same as the games where I couldn't evolve yet, but it would be worth looking into at the very least.
"Well, for starters, I was thinking I could get a book on the general geography of the area. And then a book about Eevee evolutions." I hesitated. "This might sound a little vague, but maybe a book about like… special abilities? Like abilities unique to an individual and not a species." She nodded slowly, and I continued. "Also, maybe an abridged history of the continent?"
I realized I was being pretty broad and vague in my requests, but she smiled and said, "sure thing dear. I'll be back with those books in a moment." She moved with purpose out from behind her desk, immediately heading straight for some aisle deeper in the library. I was impressed with the vigor and pace at which she moved. She must really know about this stuff. I waited for a bit, idly reading the titles on the bindings of the books on the shelves near me. Before long, the Meowstic returned, balancing a stack of books in her arms. "Would you like to check them out, or read them here?" I thought for a moment.
"It'd be nice to read here, if possible." She smiled again, beckoning me to follow her. I followed her through a bunch of shelves to an area in the back with tables for reading. A couple of other Pokemon were reading there, but they were too engrossed in their books to notice me.
"I'll set these down here, dear. Let me know if you need anything else!"
"Thank you so much for your help!" She nodded, then hurried back through the shelves to her desk. I looked at the books she had picked out for me. "History of the Grass Continent," "Eevolution: A Guide for Beginners," "Geography of the World," "Innate Abilities…" I picked up the evolution book first, opening the cover. There were a bunch of descriptions of each of the Eevee evolutions, describing their unique abilities and affinities, and of course evolution method. Out of curiosity, I flipped to the passage about Sylveon.
Sylveon is the most recently discovered Eevee evolution. It has complete control over flexible ribbons attached to its body, allowing it extreme dexterity that other Eevee evolutions lack. It isn't fully known how an Eevee evolves into a Sylveon because of the rarity of them, but those who have evolved into Sylveon recall "having an intense feeling of love" at the moment of evolution. As a Fairy type evolution, it is also believed that having mastery over a Fairy type move aids in evolving into Sylveon.
I paused briefly over the "intense feeling of love" part. To be honest, I didn't really understand it. What was considered as an "intense feeling of love?" I kinda wanted to evolve into Sylveon, but the evolution process seemed complicated compared to the other ones. I continued flipping through the pages until a section titled "exceptions" came up. Interested, I read on.
As you know, most Eevee feel a pull towards a particular evolution. Failure to evolve into that form can often cause intense stress and upset to the Eevee. However, this is not the case for all Eevee. Some Eevee, though very few, have reported not feeling a particular pull towards any evolution. In these cases, they are encouraged to evolve into whatever they wish, often ending up simply waiting for an evolution to come to them. These Eevee are noted to be particularly powerful, with affinity for all of the elements, as well as physical and special prowess.
It felt good to know that there were others in my situation. I didn't want to be considered a defective Eevee or something. Plus, it was really cool that I could be powerful no matter what path I pursued. I remembered my control over fire at Alex's house. Maybe the "affinity for all of the elements" that the book spoke about could've referred to something like that. Being satisfied with what I learned, I closed the cover of the book and moved onto the geography one. It looked like the discovered world was split into four continents: Grass, Sand, Air, and Water. The continent where I was currently residing was the Grass continent. The west side of the Grass continent was dominated by a large land mass, which held Treasure Town, Dewdrop Town, and a bunch of other towns I hadn't heard of before. Off the coast, there were a couple of much smaller islands with unique terrains. I noticed that Joy Tower was labeled as one of the islands on the map. It was still a ways away from us, but it wasn't as far as I originally thought. I felt my heart beat a little faster just thinking about it.
The Grass continent is at the southeast corner of the world, south of the Air continent, southeast of the Water continent, and east of the Sand continent. I was filled with a sense of wonder at the vastness of the world I was inhabiting. There was so much to explore, so much to see! I continued skimming through the geography book, matching it with details I learned from the history book the librarian gave me. There was a whole expansive history behind the formation of the four continents and leadership that never got discussed in the games. It was honestly a little too complicated for me to completely understand, but I could at least say I got the coarse details down.
I finally looked at the book titled "Innate Abilities." Skimming through the contents, it seemed to be talking more about Pokemon abilities that each species is born with, rather than abilities like Dimensional Scream, or whatever my ability to make a fire was. Somewhat disappointed, I closed the book and went to leave the library, being sure to thank the librarian again on my way out.
The cool evening air hit me outside, feeling refreshing after an evening spent holed in the library. I felt a little more confident in my understanding of the world around me. I took my time walking back to the guild, taking in the crisp air and the quiet drone of noises coming from Treasure Town. The guild came into sight, filling me with a strange sense of nostalgia. I smiled feeling the grate pass beneath my feet, remembering my first time entering the guild with Alex. The guild had a quiet atmosphere tonight. Only a few groups of Pokemon chatted quietly to each other on the main floors, smiling at me as I walked by. I entered our room, expecting to see Alex, but finding it empty. "Huh, guess he must be out still…" I shrugged, plopping down on my bed. The second I lied down, I felt a wave of exhaustion hit me. Maybe a little nap before Alex gets back wouldn't be too bad…