Well, it's been a while since the last update, but thanks for waiting. Hope you enjoy.
The trip, from the mountains, to Veilstone City almost flew by for Espir. Wrapped up in his own thoughts and feelings, his own concerns for his family, he barely paid any attention to the others as they trekked down the mountain, continuing out towards the East.
The only day that did not feel like a dream for Espir, or indeed a nightmare, was when the party stopped off in Celestic Town to resupply, following the journey through the mountains.
Celestic Town was tiny in comparison to most of the other settlements that Espir had been through during his time in Sinnoh. While Alexis collected her supplies for them to be able to carry on with their journey, Espir took his time looking around the town, which took all of five minutes. He could stand in the center of the town and see all of it. There were very few homes and other simple buildings collected around a large, pit-like feature in the center of the town. Within this pit, was a shrine of some sort.
Espir tried to read what was written upon the shrine but found that the words had been all but worn away with age. It seemed to be significant, considering the entire town was built around the shrine, but Espir couldn't fathom how exactly it was important, besides just being old. It surely represented something, but he resigned himself to not being able to unlock every secret in this world. Some things were simply closed off to him by time itself.
The party continued on their journey, pushing on towards Veilstone City and the promise of a third gym badge. Espir could tell that Alexis grew more eager the closer they got to the city, as they surely would have tried to find somewhere to sleep over in Celestic Town, had she not been in such a hurry to carry on. Espir didn't mind, as it just meant he was closer to his goals- whatever they were. He didn't even know any more. He knew he couldn't achieve anything by chilling calmly in the middle of nowhere, but he didn't know how to achieve anything he wanted to achieve while stuck in this Pokémon party. He also had no idea how to achieve anything without them, so he didn't see any reason to leave just yet. He had to be patient, stick out the waiting period, and hope an answer would come along sooner rather than later.
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Pushing further south by the day, Shane was just about done with snow.
He knew, by his own experience at least, that snow was his new natural habitat. He didn't care. It was nice to look at momentarily, but after a solid couple days of traipsing around and hoping to not be ambushed by the angry pink flying thing, the novelty of the snow had really just burned away for him.
So, to get away from the snow, Shane walked south- or what he hoped was south by the position of this other world's sun- as fast as he could. He was a little confused at why he wasn't feeling hungry, even after days of travel, but it worked out well, as there was nothing to eat due to the heavy snow covering everything. He had the mountain range to his right and used that to guide him through Sinnoh, inch by freezing inch.
If only he could find someone to talk to before the pink thing rocked up to try and ruin his fun once again. The snow made everything feel very clinical and lonely. He wasn't the most popular person around, but even he needed company after walking by himself for days without seeing a single other person walking around.
Perhaps, what really rubbed the loneliness in that much further, was that he had so much time to think on his situation back home. How were his family coping with him being gone? Did they blame themselves?
He just had to focus on putting one paw in front of the next, with one eye on his path into the warmer unknown, and the other looking out for the pink being, determined to drag him back to his deathly fate.
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Following on from Celestic Town, Espir and Alexis carried on towards Veilstone City. They had to make their way across a rather fast flowing river. The river, surprisingly, was even more heavily populated with people than Celestic Town was and Espir found himself wondering where all those fishermen lived, if not in the most local town.
From that point on, their journey was quite pleasant. The weather continued to get better as they gradually moved in a south-easterly direction towards Veilstone City. It got warmer and the sun began to become more intense, now that they were leaving the cooler mountainy area behind.
There were many forested areas on the way to Veilstone City, which helped to remind Espir of Eterna Forest and his calm first few moments before Alexis arrived to throw everything into motion.
Espir was bored out of his mind when, finally after a few more days of traipsing along paths and green grass, he and Alexis laid their eyes on their intended destination.
Veilstone City was huge in Espir's eyes and reminded him of Oreburgh City, though only in the sense that it had a heavy theme of rock-based architecture. The primary difference between the two cities was that Veilstone was both larger and clearly cared more about the conventional sense of aesthetic design. The buildings of Veilstone City were built on top of carved out stone supports, while in Oreburgh, the rock had been almost more important than the buildings built within it.
While Veilstone City was at least warmer than the mountains with Mount Coronet's mountain range, it still had a distinctly exposed feel to it. Perhaps with the isolated, extended portions of rock, the whole city felt rather lonely and split apart.
"We've made good progress," Alexis exclaimed as she and Espir looked out at the city before them. "Do you want to do a bit of sightseeing before we find somewhere to hole up for the night?"
Espir just shrugged, knowing that whatever his response was, Alexis would likely misinterpret it. She almost had a knack for picking the exact opposite of what he was trying to tell her.
Espir couldn't decide whether he was impressed, or underwhelmed at the city. It was a strange cross between imposing, with the rock supports, and barren, also due to the rock supports.
Alexis appeared to be happy enough, walking around and pointing out different buildings, like she had done when they'd entered Oreburgh and Eterna.
Espir didn't take in much of what Alexis was saying about each of the buildings, as he didn't believe any of it was relevant to what he needed to get done. For now, he was just on this trip to keep out of the clutches of Team Cosmic.
Finally, after far too much traipsing around, in Espir's opinion, they found a secluded corner of the city, dug slightly into the rock that surrounded the city. Within this quiet area, they found a collection of large rocks.
Espir was in the process of rolling his eyes at the whole ordeal of finding special rocks in a city that prided itself on its affinity with rock, when Alexis read a small plaque, describing what these rocks were and why they were so important. The plaque was small and nailed into the wall on their left, so Alexis had to squint a little to read it, but she got the gist. These weren't just normal rocks, but meteorites.
Despite his better judgement, Espir started walking towards the meteorites with his hand outstretched, wanting to be able to have said he touched space rocks. He didn't see any signs that forbade him from doing so and he knew it was less likely that he would get in trouble for it, than Alexis for being an irresponsible trainer.
Before Espir could wonder if that was a selfish thing to think, there was a sharp crackling in the air, as if it was becoming highly charged for a lightning bolt. He stepped back quickly as the air partially ripped open. It wasn't enough to see through the portal, but it was apparently enough for Alexis to run away entirely from the area.
"Come on!" She called to Espir without looking back.
Espir was furious, but as he hesitated between following Alexis and inspecting the portal further, it snapped shut once again. It left no trace, though Espir was still just as angry as he had been the instant Alexis began running away.
"What the hell was that?!" Espir shouted after Alexis as he ran to catch up with her. She had run off to a safe distance, but carried on walking, refusing to look back at the meteorites. "I said, what the hell was that?!" He shouted again. He didn't forget that she didn't understand him, but in his anger, he truly didn't care.
"Look, I don't know what you're saying!" Alexis shouted back, "I never do!"
"I don't give a damn! Hey!" Espir said, as Alexis was still marching away from the meteorites, as if with a specific destination in mind. "Where do you think you're going?"
"Don't start mouthing off at me," Alexis said breathlessly as they strode through the city. "I've had quite enough of seeing silly things like that. It must have been a figment of my imagination, or some weird weather pattern. Yeah, that was it. Weather. Weird things can happen, you know."
"You know that that's insanity," Espir argued back, "and where are we going?"
"Can you stop jabbering for just two seconds," Alexis snapped, "I need to think, if we're going to have any chance at winning this thing."
"Winning what?" Espir asked, bewildered at Alexis' antics, but their location answered his question as soon as he looked from Alexis, to the building they were both now standing outside of.
The third gym. Veilstone Gym.
Alexis was planning on rushing ahead with the gym challenge in order to ignore the entire meteorite issue. Espir stared up at her, appalled, but she ignored him, too, and pushed on in to the gym.
Espir trailed behind Alexis as the two of them walked into the Veilstone Gym and laid their eyes on the challenge that awaited them.
Having seen two formidable gym interiors already, both Alexis and Espir were underwhelmed at the interior to this third gym.
What appeared to be a simple dojo lay before the two of them. Over a large training mat, were the markings for the battle arena. Wooden beams held up a ceiling that had no decorations. The walls had few decorative features themselves. This was a place of training and honing of skills. There was no time to stare at art upon walls when there was training to be done.
Upon a small pedestal, was a small brass bell. Alexis, unsure where everyone was in the vacant dojo, struck the bell and it rang out with one singular chime. With the room being so filled with wood and training mats, there was no echo and the chime died quickly, leaving a silence that felt even heavier than the one prior to the ringing of the bell.
Gradually, Espir made out the sound of light footsteps. They were barely perceptible, but were getting slightly more audible with each passing moment, until a small girl emerged from one of the openings at the opposite end of the training hall.
She had short, bright pink hair that was turned up at the edges. She wore exercise clothes, a blue top and white jogging bottoms. She looked more like she was here for a workout, but still approached Espir and Alexis. Alexis looked as if she didn't expect this girl to be anything more than the person that greeted those seeking the gym leader. Instead, this girl was the gym leader.
"Hello?" The girl said as she got closer to Alexis and Espir.
"Hi there," Alexis smiled, "I'm looking for the leader of this gym?"
"That would be me," the girl smiled back, "Maylene."
"But I thought the leader was-"
"I took over recently," Maylene said, cutting in as if she had had this conversation plenty of times before. "Is your team ready to battle?"
"As ready as we'll ever be," Alexis nodded, which caused Espir to give her a side-eye look, knowing she wasn't being entirely honest.
"Good," Maylene said, turning away from the two of them and walking over to one end of the training mat. "Shall we?"
She gestured to the other side of the mat and Alexis nodded, starting to walk over to that end. Espir hadn't been expecting to fight until the following day, so he wasn't looking forward to what was to come- in addition to how Alexis must have been off her game, due to the abnormal occurrence outside by the meteorites. She was not in a fit state to be calling out strategy for a Pokémon battle. He had a bad feeling about how the fight was about to go down.
Espir took his side by Alexis, bracing for what was to come, when she held out a hand in front of him.
"Not now," she said quietly, and plucked off a Pokéball from her belt.
"Are you ready?" Maylene called from her end of the mat, holding one of her own Pokéballs in her hand, throwing it up slightly and catching it in anticipation of the fight.
Alexis nodded.
"Then let's begin."
Alexis gripped her Pokéball and threw it out into the arena.
"Letos, outcha go!"
Espir could only watch on and hope it went better than last time.
ultima-owner: Let's just say... he's got a bit of an ego.