A lot of new things had been added to Anistar since his last visit. The city that use to float on a pier, had now spread up the shore and up the hill a little bit. The great tourist attraction however still stood. The big glittering crystal wall raising out of the ocean, upon which the city was built, remained.
The sun's glare was intense, so much that the vagrant looked down and away from the sundial to save himself from blindness. He found himself looking down at the puddle of molten rock, who'se two eyes floated around, looking back up at him. A large collection of half-cooled magma sat on it, a ball that looked almost solid due to the black-ish brownsemi-solid magma. Kneeling down, he gently patted the ball, watching as the puddle moved so as to raise the hard part to his hand. The large man smiled down. "Good to see you evolved" He patted a couple times before Leveyr landed beside them. A black and blue metallic looking object rolled off the birds back. It appeared to be an old victorian lamp, though it's two eyes blinked at Ryan and the flame inside curled and flickered happily. With a large grin he reached out to pat the top of it's head too. "And you've evolved as well, congra-" At his touch, the creature's body began to shutter and distort, growing extra metal appendages and a more spherical head. He withdrew his hand in time to avoid being burnt by the sudden blue flame that erupted from the top of the creature's head. Chuey marvelling beside him at the rapid change from Candle, to Lantern, to Chandelier. The large man however couldn't marvel, he could barely think for the extraordinary pain in his 'tattoo'. A pain and heat so heavy and real, it felt as if a ball of fire the size of a motorbike was resting on his back. Even Chuey stepped away from the heat, exclaiming confusing at the strange rippling of light at Ryan's back, as if he were a hot road, bending the light above it.
As the group wound through the maze of piers, the young lass broke away from the group to dash off to a large ornate victorian building that the large man assumed was the gym. Ryan and Chuey instead continued to the large crystalline wall. The woman beside him sighed as they sat down at a table outside the cafe near the wall, obviously meant to capitalize on its fame. "I need to find a place to live. I can't live on the street." Ryan lowered himself into the seat opposite her, not wanting to interrupt out of fear of being blamed. "It's you're fault you know, you gotta help me find somewhere to live since you got me kicked out" she grinned, spinning a pokeball in her hand as she kicked him under the table. Annwn sat at a third chair, behaving as if he were a people's too. The long lioness trotted over, licked Chuey's hand before curling up at her feet. It was clear the woman was stifling the naw. Ryan grimaced through the pain as the chandelier pokemon landed upon the parasol. Though after a while the pain subsided as the chandelier calmed down. Fyre barked excitedly, sitting on Ryan's lap with his front paws on the table.
After lunch, and patting the little pokemon that enjoyed spending it's time wrapped around her wrist, Chuey leant down under the table to pull a rather large bottle from her bag. Seeing this bottle, which he immediately recognised as whiskey, perked the vagrant up considerably. He was happy to sit 'patiently' as she poured three glasses, for herself, Ryan, and Annwn. While Annwn could hold the glass in much the same manner as the human on either side of him, he had to poke his tongue out like any other dog in order to lap from the glass he'd been given. The pokemon wasn't particularly fond of it, sharing it with each of the others. Ryan had to laugh when the the waiter returned, not at the waiter's walk but the look on his face at the slobber covered, scratched third glass. It was a pleasant day, all things considered, as he watched Fyre propping his front end up by grabbing the edge of a metal bin, fastened to the ground, to sniff within it. Turning back to the table, he gently took the ball that was sitting in front of Annwn. "Is there a problem bud?" He said, gently turning the heavy ball over in his hands. "It looks fine. Should I run a diagnostic? None of the lights are blinking." The bronze and black ball had a sequence of L.E.D's within about 5mm of bulletproof glass wrapped in a band under the main bronze top segment. None were lit.
It was only after seeing Annwn shake his fluffy head that Ryan noticed the odd look on Chuey's face. "What?" He asked, only to be asked what kind of pokeball he was holding. "It's a cherish ball." Of course, the obvious question to follow, was indeed asked. "Where to start?" He pondered, turning the ball over in his hands. "Oh! I should preface with the drawbacks." He smiled unintentionally, one hand falling off the table to pat the fluff beside him absentmindedly. The teacher has been unleashed. "First, this is as small as it gets" he held it up, a full size pokeball. "Your pokeball can decrease it's size for portability. This one can't do that. It's too complicated to use collapsing technologies." He smiled, turning it over and passing it to her. "Second, It costs about as much as a masterball to make it. You know about masterballs right? 'the pokeball that will catch any pokemon'? Yeah, About the same production cost!" her eyebrows bounced at that, obviously at least slightly impressed. But he didn't notice. "And, it doesn't catch pokemon. A pokemon has to willingly enter the pokeball for it to be contained. It's kind of a side effect of one of the benefits." He grinned, taking it back. "So! What's so special about it?" She didn't ask. He didn't need her to. He held it up, pointing to the button where most pokeballs had one hole. It did have the same one hole, but there were ten more in the ring surrounding the 'button'. "See these? That one in the middle is like the one in any of your pokeballs. It materializes or dematerializes the pokemon back into the ball. But it's not just one, inside there is a tiny mirror that refracts the datastream into ten other dematerializers, or the stream from ten other materializers. It makes sure that even if one of them breaks, the ball can compensate and move the data to any of the other working ones until repairs can be made. And these other holes are in case the center mirror breaks, they perform the exact same role but for a specific materializer." he pointed to each hole and the motioned in the air as if turning a tiny screw as he spoke about the mirror distributing a datastream. "This also means that if you want it to materialize or dematerialize faster, multiple can act at once. Each one applying or taking a seperate part of the datastream!" The waiter was standing about 4 meters away, just staring in rapt attention. "Its shell is three times as thick as any regular pokeball." the large man suddenly bashed the ball on the table as if unafraid of breaking it.
"and it doesn't have a hinge for easy opening, which most pokeballs do as a side effect of having to maintain the internal compression system. But because it doesn't have a hinge, and doesn't open, it can't snap in half! In fact. This thing is touted to be nigh indestructable. I, for one, know that this particular ball has been wedged between a frieghter and the dock wall down in aquacorde town with absolutely no damage." He shuffled his chair around the table to beside her, to hold the ball up where both could see it easily. "But inside is where it gets really interesting" he started pointing at it as if it was transparent and they could see through it. Beholden of a super power of imagination that his companion apparently lacked. "There's over a hundred and fifty failsafe mechanisms inside, I think a hundred and fifty one but don't quote me. They make sure that absolutely nothing goes wrong with the storage of a pokemon." he shook his right hand dismissively as he asked not to be quoted on it while he held the ball in his left hand. "Hell, there are even two backup data storage segments. I'm serious! There are currently two copies of Annwn in stasis in this ball." He pointed into the back and bottom of the ball, at something obscured by the very obvious shell. At last she spoke, asking what these backups do other than sit there taking up space. "Well, they can be used to compare to Annwn whenever he's withdrawn into the ball!" he grinned. "If any part of his datastream is larger or smaller than the reference copies, the ball will start to analyze the difference, and compare anything it finds to a database of known issues, and then repair the data." his finger flicked side to side as if pointing from her to some pile of things, obviously lost in it's own little animated world. What sort of things, she wondered, would be 'known issues'. "Oh, data corruption, broken bones, poisoning, muscle atrophy, blood poisoning, virus's, heart failure, trauma. It's basically a pokemon center in a ball." he tossed it from one hand to the other. "Yeah they are super rare! Only given to pokemon league champions and the very rare Battle Barracks Generals that actually get to leave. Most end up having to stay indefinitely or being put to death for things done while locked up."
"Oh umm, I'm sorry about that" the large man suddenly blushed, having realised just how much he had rambled. Only to be told not to worry, she found his enthusiasm cute. Cute. "Did you see Shauna? She's enthusiastic about this gym thing. I'm actually kind of impressed" He attempted, not at all subtly to change the topic. "Most people drop out of the pokemon league after three gyms" He continued, to a mumble of agreement from the waiter wiping the nearby table. The two men nodded to each other as Ryan leant back in his chair. "I never did the gym challenge. Did you?" She had not. From what the large man knew, only one in ten people didn't attempt the pokemon league challenge. He must have beat the odds to meet a woman, who like him, had not.
By the time the young lass caught up with her travel companions two hours later. The large vagrant was hanging upside down by his ankles off the pier, holding a fluffy and curious Fyre so the old dog could sniff a fish that was poking its head out of the low tide water. He of course was not hanging by sheer strength of his legs on the pier. But instead by a fairly bewildered looking waiter, who was obviously wondering what he'd done to get himself into the situation. She sat silently at a nearby table with a bemused looking woman with a green streak of hair. Both of which biting one lip to stifle laughing at the sight before them. "Mr. Cabberin!" Shauna perked up when he finally surfaced with happy Fyre, the little dogs fluffy tail swishing happily. "I did it! There was a half an hour wait, but I beat the gym in just under two hours!" Ryan smiled, sitting Fyre on a chair as he stretched his own legs. The little dog put his head on the table, sniffing the bronze and black pokeball sitting in front of him. "It was hard! But I have seven badges. Which makes means I'm really close to being considered for the pokemon league tournament next year!" Ryan grinned, ordering another plate of food for the exhausted young lady. Which the waiter offered free of charge, for the achievement.
The group was laughing. Sitting with the young lady as she ate her meal and recounted with excited detail every moment of her 'ordeal'. A story that the two adults were happy to listen to despite the nagging thoughts at the back of their minds that it was a two hour event. As she started on the battle between herself and the gym leader, all the nearby screens blared to life. Lysandre, the pompous ass who'se phallic nose would haunt the dreams of any inadequate man, was staring at them from all angles. "Pokémon Trainers. I come to you by all media to make an important announcement. Listen well. Team Flare will revive the ultimate weapon, eliminate everyone who isn't in our group, and return the world to a beautiful, natural state." Everyone stopped what they were doing. All focus had turned to one of Kalos' most renowned inventors making an announcement. "Unproductive fools are consuming our future... If nothing changes, the world will become ugly and conflicts will raze the land from end to end. I repeat. We will use the ultimate weapon and wipe the slate clean." His face softened, almost pityingly for the final sentence. "I'm sorry, those of you who are not members of Team Flare, but this is adieu to you all." Once the screens returned to normal; the girls and pokemon finally looked at the vagrant. He was still staring at the screen that now showed a weather report. His jaw so obviously clenched it was a wonder he didn't shatter his teeth in his mouth. His eyes simply stared at the box, furious.