There aren't any bandits in these parts. It's just the uninhabited swathes coast from here to there. About the only thing noteworthy to be found on the ocean's edge were the distant shadows of water-types floating along The Sea. Come to think of it, there wasn't anything dangerous about their walk back save for the possibility of falling asleep and being swept into the waters by a renegade wave. Though with this Prinn fellow at his side, the chances of that happening had been thrown out the window. The boy obviously wants his badge, and falling asleep just gives him the prime chance to swipe it.

Nobody asks complete strangers for help unless they're desperate or want something of theirs, this boy seems to be both.

Warning him about guilds won't work: the kid had wanted to make the mistake of being roped into a guildmaster's schemes, then by all means let him learn from it. And then he could move on with this life in a year or two after he'd been hung out to dry by his scarf. It's not Braviary's job to tell others how to live.

They travel up a slope near the ridge to a place called Scoria Town - a hobble not too far from the guild Prinn keeps talking about. They cross onto the roads cobbled into buildings cobbled and walled with porous black stones. Lantern lights surround them, and the boy leads him.

"You want me to show you around?"

Were he to say "Yes, Prinn, I would love to" they'd be stuck all night. Braviary just wants this over with.

"This is Scoria Town, right?" Braviary looks at the water type who promptly smiles back.\

"Yessir."

"Never heard of it."

"That's what most people say when they first hear the name. Followed up by 'Scoria's where that guild is, ain't it?' Prinn traipses into town, dragging Braviary with him. "They usually stop asking about Scoria after that. They probably think we're just the same as every other guild town."

"What's so different about it?" Braviary asks.

"Well, I start with saying 'it's a Scholar's guild, not an adventuring guild. It's a fascinating place, attracting the smartest around to come together and unravel the world's mysteries' "

Prinn threw up his flippers as though he scattered a pound of confetti, and for a rehearsed speech reeking of unpaid work, Prinlup sounds quite sincere.

"And then they walk off, don't they?"

"Yep. Every time." he huffs, defeated. "I think people just aren't interested in coming here."

Soon they find themselves in the cobbled streets of Scoria Town having strolled in from one of the three roads which all converged on the town's marketplace. Most of the buildings were built from dark wood. As though they had somehow risen from the earth, every single one of them had their pointy rooftops covered in a layer of grassy dirt. Due to the work of some persistent gardening pokemon, these roofs remained evergreen.

The atmosphere was thick with the scent of crisp firewood, cedar resin, and ocean air creeping up from the cliffside and over the entire town. Banners decorated with dark green and gold flags hung above the streets and tree branches, mostly cedar, still bloomed with their evergreen leaves and little pine cones. There were carvings in the abundant driftwood from Scoria shores depicting aquatic pokemon lying on their sides, looking quite pleased to have been beached near this cozy little town.

It was nearing nightfall. The town's windows glow orange with roaring fireplaces, smoke stacks billowed, and lanterns cast many shadows onto Scoria's dusty roads. Scoria's glowing streets and the three roads leading out from it stand as the only light in the surrounding forests and pastures. Guild town or not, if Scoria had lasted long enough to have grown to this size in the middle of nowhere then it was remarkable in at least one aspect. Braviary felt home in the company of such staunch stubbornness.

They make it into town an hour before nightfall, stopping at a lamppost. After a moment or two of just standing there, Prinn speaks up

"If they already got the lamps up, then sheesh, we might've been walking for longer than I thought." Prinn chuckles, "Maybe an hour or two off? Maybe three? I don't know, but I'd hate it if we got lost in the dark out there."

There's a pause.

"Are you doing okay?" Prinn asks, looking at the large bird.

"I'm doing as good as any pokemon whose very first thing they had to do after being booted out of their bed was walk a marathon. " Braviary breathes a deep sigh. "Suffice it to say I feel like my back's out for my blood, and my talons want to join my wing in being torn off. I don't feel well, Prinn, not at all."

Prinn raises a flipper and Braviary cuts him off.

"Oh, and I just thought I'd let you know I could really go for a bed right now. Maybe some chow on top of that, oh, a drink as well – you know, anything to make me feel like I'm not going to keel over all of a sudden."

"I know a few places..." Prinn speaks up, "There's Garl's – everyone just calls him Golduck, though – place which usually has a few beds open year round. As I said, Scoria doesn't get many visitors. You're kinda an exception, you know."

"Tell that to the Golduck fellow then. Maybe then he'd think this stranger you found washed up on a beach is someone special enough to consider having him loitering in his inn for a month or two." He was being incredulous of course. "Bed or no bed, if you can sit me down somewhere with a fresh glass of something I'll be fine." Braviary adjusts his brass badge. "But don't go spending all your pennies on this strange bird you found on the beach just because he had a funny badge, alright? That's called being terrible with your money."

"I thought it was called not wanting to see someone pass out."

"I guess you can call it that too."

Prinn stays still, staring down the street and further towards the heart of the town. The mossy fountain in the middle of the marketplace itself, though dry a majority of the year, looks to be a better place to sit than the cold ground beneath a lamppost.

"Let's keep going." Prinn says as he waddles further into town, and the old bird follows.

The road thus far had been cobbled with varying levels of craftsmanship, but the three highways pales in comparison to the craft of the town's square. Each stone brick in the square was wholly unique, all of which were hand placed, sometimes carved to form the vibrant image of a crescent moon. The image of one encompassed an old fountain overgrown with autumn-colored vines. From berry stalls to adventuring equipment, several venues dotted the market square, the majority of which serving their last few customers for the night.

In this case, Braviary sat at the fountain's edge as watches the little guy go up to one who had their stall with dozens of barrels surrounding it. There were two pokemon behind the stall: a bright yellow psyduck who seemed to be the face of the whole stall – and dressed in the finest golden cloths a pokemon could afford to get smeared in berry juice, and a mienfoo who was there to move all those giant barrels for him and who frankly look to be having a lot of fun rolling the one they've been using as a footrest. He watches as Prinn pulls up to the counter, and being too far to hear what they were rambling about, he turns his eyes to his surroundings.

He saw the three main highways which cut through the streets and slithered into the wilderness beyond, recognized the aforementioned "Garl's Place" as a tavern whose second story looks as if it were about to spill out into the streets and was actually named "Golduck's Good Tidings" if the crude sign posted outside it was to be trusted, yet he didn't see anything pointing towards this Scholar's Guild Prinn had been blabbering about. Maybe it was out of town?

Braviary looks back, and sees someone staring at him. Although smaller than him, their glare made it feel as though they tower over him. Bird-like in appearance, it had a long mouth-less beak that curves like a scythe, had long white feathers which draped across the ground, and bright magenta feathers. As quickly as their eyes had met, hers back away as Prinn scurries back with a bottle in hand.

Prinn uncorks a bottle and fills a wooden cup he had brought with him. "What I have here isn't the first thing I'd turn to for a drink, though given the fountain's dryness, I'd say it's the next best thing." he says, "Here you go!"

Braviary takes the cup into his wing. He takes one look at the odourless black fluid and hesitates. "I appreciate it." He shows the Prinplup the strange substance. "Are you sure this is safe?"

Prinnreads the label of the bottle, gives it a good shake, then lifts it up as he takes a very quick drink. After a moment, he speaks up. "Um, yeah it tastes pretty safe. It's just not supposed to stay black, maybe try stirring it or something?"

Braviary carefully jostled his cup, took a look, then showed Prinn it was still indeed pitch black. Assuming it was just going to stay the bland colour, Braviary chugged his cup like a plant soaked up water and handed it back.

"Tastes like caramel." he said.

"When you drink it from the bottle it often tastes that way, but I don't think it's supposed to. " Prinn explains, pointing to the bottle, "This stuff's made from Enigma Berries,s stuff that only really grows once in a blue moon."

"Point being?"

"Well the guild around here found a way to grow them outside where you usually find them, and when mixed into a wine and exposed to the air – erm, lemme just show you."

Prinn fills himself half a cup of the wine, sloshes it around, and then swigs it down. Prinn flashes the bottom of his cup to Braviary who sees that the wood is now stained a slick cobalt blue.

"That metal-ish color in there?" Prinn said, confidently. "It means I'm smart, or a Mariner. I took it as meaning I'd chart The Sea one day, maybe see what's out there other than colonies of water pokemon. As you can see, I haven't gotten that far yet."

"Ah, I think I get it. I reckon map-making is bound to do a fellow good if they're lost at sea."

"It's accurate enough for the guild to use it to introduce new people," the fringes of his smiling, confident face twitch with uncertainty. "That's what this one explorer said when he came to town and showed everyone who was at Garl's at the festival Last Summer. I mean, I might be wrong about it being accurate, but like you said it's still a cool trick. Right?"

When deliberating an important life decision it's important to base it off something more than a curious trick. If it didn't work for him, then who knows how many fools have been suckered into believing the nonsense this bottle trick's told them?

"It might sucker a few people into joining your guild, but I fail to see the point" Braviary must have hit a nerve because Prinn was stricken silent for all of a good minute. "Can I have the rest?"

"I did buy it for you." Prinn bluntly replies.

The pokemon's sour mood didn't last for long. After handing over the bottle he stares off, thinking for a moment, and something going on inside the Prinplup's head makes his eyes glow up like fireworks. Knowing all too well what he was in for, Braviary cocked his head back and took an especially long drink from the bottle, cutting the boy off.

"Gotta say now that I think of it, this stuff's pretty good. More of a spicy pokemon but I've yet to see spicy berry wine which doesn't taste like chalk, so I'd say your parlour-trick drink here gets a passing grade." Braviary messily jams the cork back into the bottle. "But just because I've only now gotten a drink don't think for a moment I've forgotten what you said before. What do you want me to do?"

"I want you to come with me to the guild and when they ask, or when I ask – I honestly haven't rehearsed it enough to know which would come first," Prinn said. "Just show them your badge when prompted, okay?"

"Is that it?"

Prin nods at him.

"Well I'll be! You should've just said so!"

Credibility was something earned, not innately given. Being born in a family of traders but never being one would certainly give the pokemon more merit as a business person than startup tradesman number two-hundred, but pokemon had to first prove themselves before being seen as credible people. When a pokemon proves themselves to be reliable, trustworthy, and useful, then they can be counted on to have any modicum of credibility.

For a merchant, she hadn't travelled very far from home, and that was unusual for her even in her mercantile family She had gone one one trip when she was much younger, but had she known at the time it'd be her last, she would have picked somewhere else other than miserable Scoria Town. Miserable was too harsh of a word to describe the seaside town. It sure beats being in a village out in the middle of nowhere, but given whoever settled this town decided to place it as far away from every other big settlement as possible, it may as well be no different than any other isolated shire. But no, it was hardly the case. For a town to be established by a whole guild of self-proclaimed scholars there had to be something different about Scoria she was missing, and pokemon who she'd view as quite credible, claim to be the case.

However, as many of the bigger merchant clans had yet to set up shop in this nowhere-land, her family decided to take advantage of this untapped potential. Perhaps they were foolish to make the investment in the first place, but when they had decided to leave for greener pastures the onus had been on her, the second youngest at the time, to keep their store here afloat. She had remained in Scoria Town ever since.

After years of living here on her lonesome only occasionally seeing the lone sibling drop off product for the shop and collect their share of the income, she had come to have an affection for this strange town.

It was by the sea, close enough to an abundant forest where she could forage to supplement her shop's inventory, but somehow too far for any bandits to have to waste their time coming all the way here. They likely didn't want to mosey with a guild of any size. What the guild didn't deter were the odd strangers and entrepreneurs looking to make their names in this town just like her family had so many years ago. Pokemon like that rambling old seer who appeared on the night of last summer's fair.

The Xatu was strange. For a self-professed wanderer, he had only the clothes on his back, many of which looking much to pristine for a man who's walked the land; and a satchel which was borderline empty save for a couple coins and a set of dice he claimed were carved from a very elusive dragon-type. Something about his uniquely blue-green feathers seemed to make him stand out, and on his chest was an unusual, diamond-shaped badge.

At the time she hadn't seen him as anyone important. Simply another weird pokemon attracted by the sounds of the festival who she'd do well to keep an eye on. Although all he got from the fair-goers were consistent no's, it had only taken him an hour for him to eventually come crawling up to the merchant at her stall.

He had introduced himself as a traveler, calling himself Xatu while never giving her his real name. He had said he was a psychic, which sure enough his whole species was but he had claimed to be an especially talented soothsayer who possessed the ability to commune with the stars. She hadn't believed him in the slightest, what proof did he even have? Listening to the stars shouldn't even be possible given no pokemon had ears that big. She had, however, invested the measly fare he had asked for to get him to do his little jig and keep well away from her customers. To that end, he had been very quick about what he had to say.

For a short time he had stared into the sky, beak agape, until he had finally spoken. She remembers him rambling, but she's retained none of it.. His claims had gone from prophetically vast and profound, corroborated by much smaller predictions of the coming days. Little things like how she'd leave a yellow incense to burn too long in her chambers one night, how on another day she'd come to see five bottles – no more, no less, arranged around the fountain. In truth she had not cared for his talk of the stars, her family's wealth, or his dire soothsaying about the stars one day vanishing. What she had really wanted was to know if his prophetic abilities held so much as a pinch of merit.

Sometime when she had all but forgotten about all of this she would get her answer as another strange looking traveler came into town. She kept a stern eye on him, watching as the pokemon he had been travelling with – a wannabe guildie who seemed to have plucked this bum from off the road – left to buy the fellow a drink from Golduck's stall. Yet something hadn't settled right with her about him, something she had been warned about:

An explorer's badge made entirely of brass with wings emblazoning a featureless diamond, the same as the Xatu from a while ago.