TRAINER ID
Name: Daniel Ingram
Badges: 3
Account: 37,346 credits
Location: Dewford Town

DANIEL'S TEAM
Kirlia (Apollo) - Male
Crawdaunt (Duran) - Male
Eevee (Orion) - Male
Trapinch - Female

OWEN'S TEAM
Hariyama (Bronson) - Male
Shroomish (Misha) - Female
Vigoroth (Omar) - Male

It should have come as no surprise that my misadventures in Granite Cave would bring trouble.

Part of me hoped that I'd be able to go about my day without further incident. At first, all signs even seemed to point to that being the likely outcome – I didn't draw any undue attention or encounter anybody that I recognized on the relatively secluded walk back to Owen's house, and nobody was home to question my disheveled state or the unpleasant smell lingering on me thanks to Orion's unfortunate accident. Both parents were still at work, and Owen himself must have been off somewhere with friends or his team, which was preferable given the circumstances.

That granted me the opportunity to clean Orion and wash my hoodie without raising any questions, as well as some much-needed time to contemplate things. I wasn't sure if I wanted to tell anyone about what had happened during my expedition into Granite Cave since I had a feeling that I would find myself on the receiving end of a certain man's wrath if he knew that I'd procured a map, traveled past the danger warning, and alerted the entire cave to my presence only to narrowly escape becoming the victim of some justifiably upset Onix.

Then again, there was a part of me that almost wanted to have some sort of confrontation with Owen's father. Sure, I'd probably been a little too dismissive about his warning not to explore the cave so casually, yet it seemed as though the only reason I'd even ended up in that situation in the first place was largely due to him and the other Dewford rangers. Why bother opening Granite Cave to the public if the upper floors were entirely devoid of Pokémon, and those that you could find by traveling deep enough were extremely defensive and on edge? It seemed to me that it would have been better to keep the cave closed until the Pokémon were returned and the ecosystem began returning to normal, but apparently the rangers didn't agree.

Despite my strong desire to get answers and vent my frustrations, I knew that Owen's father probably didn't have the final say in whether the cave reopened or not, and that no good would come out of arguing with him. I was a guest in his home, and even though I sometimes found myself lacking experience and common sense in social matters, I was self-aware enough to know that bringing trouble or drama as a guest was an exceedingly rude thing to do.

Taking extra care to ensure we didn't leave behind a mess of water or hair after bathing Orion and calming him down, I moved my hoodie from the washing machine to the dryer before deciding that a quick meeting with my team was in order. Duran and Apollo had both been recalled suddenly in rather dangerous circumstances and Trapinch was completely out of the loop of what had occurred in Granite Cave, so filling them in to prevent needless worry was a priority.

Somewhat unsurprisingly, Trapinch didn't have much of a reaction to learning what had happened. There was some mild disappointment after first being released and realizing she wasn't going to get the chance to put her training to the test by battling the cave's residents as she'd expected, but I promised her that I'd find her a good opponent tomorrow one way or another, and that seemed to appease her well enough.

Apollo definitely wasn't pleased that I'd unilaterally decided to put myself in a dangerous situation while he was helplessly stuck in his Pokéball. Thankfully, he was just relieved that we were safe, so he got over it easily enough after better understanding my thoughts and feelings on the matter, as well as my firm conviction that I'd made the right decision.

Duran wasn't so easily soothed. Granted, he wasn't quite angry at me for doing what I thought was necessary to keep us safe, just disappointed that he'd been denied the chance to battle a tough opponent, as well as what he likely perceived was a lack of faith in his ability to protect us. Having no idea just how massive and dangerous an Onix could be, it wasn't difficult to understand why he would be a little arrogant in his ability to handle whatever would dare to challenge him, especially after learning that it was a rock-type.

In all honesty, I actually felt as though Duran would have a decent chance in a fair fight against an Onix, at least a wild one. But battling multiple enraged Onix at once, especially in a cave with extremely limited visibility and the potential for a cave-in? As much as I wanted to fulfill Duran's strong desire for a tough battle, that wasn't a risk I could accept.

In the end, all I could do was promise to get him some tough battles soon. He begrudgingly accepted that, but I could tell that he was growing increasingly impatient. It made me question if I should make good on my promise to give Owen a proper battle, but I had serious reservations about that and didn't want to be put in a position where I further inflicted harm on Owen's already shaky morale.

I'd been picking up hints that he was struggling to cope with the loss of Roxy and Bruno despite his best attempts to act like he was fine. After his crushing loss against the Kantonean, I felt like he was teetering on the edge of completely abandoning the circuit, either temporarily or permanently. Not that I could exactly fault him though, since it was undeniable that his battle capabilities had been severely reduced with the loss of two team members, particularly in the case of Roxy. She had arguably been the most effective battler, and although Bronson and Omar both had the potential to replicate her strength thanks to their recent evolutions, they still lacked the versatility she had provided.

If Owen were to continue the circuit with me after I earned Dewford's badge, our next gym battle would be in Fortree – a flying-type gym. Though I wouldn't claim I had great answers for the challenges a team of aerial opponents would present, Owen's battle with the Fearrow had highlighted just how difficult of a time fighting types had when facing anything airborne. Though the Fearrow could ascend freakishly fast, it was large and relatively slow when it came to diving in to attack, at least compared to what I was used to seeing from Pokémon like Swellow and Golbat. Frankly, Omar had been somewhat lucky to be able to ground it, and I didn't see how Owen would be able to handle an entire team of flying-types, let alone in a fifth-badge gym battle.

If he still had Roxy, I could imagine him doing fairly well against a flying-type gym, but as things were I simply couldn't picture him standing a chance unless he got some new moves and tactics, or even new team members.

That brings me to the main reason I didn't want to battle Owen, despite knowing Duran would love it and it was probably the best battle experience we could get on Dewford, apart from our eventual gym challenge against Brawly. I felt extremely guilty for having this belief, but if I was being completely honest I simply couldn't imagine a scenario where Owen would win what I assumed would be a three-on-three battle.

Depending on the matchups, Duran and Orion would likely have to put in work to pull off a win, yet I felt reasonably confident in their ability to do so. But realistically, Omar was the only one I could maybe see having a chance against Apollo – and I was convinced that wasn't just me thinking exceedingly highly of his abilities either, which I still didn't fully grasp after his evolution. Even ignoring the major type advantage Apollo had over fighting-types, every Pokémon that Owen could send out would find it almost impossible to land a hit on him, and I could easily see Apollo clenching the win against multiple members of Owen's team if the rest of my team somehow got steamrolled, which was highly unlikely.

In my personal opinion, Owen needed to introduce more variety to his team, as well as add some ranged attacks into his arsenal. Just because he was a fighting-type specialist didn't mean he had to exclusively deal in close-range combat, as evidenced by how Brawly's Hariyama had swiftly dealt with the infected Pelipper from afar, yet I hadn't seen any of his team members ever performing such a move.

I was nervous to battle Owen because I didn't want to be the reason he finally called his journey quits. In fact, I had already started pondering ways that I might be able to have Apollo lose convincingly, or at least hold back enough that it wouldn't be an absolute blowout. If I had my way I wouldn't even use Apollo for our eventual battle, yet I felt certain that there was no way that Owen would let me get away with that.

But that was a problem for future Daniel. At a minimum, I decided that I was going to do everything I could to postpone battling Owen until after I earned my fourth badge. If our battle ended as I suspected, it would help to soften the blow if we had the same number of badges, or so I hoped.

That's why I didn't want to ask him to spar, even if he was the perfect training partner for us to prepare for our impending challenge against Hoenn's fighting-type gym. Now that I knew he had his sights set on a full-fledged battle against me, it felt like doing so would leave me with little choice but to accept when he inevitably pushed to turn spars into a proper battle.

Though much of my team was in dire need of good battles for various reasons, it felt like we had very few options. Granite Cave was a bust, Owen felt like a ticking time bomb, and the League still hadn't opened up any gyms despite lockdown restrictions continuing to slowly lift, so Brawly wasn't even an option.

I had a lot on my mind, and there was only one person I felt I could talk to about them. It was likely to come with a bit of a verbal lashing, but I was trying to be more open and honest with my friends, particularly Samantha. So after debriefing my team and grabbing my hoodie out of the dryer, I decided to call Samantha while making a trip to the Pokémart to buy a new backpack, explaining to her what all had happened and the situation I found myself in.

"...You got lucky, Daniel. I hope you know that."

"You aren't going to call me an idiot?" I asked surprisedly while browsing the selection of travel backpacks, feeling Apollo's amusement over our link as he stood by my side anxiously. He was a little uncomfortable and distracted, currently trying to cope with what was apparently too many minds and emotions in his sphere of awareness, but he was managing.

I'd almost brought Orion instead, mostly because Apollo drew a lot more attention than an Eevee curled up discreetly in my hoodie pouch, but since Apollo had experienced a form of sensory overload during our first attempt to go into town I decided it best that we start to work through that. Dewford was one of the least populated towns we'd encountered, and although I didn't know exactly how far his 'range' was, I knew that it was important to sort out this new problem before we continued on our journey. If he couldn't learn to handle Dewford, there was zero chance that he would be able to accompany me somewhere densely populated like Slateport or Mauville, particularly if we hoped to watch Samantha's next contest in an arena with potentially thousands of people.

So he was doing his best to overcome this new problem, and although he was definitely struggling, we were already seeing some slight improvement. I'd suggested that he try to focus on me and block out all the other stimuli that he was experiencing without the use of Calm Mind, since he couldn't exactly use it while walking around with me, and while he still held a pained expression that told me he would rather be in his Pokéball, he understood that it was for a good cause.

If exposure therapy worked for me and Orion, it would work for him, I was sure.

I heard a sigh over the phone followed by a long pause before Samantha spoke again, a hint of resignation in her voice.

"I won't berate you too much for getting in over your head, since it sounds like you were as careful as you could manage to be. You shouldn't have let your curiosity get the better of you, and Apollo definitely shouldn't have used Disarming Voice in a freakin' cave, but it's not as if you can't handle yourself either. I'll give credit where it's due though, so I won't call you an idiot since you had the good sense to run rather than trying to stand your ground against angry Onix."

I felt a little indignation from Apollo over our link, who was kind of 'listening in' to the call by way of reading my thoughts. "Not sense mind, so knew foe was dark. Did best thing to protect."

I raised a brow, extremely impressed by Apollo's knowledge of type effectiveness. I supposed it made sense that he would have learned that, since he'd battled dark types before and probably knew he couldn't use something like Confusion or Psybeam against a Pokémon whose mind completely resisted psychic-type energy. Still, his ability to quickly ascertain and act based on the opponent he was up against was yet another indication of how smart he was getting, and I couldn't help but be proud.

"Well thanks for going easy on me, dear sister," I said into my phone half-jokingly. "But let's focus on the problem at hand. My team needs battle experience, Granite Cave isn't exactly a great option right now, and I feel like battling Owen will spiral into something that ends horribly, even if it would be the best training we could get before challenging the gym. Not to mention, there isn't exactly an abundance of trainers on Dewford that would be able to give Duran or Apollo a decent fight."

Bashfulness. Delight.

"It sounds like you're overdue for another humbling, which is crazy to me considering it's been like a week and a half since Apollo and Duran got slapped around by some random Rockets," Samantha reminded me with disapproval in her voice. "Listen to yourself Daniel – you just assume you'd wipe the floor with Owen and any other trainer on the island? You have three badges, my guy. Go challenge that Kantonean, or Owen's dad, or literally anyone at the ranger's station for that matter. If you seriously think Brawly is the only trainer on that entire island who can give you a run for your money, you're delusional."

Embarrassment.

I frowned while thumbing through backpacks on the shelf, my shoulder holding the phone to my ear as I checked for one that had pockets and pouches similar to what I was used to.

"Maybe… Or maybe I just have confidence in my team's capabilities. Duran and Apollo have both evolved since then, and I'd hardly describe it as getting 'slapped around' by 'random Rockets'. Not to mention, they aren't struggling to adjust to their new bodies nearly as badly as Bronson. I've been watching Owen's team train and battle, and I just don't see how we'd lose. I thought I was being a good friend by putting Owen's feelings above my need to battle, you're telling me I'm wrong?"

I heard her sigh, and another long pause before she responded.

"No… I'm actually kind of proud of you, because the Daniel I first met not so long ago was kind of thoughtless and self-centered. I'm still not sure I agree with your assessment, and I definitely don't like the cockiness I'm picking up from you, but I'm not there so I'll have to trust your judgment. Either way, it's nice hearing to hear you being considerate of other people for a change."

"I'm just worried about my friend, and I don't want to be the one to push Owen over the edge."

"That's thoughtful and all, but no matter what happens you can't blame yourself for Owen's situation, or his decisions. You did your best in Lavaridge, and you've helped keep him busy and sane in Dewford. You've been there for him, made it clear you're available if he wants to talk about anything, and you've kept him in check when he started getting self-destructive. You've done all you can, and if a friendly battle is what causes him to lose his resolve, then so be it. It sucks, but you can't blame yourself for whatever happens."

"But why even risk it? I'd rather just not battle him until I have to, then lose as convincingly as possible. I know Apollo wouldn't mind throwing for a good cause, isn't that right partner?"

Agreement. Determination.

"Your heart is in the right place, and I agree you should do everything you can to wait until you have your badge so that if he loses, it's not as bad since you two are on equal footing. But don't you dare throw the match, Daniel Ingram. If you use Trapinch instead of Apollo, or if you have Apollo hold back and purposely let him get caught out, he'll realize you're treating him with kiddie gloves. If he realizes you threw the battle, which is extremely likely, it would be a far worse hit to his pride than just losing."

"Alright… I won't throw the match if it ends up happening. I still would rather not be put in that position."

"Hate to break it to you Danny, but if Owen has his heart set on battling you, there's not much you can do about it. Put it off until you get your badge if you can – just go battle some locals or that Kantonean so you can get your fix. Start a king of the court on the beach, or better yet focus on the two team members who actually need practice instead of giving your two veterans an even bigger boost to your already inflated egos. I know you want to let them flex their new strength, but Orion is seriously going to struggle against a fighting-type gym, and Trapinch has basically never even been in a proper battle. Go battle some wild Pokémon around the island with them, and just have Duran and Apollo hold off until the gym battle, or pit them against each other. You're overthinking things and missing the obvious answers, as usual."

"I guess…" I trailed off as I picked a forest-green backpack that was fairly similar to what I currently had, deciding I didn't want to pay extra for the variant sporting a water bladder.

"Hope I was able to help, but you're kind of on your own. Now enough about all that, guess what? As of today, I have a new addition to my team! Her name is Ahri, and she's the cutest little ball of fluff you've ever seen!"

My eyes briefly widened at that revelation, and I couldn't help but smile.

"Congrats. I guess that officially makes you a dragon tamer. Kind of funny, since I specifically remember you so adamantly warning me against that exact thing."

"Oh, hush. We've talked about this – Altaria are much gentler than most dragons, and it should be fine since I'm raising her from a Swablu. She's an absolute sweetheart, and she already gets along great with the rest of the team. Well, Chase is still indifferent about it, but you know how he is."

"You'll probably have to actually battle if you want her to become an Altaria," I reminded her cheekily as I checked out at the register with my new backpack, smirking slightly at Apollo's bashfulness over our link as the cashier leered at him with interest. "Dragons are hard to evolve, and I sort of doubt you'll be able to manage it just by training for contests."

"For your information, I have been battling more. Almost every day since lockdown began my team has been sparring with one another, and even Joy has been getting in on the action. None of my Pokémon were infected, and we could only do so much training and routine practice without going crazy, so we started sparring in the training room. I even had a battle against Marelle yesterday, although she beat Buzz. Now that the lockdown is lifted I plan on battling more, but it's not exactly appropriate to issue challenges in a place where loads of people just had their Pokémon stolen."

"Probably a good idea, it sounds like Fallarbor had it pretty rough compared to most places the Rockets targeted. So are you and Marelle going to head to Slateport together, or what's the plan?"

"Probably, we'll see how it goes. The contest hall should be opening up again soon, so I'm going to stick around to support her. Assuming she wins, we'll both have the same destination, and I wouldn't mind booking a Teleport if she doesn't want to travel by foot. I didn't really want to Teleport on my journey, but it's just backtracking so I wouldn't consider it cheating. The region is still kind of in a weird place, so we'll just have to wait until the contest halls and gyms reopen and go from there. I've got to let you go though, I stepped away from Marelle for your call and she's waiting on me. Try not to do anything else dumb or dangerous – I need you in one piece if we're going to meet up."

"I'll try my best, no promises though. Take care, and tell Marelle I said hello."

"Stella."

"Stella too, from Apollo and me," I added quickly as I rolled my eyes and smirked, sharing the amusement Samantha's voice held as she confirmed she would and said bye before hanging up.

After leaving the Pokémart with my new backpack, a pair of kids approached us who were fascinated by Apollo, so we stopped for a couple of minutes to answer their questions and fulfill their curiosities. They practically begged for Apollo to talk to them telepathically, but after having a vivid flashback of a certain woman who had once asked for the same then practically ran away from how unsettling she found it, I decided it best not to do so without parental permission. This turned into a bit of a mess due to the kids being very insistent, but we were 'saved' by the sudden appearance of an authority figure, for better or worse.

"I finally found you," a familiar voice from above startled me and the kids, causing them to promptly excuse themselves and scamper off as they realized the ranger was looking directly at me and didn't seem at all happy.

"You say that like I was hiding or something," I said with a slight frown to Owen's dad as he landed his Tropius and promptly returned it.

"Return your Kirlia and come with me. We've got some things to talk about down at the station," he said sternly, leaving no room for argument.

I sighed in resignation as I unclipped Apollo's Pokéball, reassuring him over our link that everything would be fine before recalling him and nodding for Owen's father to lead the way.

Despite my personal misgivings with the flavor of parenting that Owen's father employed, it was hard to dispute the fact that he was a good ranger.

Make no mistake – he was not pleased with me. After being escorted to a small conference room and explaining what had happened in Granite Cave with only some minor omissions, I was surprised to find that he wasn't nearly as mad as I'd expected. Annoyed for sure, but more resigned than anything, which surprised me.

Apparently, the Onix that I'd aggravated hadn't simply given up after losing my trail, but had instead caused quite the uproar within Granite Cave. Unbeknownst to me, I hadn't been the only one in the cave – there had been a pair of tourists exploring the upper caverns that I'd almost surely been teleported right past, and they'd quickly vacated the cave to report the roaring and rumbling they'd heard coming from the depths to the rangers.

Naturally, Owen's father had pieced together that it was my handiwork – not only because he knew that I had gone to explore Granite Cave earlier in the morning, but because he'd also encountered a certain Kadabra who knew my name after the rangers had been called in to calm things down.

Owen's father had some choice words for me, claiming I recklessly put others in danger and should have immediately reported what had happened to the rangers after escaping the cave, but considering it had only happened because I'd been 'attacked' unprovoked, he wasn't keen on being too harsh with me.

It probably helped that there was another ranger present to write up the report as he did the interviewing, who seemed much more laid back and amused by my story than Owen's father did. He particularly enjoyed the very uncomfortable moment when Owen's dad called me out for printing a 'map' at the Pokécenter, a revelation that caused me to physically recoil and grimace. It should have come as no surprise to me that Nurse Joy would reveal that information if asked, but I still couldn't help but feel a little bit betrayed. It dawned on me that I probably should have just saved the image to my phone, and I vowed to do that if I ever found myself in a similar situation going forward.

After about an hour of enduring what was essentially an interrogation, I was eventually allowed to leave with little more than a strong verbal warning that the next time something like that happened, I needed to alert the rangers or Nurse Joy, otherwise I could get in serious trouble for failure to report an incident. That was all I actually did 'wrong', since they couldn't exactly get on my case for procuring a crudely drawn map, traveling past the warning markers, or reacting defensively while engaging in a peaceful dialogue with the cave's residents.

In the end, Owen's dad had the full story of what happened in Granite Cave despite my attempts to keep a few key details from coming to light. After initially omitting the existence of the Dawn Stone from my retelling of events, I soon realized that what I thought was a white lie was very likely to get a certain Sableye into serious trouble. Unfortunately, I was brought into the station holding a brand new backpack that still had the tags on it, so it didn't take a genius to realize the Sableye that had pounced on me had torn into my back with vigor. I couldn't rightfully claim that it simply fell on me or that it was being playful, because that completely invalidated the reason why Apollo had to use Disarming Voice, which ultimately caused the issue at hand.

When they started grilling me on if I was hurt, why I had bought a new backpack, why I hadn't caught the knocked-out Sableye to bring it in if it was randomly attacking trainers, and if there were any unique identifiable traits about it that stood out, I knew that the right thing to do was to admit to the Dawn Stone. It added an entirely different context to the story that made the Sableye seem a lot less malicious and dangerous, and I just couldn't in good conscious throw the Pokémon under the bus for the sake of keeping the Dawn Stone a secret.

To my complete and utter relief, revealing the existence of the Dawn Stone didn't devolve into a conversation about why an orphan with only three badges, no sponsorship, and no stable income was carrying around a Dawn Stone. I thankfully didn't have my stuff with me and obviously didn't choose to reveal the quality of the stone, which I suspected was a big factor in the Sableye losing all sense of self-restraint. I still had no idea exactly how it knew that the stone was in my backpack, since there was no way it could be seen and I felt reasonably certain there wasn't any sort of scent, but I could imagine that a species of Pokémon known for finding and munching on precious gemstones had their ways.

Perhaps it was drawn to the energy contained in the gemstone, leaving me to wonder if eating such a stone would have done anything significant to the Pokémon. I felt confident that it wouldn't evolve, as Sableye had no known evolution and researchers had long since tried every combination of stone and known Pokémon they could think of, but perhaps it would somehow make it stronger or provide some other unexpected effect. I seriously doubted that any researcher had ever studied the effects of a Sableye eating such a potent stone, let alone a Dawn Stone which are among the rarer variants.

I'll admit to being slightly tempted to go back and offer it as an apology for knocking out the Sableye just to see what happened, since I had no other plans for the stone than to likely sell it. That was of course a stupid thought that I didn't seriously entertain, and I felt my chest tighten as I pictured myself sitting there with a stupefied expression as the Sableye scampered off with the stone, leaving my net worth a tiny fraction of what it had only been moments ago. Still, it was interesting to think about.

Somehow, by the grace of Arceus, I wasn't grilled over the stone's quality or origins. They seemed much less concerned with why I had a stone in my backpack than with verifying that they didn't have a problematic Sableye that needed to be addressed. This shouldn't have been surprising to me given that their job was maintaining order among the local population of Pokémon, not running audits on trainers' finances and assets. Still, I couldn't help but feel immense relief that they didn't question the stone any further, because that surely would have devolved into a very uncomfortable conversation.

"You're free to go kid," Owen's father informed me after briefly stepping out with the other ranger, presumably to confer and finalize the report.

"Just like that?" I asked, surprised I was getting off so easily.

"Just like that," he confirmed with a nod, holding open the door and gesturing for me to leave the room I'd been in for well over an hour. "We'll ask that you stay clear of Granite Cave for at least a few days just in case there are any hard feelings among the residents. They're a bit… on edge right now as I'm sure you noticed, and I'm sure they wouldn't be too happy to see you after knocking a few of them around and disturbing the entire cave. This might surprise you, but Pokémon are just as capable of gossiping and holding a grudge as people. You look rather unique compared to most humans they see, so they'll definitely recognize you, and not all are likely to be as understanding as the Kadabra you encountered."

I simply nodded, deciding it wasn't worth asking if being told to stay away from Granite Cave was a polite request or a veiled command. I wasn't sure if I could be forbidden from going into a public area, and I seriously doubted that I was going to be attacked on sight by any of the Pokémon who would recognize me given the strength my team had displayed and how the situation had unfolded. But I could agree that it would be unproductive for me to go back since battles and capturing a new team member both seemed off the table, at least until the missing residents were returned and things had largely returned to normal.

It was easier to just accept that Granite Cave was a bust for now, and I didn't exactly want to push my luck with Owen's father. Yet something still didn't sit right with me, and although I had fulfilled most of my curiosity by venturing deep enough into the cave to get some answers, there was still something I didn't understand – one final thing that I felt I needed to have closure to the whole situation.

"I've gotta ask… Why even reopen Granite Cave when it's nearly empty, and the few Pokémon that remain are so jumpy?"

Owen's dad gave me a look, and I almost regretted asking the question. But after a moment of mulling the question over, he responded with what I felt was a very carefully worded response.

"The cave is acceptably safe for exploration, so it was opened up to the public. The League is very keen to return the region to business as usual, so keeping unnecessary restrictions in place would be highly frowned upon. You could have enjoyed sightseeing the geologically unique cave had you not been foolish enough to bring a map, go directly to the depths, and carry around an evolution stone in the only location where the species of Pokémon famous for eating rare gemstones can be found in the entire region."

I nodded in reluctant acceptance, not wanting to argue the point any further. I supposed I could see how it was suitable for the average tourist to visit, but I still felt like most trainers would push deeper like I had after not finding any Pokémon.

"Fair enough, I suppose. I just wanted to do some training and maybe add a member to my team. Sorry, I didn't mean to cause you any trouble."

"Well you did. This is your one and only warning Daniel, don't squander it. We are far too busy combing the area and trying to ensure things can go back to normal to be dealing with easily avoidable nonsense caused by carelessness and arrogance."

I frowned but kept my mouth shut as I was escorted out of the station by the two rangers. But as I was let out the door I couldn't help but ask one last question, remembering my recent conversation with Samantha and realizing this was the perfect opportunity to shoot my shot, however slim the chances.

"Say… Since I can't challenge Brawly or go in Granite Cave, would either of you two be interested in a battle? Not now obviously, but maybe when your shift ends?"

Owen's father gave me an extremely unimpressed look while the other ranger snorted in amusement before shaking his head in disbelief.

"Scram, kid."

A/N: New year, same Daniel. There are a few parts of this chapter I'd have liked to deliver a little better, but it's one of those cases where I'm on the brink of driving myself crazy trying to get it just right, and I have to call it somewhere. Hopefully you enjoyed, even if it's not my best work or the most exciting chapter ever. Trapinch finally gets her battle debut next chapter, so we'll see how that goes. Hope you all had a great end of the year, see you soon!

Shoutout to The Muffin Rat King for beta-reading this chapter!

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