I saw no reason to object, so I answered him graciously, figuring that I would be exploring the town after this meeting happened. "Uh yeah. I'll not be waiting too long I take it, considering the fact that this seemed pretty urgent."
"Yeah, be there in a tick." Clay said, before he rushed out, taking the elevator ahead of him, of course. Of course I could have gone with him but this way I got a bit more of an opportunity to speak with my Pokémon by myself, at least, minus the referee who likely had experienced this sort of thing at least a few times in their life.
"Well Stripes, I do wonder if you're excited about Pokémon battles just yet. I also need to get an everstone accessory. Have you decided on what sort of one you want?" I had already conceptualized some things for him to wear, but he, of course the final decision would remain with him.
Stripes pondered for a moment before finally saying, "Not really, even though I have some experience with Humans, and what you told me, but I have no idea what sort of capabilities you have besides the clothing you wear."
"Oh, yeah, I suppose that I didn't exactly tell you much in that regard. But it was to explain certain things. I will be able to give more detail. It's a bit like your weights that I've been using to train you. I also have no idea what strength level your species evolves at either, so I'll have to keep track of that for future record. But I'm sure you remember what that evolution energy felt like. If you feel that sort of thing happening again, I'm sure you can, in a way similar to how you do various elemental moves, try to redirect that energy outside of you, until we get the Everstone."
"How do Everstones work, anyway? A rock that can stop a Pokémon from evolving? Seems a bit odd." Stripes asked.
"Well I'm glad you asked. It's quite fascinating, actually. We still don't know exactly why, but, it seems as if there are certain properties about an Everstone that work in a manner similar to how an evolutionary stone works, though in the opposite way. A Fire-stone, filled with the energy required for a Flareon to evolve, and a Growlithe into an Arcanine, and many others. This also translates a bit to being able to create a conduit that can essentially accelerate you an entire strength level… but I'm sure you can imagine it comes with a bit of a price."
"I can imagine that a shortcut like that would also do something to our overall strength and potentially life span." Stripes replied. If there was one thing that I liked about all of my Pokémon, it was that at the very baseline, it seemed as if I attracted the more intelligent types. In actually, I actively seeked them out based on personality and how they handled our first meeting.
"I believe so. But, I don't really want to think about it, since I care about you all more than that. Anyway, as you said you don't know much about how human clothing besides what I'm wearing and whatnot. So let's start with some basic things. Usually things like bracelets come in matching sets." I took out the Xtransceiver and began to show various arm bracelets, leg bracelets and eventually started moving on to other similar accessories.
Eventually we settled on two options. The final choices were a (Poké Egypt)ian style neck corset, and matching arm bracers, one of which would contain an Everstone. After that decision was made we headed to the cave that was outside of the city.
Upon reaching the entrance to the cave… my body completely froze. I was only to ask one simple question, the question that showed my greatest fear.
"Is that a fucking spiderweb? A giant fucking spiderweb?!" I collapsed to my knees and held my arms to my sides.