Episode Three Part Two
Knock You Down A Peg (Or Two)
The Lucario who had barged into the waiting room, surprising the occupants inside, was a rather tall one with the spikes protruding out of his chest and back of the hands being slightly curved carrying a load of papers with both paws.
"Hello everyone! If you are planning to enter the Guild, the time is now! I will be the person who will be the overseer of this event and will be here to guide you," he announced to the room.
It's time, huh? There goes my sweet time with that Vulpix.
The Lucario went over to the table right in front of Aaron's and Jezebel's, and dropped the stack off there.
"If you would like to join the guild, come over here, if not you can sit there and wait for your beloved…" he tapped his chin. "Thing to return."
"I've been waiting for my brother to be found for six weeks!" An Audino said excitedly from the back.
"That's great!" The Lucario separated the papers into two stacks. "The enrollment has two parts to it. A written and a Team Combat Test. We are currently going to do the written test now. The stack in the left of me are contracts that are basically just saying yes I want to join the guild if you sign it, and the other is a test that will ask questions about general teamwork, certain skills you have, personal aspects we might need to know, and etcetera. It's not really a test and more like a questionnaire. These tests will determine possible training you will have to face in the future."
I don't want to have to spend more time having to do training. Guess I have to actually try to do this properly now.
From around the room eight people, including Jezebel, Aaron, and the Pikachu and Vulpix from earlier came to the table and collected the test, contract, and a small container full of ink. The other four people were an Armorouge and a female Indeedee who seemed to be acquainted, and a Murkrow with a Skarmory.
Jezebel grabbed the papers for both her and Aaron and they headed back to their table. Vulpix and Pikachu opted for the tables instead of the benches.
"Here ya go," Jezebel passed the sheets over to his side of the table.
"You're welcome."
"That's my line," Jezebel took out a small pen from her bag with some ink and began the writing.
Aaron looked down at the contract. It basically just contained some stuff about how you would not abuse the power gained from the Guild and that you spend your time helping people.
This seems more like a pact than anything.
Aaron signed it by dipping a large part of the tip of his claw into the ink printing on its side onto the paper and on the side of the mark left writing an A on the side of it, thus properly signing the contract.
He moved onto the test. At the beginning most of the questions were just about stuff about yourself, your name, which Continent you grew up in, who's your partner, experience with dungeoneering, criminal record, (and due to how his crimes were never found he put none. Obviously.) and stuff like that. While afterwards the questions were about how you would act in a certain scenario, like your partner fainted in a combat situation, what would you do?
Aaron finished it rather quickly and was left with nothing to do.
Aaron looked over to the Vulpix. He was making a loud ruckus about having to write and how all of these questions are stupid and nonsensical. The poor Pikachu was stuck with writing it all down and Lucario had already visited them multiple times as if he was a teacher.
Which he kind of is in some part.
Watching them arguing was getting tiresome, so while resting his head on the table with crossed arms underneath he looked around at the other people.
The two bird Pokémon were atop the table writing with their talons and the Indeedee and Armorouge were done with the test and chatting with each other.
"Ah, yes. I am simply wowed at having the chance," the Armorouge said.
"I know, right! It's lucky that we finally had a bit of good luck with this!" The Indeedee replied
"It isn't luck, it was destiny!" The Armorouge pumped his arms up in the air.
Wish I had their enthusiasm.
Not realizing that he was staring at the two the entire time the Armorouge and Indeedee took a look at him and gave a wave. Aaron gave the same motion. The two returned to their conversation.
After a few moments of pure boredom Lucario headed to the middle of the room. "Hello everyone!" He seemed a bit more drained. "I would like to announce that everyone has finished the written test. Return your sheets to me and we will soon begin the second test."
Jezebel took Aaron's test and everyone headed to Lucario.
"Thank you," Lucario said, grabbing each test and contract one by one.
"Okay," he piled up all the papers into a bag on his side. "We will now begin the second part of the test: the Team Combat test! Now if you'll just follow me and we will head over to the training room." He turned and left the room. Everyone followed.
From the left hallway the went past the lobby containing more people than before, most likely due to it being later on in the day, and the group of nine went into the right hallway and followed Lucario into a door at the right right before the cafeteria.
The training room was a large rectangular space with the door being at the corner of it. Inside the room was a large white outline split in two and a line of benches on the wall where the door is.
"Welcome to the Training Room! For the team combat test we will be doing as the name implies, team combat! You and your teammate will work together in order to duel another team. In order for you to win the duel they must surrender, or you must be able to restrain them in some way. Remember you don't want to harm them too badly or make them faint, that's my job when we start training. I will be watching over your performance In this fight and will determine how many learning sessions you will need in the future. Anyways, head for the benches."
This'll be good.
The thought of a fight excited Aaron. It had been an awful amount of time since his last spar. Most of the fights he had lately were just with the brain dead swarms of feral Pokémon which were incredibly boring since their brains were practically mush. But with an actual person? That would be great. They would have planning, lean how to adapt, they would change throughout the fight instead of just running them at you whenever you just take a step into the room they're in.
The group sat down on the benches with Lucario standing ahead of them. "I will be choosing how you will fight out of random chance. And by random chance I mean I'm going to close my eyes, point somewhere, and since I don't have any object permanence it will be random," Lucario took a paw and covered his eyes and did as he said.
C'mon, let it be the Armorouge! It would be fun to mess around with Vulpix but I want a challenge and he's the only evolved Pokémon here.
Lucario stopped rapidly moving his arm and ended up landing on the Indeedee, "Good, okay. The first team to fight will be Armorouge and Indeedee and the second will be… " He shut his eyes again and repeated the movements.
Please let it be me. Aaron looked over to Jezebel, she was wearing and had both of her fingers crossed.
Suddenly the arm of Lucario stopped and it ended up being pointed at… the Murkrow.
Great.
Jezebel gave out a relieved sigh.
"Murkrow and Skarmory!"
The Armorouge and Indeedee gave each other excited looks while the Skarmory and Murkrow gave each other confident smiles.
"You two may head up to the opposite sides of the fields and I will count down for you to begin the fight," the teams did as what was said.
The Indeedee held herself in a strong stance while the Armorouge seemed to be a lot more loose. The Skarmory and Murkrow both stood on the edge of their talons waiting to begin lift off. Lucario stood on the side of the field and began to count.
"Three
Two
One,
Begin!"
Lucario spread out his arms as he announced the start of the fight.
In barely a second after it began a mystic force began to spread throughout the space leaving a strange feeling in the air. It came from the Indeedee and it was due to her ability: Psychic Surge.
At the same time the two birds took off the ground and the Murkrow started to flap his wings in a rapid pace causing a large forceful wind coming from his direction.
After the surge coursed through the area the Armorouge pressed his arms together and in a moment his shoulder pieces slid down to his hands. Unfortunately before he could blast a single move the Skarmory came down from the air with a burst of speed due to the tail wind and slashed down at the Armorouge with a Night slash before getting back higher into the air.
Trying to move against the wind due to trying to circle back from the attack the Skarmory slowed down a bit and a flash of a mystical fire beamed its way onto the Skarmory from the Indeedee causing scorch marks.
After being able to recharge from the attack on him the Armorouge started up a new move and a purple energy came coursing out of him and spread out through the room like a blast of noise. The move was not very effective against the Skarmory but seemed to weaken him a bit and it didn't seem to affect the Murkrow at all, who began darting down at the Indeedee. The Skarmory circled around the two.
The Indeedee took the talon first dive from the Murkrow head on which barely did any damage. But before the Murkrow could get back into the sky the Indeedee took him by the talon and pinned him to the ground with a single hand, causing the Murkrow to be unable to fight any longer.
Midway during the fight Vulpix suddenly burst out of the room with Pikachu saying something about forgetting a bag. Aaron didn't care. He was too enthralled with the idea of having to fight against the Indeedee team. Unfortunately it was only an idea and the best he could do was watch.
It would've been great.
Realizing that his teammate is down the Skarmory began trying to get off another Night Slash at the Armorouge to finish it off, but before that could happen the Armorouge had already charged up a full Arm Cannon and the Skarmory took it head on.
He soon fell to the ground, defeated.
"That's that! Good job everyone! Truly a great battle. I have Orans in my bag for you and you can all rest on the bench as the other teams fight," Lucario went down to the downed birds and since they were still awake fed them an Oran, healing them up. He just tossed some to the Indeedee who let go of the Murkrow.
"That grab really caught me off guard man," Murkrow said to the Indeedee.
"Thank you! I've been practicing on it," Indeedee smiled.
"That's a very specific thing to practice." The two teams congratulated each other and headed back to the bench healing up.
"Okay now it's time for Garchomp and Salazzle to face off against Pikachu and Vulpix- where are those two?" Lucario said, cutting himself off.
"I think those two ran off for their bag in the waiting room-" Aaron tried to say before some noises came from the door.
"Urgh, Arceus! Why was that thing!" Vulpix exclaimed to Pikachu.
What thing? Did they run into- yeah they might've actually.
"Let's just do the test please," the Pikachu replied.
"Where were you two! These are the beginning moments of you two at the guild, and those aren't putting up good reputations."
"I'm sorry sir," the Pikachu apologized. "I just forgot my bag at the waiting room and I was about to ask you if I could get it but then Vulpix ran off to get it."
"Look that doesn't matter now! What the hell was that thing? It had an ax on its head, it had a weird fish tail, it was so… Urgh."
Yep, they're talking about Chimera. Wait, they left the infirmary?
"Look there's not enough time for what you're saying right now because we are going to have to move onto the Team Combat test," Lucario scolded. "You will be facing off against Garchomp and Salazzle. Now head off to your side."
"B-but there was- hmph." Vulpix grumpily made his way to the opposite side of the field with Pikachu. Aaron and Jezebel both were already at the right side of the field.
Vulpix started with a pout at first but then he looked at Aaron, and a smug smile grew.
Oh he thinks that a type advantage will do him good? He's in for a surprise.
Aaron returned the smile. Jezebel just looked awfully annoyed.
Lucario went back to his original position and began to count down again,
"Three
Two
One
Begin!"
Vulpix began to puff out his chest and a cool feeling began to grow around him but that wasn't fast enough. Before anyone could notice, before anyone could see, Aaron was already dashed over to the side of him. Pikachu jumped over to the side trying to avoid the dragon.
From behind Aaron put one of his scythe-like claws around Vulpixes neck. From his side trying to get him off Pikachu with a burst of energized speed tried to slam into him, only for Aaron to slightly move out of the way causing Pikachu to skid across the floor.
"Ow…" she said, trying to regain her footing until a blood red claw circled around her neck.
"I believe we're done now," Aaron yawned, still keeping Vulpix around in his wrap.
"W-what?! That's, no!" Vulpix yelled. "Y-you cheated! You couldn't have just beaten me so-"
"Sorry bud, but unfortunately you lost. I think that's a bit of my fault though. Should've tried to scale and face you against equally matched opponents," Lucario said
Aaron let go of the two.
"W-what?! I can face off against this fool at any time and win! It's just that he- he cheated!" Vulpix complained.
"Look, I want you to hear me out, I know, insane. But he didn't cheat. He just had more training, he obviously has experience with combat. You just need some more help, which is fine. So why don't you just accept that?"
"It is because I- Urgh!" Vulpix couldn't say anything else.
"It's fine, have some an Oran, and one for your teammate even if you aren't that harmed," he handed two Oran berries to him. Vulpix could only reply with a hmph.
Aaron headed over to Jezebel who was just sitting down on the floor.
"Good job, exactly what I expect from my bodyguard."
"Even if I did do a good job it was still bad."
"Well nothings perfect," Jezebel stood up.
Lucario came back to the middle of the room, "Okay we have finished the tests! Congratulations! You have all been accepted into the Expedition Society! For now I will have someone escort you to your new rooms, show you the job boards and explain how everything goes at your new job! Thank you for your time."