Hitori managed to continue her journey for another two hours despite the soreness in her feet. Managed to reach what appeared to be a clear break point in the route. There was a stream moving down the rough hills, separating it a bit from the rest of the route. Not only that but there was a man-made bridge to get to the other side. The breakpoint was clear of any patches of wild grass in a clear circle that was even raised a bit off the ground. The final point of interest was a wooden picnic table just sitting out in the middle of the area.
While the need to get off her feet was enough to push Hitori over the bridge, another worry arose before she could cross the threshold into the break area. "W-what if it's private property?" She asked herself mostly. If she laid her stuff down would someone come out and arrest her for trespassing? Hitori Gotoh, forced to retire before she could even begin because of a scandal. She could see the court proceedings happening before her eye when Whismur's voice managed to snap her out of it where she noticed that her partner was pointing towards a sign sticking out of the ground. 'Hammerlocke's Route 7 Camping Area. Please clean up after yourselves' It read.
"A-ah, r-right," Hitori awkwardly laughed at the obvious mistake she was making before taking a seat at the picnic table. She let out a sigh of relief to finally be off her feet, taking her phone out she checked her time. It was around 6 pm. She had eaten before leaving so it was probably time to eat right? The fact that both her stomach and Whismur's decided to audibly make themselves known at the same time solidified the first order of business.
Dragging her suitcase up onto the table, she unzipped it and retrieved two of the containers of Pokemon food. As she was unscrewing the lid on the first one she remembered the advice the website had for her. "Whismur, do you think you'd be able to find any berries around here?" She asked.
Whismur, who had jumped up onto the bench next to her to watch the container with a near drool suddenly snapped at attention towards Hitori. She tilted her head slightly at the question before flinching when Litwick spoke up in that wispy voice of his, having found his way up onto the picnic table. Hitori had to admit that he was nearly silent when moving around. Litwick confidently pointed out towards the bridge, his wax body morphing so his hand extended out further. There was a cluster of trees back across the bridge. Litwick continued to speak though Hitori didn't really know what he was getting at beyond there probably being berries over there.
Whismur eventually began to nod along understanding something Hitori couldn't. Litwick began to head off right away while Whismur told her as best she could what Litwick was trying to get across. While she couldn't understand her words either. She did understand what Whismur was trying to get across. 'People throw away berries over there, so the trees are berry trees' or something along those lines. Most of her understanding came from how Whismur moved her arms around while explaining.
Hitori gave Whismur a nod "So he thinks there should be a lot of berries there? Okay, then see if you can find some to save on food. Ah, you can eat as much as you want from what you can find!". Whismur certainly seemed happy at that prospect as she ran off to join Litwick in searching for food. Hitori watched them cross the bridge for a bit with a small smile on her face. She could see the trees from where she was sitting, so if they got in danger she would be nearby. Not that she thought she'd be any able help. Maybe it'll be like a team-building exercise for them.
As that thought sank in, she suddenly recoiled as though she was slugged in the face. Team building, camping, it may have been delayed but it was just the kind of thing she had a complex over wasn't it? Her mind conjured up the image of her partner going off with Litwick and a bunch of other Pokemon and Kita, abandoning her to go be an extroverted, normie Pokemon. Whismur spoke in a weird human tone as she explained how she was going off to a mixer and then off to make more friends in high school and other things Hitori herself barely knew about beyond the word being used by those types.
She slunk down under the picnic table where things would be shaded and gloomy. "Ahhh… Sorry Whismur, please remember your partner when you're off living it up in the big city as a popular Pokemon. I apologize for thinking a sub-wim… pod," Hitori started muttering but trailed off as she noticed a Pokemon emerge from the stream.
That purple and pale blue color, those gloomy yellow eyes, a wimpod. They came out and the two locked eyes. The wimpod wasted no time scurrying over the clear ground to join her under the picnic table. Now normally a Pokemon suddenly approaching her would cause her to freeze up and worry. But not this one, if anything she felt at ease around them. Something the wimpod apparently shared as they only gave her a single glance before happily sniffing around the area.
'I- I really am at the level of a wimpod!' Hitori thought to herself with a slight jump. She knew they ran scared from anything that wasn't fellow wimpod. She was right every time she apologized for being so arrogant to believe herself to be more than a wimpod. She couldn't help but feel somewhat comfortable knowing that even if the rest of the world rejected her, there existed a type of Pokemon that would accept her.
The shock was also enough to help calm her down. Whismur was her partner for years now, but she was overthinking it. Coming out from under the picnic table, she pulled her phone out, there was something she had been meaning to look up. The wimpod meanwhile, expanded their range of shuffling about. Hitori brought up the Pokedex site, while it may not have been a proper Pokedex with access to normally restricted information, it still had more than enough for her.
Bringing up whismur, she began to read through a page regarding their behaviors for an explanation for Whismur's increased appetite. It didn't take too long to find, according to the website, whismur go through multiple growth periods in which their appetite increases massively. While wild these growth periods are much more spread out and serve the purpose of storing fat that allows them to live deep in caves with little food for an extended period. However, when being trained the growth period is actually the first sign of evolution, where whismur begins gathering the energy necessary to evolve.
The site does explain that it doesn't mean they're going to evolve soon. Going into more detail the trigger for these growth periods in the wild is being driven out of their territory within caves, causing them to eat anything they can until they can find a new segment of cave where they won't be disturbed. This is actually believed the main force that causes whismur to evolve into loudred in the wild. While for owned and trained whismur, battles, training, and travel emulate the similar thing which causes the same instinct to gather food.
It is the first of three signs of evolution for whismur, the second being the whismur's ears spending more and more time unfurled until spending more time straight than curled. The final sign and closest sign is a personality shift where whismur becomes very outspoken. It is this sign that usually causes a whismur to leave their pack in the wild as loudred and whismur do not live together.
Hitori was happy to finally have an answer to that question, her taking Whismur to that battle café to battle must have started it. Guess it meant she was going to have to feed Whismur a lot in the future anyway, maybe even more than what the Pokemon food package was recommending. Her thought was interrupted as there was a loud rustling coming from trees, one loud enough that the wimpod had bolted right into the water, glowing yellow-green lights flaking off the Pokemon in a way that Hitori recognized as the move struggle bug.
The rustling soon revealed itself to be Whismur who burst from the foliage running for the bridge with her arms full of berries, even her ears were being used to hold some more like she was a skwovet. Following shortly behind her was Litwick who had a mischievous look upon him, he was also running but was just that much slower than Whismur. "W-w-what's g-go-" Hitori asked as she got up and took a step or two towards the two.
Before she could continue her words, her two Pokemon were then joined by a swarm of karrablast, all of which were brimming with anger. Four, five, six, they kept coming chasing after the two. 'they must have been living in those trees' Hitori thought to herself.
"W-whismur, Us-" Hitori started but stopped when she realized that Whismur's arms were already full. That and as her Pokemon continued to make their way towards her, Litwick stopped upon reaching the bridge and turned to face the Pokemon, a confident cry coming out. It made sense, a fire-type would be effective against bug types. That and Litwick seemed fired up.
"L-litwick e-ember," She called out. Litwick took a pose that seemed to be beckoning the bug types to approach him, without the swing of his head that he needed before, the flame on his hair flared up as a trio of fireballs split off from it. He even pointed forward before sending the attack out. The flames shot out into the rushing group of bugs and while they all made moves to get out of the way, two of them were hit by the attack and were flung back as they were engulfed in the flame.
They were not cowed by a single fire type, however, and soon their horns were glowing with the signs of peck or fury cutter. "E- Acid armor," Hitori called out, changing her mind after a second. Litwick immediately began to become less solid, looking almost as though he was melting into the puddle. When the karrablast reached him and dove at him with their horns, they sank into his waxy body.
"A-another ember," Hitori called out and right away Litwick flared out the flame on his head, conjuring another round of embers that were free to slam down into the bugs that were now caught in his body. A few more were knocked away, even falling into the water. Despite this, the karrablasts that remained pulled their horns out only to ram them right back in to try and take out Litwick through attrition.
Whismur at this point had crossed the bridge and deposited her hoard of berries onto the ground and began to repeatedly cry towards Hitori trying to explain the situation. Though Hitori couldn't quite get the meaning while she had her eyes on the battle. "Ember again," Hitori called out. It may have been a straightforward strategy, but it didn't seem like it needed more than that. Ember looked like it was enough to knock them out and it could even take multiple out as once.
Again and again, Litwick fired off his attack beating back the remaining karrablasts with ease, even if he took more attacks in the process as the final ember knocked out a few more karrablasts and finally made the swarm give up and run away from Litwick and the rest of his group. Litwick swelled up with a puffed-out chest and turned to look at Hitori was a large smile on his face as he pointed to himself. Even if he nearly fell over as his body was riddled with holes and he had clearly taken more damage than he was trying to act like he had.
Hitori immediately ran over, "L-Litwick! A-are you okay?" She asked while fumbling around and trying to keep the candle Pokemon from falling over completely. Litwick proclaimed confidently that he was fine. If anything he seemed overjoyed that he was receiving her attention. "A-ah I'll get you a potion," she said before scooping him up in her arms and running back over to the picnic table. It didn't take too long to get a potion out and start spraying Litwick, whose amorphous body had already reformed back to normal, but Hitori was going to make sure he was fine.
Letting out a sigh of relief once the potion took effect, Hitori leaned back and took in the battle. She hadn't seen much of Litwick's training earlier today but already it seemed stronger and faster. She didn't do anything other than tell him to use ember, so it was just Litwick's effort. Did he just need motivation? Hitori imagined it, her litwick weirdly speaking in a human tongue "Thanks to you Guitar Hero I got all the motivation I need to grow this strong!". The image while probably false, still was enough to make her smile as she drank in the imaginary praise.
Whismur climbed up onto the picnic table's bench and began to complain and point at Litwick, snapping Hitori out of her delusions. "Eh? Hmm?" Hitori let out as she listened to Whismur. She still couldn't understand the specifics of what her partner was saying, but she could understand what Whismur was trying to get at. Something happened in that thicket of trees where it was Litwick's fault, and he started the fight.
"I-is this true?" Hitori asked Litwick, did she already fail as a trainer and now she had a delinquent of a Pokemon? Was she going to be extorted by him and he won't even help out in battles? Before she could spiral again, Litwick began to give his side of the story. Though it was quite short, a derisive snort followed by a few more cries of explanation that she couldn't grasp at all.
Despite that, Whismur went silent before nodding in… Agreement over the reason? "Whismur, what did he say?" Hitori asked. Whismur did try to explain it with several whispers, but Hitori couldn't pick up on it at all. "I, see," She lied.
Changing subjects abruptly to help cover for her lack of understanding, "W-well I guess y-you both still succeeded at getting food, G-good job! Y-yay!". Her voice was a bit strained and cracked a bit as she tried to come off as cheery. Her two Pokemon were happy to draw their attention back to the small pile of berries they had gathered. Even helping Hitori as she moved them onto the table.
"O-okay u-um, if y-you have some favorites s-set them aside, t-then I'll divide them up," She explained. Hitori watched as the two of them began to divide up their spoils, as she expected Whismur to take the sweet berries for herself. Meanwhile, Litwick was a bit harder to pin down, he took a few red berries that she vaguely remembered as spicy ones, before starting to try and assemble a mix of pink, blue, and yellow berries.
Once they had both decided which berries they wanted above the others. Hitori ended up pushing the rest of them towards Whismur, she needed the extra food if the site was correct. Thankfully Litwick didn't have an issue with it. A thought did occur to her, and she took out a bag and put some of the berries they each set aside. "these will go for breakfast and lunch tomorrow," She explained. She was again thankful that the two of them easily accepted this rather than try and get aggressive over their food.
Left alone with the remaining berries the two Pokemon got right to eating. Hitori had to rush to try and get a count of how many berries each of them was going to have before taking her phone out to try and find a calculator for how much it meant she had to feed them more. Once she had, she opened the containers of Pokemon food and was surprised that on the inside of the lid were plastic inserts that were made to be used like plates. She carefully counted out the amount of food she was setting out. As she pushed the two plates forward, she watched as they eyed the food and took a testing bite of it. Her worry was unfounded as both of them seemed to enjoy it and happily moved between berries and processed food.
Hitori finally was able to let out a sigh and rested her head against the table. She would have to add another thing to the long list of things she wanted to thank her parents for. She was starting to get an idea of what being a parent must be like. After a minute or two of watching her Pokemon eat, her stomach began to grumble once again, and she went back to the suitcase taking out some of the ready-made food she had brought for herself, and dug in as well.
After everyone had eaten and the few things she had taken out were put away. Hitori let her two Pokemon do as they pleased with the rest of the evening as she certainly wasn't going to try and walk for another two hours using the remaining sunlight. Before she went to do her own thing, she remembered the wax she bought and broke the first bar up, holding it out for Litwick. The candle Pokemon's eyes shined and excitedly accepted the wax and began to chew on it almost a bit like it was gum.
The other thing was preparing the campsite. Not that there was much for Hitori to do, she didn't have a full tent or anything. But she still spends a few minutes finding a spot and laying the sleeping bag out, lying down on it for a couple of seconds. Only to get back up and try a different location. None of it was like her old bed in terms of comfort and it was out in the open It didn't feel right for someone like her who preferred a more cramped feeling. Her solution in the end was to line up her suitcase and guitar case in an L-shape and use the inner corner as a spot to lay her sleeping bag down, which felt better.
Next came out a solar-powered phone charger and getting her phone plugged into it, Hitori had already used it quite a bit and it was getting low on power. She considered that if she got an electric-type Pokemon, they could be used to charge it up instead. Kita probably already had her Pikachu do such a thing, so they could constantly take, what was it called 'totes grammable selfies?' or something like that. Thinking about Kita, Hitori looked over the message history between them, the last message being from before the opening ceremony.
'C-Could I message her?' Hitori thought to herself as she stared at the phone. She didn't have anything else really pertinent to do at the moment, even if she was already planning to get her daily four hours of guitar practice in with the rest of the evening. While she was considering such a thing her phone beeped with a notification, shocking her enough that she tossed her phone up into the air and nearly fumbled it a few times as she narrowly avoided having it hit the ground. Her heart was thumping, enough that Whismur stopped her bit of exploration to look over at her.
"A-ah, I was just surprised," Hitori told her partner. Whismur's hearing was good enough that she probably heard how hard her heart was beating at the surprise. Whismur whispered something that felt like understanding before she went back to pacing around and exploring the campground a bit. Hitori turned her head away from Whismur and back onto her screen where she saw that there was a message from Kita.
'Hey there Hitori! Tonight's probably your first night out in the wild I bet! How are you holding up! I'm doing great, trekking through the Wild Area before the challenge started totally got me ready for it! Already I'm probably halfway to Hulbury already,' Kita's message read.
Hitori carefully read the message a few times before typing out a response, then deleting it and starting over a few times. Even if she was a bit more used to texting someone who wasn't her parents on the phone it was still very nerve-wracking for her. 'I am doing well this night. I deeply appreciate the concern you have shown me. I do not believe I had gotten very far along the route, however, this was due to taking breaks to stop and train my honored Pokemon partners' Was what she eventually sent.
Kita's reply was almost immediate despite how long Hitori took to figure out her own message. 'That's good to hear, my first day was totally rough and I was kind of worried for you!'. Before Hitori could even finish reading that message, Kita had sent another one already. 'I was wondering if you'd be willing to help me out. I wanted to try and get my newest team member ready for her first gym battle. She uses Icy wind like your whismur so do you have any tips for it?'.
Hitori wasn't sure if she should be happy that Kita was relying on her or scared because what if she gave bad advice and then Kita would lose her gym battle, and then, and then. Hitori shook her head to dismiss those thoughts to try and focus on the conversation. 'My deepest apologies but I have no advice to give. I didn't train Whismur in Icy Wind. I begged my parents for an advance on my allowance and used that to buy a TM for the move' Hitori replied.
'Ah, well too bad! Vanillite can already use the move, so I was hoping you had some kind of secret technique you know?'
'I may have something that can help you! If you look at this site, it's a database for any moves that Pokemon can learn along with explanations for how they used the move and tips on how to teach them. It even has videos you can submit yourself of different Pokemon moves' Hitori quickly replied back. Copying the link to the Attackdex site and sending that over as well. Even if she was expecting another immediate reply from Kita, it took a couple of minutes for a reply to come.
'Woah! That's amazing! I'll have to make sure every one of my Pokemon shows off their moves! Kind of like contests! Kind of a shame we don't have any here in Galar. I'm sure Pikachu and Vanillite would love to show off!' Kita replied. Followed shortly by some stickers of the two Pokemon in question.
Hitori didn't reply immediately, her thoughts occupied with contests. It was a scary thought in more than one way. In a way it was closer to her desire to become so famous and popular that her social issues won't matter anymore, but at the same time. She didn't know if she could handle it, just stepping up to give battle commands was enough to make her sweat and feel nauseous, if she had to perform at the same time? Even worse, she could see herself becoming way to invested and becoming an even bigger weirdo over it. Better she just focuses on her guitar and battling.
'It is indeed a great shame, alas no such contests exist within Galar. So I shall focus my efforts on gathering gym badges and my guitar' Hitori sent. From there, their conversation turned more towards non-Pokemon related things where Kita was happy to once again talk, or rather text enough for the two of them. Eventually, Kita got busy with something as she apologized and didn't respond, so Hitori took that to mean the conversation was done and took a deep breath, another social situation handled, she was getting better at them she believed.
Setting her phone down, Hitori finally turned her attention to what she had been wanting to get to since she stopped her walking for the day, her guitar. She took advantage of the fact that her headphones were able to plug into the guitar to not disturb the wildlife too much. The last thing she wanted was for the campground to be attacked again just because she was playing. Quietly she began to get into her routine, a few chords while she double-checked to make sure everything was in tune. Then she began to play, pushing herself to perform a piece that was just a touch too hard for her. Which was kind of hard to find if there was one thing Hitori considered herself good at, it was guitar, allegedly, according to some of the comments on her videos, and Litwick.
Whatever Whismur and Litwick were doing before was quickly dropped as even without the amp, her playing was enough to get their attention. Both of them find a spot to listen attentively towards Hitori, Whismur leaning towards more quiet enjoyment, moving to take a seat next to Hitori's sleeping bag. Meanwhile, Litwick took a spot on the picnic table and was waving his body around in a manner vaguely resembling the kind of dance done with light sticks at idol shows. From the stream the head of the wimpod that was around early briefly popped out to look at the playing as well.
When Hitori had finally felt her fingers starting to sting and felt like it was a good spot to stop for the day, she finally took in her surroundings a bit, it was dark out and noticeably colder now. More than that, a fire was apparently set up far enough away from her that it wouldn't be a risk of anything catching fire while providing her some light and warmth. Looking around she found Litwick next to the fire with a wide smile on his face. "Did you make this fire?" She asked.
Litwick nodded eagerly before pointing to the cluster of trees and holding his hands out like he was carrying something to help illustrate the source of the kindling in his explanation. "T-thank you. A-ah but I heard you need to make sure to put it out before we go to bed. Or was it just watch it?" Hitori said. She had no idea if it was normal for the Pokemon to do something like make a fire but still, she appreciated it. Litwick just nodded at her and pointed at himself as though to say 'Leave it to me!'.
There wasn't much else she could do at this point but get into her sleeping bag to turn in for the night. Whismur was happy to come up right against her and act like a hug pillow further creating the nice, cramped space Hitori enjoyed. Litwick however didn't go to sleep, instead, he took it upon himself to take watch guard his trainer throughout the night. Just as the minutes passed and Hitori slowly began to close her eyes and drift off she suddenly shot up. "My upload!" She exclaimed. She felt around her pile of things for her phone before tapping away to finalize the upload to her channel, something she had been meaning to do earlier. With that, Hitori dropped back down and quickly fell asleep to dreams of becoming a viral hit.