I was glad to know that Tidal was alright, even after that last Iron Head. Though apparently, he had a new respect for Adamant. Watching Tidal follow Adamant around like a puppy begging to be taught how to use steel energy was frankly hilarious to watch. It wasn’t too long after the battle, though, that Dawn and I settled down for the night and went to sleep.

Waking up the next day, Dawn and I reluctantly began moving in the early hour. Dawn looked Tidal over in the light of day and decided to let him rest a little more, a least until around noon. Luckily, so long as a pokémon is not knocked out or seriously harmed, they heal quickly from battles.

The two of us started walking yet again, this time with just Adamant keeping us company. Our idle conversation drifted through a dozen topics, from the merits of different types of pokéball to discussing how much of an effect Ladon’s King nature had on his battling.

We had made a few hours of progress down the road and were talking rather animatedly about the merits of a couple of moves when I noticed both Adamant and Tidal perk up and glance to the side of the route.

I cut off what I was saying and tapped Dawn’s arm, gesturing toward where they were looking at. She glanced at it before looking back at me, “What?”

I flicked my eyes to her for a moment before looking back, “Always trust your pokémon; they have sharper senses and will know about dangers before you,” I spoke quietly while looking between the direction the pokémon were staring and the pokémon themselves.

Before Dawn could say anything in response, a Starly swooped out of the copse of trees that the pokémon had been looking towards, watching us with sharp eyes.

Dawn made a small noise in her throat before speaking, “Hold on for a moment,” I stopped walking before looking back at her, “I kinda always wanted a Staraptor on my team, and I know that the longer the pokémon is on your team the better so…”

I glanced at the Starly that was currently staring down Tidal with a critical look. “You’re gonna try and catch it?”

Dawn nodded once before turning to Tidal, “You up to it?” I stepped back a few meters, giving Dawn her space while watching interestedly. I’d never actually seen anyone else catch a pokémon before; it would be interesting to see.

Tidal chirped out a somewhat aggressive sound, moving towards the Starly. It quickly reacted by flapping its wings rapidly, half-hopping and half-flying backward. Dawn wasn’t having that though, “Water Gun!”

Tidal tensed for a moment before a high-speed stream of water slammed into the Starly, making it let out an indignant squawk as it tumbled back toward the ground. Tidal rushed forward, its little arm glowing with a Pound. Just before it would have connected, the Starly managed to dodge the blow, and retaliated with a Peck that rocked Tidal back for a moment.

I probably would have been a little concerned if not for having seen just how much damage Tidal could take and keep going. If he could take a half-dozen of Adamant’s tackles and an Iron Head, even weaker ones, then he would be fine from a single Peck.

Tidal proved me right as he just turned his head and spat out another Water Gun, sending the Starly tumbling back again. This time Tidal managed to catch up with it, slamming a Peck of its own into the Starly.

The two separated themselves, both watching their opponents carefully. Dawn called out, “Water Gun it down from a distance!”

Tidal quickly summoned up the water energy and began following the order, Water Gun’s firing out towards the Starly. For a moment I thought I was seeing something as the Starly’s eyes glowed white before it launched itself into the air. I narrowed my eyes as I watched it somehow perfectly dodge every single Water Gun before flying farther so it was barely still in range.

Tidal was almost glaring at the Starly at this point, but Dawn seemed to have figured it out, “It might have Detect! We’re gonna work around that, keep the Water Guns up but just fire randomly a couple times!”

I nodded slowly. I’d been doing some reading on the best and most common moves used in battle, and Detect was up there with Protect. While Protect formed a shield, Detect allowed the using pokémon to glimpse at what the opponent was planning to do, letting them dodge it. Detect was considered the worse move since, like Dawn was demonstrating now, if the opponent guessed you were using it they could just attack at random and it wouldn’t help against that.

I watched with Adamant as one of Tidal’s Water Guns smacked straight into the Starly, sending it to the ground again. Tidal was just about to smack it with a rather powerful-looking Pound when the Starly interrupted him.

It was surrounded with a white glow for a brief moment before blurring forward and slamming its beak into Tidal, making him stagger. I blinked in surprise, realizing this was the first time I’d seen Quick Attack in person.

Tidal recovered quickly though and batted the tired and bruised Starly with a Pound. The flying type was about to try and get into the air again when it let out a long breath and dipped its head. I leaned forward a little, not having seen this before.

Dawn looked surprised, but her lips quickly curled into a grin. She moved forward and spoke quietly with the Starly. I couldn’t quite hear what she said, but I didn’t mind all that much. After a few minutes of speaking and the occasional emotive response, I saw the Starly nod and Dawn captured it in a pokéball. I couldn’t keep in the grin as she stood back up and started making her way over with a tired, but satisfied, Tidal.

“So, it went well then?” I said, smiling and gesturing towards the pokéball she was holding. She blinked for a moment before breaking out into a large grin.

“Yeah, yeah it went pretty well! We made a deal where once she’s evolved all the way we’ll come back so she can find and show off to her parents, but otherwise all good.”

“Nice. I am kinda wondering though, is that… normal? For a pokémon to sorta, negotiate their capture, or..?”

“Oh no,” Dawn shook her head, “That sort of thing only really happens when the pokémon intends to get caught and is testing if they want you to be the one to do it,” Dawn explained. “If they don’t necessarily intend to get caught, you need to weaken them and throw the pokéball near them. The pokéball is designed to capture a weakened pokémon near itself. Once the pokémon is in the ball, it’s designed to sort of show the pokémon what trainers offer to them, training, battles, experience, family, and all that. If the pokémon accepts then they stay in the ball. If not, then they break out of the ball and you just have to either knock them out or leave them alone.”

Dawn shrugged, “That’s what the different ball types are for actually. Regular pokéballs just show what trainers typically offer to pokémon. Great balls are just higher quality and are a little comfier for pokémon. Ultra balls though, actually take in a small portion of the trainer’s aura when they hold it, and they show that to the pokémon, letting them judge if they like the trainer and want to partner with them. They’re usually the best for actually capturing pokémon.”

Dawn nodded towards my pokéballs at my side, “The luxury ball is a special type of ultra ball designed to customize itself to the pokémon it contains, and the premiere ball is the same but without the aura bit.” She shrugged again.

I nodded slowly, thinking it over while glad I asked. After a few moments, I frowned in confusion, “Oh, and She? How do you know she’s a female already?”

Dawn raised an eyebrow at me before seeming to realize something, “Oh! Yeah, well, Starly have some small differences between the genders that you can pick out visually.” She shrugged, “Funnily enough, your whole team happens to be species that don’t have similar tells, so you really do need a pokédex to tell,” She paused for a moment, “Or getting uncomfortably familiar with them.”

She then looked at Adamant, “Well, and Beldum are genderless. So yeah, I guess you had no reason to know…”

I nodded slowly, “Huh, that’s… I was going to say useful, but I don’t really know if it will… My pokédex will let me know for my team and I don’t really care that much for pokémon we battle so….”

Dawn shrugged, picking up her bag from where she’d laid it down before the battle, “That’s fair. Not everyone needs to be able to tell at a glance. Most don’t, to be honest.”

I shrugged as well before thinking of something, “So…. Any name for her?”

Dawn grinned happily, “Zephyr. She’s Zephyr.”

I chuckled at her enthusiasm, completely understanding the feeling. Little was more exciting than gaining a new team member. It was like getting a new family member in a way.

“Alright then, let’s keep going and we can all say high to Zephyr when we stop for the night.”

Dawn agreed with that, and it wasn’t much longer before we started our long trip again. There wasn’t much more time left for travel in the day, so it wasn’t all that long until we were looking for a campsite. I was mostly just happy that we hadn’t quite left the section of the route that was along the river. I enjoyed the beautiful scenic view quite a bit.

Working together, it didn’t take long to get our camp set up and to start releasing our teams. Zephyr had an interesting reaction to my team, apparently having thought that Adamant was my only pokémon like Tidal had been Dawn’s.

Her reaction to Ladon was a little entertaining with how she froze in front of the relatively massive dragon. To be fair, I could kinda understand it. Zephyr was barely a foot tall, while Ladon was over five feet. It took her a little while to relax, and even then she mostly stuck near Dawn or Tidal.

Little more happened that day, with Dawn and I quickly falling asleep, not wanting to be too tired for the next and last day of our travel to Oreburgh. Waking the next day was harder, but ultimately not too bad. We packed up our things and returned all the pokémon who wouldn’t be staying out, mainly Tidal and Ladon. Dawn wanted Zephyr to stay out to bond a little. I on the other hand had to return Ladon because neither Ladon nor I wanted to deal with people gawking at him.

The day passed quickly. Zephyr and Adamant flitting to and fro warded off most any pokémon that wanted to battle, and the few that were brave enough to attack anyway got quickly beaten. I let Dawn and Zephyr take most of the battles, hopefully letting them bond a little and gain some experience.

We did pass a few trainers on the way, none of them too much older than us. They gave a few strange looks to Adamant and me, but didn’t bother us. This led to us finally cresting the final hill before Oreburgh with a surprising surplus of energy seeing as we’d apparently been faster than we’d given ourselves credit for. We still had a few hours of the day left compared to the expected one hour that we’d expected.

Walking back into Oreburgh was a strange experience, especially with Dawn following. I offered to lead the way to the pokécenter. Dawn shrugged and told me that even though she and the professor would go through the city every once in a while, she never really learned the layout.

It took us only twenty or so minutes of walking through the dull grey buildings to find the pink-highlighted structure of the pokécenter. Making our way in after recalling our pokémon, we entered to find the place mostly dead. A few trainers were sitting off in a nook against the far left wall, and no one else seemed to be around.

The nurse behind the counter looked up as the bell chimed at our entrance. Seeing us, she smiled and placed a bookmark in the novel she was reading, sliding the book under the counter before standing.

“Welcome to the pokécenter; how can I help you two?”

Dawn and I both went to speak before stopping at the same time. Before the moment could drag on any longer, I gestured for her to go ahead. She rolled her eyes but smiled slightly before speaking, “I have a newly captured partner, a female Starly to get checked out and I think we both are looking for a room.”

I nodded to confirm it before interjecting, “If you could also point me to the nearest pokémart as well? I need to pick up some items for my own team.”

The nurse smiled politely before reaching under the desk and pulling out a thin slip of paper and handing it to me. Looking down, I saw it had directions to a number of stores targeted at trainers. I also laughed slightly when I realized it was the same thing the nurse had been using as a bookmark.

I tuned back into the conversation when the topic of the rooms came back up, quickly showing the nurse my trainer’s license and receiving my key. I took a moment to let Dawn know I’d be running to a few stores and would meet up in the pokécenter the next day. She nodded distractedly and waved me off, but I was pretty sure she’d heard.

I quickly followed the little leaflet’s instructions while referencing the street signs available. After almost an hour and a half of slowly picking my way through the city did I manage to collect all the items I wanted to get. I’d picked up the hardest metals I could buy a decent quantity of for Adamant, spending almost seven hundred pokédollars on the bulk purchase before shoving the metals into my bag. I also purchased an enormous amount of pokéfood that was supposed to be specialized for dragon types and an almost equal amount for dark types, making the cashier give me a few concerned glances. The pokéfood came out to over six hundred pokédollars on its own. I couldn’t help but wince at the large expenditures, but such was the price of such rare and powerful pokémon.

Trudging back into the pokécenter after the surprisingly tiring trip through the city, I nodded to the nurse when she waved at me. Making my way into my room on the upper floors of the pokécenter, I collapsed on the bed with a groan of exhaustion. I fell asleep not long after I forced myself through a few night routine items.