Brenda's brow creased slightly; she wasn't aware of anything she'd said that might have constituted not giving Ash a break.  Was "really taught him" an insult today, when she'd meant it as reassurance that the job had been thoroughly done?  If not that, then what?  And why was Rick being prickly, of all people?  Even if she chalked it up to everyone, including herself, having had too little rest with too much on their minds, it didn't bode well for any kind of deep conversation.

But before she shared that thought, before she decided whether she should just leave, she had to know something.  "So you talked to Tangek?" she asked Rick.  "Saved me the trouble?  How'd that go?"

The matter of educating Ash was something she could address after this if she stayed, or later in the day if she followed her gut and excused herself.  And as much as Ash and Enya were diametrically opposite personalities, she knew they'd been growing on each other lately - Enya on Ash more so than the other way 'round; and, Brenda thought with an inward smile, she could talk about that pairing all day.

  -:-

Ash had only intended to splash some cold water on her face, comb her hair and slip into some shorts - or maybe sweatpants, she thought, considering the weather.  But she had the same problem now that she'd had after the airlift: All the "warms" were now at Hometree.  And for people who wore "little bitty nothing" (as Enya would say), even shorts provided more insulation over the thighs than most Na'vi had ever needed.  So she didn't have spare leggings, other than the ones she'd worn in-link yesterday, and those were getting borderline suspicious, if not yet funky...  Where at all did Brenda do laundry?

Ash was only just coming to realise it now, after awakening to the presence of the frontierwoman this morning...but in her mind Brenda had become something like the gold standard by which Ash subconsciously measured herself.  Brenda knew how to make it out there.  Brenda knew more than Hell's Gate did about what a human could eat on Pandora, and what needed to be done to it to make it safe to do so.  Brenda made crafts and clever inventions from things she found on the land.  Brenda was strong; Brenda was sturdy.  Brenda was an artist (well, she claimed it was Tall Brenda who drew those sky-maps, but Ash still found it difficult to believe that an Avatar not named Enya could have her own talents and interests).  Brenda was a poet, if the way she described things was any indication.  Brenda was most definitely a deep thinker, maybe even a philosopher.  She knew impossibly more about driving than Ash ever would, even after eight years of watching and talking to other people who did it; even if she survived this crisis.

The only things Ash did better than Brenda were physical anthropology and labwork, neither of which Brenda had any use for.  No, the Armenian astronomer had come out here and offered herself, her knowledge and her resources for nothing more than an extra filter pack and a look at Enya asleep.  She'd gotten a lot more out of that first visit than she'd asked for - a place for Tall Brenda to heal; a spot for the B-shack on the other side of the quad; and plenty of Enya.  Well, at least Ash didn't have to envy her for that...but how she envied her for almost everything else!

But this was the shape of Ash's life right now.  She'd done and told and said more than anybody wanted her to.  Now it was her turn to sit quietly, to ask and watch and learn, to be humble and open and childlike.  She didn't know if she could do it.  She didn't think she had anything to offer, anything to share in exchange.  But if an interval of discipleship was what it would take to not feel so damned superfluous whenever Brenda was around, then she'd be the most attentive pupil in all the history of mentoring...

~ Don't be silly, Ash.  You don't have the temperament, the patience, or the will. ~

...No.  She was not going to listen to any more negative self-talk.  And if she found herself beset by it anyway, she would just take herself to the nearest warm body of water that had a source and an outlet and wash it away.  This shower, for instance; it had a head and a drain...  Yes...the shower would do just fine.

She stepped into the stall and got the thing going, then imagined herself becoming one with the steam in her air passages and the "tropic rain" running down her back.

Rick didn't grin back, instead he frowned. "Give her a break, 'kay? As I said, I still didn't get much more than some basics last night: she'll be going to the Heart. Just not this time, cause having Ash and the shard in the same trip ain't the best idea. But she will be going." He raked his hand through his hair, trying to sum up the parts of information he had.
"We had a lot of things happening here, but there've been a lot of things happening at Hometree too. Some of them our Na'vi friends will need to know, especially Tangek. The Blessing's been there too, ya know? And the Tompa'tanhi might be split up in several locations, but their spirit's not broken. They're still whole, from what I got from Ash last night. Knowing this might help a few spirits to heal..." He paused. "Jeez, you don't know about that either, I've had a long talk with Tangek yesterday, but that's something I wanna go into once you and Ash both are here - no use in telling it twice."

Rick's brow shot up too now. "And about teaching - you'll get your chance, as will everyone around here. There's been something about all of us having earned something like a break. Not shouldering the weight of this moon. Ash said she's supposed to learn to be the child she's never had a chance to be." His voice almost got pleading now. "I know, things have been tense lately, but I hope you and everyone can give her a chance. Whatever happened at Hometree yesterday - and I only know a tiny little part of it - it changed Ash. It changed something in her deep down, I guess that's part of why she's so exhausted right now. And my gut tells me that this change is what she needs to deal with everything the shard, the Red and her past have messed up."

Finally he smiled at Brenda. "Do you know she said that she said she wants to get as strong as Enya? Can you see a better role model at all?"

Enya spent the next couple of days taking her dog Pokés (Pepper, Growlithe; Tibbie, Rockruff; Maynard, Lillipup) for a long walk.  They came back eligible for Akala Island, except for little Maynard, who was pretty low-level to begin with.  He did really good for his first time out, and the Tapu know *I* didn't get through boot camp in one session either.  And Enya learned, figured out or came up with some new techniques too.  It won't take a Hawaiian shirt to startle an opponent now...  How's about leading off with one of your fair-to-middlin' Pokémon, then when/if the other trainer forces him out of the battle, she finds herself facing your heavy hitter?  Nobody abuses a puppy in Enya's presence, and if they do, they fully deserve a faceful of Tayu and Pity-Kitty.

Hawaiian shirts: Me-and-Kiye Avatar in-joke.  The default female Trainer character comes with a white flower-print blouse and a little knit pom-pom hat.  Pokémon Sun and Moon allow you to customise your Trainer, so that's how I got Enya-pen into her darker skin, wavy hair and her trademark red t-shirt and khaki shorts (wifs lotsa pockets).  But before then, Kiye and I were swapping lines about how, if Enya'd kept the hat and bought a really loud shirt, she could do a total Norm Spellman on her unsuspecting opponents:  "Enya used Colour Clash...and it's super-effective!!"  :-D

And this is hilarious: I have to steer Enya around Alola with my numble fingers, and it shows; so people in Alola are probably asking themselves how the hell anyone who baps into doors and corners like that ever got to be an Island Challenger, let alone a successful one.

As far as that contrast, though, I think maybe the same thing happens with Enya as happened to the Celtic heroes and people who are like them in spirit: Battle transforms them.  Something comes into them that bulks out their muscles, hardens their skin, even makes their hair stick out, and definitely overrides any kind of weakness.  They're "in the zone", as surely as me on a hacking run or a ballplayer waiting for his favorite pitch, the one he knows is gonna come and knows he can deposit on the roof of an eight-story building across the street.  Avatar Enya forgets she's crippled.  Little Kid Enya forgets she's seven.  And Pokémon Trainer Enya synchs her mind with incredibly strong and agile creatures who can fly or breathe fire or bite you long-distance.  Bapping into doorframes is just what she does in her free time.  ;-]

She's on Akala Island now, where she will face three Trials: Water, Fire and Grass.  She just learned how to ride a Lapras, and is looking for Water Captain Lana.  Oh, and the folks at the Pokémon Nursery gave her a TM (basically a learning tool for new moves) called "Hidden Power", which lets Pokémon of one type use attacks from a different type that abso-frickin'-nobody would ever see coming.  An Electric Growlithe?  A Flying Persian?  And little Tibbie's an unsuspected Psychic.

-:-

Sooo, Enya took the ferry back home to Melemele.  Her very first stop was the malasada shop.  If you share them with your Pokémon, it does worlds for both their bellies and their morale, which in turn makes them more resolute in battle.  So a goodly part of Enya's day was taking her Pokémon to the diner...six Pokés at a time...and feeding them these things.  Did I tell you she's got a half-crapload of Pokémon?  Uh-huh.  Even only taking the ones she'd battled with, she still had to make three trips...and a fourth once she picked her party for the trip back to Akala.  No Pokébeans there.  No place to sleep either.  The way she sees it, everybody needs to report to the marina rested, with a full belly, and in perfect health...their trainer included.

She caught a Drifloon.  She had to battle five of the damn things plus a few Gastlys and half a dozen Zubats before she managed to fight one without knocking it out.  (Tayu is just too overpowered for anything on Melemele by now!  No finesse...)  So she spent an hour battling Little Nasty Ghostly Things when she hadn't slept in a couple of days, and with no party members who were resistant to Ghost attacks.  The spooks made hash out of her party.  But everybody survived it, she took her 'mon to the PokéCenter and got them back up to snuff, then she gave everybody the afternoon off while she dashed downtown to keep her promise...

The lady didn't want the Drifloon.  Read the entry in Enya's Pokédex and decided that, No, she really didn't want that thing in her house, especially as it has a habit of leading small children by the hand off to parts unknown.  It's a balloon, of course everyone wants to grab it by the string!  But that made Enya's mission, from the boat trip to the battles to the hunger and exhaustion, a total waste.  Well, okay, she got paid handsomely, but

Boy.

Was.

She.

PISSED.

*cue blood-curdling Enya scream*

*All Pokémon under level 35 take cover*

 -/-

Home.  Bed.

 -/-

The afternoon and evening, by great contrast, were delightful.  She checked out some of her newer Pokémon from the Center, including Pepper (Growlithe), Tibbie (Rockruff) and a boxing crustacean called a Crabrawler (Dempsey by name), and did lots of wandering through tall grass, flower meadows, caves and other hidey-holes to flush out enough small game for them to get in some practice/XP.  Nobody under level 15 is coming to Akala!  So she'll be taking them out to play tomorrow, too.  And she *did* catch one of those Gastlys, so that weakness in her defenses has been plugged; she named the silly thing "Pickwick", just because it seems like all the good ghost stories are British.  ;-)



(Of the Pokémon shown above, the first four became Champions.)

Right around here was when this started feeling less like a game log and more like a real story.  There's no actual option in the game to scream in frustration, for example, and I've already described how minimalist the dialogue boxes are.  But I was starting to get into Trainer Enya's head, or else she was getting into mine; either way, her imagined thoughts and words were becoming as much as, if not more than, a part of the play experience as the things that resulted when I pressed the buttons.

- couple days later -

-:-

Gaah!  I really should have made Enya stick to the plan of just kicking around Melemele and giving her Pokémon the day off...  But no.  She's on a different island, her Pokémon are starving, she's starving even worse, and that 'forsaken big fancy hotel Lillie's staying at didn't even offer her a room!!  So she got fed up and headed off to find somewhere pretty to curl up for the night.   She settled in a cow pasture by a cliff overlooking the sea.  She had to fight her way through several trainers and a lot of tall grass to get there, though...which has left her party in even direr straits.  She's thinking of ditching Lillie's group and taking the ferry back to Melemele; hell, she's got home and a bed there, she still owes a lady a Drifloon, and she already knows the restaurants.

That's not to say that she dislikes Akala Island, though.  Quite the contrary.  If Melemele's like Oahu, with the big cities, then Akala's more like Molokai, which has a lot of ranches and a totally different landscape.  Angelo would be right at home!  And maybe this is Ben rubbing off on her, but she's discovered that she really likes the Old West town and the cattle and the countryside.  It's quieter there, with more pretty places, and since there aren't a lot of people there, the natives tend to be good at more than one thing.  The bellhop at the hotel is also a Pokémon trainer; so are a lot of other people after the cows have come home.

She's caught a Lillipup (mini-terrier; 5th gen) and a Mudbray (donkey foal; baby Pa'li); she named the latter "Kilvanä".  And the Pokémon on Akala are quite a bit tougher!  She's still smarting after her team got their asses handed to them by a pair of Eevees.  ;-b ...



Huggit, I'm sending her home today.  Lillie's too timid to wander off; if she can't even find Enya room and board, she can wait.

Now that Ash was sitting up, everyone could see each other; she accepted the coffee, but was too annoyed to return the kiss.  "No, seriously, Brenda, what are you doing here at the crack of dawn having breakfast with my boyfriend?" she griped.

"Same thing I was doing yesterday, Ma'am," Brenda drawled.  "Getting into your business.  I taught him - really taught him - how to monitor your pod; it wasn't much harder than explaining it to Enya..."  She grinned at the ex-soldier, then turned back to his mate.  "So now's the quiz, and don't you go giving him the answers!

"But as far as what's happened here, mind you, I slept through most of it.  Except the part about the Ikran egg...and about camo'ing these shacks...and we're kicking around some ideas for a watchtower..."

Ash cocked her head with a frown, a full two beats behind.  "Ikran...egg? --Hold on; I want to be awake for this...  Avert your gaze, Mountain Girl; I don't host people in my pajamas."  She pulled on the nearest thing, which was one of Rick's outgrown fatigue shirts, then went to the 'human maintenance facility' to freshen up and put on a pair of shorts.

Brenda lofted a comical eyebrow at Rick.  "She didn't kick me out...  Progress!" she grinned.

Later in life Rick claimed this as one of his major victories in the battle for Pandora: he managed not to laugh at Ash's sudden change from grumpy not-a-morning-person impersonment to pure panic about being late in mere seconds. It was just a grin and that was hidden behind the bulkhead.

He also solved the mistery of who Seze was - obviously Sprout had gotten a new name yesterday. He didn't know what it meant, his Na'vi lessons - aka the vocabulary he picked up here and there - didn't go that far, but he liked it anyway. It was more a personal name for a beautiful person instead of a nickname for a growing Avatar in an incubator. He had been around Enya way too much to not being infected by the thoughts of Avatars being their own personalities. Seze would never be Enya, of course, but she was a being of her own.

He wiped the grin off his face, got up to fill another mug of coffee and strolled over to hand it to Ash, handing it over with a quick good mornind kiss. "Brenda's right", he said. "What you ate last night wasn't enough to keep you over the day. Your body needs the energy for another day in link. Plus - I'm sure the Ikran Makto know pretty well when you came home last night, that you were tired to the bone and that you need some time to rest. Food and sleep are important, no matter if you're human, Na'vi or Avatar.

And while you're eating - if you want to - I can try to sum up what happened here."

Ash didn't get out of bed, just rolled over onto her back and put her arms behind her head.  "Rick...what is anyone besides you and me doing in here before we've both had showers?" she muttered crossly.  "Jeezus, you saw how I came in last night, and I'm only a few hours--"  Now she sat bolt-upright, suddenly enough to make herself dizzy: "Omigod-what-time-is-it-I'm-gonna-be-LATE!!!"

Brenda, having recovered herself, asked innocently "Late for what?"

"Late for my--umm, Seze's ride home!!" Ash squawked.  "The Pa'li Makto are probably standing there tapping their feet right now! ...It's supposed to be an all-day ride...and I don't want to take an Ikran-rider out of commish, the Clan needs them way worse than I do--I mean, they'd probably do it, but it'd hurt them somehow, and why put them through it just because I can't get my own ass out of bed??"

Brenda gave a Mona Lisa smile; of course she'd made the connection between Ash's brief identity confusion and her Avatar, most likely still waiting for her at Hometree.  "Can't help you with the ride, but as for the time? --Little Sun came up a while ago; we're expecting Big Sun shortly.  And if I were those riders, I'd be grabbing myself some breakfast.  Here, hon, have an arepa; 'Seze' will thank you for it."

If Brenda hoped that nobody would see her levitate, Rick on the other hand hoped that nobody saw him flinch. For a second he seriously considered just going back to bed and starting his day all over again. This was not how he had intended to catch up with everyone on so many different subjects. Especially as Ash's and Brenda's first meeting hadn't been a big success - the two women hadn't seen much of each other in the meantime, but Rick still felt that there was some kind of tension. On the other hand, something in Ash had changed and maybe this was the chance they needed to get something like a fresh start. Or at least smooth out some of the rumples the first meeting had left behind. So he took another sip of his coffee, then leaned back, looking definitely more relaxed than he actually felt, sorting his thoughts about last day.

He looked at Brenda, knowing that she had been at least partially around that day; Ash would have to be filled in on everything. "Right, you went off to sleep right after we brought Ni'tingal's egg home. Or do I mix that up?" With everything that had happened the last day - so many intense events, accompanied by quite as intense feelings - he wasn't quite sure anymore about any timeline details.
He turned to Ash then - or at least the bulkhead where her voice was coming from. "Good morning... feeling a bit better now?" He wasn't sure about that, not the way her voice sounded as if she was still halfway asleep.

This might, perhaps, be a good place to explain the Island Challenge system before we send Enya on her first Trial.

First, a word (okay, several dozen) about how all the games have been structured until Sun and Moon.  In almost all Pokémon games, the player's trainer character treks all over his home region catching Pokémon (well, that hasn't changed...) and honing their abilities in hopes of challenging the region's eight Gym Leaders.  Each Gym Leader specialises in training a different type of Pokémon - Water, Rock, Ghost and so on.  When the player-character wins one of these battles, the Gym Leader gives him a Badge - the Cascade Badge from the Water-type Gym, for example, or the Boulder Badge from the Rock Gym.  Once the trainer has collected all eight Gym badges, he is sent to battle with the Elite Four, the top four trainers in the whole region.  If he defeats them, he gets to take on the last person who did so: the reigning Pokémon League Champion.  Should the trainer become Champion himself, he can expect a parade of challengers in turn.

In Alola, by contrast, there are no Gyms, no Champions, no Elite Four (or at least there haven't been; Professor Kukui is attempting to establish a Pokémon League for the Alola Region).  Instead, an up-and-coming trainer is given an amulet and sent on what's called the Island Challenge: Seven Captain's Trials, each against a specific Pokémon type, spread out over the four Islands of Alola.  Once the challenge-goer has completed all the Trials on a particular Island, she gets to battle that Island's Kahuna in a Grand Trial.  Each of the Kahunas also favors a particular type of Pokémon.  So...seven Trials and four Kahuna battles, covering eleven of the eighteen known Pokémon types.  And after each Trial, including the Grand Trials, the challenge-goer is awarded the Z-crystal for that move-type.  There are other Z-crystals that are unique to particular species of Pokémon, and crystals for the remaining types are rumored to be hidden in various places around the Islands.  The idea is to find, earn, or win them all.

Now, some of this lines up with the League system; the Trial sites could be said to function as Gyms, with the Captains as more-or-less Gym Leaders.  You could even call the Z-crystals "badges", although they're a helluva lot more useful in battle.  But the philosophy behind the Island Challenge couldn't be more different if it tried.  Completing the Island Challenge doesn't make you King or send other Trainers looking for your hide to tack onto the wall.  There are no ranks, no titles to defend.  It just makes you yet another of the strongest Trainers in Alola, and if you want to get together with the others for a friendly team battle, why, you can, and it doesn't cost anyone a title or their prestige.  It's not a competition with others at any level above the individual battle; just a test of a Trainer's own strength, in which the only real "rival" is herself.

So let's see how Enya-pen does in her first Captain's Trial.  I'd flop, I know that...because it's against Normal-types.  ;-b

  -:-  -:-  -:-

As it turned out, even after all that day's excitement, Enya was just getting warm.  Checking the engines and the wing-load balance before an Epic.  Bombing.  Run.  Went like this:

There was a patch of tall grass between her and the next Pokémon Center, so since she had no choice but to stomp through it, she did so long enough to find the Spearow and the Cutiefly.  Then she 'boarded' her higher-level Pokémon and brought out the weaker ones, and they went grass-stomping some more so's she could level them up a bit.  Her team is like Little League--everybody gets a chance to play.

But she knew this was all just stalling for time before the actual Captain's Trial, so once everybody'd had their workout, she went back to the Center, had some refreshments (Tapu Cocoa!), loaded up on potions and Pokébeans, and put a LOT of thought into who she was gonna take with her into that cavern.  She caught about a crapload of Pokémon yesterday, so there were a lot of choices.  She picked:

  -  Tayu, Dartrix (of course)
  -  Pity-Kitty, Persian
  -  Senator Sam, Yungoos
  -  Nepomuk, Slowpoke
  -  Tae Quon Lee, Makuhita (a Sumo-wrestler Pokémon)
  -  Tron, her trusty Magnemite



...and made her way to Verdant Cavern, where she met Captain Ilima and began her Trial.

The Cavern was beautiful, and she just stood there for a while, taking it all in...oh, and scoping out ramps, ledges, bridges and other means of getting from one "platform" to the next.  She spotted some hidden Items, too, and scooped them up.  And nothing too scary happened at first; she had to fight a few random 'mons who jumped out at her, then, umm, "persuade" two Team Skull goons (what the heck were they doing in there!!) to GTFO or at least stay out of the way.  But then she had to take on the Island's "Totem Pokémon", a much larger and more powerful version of a regular 'mon, raised by Captain Ilima himself and possessing a demigodly aura.  And what was this creature? --A dang Gumshoos!!  Ohh, Senator Sam got a kick out of that one...

One thing that Alolan Pokémon can do that Pokés from other regions cannot is summon other Pokémon for help in battle.  After Enya's team landed the first hit, Totem Gumshoos did just that, and next thing you know she's facing another Yungoos as well, and had to divide Tayu's attacks between them...  Nonetheless, she defeated the Totem Pokémon of Melemele Island, and thought she felt the eyes of Tapu Koko itself on her as she claimed her prize: The Normal-type Z-crystal, the first one she'd won rather than gotten bundled with a Pokémon.

Only then was she allowed out of the caverns.  And her friends, Hau, Professor Kukui and even Lillie, were out there to greet and congratulate her.  But the Trial was far from over.  FAR from it.  Turns out that was just loading the cargo bay, because the real Trial...was to defeat Kahuna Hala himself.  Oh, not immediately; he didn't ambush her as she emerged; that would've been incredibly rude and not at all Hawaiian.  Na, he walked her to the village where she'd had her very first battle and let her come to him when she was ready.

At length, and after spending a while feeding and pampering her team, she did...and much to her own very great surprise and Kahuna Hala's delight, she defeated him.  He gave her another Z-crystal (Fighting-type), taught her how to ride a Tauros, stamped her Trainer Passport, and told her she was good to go for the next Island.

BUT! ...She had one unfinished errand, besides finding a Drifloon for that lady: Random sent her off to the only as-yet-unexplored part of Melemele: Ten Carat Hill, which is actually an extinct volcano with a beautiful, peaceful and very large meadow where the crater used to be.  Think Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania, the archetypal African savannah habitat, and you'll get the picture.  And whyyyyy did Random send her there? --It's the only place in the whole of Alola where she could find a Rockruff.  Player knowledge?  Heck Yeah!!  But she has an in-game excuse; Professor Kukui has a Rockruff, and she fell in love with him and wanted one too.

Well, savannahs-in-a-crater tend to be pretty densely populated with wildlife, and so it was for Enya: She caught another half-crapload of Pokémon before she finally found her Little Dog.  But she did!  And so, after an 18-hour day and almost three hours of nonstop battling at her highest levels yet, she came staggering home and plopped into her bed...where, this morning, her mom's Meowth had to use an Awaken potion on her to make sure she gets to the marina on time.

 - - -

Off to Akala Island next.  But first, that Drifloon; and since battling really worked up everyone's appetites, she's out of Pokébeans again.

[Verdant Cavern, Melemele Island]