After exhaustively making his way up a stone stairway chock full of bored-looking Pokémon, Trevor entered the gargantuan tent that seemed to watch over the entirety of Sunrise Town. Immediately upon entering, Trevor was shocked with how massive the tent's interior was even with the already impressive size of the exterior. Giant three-legged torches as well as a gaping hole on the tent's roof illuminated the dozen or so lines of bored-looking Pokémon waiting to be authenticated. The air was abuzz with the sound of murmuring and an occasional stamping sound that he couldn't quite place.

Before long, Trevor was jolted upwards by the all too familiar sound of Aiden's voice, emanating from the front of a particularly long line. "Hey, Treph!" she shouted while rapidly waving a paw in the air, much to the ire of the many Pokémon attempting to concentrate near her. Trevor couldn't help but mutter more than a few flustered apologies as he awkwardly shuffled forwards.

"You're just in time!" Aiden put her hands to her hips triumphantly and let out her widest grin yet, yellow eyes twinkling with excitement. To her side was a massive wooden table carrying a few sheets of official-looking papers, and behind it stood a silent Mr. Mime. His colorful body and clown inspired appearance betraying his brutally exhausted expression; dark shadows sagged under his eyes as he stared at Trevor with a look practically screaming, "End my suffering."

"We're almost done with our papers, here," Aiden explained, "I've taken the liberty of filling in all your information for you, so all we need is your pawprint before we can become official explorers!" By the way," she suddenly whispered into Trevor's ear, "I don't know where you're actually from, I took the liberty of writing that we came from the same hometown. Let's just keep this our little secret, okay?"

Trevor worried on whether she should be whispering so loudly while the Mr. Mime was within earshot, but he didn't seem to care. He looked as if one wrong word would end up with him completely breaking down into tears, and Trevor wondered whether it was due to his exhausting occupation or Aiden's...overbearing personality.

"Aiden, I have something I need to te-," was all Trevor could utter before being dragged by Aiden towards the table, who elatedly pointed towards the application placed on table's center. He scanned the top portion of the paper, scribbled with Aiden's messy writing, and found that she had indeed labelled his hometown as "Ore Point," despite the fact that he had never heard of such a place before. Under the "Title of Team" label, Aiden had already written the name "TEAM SPIRIT" in distractingly huge, bold letters.

As Trevor read through the paper, the Mr. Mime silently motioned towards a massive jar of ink, about twice Trevor's size on the table's left side. Upon looking at Aiden's document to the right, with her splattered black pawprint at the bottom, it became obvious to Trevor what he was intended to do.

Trevor dipped his paw into the cold, thick ink and hovered it over the document, staring at the blank area on the bottom obviously intended for his pawprint. His heart began to accelerate as he considered what Camo had said prior. "Printing my hand would mean facing more of those blank-eyed killer Pokémon," he thought silently, his upper body slowly tensing up, "Ones like the Riolu that nearly killed me a few days ago. If I go into one of those 'dungeons' again, I'll probably wind up dead rather than just bandaged. I can't fight. How could someone as weak and pathetic as me become an explorer?"

"You okay?" Aiden looked over Trevor's shoulder, confused as to why he had just frozen up out of nowhere. "C'mon, don't bask in the moment for too long, let's put Team Spirit on the map already!"

"I've made up my mind. I can't go through with this, exploring is too dangerous for someone like me. I'll pass on the terrifying monsters and risking dying a horrible death. I don't need to be an explorer. I don't need to be anyone special."

And yet, Trevor found himself turning his head to the side and to meet Aiden's, who looked as if she was about to explode from anticipation. In that moment, Camo's words echoed in his head: "Leap of faith." And before Trevor could react, he turned his head back forwards to find his paw printed neatly onto his application.

"ALL RIGHT!" Aiden cheerfully proclaimed, leaping several feet into the air as the tired Mr. Mime lifelessly stacked the papers into a neat pile.

"Your test is in two days, three hours after sunrise. Just, please take her away, I've got enough to deal with back at home," he grunted to the stunned Meowth before adding the applications to a rapidly mounting heap of papers. "NEXT!"

The pair descended the stone steps and made their way back to town, Aiden strutting by while humming a jovial tune as Trevor anxiously followed. He had meant to decline his signature, to run away from this clearly dangerous choice. And yet, he couldn't deny planting the clearly visible pawprint on his application. His mind went into overdrive as to why in the world he didn't just walk away.

"Treph!" Aiden suddenly proclaimed as the two reached the outskirts of town, her eyes becoming slightly watery "I can't believe it, this is actually the beginning of our journeys as official, bonafide explorers! Yeah, we're not officially explorers yet, not until we pass the entry exam, but this is a great first step!" Aiden put her fist into the air, as happy as could be. "We're Team Spirit, and we'll definitely become world-famous legends in no time!

Trevor, despite all his worries cluttering up his headspace, couldn't help but let out a genuine, albeit weak smile at Aiden's optimistic confidence. Yet, there was one concern that he couldn't get out of his head in addition to his already mounting pile: As the two exited the borders of Sunrise Town, he could have sworn that for a moment, he felt as if he was being watched.

-

From behind a large tent draped in purple, a burly Drapion venomously stared at the both Trevor and Aiden from a distance as they made their way down through the right side of the wide stone incline. "There they are, Grudd," he growled as the pair passed by, "They look every bit as weak as you said. Damn Explorer Association. They ain't got no standards any more. They'll let any trash team waltz in nowadays."

From further behind the tent, the Drowsee to which he was referring to let out an indignant scoff, folding his arms as he watched the two unassumingly pass by. "It's been a while since we've found targets this unqualified," he muttered bitterly. "That Scorbunny was bad enough, with her boasting and her stupidly naïve attitude. But that Meowth? He probably couldn't talk down a baby Caterpie with how spineless he is, much less take on a dungeon. And these are the types of teams that the Association is letting in these days? Someone needs to show those scum what being in a team, what the act of taking on dungeons is truly about."

"Hey, boss!" A wide-mouthed Golbat hurriedly flew over to the pair and crashed on the grass in front of Grudd, loudly gasping for air. "I've got intel!"

"Quiet!" The Drapion angrily hissed as he knocked the Golbat upside the head, "Your big-ass mouth is gonna get us all noticed!"

"Sorry Fang," the Golbat murmured while rubbing it's bruised dome, "But it's important! I was near the two while they were registering. The Scorbunny was shouting up a storm, so it was hard to hear, but I've been training up my hearing for a while, even after evolving, so I've become pretty adept at picking out certain voices over others. It's a good thing that the Meowth wasn't saying much, I wasn't sure what he was doing, actually. He was just kind of staring motionlessly for a full minute. He almost reminded me of- "

"Get to the point already," Grudd snapped, rolling his eyes. "I thought I told you to work on that mouth of yours."

"Sorry, sorry. The point is the pair's test is in two days from now at three hours post rise!"

Grudd cracked a sinister grin. "Good work, Ave. With a bit of digging, I'm certain that we can find the testing location as well." He curled his three pudgy yellow fingers into a tight ball and raised his fist into the air triumphantly. "Get ready, team. Cause after three years of hiatus, the Bush Burners shall once again perform it's sacred duty of incinerating the trash of the Expedition Society once more. For the Rescue Era!"

Ave and Fang's raised their wing and pincer with Grudd's, and the three quietly proclaimed in unison, "For the Rescue Era, the true golden age!"

-

During dinner at Aiden's house later that day, Trevor preferred to absentmindedly stare at the plate of Oran Berries sitting in front of him over actually eating them. For all of Aiden's unbound excitement, even she couldn't ignore this abnormal behavior.

"What's up Treph? You usually love these. We gotta eat, you know; we don't know what kinda dungeon they're gonna throw at us, so we have'ta build our strength while we still can."

Trevor continued to silently gaze into his food, his massive eyes rendered completely glazed over.

"Hey, you okay?" Aiden leaned forwards, visibly worried. "You look like you need to get something off your chest. We're partners, so we need to be open with each other from this point onwards." Trevor shifted his gaze towards Aiden with a hesitant expression. Aiden smiled warmly. "It's okay, you can tell me anything. I won't judge."

"I guess I should just tell her," Trevor thought to himself, "I just hope that Aiden won't be too mad." With that, he silently mustered the resolve to tell Aiden the truth with a faint hope that she would react calmly.

"WHAT?! WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU DON'T HAVE ANY EXPERIENCE AS AN EXPLORER?!"

So much for that. A terrified Trevor stared intently towards the ground as Aiden shot up and began angrily pacing across the house.

"Why'd you even agree to join my team in the first place if you barely knew what explorers even do?!"

"You didn't exactly make it easy to disagree," Trevor flatly stated with a twinge of annoyance, remembering how Aiden had put him on the spot by suddenly asking him to join. "No offense, but you never left me with too many opportunities to explain myself!"

"You could've just said no! You could've spoken up! I mean, yeah, I guess I dragged you around a bit, but it's not like I forced you to say yes or to stay here with me! Or to plant your paw on that document, right?! Now the test is in a couple days and I've got a complete rookie as a teammate! What were you thinking, not speaking up?!"

Trevor began to wish that he could melt into the wooden-paneled floor and out of sight.

"Do you know anything about exploring?" Aiden asked after a brief pause, "About mystery dungeons, crawlers, the Explorer Association?"

Trevor shook his head, trembling slightly. His lips pursed as he felt his claws scrape against the edges of his seat.

"How's that possible? Even if you're not an explorer, all Pokémon should at least know about Mystery Dungeons, given how dangerous they are." Aiden looked at Trevor with pity-filled, causing him to grind his fanged teeth together. "Where exactly are you- "

"I've already told you, I'm a human!" Trevor suddenly shouted, "If you'd just stopped and listened to me, you'd know this by now!" Both Aiden and Trevor stood in silence for a few seconds before the latter hung his head in shame, wincing with watery eyes. "I'm sorry," he muttered weakly, "I didn't mean for any of this to happen. I don't want to be a burden. It's just that I thought that by becoming an explorer, I could...be someone, you know?" Trevor shook his head slowly, eyes shut tightly and whiskers drooping. "And you were looking at me with such anticipation. I don't know, I just...couldn't say no."

Aiden stared into Trevor's eyes intently once again, except this time with stunned admiration rather than incredulous fear. Aiden tried looking for some kind of sign that this was a trick, only for Trevor's genuine expression to cut said attempts short. As outrageous as his claim was, Aiden couldn't deny the truth any longer.

"You...really are a human," she finally admitted. "Wow. I'm...sorry. I should be the one apologizing for doubting you. It's just that a human hasn't been seen since..."

Aiden trailed off, staring at the ceiling as she began considering her options. "Can I even go through with this? I mean, the guy probably doesn't even know how to throw a thorn, yet the test is in two days. And to top it all off, he's a human! Yet...it's just one test, right? Surely I can drag him along just one dungeon before really showing him the ropes."

"Alright," Aiden suddenly declared, "We...we can make this work. Yeah, we can't let something like this stand in our way! The test's in two days. it's not much, but it should be enough to prepare you a little bit for what's to come."

Her expression gradually became more optimistic as she continued talking, as if she was convincing herself in real time. Trevor couldn't help but feel nervous as her voice steadily became more manic and disconnected over time; after a while, he became unsure as to whether she was even referring to him anymore as she continued to ramble on.

"That's right! We're Team Spirit! We can conquer any obstacle, no matter the cost! You don't need prior training to pass that stupid test! We can prevail through the sheer power of will alone!"

Aiden grabbed Trevor by the shoulder, putting his head into a tight armlock as she let out a hearty, triumphant laugh. He, in turn, nervously chuckled as he tried pawing his way out of her firm grip to little avail.

"Okay, I think I've got a plan!" she proclaimed enthusiastically after releasing Trevor, spinning him around and placing both of her paws onto his shoulders. "Alright Treph, here's what we're gonna do..."