Chapter 6: Out of the Comfort Zone

Crom, Nida, and Pleo found themselves trading awkward stares with each other. Yes, there was supposed to be a sparring partner after their crawl through Mosca's maze, but… this older Druddigon waiting in the center of the last wood-paneled chamber...

"Of course, sweetie!" Gwenith chuckled. "You didn't think that I just came and went during the session to restock your bread loaves did you?"

"Um… Nida? I thought friends didn't fight with each other," Pleo said, somewhat unnerved by the idea of fighting the Pokémon that gave them bread in the morning. Crom also felt that the battle arrangements seemed rather unsettling. After all, it was one thing for the young Druddigon to fight with his brother Cenn, but...

"Mom, are you sure that-?"

"I'm pretty confident that I can stomach a couple nicks here and there to help you younguns grow a little," Gwenith responded as she adopted a tensed pose.

"Try and hit me with your best shot!" she roared.

"Uhmm… rawr, look at how totally fearsomely cute I am?" Nida growled endearingly back at the Druddigon.

"Yeah! Yeah! We're tough! And scary!" Pleo chimed in as he attempted to mimic Nida's growl, but wound up producing something that came out as more of an awkward squeak.

"Well, if you won't land the first hit, then I will!" Gwenith huffed before she lunged for the group with an open claw.

"Whoa! Mom?!" Crom exclaimed as he narrowly rolled out of the way of a weak, but still stiff claw swipe. Gwenith's swipe carried on past Pleo, who had narrowly ducked the attack, and into Nida, sending her tumbling back a bit towards a wall.

"Ga-aah! That was an attack!" Nida shouted as she bounced up back to her feet and braced herself against her foe. "Growling disarmingly is listed in the Dojo annals as a perfectly legitimate technique!"

"You won't put a feral down for the count that way!"

"Okay! Okay! We'll fight!" Crom cried, before he attempted to rush back, and latched onto his mother's arm with his maw. The younger Druddigon quickly came to regret doing so, abruptly spitting out her arm.

"Owowow!" he groaned, it seemed biting down softer on his mother's jagged hide didn't make it hurt any less.

"Oh come now, Crom. I'm not letting you take off from the bakery to pull your punches! Put some thought behind them!" the older Druddigon admonished, before she slugged Crom with a forceful, if not squarely aimed, punch to the chest that sent him reeling.

"Argh! Moooom! Couldn't you have made that point with something less painful?" Crom grunted as he got back up to his feet, now keenly maintaining his battle posture.

"Hey, if you're gonna fight, then we can hit back too!" Pleo cried from behind the older Druddigon. The young bird stiffened his neck, and felt a hot sensation forming at the back of his throat before he opened his beak and disgorged a glowing white sphere at Gwenith's direction…

Only to watch, to his astonishment, as the Druddigon backflipped over his ball of light, used her wings to reorient her body so her claws were again facing the ground, and entered a momentary, stalling glide in mid-air…

"A-Aaaaaaaah!"

And bore down and pounced upon Pleo claws-first, pinning him to the arena's floorboards.

"You have to think fast in battle, Protecto- Oof!"

The Druddigon found herself thrown forward from her trapped opponent, who had, while still sprawled-out, wide-eyed and panting on the floor, disgorged another glowing ball on his foe in panic.

"D-Don't scare me like that!" Pleo fumed as he righted himself and got back up to his feet.

"Hah, that's more like it! You're learning already!" the Druddigon complimented as she threw herself back up to her feet. Gwenith then heard a weak plink and a faint drop of liquid fall on her hindquarters, followed by a second pink of something falling onto the arena floor. When she looked at the source of the faint noises, the Druddigon saw that it was a Nidoran's barb...

That had failed to lodge itself in her hide, glancing off and spilling its poison harmlessly outside the Druddigon's body.

"Um… At least it went further that time?" Nida said sheepishly from behind a corner panel. Crom interrupted her awkward moment with a roar as he attempted to lunge into the fray.

"Got you now, Mom!" he cried as he slashed at the other Druddigon, only to wind up slicing at air and charging headlong into a low wall. After crumpling up stunned against the wall, Crom found himself nursing his head as he pulled it back from a visible dent in the panel.
As for the where the elder Druddigon went, the matter was quickly answered by the sound of Gwenith tromping just beyond the wall.

"Aaaack!"

"Come on, Crom! Before she gets away!" Nida cried, hopping up onto the wall's ledge and vaulting over the other end. Crom got up, shook some stars from orbit around his head, and ran around the wall to rejoin the fray, leaving behind a solitary young Lugia.

"Enh! Enh!" Pleo cried as he tried again and again to bound over the wooden partition as Nida had.

Pleo found that although he was able to make flapping hops up to see Gwenith locked in combat with his partners over the ledge, he couldn't quite make it over.

"Why are these walls so high?!" he fumed before he gave up and ran around in the direction Crom had gone, just in time to see Nida being swatted away after a failed attempt to poison her sparring opponent with a running tackle.

"Oof!"

"A bit smarter, but you'll need to do better than that!" Gwenith called to the sprawled-out Nidoran.

"Nida, just keep her busy a little longer! I'm almost done honing my claws!" Crom shouted out while poking his head from behind a partition.

"Aha! That's where you are!" the elder Druddigon exclaimed as her son sank in the realization that he had just betrayed his position. "Uh-oh," he quietly uttered, as his mother came charging towards him.

At this point, Pleo had become a bit overwhelmed by the entire experience, and tried to think of something, anything to put this ordeal to a close.

"Stop it!" the young Lugia shouted, then beat together his wings to whip up a churning, whirling wind that cut across the floor of the arena. It struck Gwenith and sent her tumbling past her child into a wall.

"Good thinking, Pleo!" Crom called from his position, before starting to run as his mother regained her bearings while slumped against her wooden partition, "Nida, I think we've got an opening!"

"Right behind you!" Nida shouted, as she got to her feet and bounded after her partner.

Crom gave the hardest slash he could muster at his mother's belly scales, and quickly ducked out of the way before Nida came sprinting up to deliver a passing tackle to the Druddigon. Gwenith's jagged hide stung back, but the two were keen to swallow their urge to stop and cry out in pain. Luxuries such as staying still would have to wait for the two rookies until after they had some healthy distance between themselves and Gwenith, who would surely be hot on their heels…

Only… She never came.

"Oof! I- I am slain!" the older Druddigon cried, before she staggered and overdramatically toppled forward onto the floor, closing her eyes. The scene made Crom pause for a moment, and after he saw that she was not getting up, he rushed over out of concern.

"M-Mom?! Are you-?! I d-didn't mean to-!"

Only to find himself cut off by his mother jumping up and latching onto her son, lifting him off the ground in an embrace.

"See? I told you your old mother could take a nick or two!" she said, while nuzzling her child's crest.

"Moooom! You're embarrassing me!" Crom protested as he flailed to try and break free.

"Oh, so that's where he gets it from," Nida groaned. As Gwenith finally let her child go, the Nidoran turned and noticed that Pleo was still maintaining a healthy berth from the group of three.

"You did great too, Protector!" the Druddigon cheered towards the white bird, but her words didn't seem to have any effect on the Lugia, who was visibly shaking and wide-eyed.

"Pleo?" Crom asked.

"Pleo, it's over. We won. She won't attack if you get near right now," Nida called out.

"No! She hurt me! And she's scary!" Pleo chirped back, his voice still tense and anxious. It made Gwenith's expression sink a bit.

"I- I suppose that I might have overdone it a little," she murmured to herself as she set Crom back down on the floor, which prompted Nida to go up to try and console her teammate.

"Pleo, it was just a sparring match," Nida explained, nuzzling the young Lugia. "She's still the same Gwenith that works at the town bakery."

"But it hurt!" Pleo protested.

"Er… Well, that's what happens in battles, yes," Nida sighed, flattening her ears. "But if you don't practice, you could wind up really getting hurt by a Pokémon that won't be friendly after fighting."

"Yeah, like pirates!" Crom exclaimed.

"'Pirates'?" Pleo asked.

"Mean Pokémon that gang up to bully and take stuff from Pokémon that can't fight back against them," Crom growled from beside his mother. "And to top it all off, they even wear scarves like we do but don't follow the pact that goes along with wearing them at all!"

Pleo didn't like the sound of these "pirates," but… but something seemed to be missing from what Crom was saying. How exactly would putting oneself in danger of getting hurt help avoid getting hurt later?

"Besides, if you never practice, you won't ever get any stronger," Nida added.

"Uh-huh! Uh-huh! A Protector's gotta be strong in order to be able to do any protecting!" Crom chimed in with a sawtoothed smile.

"I realize that it's probably different than blowing over sea rocks... Or entire tunnels," she said, uttering the last part under her breath, "But Gwenith really isn't scary."

"Y-You promise?" the young Protector stammered.

"I promise. Now come on, let's go shake Gwenith's claw," Nida said as she guided Pleo over to the Druddigon. The two stood there, staring at each other, waiting expectantly for… something.

"Psst! Pleo! Stick one of your wings out! Like Guildmaster Hatteras showed you!" Nida whispered.

"Like thi-? Oh!"

As Pleo followed the Nidoran's instructions, he was surprised to see that the elder Druddigon had grasped his extended wing firmly, but gently. She gave it a firm shake before letting go and drawing her claw back to her side.

"You're improving a lot, Protector!" Gwenith said, before giving a soft pat to Pleo's head.

"See? Would a scary Pokémon do that, Pleo?" Crom asked.

"Heh heh, I guess not," Pleo giggled, having finally been convinced that Gwenith bade him no ill will. He would have to think twice before asking to train with her in this "sparring" thing, though.

"Um… How do we get out of here anyways?" Crom asked.


Mosca took off a couple panels from the upper walls of the maze and unspooled some netting for Team Traveler and their partner to clamber down. After exiting the wooden training course, Pleo drank some crisp, cold water from a bowl while Kiran inspected his body, Oran Berry in beak.

"So it seems like Gwenith was quite the competition, huh?" the Swellow asked as he inspected the young Lugia's body.

"Yeah, that battle was really tough- Ow!"

Pleo recoiled as Kiran squeezed the berry along a cross-cut he made into the fruit's flesh, causing some juice from the berry to dribble onto a wing scrape.

"It's alright, Pleo! The sting from the Oran juice means that it's healing you!" Crom explained.

"Crom… I thought the idea was to reassure him," Nida sighed as Pleo returned to his resting position being attended by Kiran as the Swellow continued.

"Why didn't you just fly, pollito? You would have been able to outmaneuver your opponent much earlier on if you had," Kiran asked as he daubed some Oran juice onto Pleo's other wing.

"Ungh! 'Fly' over them?" Pleo asked after wincing a bit due to the juice stinging.

"E-Eh?! But you're una ave!" Kiran interjected while giving the berry's pulp over to his comparatively large charge. "I mean, your wings look a little scrawny and all, but surely you can fly a little?"

"Well, he doesn't know how," Crom said, scratching the back of his crest sheepishly. "And Druddigon can't exactly fly with these wings. We glide, and we're not that great at it."

"Yeah, and I sure can't teach him," Nida piped up, hopping a bit off the floor. As he looked over the young Protector nibbling through his Oran pulp, the Swellow realized to his dismay that Nida and Crom raised a good point.

"That's… something I shouldn't have taken for granted," he groaned, burying his face into a wing.

"One step at a time, Kiran," Mosca said as she walked up from behind. "Though given the Protector's progress today, I think that we can put him through some flight-focused training for the next few sessions."

"It'll have to do," the Swellow sighed as he wondered whether conceding to Hatteras' suggestion to babysit Pleo in the Day Care might have been the more prudent option after all.

"Hrm… Have you all recovered a bit from your training?" the Hawlucha asked the three younger members of Kiran's team.

"Uh huh! Uh huh!" Pleo cheerily responded as his teammates echoed, the sting of the Oran juice and the aches from their scrapes having already faded.

"Now then," the Hawlucha continued. "I think that it's perfectly reasonable to now call it a-"

"Woo hoo! Training's over! Come on Pleo, let's go!" Crom cheered, throwing his arms back into the air before he made a beeline for the chamber door, flung it open, and ran out into the corridor outside, with Nida and Pleo closely following behind him.

"See you at the front, Kiran!" Nida called back as she darted through the now-opened sliding partition.

"Day- Hey! No se corre en mis pasillos!" Mosca huffed after the three Pokémon.

"Heh. Well, I guess at least one thing is predictable with that pollito," Kiran said as he too turned, took wing, and made his leave after the rest of his team.


By the time Team Traveler departed the Dojo, the sun had just begun to touch the horizon and begin its process of slipping over for the night. The group decided to make their way back to the guild hall by walking in the gully of the town's stream, which had enough dry ground exposed to be walkable. The team made their way along, passing under the frail bridges that stitched the two sides of Bluewhorl together over it. The water was clean, flowing at a pleasingly meandering pace, and briskly cool to wade in...

"It tastes like the water at the Dojo!"

Most importantly, it did a remarkably good job at cleaning out the leftover dirt from the mud trap in the maze out of Pleo's feathers. After the first few chilly dips and a few subsequent moments to stop and preen his feathers, his stints in the water grew increasingly long and enjoyable as the white feathers began to better shield his skin underneath from the creek's water.

"Where are we going now?" the young Protector asked, as he came up onto the shore from his latest journey into the creek.

"Well," Nida said, "I think the next step is heading to the Guild Hall and-"

She opened her mouth to continue, but found the words in her mouth abruptly dying as she had a sudden realization.

"Oh… I just remembered something. I still need to drop off that watering can I packed in your bag that I promised I'd bring to Mami and Papi while they were in the field today," she sighed.

"Eh, we can all afford to take a little diversion, Nida," Kiran chirped. "We got out a little earlier than I expected."

"Erm… I mean, I guess it couldn't hurt to see your dad again," Crom added in a cheery tone.

"Mami will also be there too, Crom," Nida emphasized, which caused the young Druddigon to briefly blanch a pale shade and give his wings a nervous beat.

"Uhm… Maybe you could ask her to be a little less scary?"

"Crom, she's perfectly fi-" Nida admonished, before she turned to notice that her team's newest member suddenly wasn't there. "Wait… Where's Pleo?"

Crom and Kiran looked around their surroundings, and after a brief moment of panic, they caught the sight of his tail disappearing around the corner of a hut up the hill of the gulley the creek laid in.

"Pleo! Wait!" Kiran squawked, as he flew after his young white charge, Nida and Crom following the Swellow gingerly up the stream, where they ran into their teammate dawdling in the middle of a path.

"What are you doing?" Nida scolded, "Just because this is a small town doesn't mean that you should go wandering off like-!"

It was then that Nida noticed that Pleo had a number of young Pokémon gawking back at him from the path, a motionless ball lying beside their feet.

"Nida! Nida! These Pokémon have a 'ball'!" Pleo chirped eagerly. As Nida and her companions drew nearer, they saw the Pokémon were coming from a tent that was shaped much like a Froslass' head. One of the edges of the white and violet tent straddled a shallow pool, which a small Finneon was flopping out of on its fins. The pool extended to the ledge of the gully, ending in a sluice that was apparently meant to drain it out into the stream.

One after another, more and more young Pokémon darted, flew, or awkwardly flopped out onto the path to the best of their abilities. The young creatures soon enough wound up crowding around Pleo, and jabbered among themselves excitedly.

"Wow! You're so pretty," a Poliwag gushed.

"How do you become a Protector? I wanna become one, too!" the Finneon Nida saw earlier cheered.

"Auntie Hariti! That 'Lugia' thingy is in the yard!" a marginally older Meowth called, turning its head back towards the tent's entrance. Almost immediately, the Meowth's voice summoned a wispy white and blue wraith, with a purple face and yellow and red eyes, that floated effortlessly above the ground.

Perhaps it was the pleasant chilling effect the creature had on the air around her in Tromba's tropical and muggy weather, but being in this "Hariti's" presence felt strangely disarming, as she seemed to exude a certain eerie motherliness to her demeanor.

"Oh my. I must say, I wasn't expecting you to need my services, Kiran," she smiled, replying in an gentle, airy tone. "Not that I would pass up the chance to care for this most… Unusual trainee of yours."

"Ahehe, well… That's not quite why we're here," Kiran chirped, giving an awkward ruffle to his feathers.

"I found a ball!" Pleo exclaimed cheerily, waving and gesturing at the ball still lying in the path.

"Ah, well a little curiosity never hurt a Pokémon around here either!" Hariti giggled a bit at the young Lugia's enthusiasm towards such simple things. "Hang on, I think there are some snacks left over from mealtime for you and your teammates."

The ice wraith briefly ducked back into her tent, phasing through one of its walls. Pleo squawked out of startled surprise, "Sh-She disappeared!"

"Eh? She always does that though," a young Bidoof nonchalantly responded.

"It's something that Pokémon like her can do with practice. They often get disoriented when they go back to normal for some reason, though," Crom explained as Hariti returned to the group through another wall, this time clutching some small, frosted, thick-skinned, red fruits in between her digits.

"Here you go, frozen Pomeg berries straight from my prize bushes!" she said, offering the fruits to Pleo and his companions. Pleo paused a moment as he watched his partners claim berries for themselves and split some cuts along the rind to expose what looked like red seeds inside.

"What's 'frozen'?" Pleo asked, tilting his head at the fruit.

"It means that I made them very, very cold, sweetie. Things sometimes change when that happens to them," the Froslass explained. "Go on, take it!"

Pleo hesitated a moment, and then grasped the fruit in between his wings. The red berry felt cold to the touch, and after hesitating a moment, Pleo managed to force part of the rind off along a cut Hariti had made into it, exposing some red seeds inside.

The young Protector paused a moment, and then pecked at the seeds. Much to his pleasant surprise, the seeds were firm like the blander seeds that Pleo had eaten earlier, but tasted spicy-sweet and had a peculiar aftertaste.

"I think I like it!" Pleo chirped, as he dutifully returned to pecking out the seeds in the fruit. Little by little, the white bird and his companions had whittled their frozen fruit down to little more than rinds when a timorous voice called from the tent.

"Au-Auntie Hariti? I-Is it gone yet?"

"Huh? Who's that?" Pleo asked, turning from his snack.

"It's those blotched Pokémon!" an Oddish huffed.

"Yeah, you don't want to talk with them, my dad said all they're good for is eating!" a Spearow declared.

"Yeah, they're bad Pok-! Yip!" a Snubbull cried out as the Froslass flicked a small ice shard at its rump. The Oddish and the Spearow also found themselves stumbling forward and nursing their rears, whining quietly after they too were struck by small pieces of ice.

"Thank goodness she shut up those críos," Nida mumbled under her breath, lowering her ears.

"That's quite enough out of you three," Hariti admonished sternly before turning to Pleo. "Protector, er... I realize that it might seem a bit strange to you, but some of the younglings here are extremely shy towards-"

Much to her dismay, the young bird had already made his way to the tent's entrance, prompting her to call after him frantically.

"Protector, wait!"

By the time she reached the tent, Pleo had made his way in, and was passing a group of young Pokémon with blotches on their heads- much like Ander the other day- that were cowering in a corner.

"Auntie H-Hariti!" a Chatot who was still covered in soft, downy feathers squawked in panic.

"H-Help!" a Bulbasaur stammered, as the toad tried to hide in vain to hide behind the Chatot that was far too small a shield.

"Pl-Please make it go away!" a trembling Mudkip cried while curled up in a ball at the foot of one of his larger compatriots. The compatriot was a small Scyther about as tall as Pleo, wide-eyed, and frozen in place in a corner.

The young Lugia, after pausing a moment to give a quizzical look, proceeded towards some sundry painted doodles he had noticed on rough paper on the floor of the tent as Hariti and his teammates rushed in.

"Pleo, you should really-" Kiran began, only for Pleo to cut off his words.

"Wow! You make paintings here?" Pleo asked as he examined the doodles. There were pictures of the harbor (if with buildings that didn't look quite as sturdy as their actual counterparts), of the mountain and its shroud of fog, of the different townsfolk…

Of the multitude of pictures, one stood out to Pleo in particular. It was a picture that was a little less crude than the others that depicted a funny little blue blob with purple antennae on the sides of its head that was balancing a blue circle on its nose.

"Who made this one?" Pleo asked, as he pointed out the picture that caught his attention.

"I did," a voice called from the corner, and when Pleo turned back towards it, he saw that the speaker was the young Marked Scyther, uneasily tapping her scythes together.

"It looks really pretty!" Pleo chirped.

"Uhm… Thank you, I guess," the bladed bug buzzed, clearly at a loss as to why this Pokémon would choose to praise her handiwork. Her companions in the corner similarly found themselves at a loss for the behavior of the dread beast in front of them.

"H-Huh?!" the Bulbasaur exclaimed, poking his head out from behind the Chatot.

"I-It's- It's being nice?" the Mudkip asked, as he began to ease of the ball he had curled his body into.

"Uh huh! Uh huh! He's not mean at all!" Crom tried to reassure the young Marked. There was an awkward pause as he and the other Pokémon realized that, beyond some perplexed stares and some faltering half-steps that were quickly taken back, the Pokémon huddled in the corner just couldn't work up the courage to walk up to the young Protector.

"Why are they just sitting there?" Pleo asked, tilting his head up to the Froslass.

"I… Think that maybe it would be best for Kiran to explain this to you once you're gone," Hariti sighed. "It's not nice to try and force Pokémon to do things they're not ready to do."

"Yeah! Come play with us instead!" the Bidoof from earlier called, poking her head into the Day Care's entrance.

"Uhm, as tempting as that offer is, we have to get going," Nida replied, folding her ears back in obvious displeasure. "We're busy Pokémon."

"We should get going, Pleo. Come along," Kiran instructed, much to the audible displeasure of the young Pokémon in the yard of the Day Care.

"Aww..."

"But I wanted to play with the birdie..."

Kiran led the team back out to the path, after they traded farewells with Hariti and her charges, the four continued on past the bridge. As the team made its way out back to the fringes, the town's structures once again began thinning out. As Pleo once again found himself under the shade of the hillside trees that began to line the path, he couldn't help but ask...

"Who were those Pokémon?"

"Some young ones that Hariti watches for Pokémon around the area," Kiran explained as he landed on a branch to briefly rest his wings.

"She helps to raise a few who don't have parents that watch over them," Nida added as she made her way over a root that intruded into the path.

"Huh?"

"Well, you see Pleo, sometimes young Pokémon, for one reason or another, don't have anyone around to look after them. Sometimes they're all busy with work around town, sometimes no one can find any of them, and sometimes they just aren't there for them," Kiran explained from his perch as his teammates continued on the path a small ways. "When that happens, Hariti takes care of them either until the Pokémon that take care of them come back, or until they grow old enough to take care of themselves."

"How come Nida looks after her brothers and sisters instead of Hariti, though?" Pleo persisted, turning back to look at the Swellow.

"Sometimes… Hariti gets very upset when young Pokémon have others to take care of them and don't behave themselves… Repeatedly," Nida grumbled as Kiran left his perch to catch up with the group.

"How come those Pokémon in the corner were scared of me?"

"It's because they were Marked, just like that Scyther that startled you a few days ago," Crom said, as he stopped to claw at some visibly loose bark on a tree that had caught his eye.

"So they didn't like me either?" Pleo murmured. "But why?"

"They were probably expecting you to be mean to them," the Druddigon explained as he left his tree, flicking aside a few scraps of bark that had clung to his claws.

"But… How come?"

"Well, a very, very long time ago, those Pokémon's ancestors did some very bad things to the old gods…" Kiran explained as he took a moment to circle the group in a small clearing they were passing through. "And they've somehow since got it in their heads that when Protectors like you came along again, that you'd be mean to them."

"But I'm not mean, am I?" Pleo asked in an apprehensive, squawking tone.

"Of course you aren't, pollito!"

Pleo breathed a sigh of relief. If he wasn't mean, then that would mean that sooner or later, those Pokémon with the blotches would realize that… Right? But, there was one other matter from the Day Care that Pleo couldn't help but wonder about.

"What does it mean to eat a Pokémon? The brown and red birdie said something about it."

The question instantly brought the entire group to a stop, and caused Crom and Kiran to look flustered while they thought about how they should answer.

"Er…"

"Uh… Well…"

"Hrmph, don't think about it too much. If that kid wasn't talking about the food that Ander sells for a living, he's probably some mouthy feral runt that got dumped there by his parents," Nida grumbled as she continued on the path.

"Now Nida, that's hardly fair! Most of the town is related to or descended from ferals if you go far back enough!" Kiran admonished as he followed along with Crom.

"So… Ferals are Pokémon that eat other Pokémon?" Pleo asked as he too began to follow his group.

"That's kinda oversimplifying," Kiran protested as the group rounded a bend, "But-"

"Doesn't that hurt the Pokémon that get eaten, though?" Pleo interrupted, as he thought about how he had pecked and chewed and generally torn apart the various berries, seeds, and those colorful things called 'gummis' he had eaten over the past few days. If it hurt to get nicked by Gwenith, this being "eaten" sounded absolutely dreadful!

"It's... Complicated, but yes, it does. And it hurts them in a way that healers can't make better," Nida explained, which caused Pleo to stop and think a moment.

"So ferals are mean Pokémon, then?"

"It's hard to explain… In the way that ferals live on their own, they need to be able to eat, and sometimes the only way for them to do that is by hurting another Pokémon," Kiran answered.

"But I don't hear anyone talking about eating Pokémon in town…"

"That's because Pokémon that live in town eat Gummis like the ones you've been eating for the past few days and aren't allowed to eat other Pokémon. Other Pokémon aren't allowed to eat them in return," Nida said as she hopped up a ledge, prompting Crom to mull a moment and interrupt.

"Doesn't the guild allow that 'scavenging' thing that Ander's involved with, thou-"

"Crom. Stop. Talking," Nida hissed, "This is already a confusing enough thing to explain!"

Oh, so that's why those brightly-colored things seemed to show up so often at meals. Something about Nida's explanation still didn't add up for Pleo, though. If Pokémon didn't eat other Pokémon...

"Why doesn't someone just make the feral Pokémon live in towns, then?" Pleo demanded, which caused Kiran to stop and come to a rest on the ground, before he turned back to Pleo and began to speak with a gentle, if firm tone.

"Pleo… Do you remember what Hariti said back at the Day Care?"

"'It's not nice to try and force Pokémon to do things they're not ready to do'?"

"One of the rules for Pokémon that wear scarves like us is that no matter how much they might gain from it, other Pokémon aren't supposed to try to eat us or take advantage of us or force us to do things we don't want to… but that in return, we're not allowed do anything of the like to another Pokémon," the Swellow explained. "And you have to live like that even when there's other Pokémon counting on you, which some ferals find to be asking for too much. It wouldn't be terribly fair to expect ferals to leave us alone if we went around trying to force them to live in a way they weren't ready to, don't you think?"

That all seemed fine to Pleo… with one caveat that he couldn't seem to wrap his head around.

"Huh? But what about Pokémon that don't follow those rules? Didn't Crom say that pirates also wore scarves, but they took things from Pokémon anyways?" Pleo asked, thinking about those creatures that Crom spoke of in the training maze. "Aren't they also Pokémon that aren't ready to live like you do?"

"Uh…" Kiran muttered, beak agape.

"Eh?! Of course not!" Crom cried.

"Yeah, if you let them have their way, they'll just go on stealing from Pokémon like us!" Nida protested.

"Let me clarify that statement a bit," Kiran sighed, putting a wing over his face. "'It's not okay to try and force Pokémon to do things they're not ready to do when they're not trying to hurt you or your friends.' When they do, you're perfectly in the right to try and make them knock it off!"

"That's also why you're allowed to hit back at attacking ferals," Nida whispered.

"Oh, I… I guess that makes sense," Pleo said, before Crom interrupted his train of thought as he gestured off towards some bushes in a clearing.

"Hey, I see your family's field, Nida!"

As Nida and her companions drew nearer to the clearing, the neat rows that the bushes were planted in became apparent, as did the little Leppa fruits that could be seen in between clumps of leaves here and there.

"Mami! Papi! I'm here!" Nida called out, her voice soon being answered as a few bushes began to rustle before Nida's parents emerged before the group.

"Hola, mija," Teja said before the Nidorino drew forward and gave the Nidoran a small nuzzle with his snout.

"Hola a todos, and pleased to see that you've been growing, Crom," Marley said in a congenial, if guarded, tone.

"H-Hello, Marley," Crom stammered, as he found himself folding his wings back and subconsciously backpedaling from the Nidorina.

"You don't have to be so shy, Crom," Marley tut-tutted. "I've never taken any trophies from nice dragons before."

Crom suddenly decided that he needed to be anywhere not directly in front of Marley, and hastily retreated behind Kiran with a shudder.

"Nida! Sh-She's doing it again!" he whined.

"Mami, couldn't you have said that differently?" the blue Nidoran groaned.

"What? That was supposed to be reassuring!"

"I think that not bringing up your past exploits would probably work better, dear," Teja sighed as he flicked away a loose spike under a bush.

"Well, what's the point of that if everyone on this island already knows about them?" Marley huffed in protest as her daughter couldn't help but roll her eyes a little.

"Anyhow, I brought the pail," the Nidoran said as she fetched a small, rudimentary clay pot with a handle and long neck from Kiran's bag and brought it over, which prompted the Nidorina to stop a moment to give them an inspecting sniff.

"Hmm… Very good," Marley said. As Nida's parents sized up the watering pail, the group was interrupted by the sound of rustling from the undergrowth around the clearing, and a voice calling out.

"Aha, I found you!" it called out, as a four-legged creature covered in jagged, striped fur with a long tail popped out of the undergrowth, carrying an stony ring in its maw.

"Eh?! Who are you?" Pleo asked as he stumbled back from the Zigzagoon.

"Pleo, that's a feral," Nida whispered as she and the other Pokémon present quickly adopted cautious postures, just in case the creature had come with belligerent intentions.

"Grr," Marley growled at the Zigzagoon, "If you think that you're going to walk off with my berries, you've got another thing comi-!"

"Whoa! Whoa! I'm not here for that… I'm just a humble Pokémon that's come to pay respects with the gift from the land," the feral Zigzagoon explained before he dropped the ring in its mouth and nudged it forward.

"Huh?"

"I'm presenting you a gift, great one," the creature bowed.

"Oh! Er… Thank you?" Pleo responded as he went forward to curiously examine the item. It was a most peculiar ring… or was it a rock? Whatever it was, it was a yellowish band with crags that jutted out laterally, as if it were meant to be worn somehow.

"Why, it looks like a crown!" Crom murmured to himself.

"A… 'Crown'?" Pleo asked, but before anyone could explain what the little Druddigon meant, the Zigzagoon abruptly spoke up and bowed again.

"It is truly an honor, please enjoy the offering. But now I must go," the creature replied before darting off back into the undergrowth. Pleo deposited this rock- ring- crown- thing into Kiran's bag as Team Traveler was left to wonder why the Pokémon was so quick to leave. As if in answer, the quiet was broken by the much deeper sound of brush being trampled as a Tropius tromped into the clearing, slowing to a stop to catch its breath.

"Mildrew?" Teja asked, flicking his ears out of surprise. "Is something the matter? Shouldn't you be at your orchard?"

"That's why I'm here!" the Tropius panted. "A feral just barged through my field with some rock or whatever and knocked over a bunch of apples my daughter was in the middle of setting aside to eat at her job at Melissa's!"

The comment caused the rest of the Pokémon in the clearing to pause and trade looks with each other.

"Well, that would explain why the Zigzagoon was in such a rush," Crom groaned, putting a claw over his eyes.

"Uhm… Pleo, I think that we might need to take a moment to help the nice Tropius," Nida sighed.

"Huh," Pleo chirped. "But-?"

As Pleo trailed off, he noticed something strange from the corner of his eye. Even though the sun had not set yet, there was something sparkling like stars in the sky above the town.

"Kiran! Kiran! Look, the stars are out!"

"Eh, I'm pretty sure that's just some dust kicked up by a Bug-Type," Mildrew answered nonchalantly. Pleo, on the other hand, was made only more curious by the Tropius's comment, and waddled over to a ledge that provided a view above the treetops of Bluewhorl Town's harbor.

As Pleo looked over the ledge, he saw that the "stars" were being scattered by a flying red and yellow six-limbed bug of some sort. The creature flew briskly along, quickly finishing up a long, trailing arc of glowing powder which slowly fell from the sky. Down in the water, a large, strange ship with a slim and tapered hull entered the harbor at a brisk clip, carried along by the wind and the trails of sea Pokémon flanking its hull closely. The ship had two masts with large, golden sails sporting a central design of what seemed to be a gray teardrop with two spikes jutting out along its sides. Indistinct figures followed it in the air, with other figures visible moving on its deck. Occasionally, there would be a stiff wave or column of water coming from the flanking sea Pokémon directed at other points in the water, surely some sort of sport or game.

"There's a ship! The stars brought a ship to town!" Pleo insisted in his cheery demeanor. The others were not so quick to brush that statement off. One by one, the Pokémon in the field came up to the ledge, and as they saw the strange vessel Pleo couldn't help but notice something very wrong with what he had expected would be a fun sight for everybody…

Everyone else watching at the ledge had turned pale.

"Oh no, first ferals disturbing my orchard, and now this?" Mildrew muttered to himself.

"We need to head back to town to make sure the kits are safe, now," Teja barked to his mate.

"You take the burrow, I'll check on the older kits in town," Marley tensely replied as they rushed off down the path from their field, their preoccupation with their crops having been completely erased by the sight of the strange ship.

"Wait! Marley! Teja!" Pleo cried, turning after the Nidorino and Nidorina who were disappearing down the path. "Where are you going?! What's going o-?"

Before Pleo could finish, he heard a deep boom and the faint sound of shouting, followed by another boom, and then another.

When Pleo looked back down, he saw that the ship had rammed a smaller craft and forced it up onto the docks in order to make a space for itself. A few of the figures who arrived with the ship stayed nearby, casting barriers of light similar to those Pleo saw at some sparring matches at the Dojo.

The rest of them were making their way into the town from the ship. Every now and then, a bright flash or a torrent of water could be seen ripping through the paths and structures along Bluewhorl's seaside, sometimes from the direction of the boat, sometimes from the opposing direction. Each one made a faint sound that carried above the din of shouts coming from the town; a crack, a pop, a boom, a churning noise much like angry waves from the sea.

After so many cycles of the cacophony, one of Bluewhorl Town's structures would crumble, or catch fire and trail smoke into the air, or simply cease to exist.

"Huh?! What's-?! What's going on?! What is that ship?! And why are the Pokémon from it wrecking the town?!" Pleo squawked, bewildered and concerned about why this ship had all of a sudden started ruining the home he had lived most of his life in.

"Pleo," Nida answered seriously. "Those are pirates."


Author's Notes:

- una ave - Spanish: "a bird"
- (¡)No se corre en mis pasillos! - Spanish: "Don't run in my hallways!"
- críos - Spanish: lit. "babies", used in this sense to tersely refer to someone who is acting infantile or immature.
- Hola a todos - Spanish: "Hello, everyone"