Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Bluer Skies Chapter 2

First Steps

Roanthe and I get off of the boat, and the Samurott wishes us - well, all the passengers, really - safe travels. It's a nice sentiment, even if I really just want to get to the guild.

Still, though, the boat ride was long, and boring too! "It's like the Samurott was intentionally going slowly, ya know what I mean?"

"He's just doing his job. It's what he does, like those Pokémon at the docks that you seemed to be annoyed at, or like your teacher."

"Well… I guess that makes sense… but I'm still annoyed it took this long to sail here. The sun's way up in the sky now, and it's hot!"

"That's better than I expected. I thought the sun would be almost to the horizon by the time we got here."

I squint my eyes. Nothing here seems like what I think a guild would be. Sure, there's docks, stores, and even a fountain, but I'd think that there'd be a sign like "Guild This Way!" or something. "Where's the guild? Am I just not seeing it anywhere?"

Roanthe sighs. I guess he's disappointed in me again. "I told you before we got on the boat that it'd still be a while before we even get to the guild. We still have to walk, buy any supplies if you need those, and I was looking into teaching you a new move or two."

(A new move? What could I possibly learn? My teacher and parents weren't able to teach me any moves aside from Leaf Storm, but even then, I pretty much knew that move from birth...)

I quickly swivel towards him and poke at him with a vine. "What moves are ya talking about?"

He sighs again. "I want to make sure we're not in a crowded area so that the moves I show won't impact what other Pokémon are doing. We have to get out of the town for that."

(Town? Not a village?)

"So… how large is this town compared to my village?"

"It's about the same size, actually. I just referred to it as a town since it's a bit more… well, I'd say formal in how things are done."

"Why's that?"

He starts walking away, so I keep up with him. "I think it'd be best if we talk about this as we're walking. Basically, to teach you any moves, I'd need to not only describe the moves, potentially show you the moves, and have you try to attempt the moves. I don't think that me showing you the moves should really cause any problems for anyone in the town, that is if I were wanting to do that. I really don't want to, plus you attempting the moves may be… rocky at first. For all I know, you could fire off a move and it'd decimate part of someone's store."

(That was a lot of stuff; should I ask him to repeat it again? What if he finds me annoying? Ya know what, I'll ask anyway.)

I stare blankly at him; his voice was frantic near the end of the speech, so I think he's very worried about this. "Um… could ya say that slower? I didn't catch a lot of it."

Roanthe closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, almost bumping into a sign before narrowly avoiding it. "Okay, I don't think showing you the moves or you trying to do the moves while we're in town is a safe option. I think that we should take maybe a day or two and just have you practice various moves, to see what you're good at. Oh yeah, and buy supplies if you need anything, of course. That sound good?"

(Okay, that makes a lot more sense!)

"Sure! As long as I can get stronger, I don't care what I have to do!"

His expression switches from a content look to… uh… like he's scared?

(What's up with that?)

"...Did I say something wrong?" I tilt my head to the side to see if he's hiding any other expressions.

"...No, nothing's wrong. I was just… reminded of someone. Nothing to do with you, I promise. I can tell you more about that once we're out of the town. So just keep walking with me and we should be there soon, I believe."

I keep quiet and follow him, turning once, twice, then three times. We pass by a bookstore, a cafe, and a… sundial store? I don't know what that is. All of the stores look like they sell things I'm not familiar with too, like "Sitrus Berry Tea" or "Theories on Advanced Physical Moves."

(Are we going anywhere? This town seems like it never ends! And he said this town is the same size as my home village? How?!)

I still don't say anything; maybe not bothering him will make it easier for him to get to where we need to go?

"You can still talk to me, I won't be angry. We're just about to leave the town anyway. Seriously, look. The walk was shorter than I expected, too."

(Was the town really that close to the road? It didn't seem like it.)

I look in front of us; there's just a road, with fields on both sides. Well, there's trees, too, but who cares about those?

"We'll be staying somewhere around there." Roanthe points to an open spot in the field to our left, which has a few trees around it. I think it's a good spot; it doesn't look dangerous and has some shade. "I'll start setting up camp right in the center of those trees."

I run over and feel the cool - or is it just less hot? - shade, which is so much better than being out in the sun all day.

(This feels great! I could stay here for a while, if I weren't in such a rush!)

"How long will it take to get to the guild, again?"

"About a few days, if we start walking now. If I account for the two days you're going to be learning moves here, that would be about a week's time before you'll enter the guild."

"A week? I can't wait that long! I need to get there as fast as possible! Is there a way ya could teach me as we're walking, or even just talk about certain moves I could learn, or-"

He sticks a claw in my face. "Whoa, whoa! Slow down a bit. If you really want to get to the guild that quickly, we might as well just start walking there now. I'm fine with whatever as long as we get to the guild."

(... What should I do… I wanna train, but at the same time I don't wanna just wait for a few days in the same place.)

He seems to notice my silence, and clears his throat. "I guess I could tell you about moves I was wanting to teach you as we're walking to the guild rather than show you those moves first."

I nod, but don't say anything. I don't know what to say.

(I'll just go along, it won't hurt me to get to the guild earlier, and I can just take a few days to learn moves after I join the guild.)

He places both of his claws on me and-

"I heard you're a special one too, Mr. Roanthe." A Braixen, who I don't recognize, is in a room with Roanthe. She sounds annoyed.

"There's no need to be so formal. That term isn't exactly a good thing nowadays, and you don't need to call me that anyway."

"We need to take down whoever's targeting us now… this could get bad quickly. No one's strong enough to take them on except for the high-ranking members of the guild, and without a way to track 'em, we're not making any progress. Damn it! If we even had 2 more Pokémon with us, this wouldn't be so difficult! We might as well be sitting here waiting for them to get us!"

"Have you been able to ask anyone else for help? I'm sure there has to be someone willing to help us."

"Everyone else has either decided to be neutral or ignored us. It's safe to say we're the only ones left. We fight or we die, you hear me?!"

"So… we failed. We're not going to stop their resurrection. This guild may as well be dead."

"We shoulda cut our losses a long time ago! Before, we mighta been able to gather a group, but now all we can do is fight!" The Braixen's left hand closes, and red energy travels up her left arm, before stopping when it encircles her left eye. "I'm going! If you wanna save this guild, you're gonna have to fight too!"

The Braixen stomps out of the room, and Roanthe just keeps sitting there before he stands up straight. "If I have to fight eventually… might as well go out swinging, right?" He gets up and closes his right palm, that weirdly colored flame spreading to enrobe his right arm.

He walks out of the room, leaving nothing behind.

(What was that?! Was that a nightmare? No, it can't be a nightmare, it's the first one I've seen where someone isn't dead; that'd mean these are more like visions! Maybe this is a sign of something that I should change? No, I don't know enough about that situation to help! I don't even know the name of the Braixen Roanthe's talking to!)

"Hey, you okay? You zoned out for a few minutes there. Are you sure you want to leave without resting first?" Roanthe's now sitting to the left of me. Was he just watching me as I was having that vision?

"Huh? …I'm fine. It was just a little memory, that's all." I blink a few times just to be sure I'm here and still not looking at that weird vision.

He nods and stands up. "Sounds like you're good to go, then. The sun's barely moved since we got to the town, so we should have more than enough time to walk and talk. Before we set out, though, I'd like to tell you that the moves I describe may or may not be too tough for you to learn; essentially they're more like suggestions."

"Sounds good to me!" I smile as wide as I can. I'm glad he's so willing to teach me; it's certainly more than anything my teacher or even my parents have bothered to do.

"Time to go, then." He starts walking back to the road as I follow behind him. He slows down so that I'm walking beside him. "The first move I'd like to describe is something you're pretty familiar with already. It's something called Vine Whip, and it basically allows you to hit others with your vines. Now, since you've already used your vines to touch me a few times, I don't think this move is going to be that hard for you to learn. I'm sure you could learn it now, if you really wanted to-"

I slap him with one of my vines. "There, done! What's next?"

"Geez, you're more excited about this than I expected. I was about to say that Vine Whip is purely physical, so it's not something that you can use to inflict any sort of other effect like poison or freezing, unless you were to combine another move with it; however, you can use it to grab objects or other Pokémon, if they're not too heavy that is."

I look around to see our surroundings - there's not much, just fields and forests - so I turn to stare at the road ahead of us as I wiggle a vine around. "That makes sense."

"Okay, so the next move I'll describe is called Reflect. This move is more used for defense than anything, since it's not used for attacking, but-"

I slap him again with the same vine. "I don't wanna learn those kinds of moves! Teach me moves I can use to beat up other Pokémon!"

His face shifts to a cloudy expression for a bit before he sighs. "Okayyyy then, I'll move on to something else. There's Energy Ball, which I myself don't actually know, but I have a move similar to it in appearance, Aura Sphere." He forms a blue sphere in his right hand. It's so large, it's probably larger than my head! "It's something you can slam into your opponent and have it burst to surprise them. And who knows, you could try to combine that with other moves as well!"

"Cool! That's what I expected when ya said ya were gonna teach me some moves! How easy is it to learn?" I gaze at the Aura Sphere in his hand.

(I can make something like that now? Sign me up!)

He grimaces. "It's not exactly the easiest thing to learn. For Aura Sphere at least, it required me to learn what Aura was, how to gather it, and make sure I could control the Aura after I gathered it. I assume Energy Ball would be the same thing, just with… whatever Energy Ball requires you to gather. I don't know what that is either, so you'd have to learn from someone who already has the move or look it up in a book. Even with outside help, it still took me a week or so to learn it."

I stop walking, because that sounds dumb. "A week?! A week's too long! Other Pokémon will have surpassed me by far by the time I'm done learning the stupid move, and-"

The Aura Sphere disappears from his hand as he taps me. "Believe me when I say that other Pokémon who are newbies to the guild like you aren't even close to learning any moves like this. You're way ahead of the game, and that's good. You're talented and you have the drive to become strong. You learn this move and you'll stomp anyone who's in the same Class as you."

(That… makes me feel better. At least I'll know that other Pokémon won't be doing as much training as me at the guild.)

"What do ya mean by class? There's a school at the guild?"

He shrugs, looking more bored than anything else. "...Someone at the guild will explain that later. For now, focus on trying to gather energy. It doesn't need to be in a ball, just gathering it's enough."

(I'll have to learn this move eventually, so it won't hurt to at least try to learn it now… but gathering energy? What energy? Is it like a specific color or something?)

I squint my eyes. Maybe if I do something weird, I can see the energy?

Roanthe laughs, a rather loud one compared to what I expected. "Okay, that's definitely not what you're supposed to do! Maybe try using a vine?"

(A vine? How am I supposed to gather energy using a vine if I can't even do it with the rest of my body?)

I stick out a vine and just… focus. Surely something has to happen if I try, right?

(Come on, something's gotta work, or I won't have any special moves to pull out against other Pokémon!)

...I don't feel anything except a slight tingle, but that could just be my vine twitching. I pull out another vine and try to focus energy in that one too. I feel more tingles, but it's not anything major, not at all like the energy I felt coming off of Roanthe's Aura Sphere.

I scratch my head with a vine and frown. "I think I'm missing something… what does it feel like gathering Aura when ya form an Aura Sphere?"

"It feels like… Aura? Look, I just know I can do it. How it feels isn't really that much of a concern to me, and I know what it should look like when I form one. Here, I'll show you again, but slower." He puts out his right palm, and I can see wisps of blue energy - I think that's Aura? - swirl into his palm and slowly form an Aura Sphere. I nod and it disappears.

I stare at where the Aura Sphere used to be. "Is rotating the energy required? I feel like that'd just be harder to do than just forming anything."

"If you want to not rotate the energy, you can, but then it comes out looking less like a sphere and more like a blob. I rotate the Aura I use because it maintains the spherical shape and allows me to slam it into opponents without having to worry about it falling apart when I push it forward into them."

"...So, in other words, ya want me to rotate the energy as I'm gathering it, otherwise the energy won't stabilize into a sphere. Got it." I try again to just get something to form on one of my vines, but it doesn't seem to work. "When ya first started learning Aura Sphere, did ya do it with one hand like ya just did?"

Roanthe shakes his head. "No. I had to use both of my hands and cup them together, which helped the sphere form, since it had a general space that it could fill."

(I should use two vines together then, instead of using them apart from each other!)

I do something similar to what I was doing before, but make sure the two vines are a lot closer together. This time, I feel a lot more energy, but it feels like it's moving everywhere. I do see, however, small wisps of green energy between the vines. "Oh, I think something's there now! Do ya see it?"

He looks surprised. "Wow, that's good! You're already getting the hang of it! Now, you can try to form that into a sphere or gather more energy."

(I don't want to gather more energy, though! Doing that felt like it drained energy from me instead of gathering it from the air!)

"...I'll stick to forming a sphere first. If I can attack with it now, that's better than gathering a ton of energy that I can't form into anything."

"Whatever works for you. It took me a while before I could form an Aura Sphere larger than the palm of my hand, so you don't have to worry about forming a larger sphere now."

"If I have to wait a long time to form larger spheres, then I might as well learn another move!" I try to throw the tiny amount of energy, which now looks kind of like a sphere, but it just disappears. I put my vines away and frown. "Is Energy Ball not a ranged move too?!"

"I've never used Aura Sphere that way, so I wouldn't be able to tell you." He squints. "The sun's setting. We should set up camp somewhere."

(I didn't notice how quickly time passed! Was learning those moves really that time consuming?!)

"How about there?" I point to a group of trees, which have a small hole in between them that looks large enough for us both. "It looks like that spot where we were going to stay for the night back at that town… are ya sure we didn't walk in a circle?"

"I'm sure we didn't. I think I'd know where we're going since I've walked this route so many times. I'm going to start a fire and build a shelter. You… can just sit there and practice moves if you want. Just don't bother me."

I walk away to a slightly shorter tree… but I still make sure I can see him.

(Still gotta be safe, even if I think I can learn Energy Ball on my own.)

Okay. Time to practice more with Energy Ball. This time, I'm gonna try gathering the energy while I'm not moving. I stick out two vines again, put them close together, close my eyes, and focus…

(The feeling's the same… does that mean I did it right?)

I open my eyes to find that there's definitely something there, but not a sphere. It's a tiny blob of that same green energy from before. It's not the size I want, but if it can still hit things, I can work on making it bigger later; rotating it into a sphere should be what I'm practicing now.

(I'll throw it around and see what happens. Maybe the blob will become a sphere that way!)

I throw it up into the air and hold out a vine to catch it. The blob shrinks and disappears. I don't think I put enough energy into the blob. Oops.

(I'm so tired of this, but quitting now means it'll just take me more time to do this anyway! I have to try again!)

I close my eyes again and gather more energy, but this time I try to make it move in a circle above one of my vines… no such luck. It's rotating now, but it's more like a circle that's stretched itself upwards.

(If I rotate it another way, it should get closer to a sphere, right?)

I rotate the energy in a circle, but the energy is still in the same shape, just stretched sideways. "Ugh! This isn't working!" I toss the energy off to the side, where it disappears into the air, again.

There's a small "boom." It had to have come from something, but what? I turn around to see Roanthe's started the fire. I walk back over to him… and I realize the sun's gone down already.

"What?! I didn't even get to finish learning Energy Ball and I missed the sunset?! This sucks!"

"It could be worse. You could have not figured out how to gather energy at all. Like I said earlier, you have a much stronger drive than any other newbies to the guild. You're already far ahead of them, so don't be so hard on yourself."

"Alright… but I'm still disappointed in myself." I make some shapes in the dirt

"Don't be. You can push yourself to train harder tomorrow. Here's dinner."

He hands me… uh… it's something. It looks like a mix of blue and yellow thingys.

"It's Oran Berries and Sitrus Berries. It'll help with restoring your energy. I wish I had something else, but this is all I brought, and we didn't exactly stop for supplies back at the previous town."

"It'sfinethanks!" I hungrily take a bite of a blue thing and a yellow thing and find that they don't really taste that bad. I don't want to think about the taste, though, because I feel more occupied with learning Energy Ball than anything else right now.

(I should go to sleep soon. I still have to train tomorrow, and I need to think of that vision I had.)

I yawn. Maybe eating that much isn't the best way to rest after training… I'll need to figure out what that is. "I'm gonna go to sleep... good night, Roanthe."

"Good night, Aikonita." He stares at the fire and doesn't touch his food. Weird.

I lay down on the dirt and close my eyes one more time…

Aikonita's moveset so far, from her own perspective:

Leaf Storm: A move I've known since my childhood. I'll need to practice with this move, even if I'm learning new ones.

Vine Whip: I've been using this move without me actually knowing that it's a move. Guess that just makes it easier for me to use it in the first place. I need to see if this move can be used for anything besides slapping things.

Energy "Ball": I can't seem to get the hang of rotating the energy in a way that makes it into a sphere. I'll have to ask Roanthe or a Pokémon that knows the move, and even then, I can't gather up enough energy for the move to really do anything! Ugh! I've got a long way to go before I can use this move…

Next Chapter: Boralo Town