That huge space rock noodle took a liking to Kali after we rescued it. I’m glad she made a new friend. She earned it after all of the effort she put in fixing him up. I still feel guilty about that. Shucks, that’s the name Kali gave him, lead us to his home after the fight. It was a cozy little place under the roots of a giant tree. We decided to make it our base camp for a little while. Sujin went about setting up while me, Kali, Jay and Lyra did some scouting. Jay and Lyra took to the sky while me and Kali went on foot. I hope those two didn’t butt heads too much. Lyra was riding Desire and I still don’t think Jay’s let that one go yet. Kali was hoping to find some signs of people while we were out. Unfortunately, we found these huge pokemon tracks instead. We followed them and found a large swinub eating mushrooms. It ate its fill and moved on, leaving a few mushrooms behind for us to gather. I’m glad we didn’t have to fight it. After seeing the way it was demolishing those mushrooms, I think it would’ve destroyed me. We also found this huge lum berry on the way back. I’ve never seen one so big. It was so cool. I couldn’t wait to show everyone back at camp.
Camp tonight was not as quiet as I was hoping for. We came back to Sujin harassing Kip. He was calling Kip useless. Not cool Sujin. At least Kip was willing to help out with the watch. Anyways, Jay and Lyra didn’t find much either. Just some pokemon that managed to get away. Everyone settled down for the night shortly after that. I had the first watch. It was quiet for a little while, but I picked up something large headed our way towards the end. As it turns out, that berry I found actually belonged to a bunch of cool armor monkeys. They just wanted to get their food back and I was happy to return it. They were kinda surprised to see us. As it turns out, most of the humans in Kototo live farther inland, possibly to avoid danger. The monkeys stressed how dangerous the area is. Kinda feels like they’re referring to something more than giant pokemon, maybe a legendary or whatever happened here. Sure the giant pokemon are dangerous, but they’ve been manageable so far. I kinda want to recruit one of the monkeys, but there isn’t anything I can do about that right now. I checked in on Rex after the monkeys left. He feels the pull of this place too. Something is definitely off here. The night passed peacefully after that.
The morning came too soon and with it came grumpy Percy. There was some kinda argument. All I remember about it was I wasn’t having it. We decided to break camp and head inland after it. I’m still amazed at how Shucks managed to roll up the slope and out of his house. After some walking, we found some ruined houses. They were old, kinda crumbly buildings. It looked like something rolled through the place and wrecked things. All we could figure out about the place was the people who used to live there left in a hurry. Maybe they were trying to escape a disaster. We probably would’ve looked more, but Shucks got bored and tried to get our attention, wrecking things in the process. I don’t think he realized what he was doing. On second thought, maybe it wasn’t a disaster. Maybe it was a “Shucks” that wasn’t paying attention.
Session 55
We left the houses, grasslands and forests for the mountains and foothills farther inland. It was uneventful, at least until we heard really creepy laughing. The laughing belonged to a guy in a mask who came from the forest on the other side of the mountains. He was laughing because of a boulder trap he set, probably for us. His name is Dante and it turns out he’s the gym leader for the island. He was “nice” enough to guide us to his gym. The whole while there, he was going on and on about crushing our dreams and how stupid we are for even being here. Pleasant guy right? I’m looking forward to taking him down a few notches. He’s a bit of a hermit and yet somehow, he’s familiar with us. He’s probably in league with the people we’re trying to find. I just wish Sujin thought about that before talking about Captain Pan. Now that he knows what we’re looking for, I think he’ll make it hard for us to get it. Something, I don’t know what cough BOULDER cough, gives me that impression. Look on the bright side Percy. We did learn something from him. We have a name for what happened thirty years ago. He called it the fleurstar. Still don’t know what it is, but according to Dante, it can choose people and spare them from its effect. Also, Dante is trying to chase everyone out of yapos completely. Somehow, I doubt he’ll succeed.
He led us to his gym, a run-down hot spring in the middle of nowhere. It used to be bigger, but he let part of it fall to ruin. It’s a shame, but at least the springs are still nice. After a quick dip in the springs, me, Lyra and Jay started a tag team match with Dante. It’s a big three on three battle with the three of us working together to bring him down. Then he added more rules. No leaving the ring or else you forfeit. It would’ve been fine, but then he sicked some goons on our friends outside. The coward. Joke’s on him though. I have faith in my friends. They’ll be able to handle it. Get ready Dante! We won’t let you get away with this!
Session 56
The battle started off with Arson, Desire and Rex facing off against Dante’s Dunsparce, big jellyfish thing and one of those spooky guys from the mini distortion realm from earlier. It was slow, or was it fast, going. Trick room made things confusing. Point is, it took us a while to make progress. The party shuffling and that jellyfish’s recovery move didn’t help things. To make things more annoying, Dante kept asking all of these quiz show questions. Each question we got wrong penalized us, but each one we got right made us stronger. The Dunsparce was the first to drop and in its place Dante sent out a smaller version of the giant titan thing from Newsootopolis. Jay had it rough with the jellyfish. It managed to bring down Arson, but that meant it was July’s time to shine. She packed one heck of a punch for a larva. The spook from the 8th dimension went down and was replaced by a problem. It was an evolved version of Queen and it knew the mean look/perish song combo. Amina, Desire and July were doomed and so was most of Dante’s team. The jellyfish went down and July evolved into a big moth thing. Unfortunately, the awesome didn’t last. The perish song went off and five pokemon went down. Jay was out and the rest of us were down to our last pokemon. It was Rex and Callia vs a pink sand castle. They had it handled, but Dante had one last trick up his sleeve. He had one last question, we got it right, but because of trick room, the reward ended up being a penalty. That stung! We won, but Dante wouldn’t just give us the badges. He just up and left, leaving the badges in the building. While we were busy, our friends took care of the ambush and caught some rift goons in the process. They finished before us actually. They even had time to spectate the last bit. Now all that’s left is to collect our badges, rest our pokemon and figure out what the goons know.