Oralin: I don't not like them, I'm just not sure how they operate as a duo. Even worse, we've got three members, and teams are supposed to not exceed that. That's what it said on the form, anyway.

The group started walking, I made my position up front. Forseir did the same, whether to show off or from being used to it, I do not know. We soon came into the tree line, from here it was obvious how little this track is used, although the grass was short, the path had plenty of broken sticks littered on it. The sun was barely able to make its mark on the ground, as the leaves mostly blinded the suns view of the ground. Though I didn't really care, I was too busy thinking about whether or not Sala would accept of our clients.

I was too lost in thought to realise that Nali was asking me something, she tapped me on the leg which brought me back from my thoughts.

"What?" I said, maybe too harshly.

"oh, I was just asking if we should go out for dinner or not, for a treat!" Nali didn't seem too affected by my tone, luckily.

"well… no, sorry." I expected that to be the end of that.

"I could find somewhere after we do whatever you need to do? I've got the money to do it." Forseir innocently suggested

"With what money? You have nothing but that scarf on you!" I said rather impatiently.

"The scarf is all I need!" Forseir undid his scarf, and took something out of one of the folds. Revealing a wallet of various currencies. "This one is yours, right?" he said holding a small stack of money.

"Yes, it is." I replied.

"That's so neat!" Nali began. "I never thought that a scarf could be used in that sort of way!"

"yeah?" Forseir started "well, you haven't seen anything yet!"

Just behind them a small chorus of two laughed in unison, upon investigation it was determined that Revial and the other new member, Aconic were telling each other jokes. They seemed to be having a good time, so I decided to leave them to it, though it felt strange to see Revi so happy, normally he was always thinking. But it made me hopeful, if these new guys have a mission and require extra help then we're here to give it!

My thoughts were broken by Forseir.

"so, uh.. You know what me an' Aconic's mission is, right? They put that on the job I presume?"

"no, they probably did but Nali picked it up too fast for any of us to protest."

"okay, so do you wish for me to state what the mission is exactly? Maybe so you could better prepare?"

"Sure go ahead" I said rather half-heartedly

"You'll need to pay more attention then that! Anyway, my mission- sorry, our mission is a capture mission, dead or alive. We need to find a Xatu named Solusic. Reason being that shortly after the war began he ran off to Norsalvard where they sapped as much information as possible from him, then, seeing how useful he could be they set him up to be a spy here, in Arom. We need to hunt him down and either neutralize him or capture him for questioning. The only problem is, he is heavily guarded-"

I cut him off.

"if he is a spy, then how do we know what species of pokemon he is? How do we know for certain that his name is in fact Solusic?" Simple questions, but they felt worth asking.

"well, we don't know. We're guessing. It just added up to the big boys in charge of all this!"

By this time we were walking towards a small rise in the terrain, just large enough so that nobody in the group could see over top of it.

"…right. Now, one more thing from me. How dangerous do you believe this mission to be?" I asked.

"Quite so, I'm afraid.. We need to take each step with upmost precaution. But I assure you, I have no intention of placing your team in any danger. It is my personal priority to keep everyone safe, regardless of orders. Now let me finish, Solusic, or, who we think is the spy is heavily guarded. His guards are not so obvious, rather they just look like civilians going about their day."

"That doesn't sound very happy.. What if we get split? What if one does get hurt or even worse - dead? What happens then?"

"We go from there. You took up the mission, so I can only expect that you were ready for what to follow."

I sighed, this kid knew his stuff. Whether that was a good thing or not I wish I knew. "I can't deny that." I thought for a moment, wanting to continue this conversation, or at least continue talking. I thought of a new subject. "Tell me about yourself, what did you do before this? What's up with your sensor things, why are they discolored? I've never seen a Riolu with blue sensors before."

"For your first question, I fought to keep Aratica the same, and I was so good at fighting, that they placed a bounty on my head. That bounty kept growing as I killed more it's in the 6 digits now I'm pretty sure. Stopped keeping tabs on it after a while. They wanted me dead because I killed most of Norsalvard's high ranking officers and only them. I would sneak in at night and take them while they slept, either by suffocation of by more.. Barbaric methods." Forseir paused for a moment before resuming

"For your second question. Early into the war I managed to get ambushed and captured. I was tortured pretty ruthlessly. At one point they started getting upset that I continued to refuse giving information, they made 3 slashes with a knife on the backs of my sensors, followed by a stab from an abnormally large spike coated in something that seems to of disallowed the wound to heal even now… I gave them their information, but it was outdated and sometimes even just strait lies. At that point they were satisfied and left me stuck to a table with two large metal spikes stickin' out of my sensors while cuffed to it preventing me from leaving. The spikes are what caused the discoloration and as an added bonus my lack of Aura abilities." Forseir looked a little stressed out from telling his story, it also somehow felt like he was skimming on a detail. I decided to ask questions.

"How did you survive? You said they left you stuck with no escape, right?"

"I was luckily found. They had taken me to a small bunker-like building for their activity. It took a squad of four about two long days to find the bunker, by that time I could hardly speak. The bunker consisted of two rooms, the main room and the far smaller back room, the back room was very dimly lit, the only light was a candle. The squad took up the main room to relax, as what I recall. It took them a while for them to hear my faint cries of help, even longer to work the courage up to enter the room in case of a trap. Meanwhile I was lyin' there in pain, bleeding outta my sensors with scratches all over my body. After a while, they finally managed to get in, looked quickly into the room and left. Hell, they didn't even report that there was a weird smell to it! Let alone somehow missing a chained up riolu in the center of the room! They just brushed it off and went back to sharing out their rations. In that time I tried to build up as much strength as possible, and as much as I'd like to say that I somehow managed to break free of the chains and yell at the squad, that didn't happen. All I managed was to groan in discomfort, which another member of that squad must of herd and went to angrily silence the noise. It was pretty good aswell, he was a infernape, so he sent a blaze to a small piece of wood and investigated the room. Found me and all anger was gone. After they painfully pulled the spikes out my sensors and uncuffed me they went about asking questions and whatnot, not even bothering to try and heal my wounds or feed me. But, that's about all." He looked very stressed out at this point and I found it very hard to find words. Not only had this kid seen more combat duty then me, but he also had been tortured! How was I supposed to reply to that? But still, there was one thing that was bugging me.

"is there nobody out to get you? Like… to try and kill you? You must of angered someone!"

"oh yes, I shoulda said that. About a month ago a bounty was placed on my head for I was killing too much. Norsalvard got sick of it and placed it. After a bit more killing they upped it to somewhere in the 6 digit numbers for a cash reward."

"So… you're wanted?"

"yup."

"Wow…"

We were just over the hill by this point, down below shone civilization. The sun was setting ahead of us making most of the houses seem darkened and silhouetted, but from the amount you could make out proved that many of the houses were made from a mix of stone and wood, forming a ring around a clocktower, four main streets intersected in the middle and each made their way to one edge of the circle, many of the houses lights were on by this time and few pokemon were in sight. As we came down the hill to embark on one of the streets Forseir and Aconic spoke in unison.

"Wow… just.. Wow."

"pretty, isn't it?" Nalion chipped in.

"See the town center over there?" Revali asked, pointing to the clocktower. "That's where we're headed for. The guild is just under the tower."

"Really? So do you have a tunnel system or something? Or is it just a few large rooms?" Forseir asked.

"Well, a main room connecting off into smaller rooms, mostly for guild dorms." I replied.

"I see.. I never thought that this place would be so organized. I thought it would be like home, a cluster of houses sprinkled everywhere! But no, it's really not!" Forseir stated.

"well, come on then, enough waiting around! Lets get to the guild for introductions! I hear that a few guild members are quite excited to see you, a few of the pokemon that have come back from Aratica have told stories about your service and their interactions with you. You've made a bit of a name for yourself."

"I didn't think I had!" Forseir said. "I mean- the pokemon who found me were from here, but I never thought I was really noteworthy, I just tried to be helpful here and there, nothing worth talking about!" Forseir looked startled at my comment.

"well how about you try convince them once we're inside?" Revial said, slightly impatiently.

"Lead the way then, I dunno where to go!" Forseir responded.

"Don't forget about dinner later! We're not missing out on it!" Nali said, urgently.

"Of course not Nali!" I replied.

Authors notes:

Heyo all! sorry for taking so long with this chapter! I was busy trying to develop my characters a bit more, to make them more interesting.

A few things I want to say here.

First being that this story is more of a complete restart of another story of mine, as it was badly planned and executed. I'm hoping that this story turns out better off!

That's all from me for now, see you all soon and thanks for reading - as usual!
-R