Chapter 4 - Recruiting Scorbunny - The Second Time Gear

After having no luck finding Ganondorf in Kalos, Link and Zelda arrived in the Galar region to search for him there. They came to a big city filled with buildings made of brick. They saw a small white Pokémon with long ears running across one of the buildings.

"What is that Pokémon doing?" Link thought to himself. "Doesn't he realize how dangerous that is?"

To Link and Zelda's surprise, the small Pokémon suddenly jumped off of the building. They were going to try to catch him, but they saw him give them a hand signal to move out of the way while he was still in the air. When he hit the ground, he skidded on his feet for a few seconds and was completely unharmed, and if he was harmed, he didn't care.

"Who are you two? What's up?"

"I'm Zelda and this is Link. Why did you just…?"

"I'm Scorbunny, or Scor for short." the white Pokémon interrupted. "You guys wanna kick a ball and pretend to be hurt with me?"

"We can't." Zelda answered. "We're on an important quest right now. We have to find our arch enemy and the Time Gears."

"The Time Gears?! Those are cool. Can I help you?" Scor asked enthusiastically.

"Trust me, Scor. You don't want to." Link tried to get across how perilous of a journey this was.

"Trust me, Link. You don't know what I want." replied Scor.

Link and Zelda looked at each other. They began to walk away with Scor following them. Zelda held her hand out at him to tell him to stay. Once Zelda and Link were far enough away that he wouldn't be able to hear them well enough, they discussed if they should let Scor come with them. They were against the idea at first because he seemed irritating. But they soon realized that more help from others could never be a bad thing. Plus, the lack of fear Scor seemed to have could also be useful.

They walked back over to him and told him they wanted him to join their Guild.

"I don't have the slightest clue what a guild is, but thanks for 'cluding me, my dudes!"

The three of them explored the Galar region for a while. Everything about the region seemed very new and exciting compared to the other regions they had traveled through. That night, when they were starting to consider giving up, they came across another Pokémon. It had a roundish gray body with two stubby legs. Link asked Scor who that Pokémon was and he responded with "Dusclops!"

Link walked up to the Dusclops so he could ask him if he had seen any of the Time Gears or knew anything about the whereabouts of Ganondorf.

"The whosabouts of what?" Scor asked.

When Link stood in front of Dusclops, he opened his mouth to speak, but then Dusclops started attacking them out of nowhere. "Shadow Punch!" he shouted. As the gray Pokémon continued to attack them with various different moves, the three others hid in a tree.

"Sorry about before, Linky. I just wanna let you know you were right. I shouldn't have come on this adventure. I should've just went to the WP like I wanted. WP stands for water park, BT dubs." said Scor.

He called me what? Link's left eye visibly twitched but he didn't respond. And what the Far is a 'water park'? Hel, I don't even understand half of the things he's saying!

Zelda jumped out of the tree and confronted Dusclops. She dodged his attacks while repeatedly hitting him with Hidden Power until he fainted.
Link and Scorbunny gawked at her while she nudged the fainted Pokemon with her foot.
"...Did you see that?"
Link and Scor jumped down from the tree. The Dusclops was able to wake up, but he was still in too much pain to stand.

"Ganondorf is gonna be...Uhh, I mean I'm not working for your enemy if that's what you're thinking." Dusclops then nervously chuckled and ran away.

"Well. There goes Dusclops. We'll never see him again." Scor said with a carefree attitude. "You guys go look for the Time Gear at the Gym. I'll bet it's there. I'll catch up. I gotta poop."

Scorbunny stood behind the tree and started moaning.

"This universe is weird!" Zelda commented.

"What's a Gym?" Link asked.

"Don't talk to me while I'm doing my business." replied Scor. "You'll know it when you see it. It looks like a futbol stadium."

Link didn't know what that was either but him and Zelda decided to take this opportunity to ditch Scorbunny. So, they ran away as fast as they could. But then Link stopped while grabbing Zelda's arm. He asked her to wait and went back to the tree.

"Scor, don't speak of such matters in front of a woman!" he scolded. Link ran away and therefore didn't hear Scor's response.

"You're a woman?"

At about 1 in the morning, Zelda and Link came across a very large, oval-shaped building. They were wondering if, and hoping, this was the "Gym" Scorbunny was talking about earlier. As they were about to head inside and investigate, a very familiar looking Pokémon ran out of the structure with a Time Gear in his hands.

"Buddies! Look! I found it!" Scor yelled while running up to Link and Zelda.

"Nay it! I can't believe that didn't work." Link thought, disappointed that he was probably stuck with Scor now. He hoped that he would warm up to him later.

"There weren't any Mons guarding this Time Gear. So who was guarding the one you got? Was it Ditto or one of the Lake Trio?" Scorbunny asked.

"No one was guarding mine either." Link answered, leaving Scor puzzled. He knew that only one of the five Time Gears is supposed to be unguarded. The other four are usually guarded by a Ditto and the Lake Guardians. Scor thought the fact there were two unguarded gears was very odd, but he chose to ignore this abnormality. FOR NOW!

"Now that we've found Galar's Time Gear, which region should we investigate next?" asked Zelda.

"Ooh! Ooh! Ooh! You know where I've always wanted to go? Alola!" said Scor.

"What's a lola?" Link thought, not knowing that it was a single word. "I don't know where that is, but we'll head there in the morning." he said out loud.
But yet, something was bothering him, it was the fact that Scor had expected someone to have been guarding the one that he had found. Or, possibly, that the fire rabbit had expected that he had that Time Gear in his possession. He did not.
"Ah...Scor? I...Don't have the Time Gear that I found."

"Where is it then?"
"...Where I found it? It's in Kalos, in the deepest part of the Missing Woods."

"The Missing Woods? Never heard of it. But okay, cool. How come you left it there?"
"...That is a good question. It didn't...feel right to take it just then, I suppose."

"Should I put mine back then?"
"No. No, keep yours."

"Sweet! I'm gonna name him Kevin. His name is Kevin and he's mine now!" Scor hugged his Time Gear.

"You do know it's an inanimate object, right?"

"YOU'RE AN INANIMATEOBJECTRIGHT!"
A few passing Pokemon stared at Scor's outburst and then kept on walking as if they hadn't heard anything.

The next morning, Link and Zelda were extra tired after a long, sleepless night in the Gym. Scor had kept them awake for several hours longer than they wanted to be because he wouldn't stop talking to them about stuff they didn't care about.

They agreed it would be time to tell him who they really were once he woke up. It wouldn't have mattered if he wasn't gonna stick around, but it really seemed like he was. If he was, they would've gotten him to leave last night when he was annoying the Hel out of them.

Before they could leave, Scor woke up and reached for leafy greens to eat. Link and Zelda watched him for a while, then Link spoke up.

"Scor...There's something that we need to tell you."
The fire-rabbit stopped chomping down on leafy greens and eyed the two younger Pokémon with great interest.
"Well? Go on, tell me!"
Before Link could speak, Zelda answered for him.
"We weren't born like this...The two of us are actually a race of humans called Hylians, and we're from a place known as Hyrule."

Scor simply stared at them for a few minutes, then shook his head.
"Say what now? You're from the human world?"
The Totodile nodded and quickly summed up what had happened before he had been transformed. He described the Pokémon he had seen as best as he could.
The fire-rabbit moved his gaze to Link.
"This 'Ganondorf' fella nearly killed you, then Xerneas, Yveltal, and Zygarde showed up?"
Link nodded, realizing that he now knew the names of the powerful Pokémon that had saved his life.
"And then Yveltal and Zygarde kept him occupied while Xerneas healed you?"
Link nodded again and Scor sat back on his haunches and blinked slowly.
"Wow. What I'd give to meet all three of them at once…"
Scor climbed to his feet and motioned for Link and Zelda to follow him.
"We need to get moving. Follow me, we're heading to Alola next."

A few minutes later, the three members of The Try Force set sail for the tropical islands of the Alola region.