Today, our li'l Enya...

  o  Helped Trial Captain Illima take on a pair of grunts from Team Skull.  That't the first time the game music turned ugly...some kind of fuzzy grunge/rap/scratchy-disc nonsense.  Enya thoroughly humiliated her grunt just to make the Bad Noise go away!

  o  Got battled by the selfsame Captain as kind of a "Thank You"...you know, sort of like "Do that again, I was kinda busy the first time"?  He might have gone easy on her, or at least she didn't embarrass herself...

  o  Took on a couple of minor favors for people she met in town: She's supposed to find a Drifloon (li'l balloon-critter ) for one lady, a Cutiefly for another, and a Spearow for a little girl who wants to trade her Machop.  (Enya needs a Fighting-type...)




  o  Caught an Abra(!)  That's a big deal, because they teleport away at the first sign of a battle; this was her fifth attempt.

  o  Caught a Growlithe!  *That's* a big deal because it evolves into Arcanine, Random's Number One favorite from the first generation.  Also, she desperately needed a Fire Pokémon to keep other people's flamethrowers from toasting her poor widdle Grass Owl.

  o  Caught a Slowpoke and immediately put him to work - he's the first team member to have any Psychic moves.

  o  Caught a Smeargle (little artist-dog), which is F'ing hard to do because as soon as you use a move, he learns it and can use it back!

Annnnd...Tayu evolved into a Dartrix.  (His final form, Decidueye, should explain the Robin Hood association.)

And-and...Pity-Kitty is now an Alolan Persian.




Yes, all the "new hires" have names, including Tsanten (the Abra) and Pepper (the Growlithe).  And No, I do not intend to illustrate Enya's entire Pokédex.   ]{;o)

   

~ Pushy Americans, ~ Brenda thought; Rick was skipping straight to the main topic.  "Didn't ask about Ash's day," she replied curtly.  "I asked about yours.  As far as I know, you've been in here ever since we brought that little Ikran home.  I saw we've gotten your aircraft outta sight and laid down the first layer of camo on these shacks.  What else happened yesterday?  You know me, I'm a day-sleeper by necessity now.  We'll get to Ash's link in a little bit; but in the meantime, I'm asking what I missed."

Completely unexpectedly, a very muzzy female voice came from the "habitation" section of the HabMod.  "Yeah, I'd kinda like to hear about that too..." said Ash from behind the bulkhead that divided the sleeping area from the kitchen.

Brenda really hoped nobody saw her levitate a quarter of an inch out of her chair...

[OOC:]

...'cause that'd be "conduct unbecoming a badass."  *g*

By now Rick knew Brenda well enough to know that she wasn't the one to dive headfirst into a conversation. Plus, to be honest, it was nice to see someone enjoy the simple joy of having a good cup of coffee. It kinda made this small step from mere surviving to having small luxuries and valuing them. Probably the same like those wicker plates and baskets that would be in the making.

So, while Brenda tasted her coffee he smelled the still warm arepas - another one of those little, nice things to have. "I know you already had one, but want something to go with a second arepa?", he asked, opening the small fridge, checking on what was inside. "Me, I'm gonna go with what they call strawberry jam here - guess my brain needs something high energy." He put a few breakfast items on the table, then sat down opposite of Brenda. "Quite a day - you can say that again."

He yawned. "And don't wonder about Ash being out cold here. When she came out of link last night, you could have taken a picture of her and put it into the dictionary, right next to the word 'exhaustion'. I didn't get much out of her, but it must have been quite the day at Hometree too. Good and bad stuff..." He rubbed his neck. "At least from what I could get. There was a lot of stuff she'll have to tell again once she's awake and rested. Ya know - trying to make sense out of a battlefield when all the intel you got are a few troup movements and maybe a gunshot or two and you know very well that there's so much more going on... " After a short pause he added: "Although if I understood things right last night for now we're kind of released off battlefield and saving-the-world duty for now. We might actually have a chance to take some wicker making lessons." 

   ...  ...

A short stroll and some formalities later, Brenda seated her now-maskless self at the little kitchen table and laid down the leaf-tray of arepas she'd brought in from the fire.  She'd already confirmed that Ash was sacked out in her bunk in what could almost be an Enya position: belly-down, head turned facing the wall, her good arm dangling over the side.  "Heh...didn't know she had it in her to relax," the veteran driver smirked.  "Then again, I've never watched her sleep; the linkbed doesn't count."

Then she gestured at the leaf-platter.  "We're not gonna be seeing too many more of these," she remarked.  "Word around the fire last night is that our Na'vi are gonna be making wicker ones.  Baskets, trays, that sort of thing; maybe even some toys.  Says something about how long they think they're gonna be stuck here...or maybe about the number of big leaves they think are gonna be left by the time these ones wear out."

Now she sipped her coffee, eyes half-closed in bliss, the better to draw out the experience.  (Her arepa had disappeared before she'd even arrived at the HabMod.)  She didn't seem to be in any hurry to start the main conversation; but this only went back to her notion of Armenian manners, in which it was polite to show some interest in your hosts or guests as people before you and they "got to the point."

"So," she finally said, "did you sleep good?  Must've been quite a day..."

Rick noticed Brenda coming out of the shack, sauntering over to to pick up the arepas and then her beeline over to the habmod. It would have taken a denser man than him to guess her destination. So he grinned, toasted with his mug and then turned back to the kitchen to get out a second one, expecting his early morning guest and the questions she'd probably bring along with the arepas.

Game Log, continued.

   -:-

I just figured it out!!!  ...Err, bapped into it, more like...  In the opening moves of a petit-mal seizure (j/k), I poked the "choose/reply" button before anyone had said anything to me...and Lo, there was Dialogue!!  So...I guess there is a way for Enya to get noticed, and it ain't by waiting her turn and being polite.

[Enya:] *ferocious grin*

The fun part of my day, of course, was running Enya-pen all over Melemele Island.  This game is a lot more fun now that I know how to get people to talk to her!  So she loaded up on Pokébeans, bought a bunch of Pokéballs, received her Munchlax, threw down an expensive lemonade, then took down those trainers.  One of them was on the arrogant side, but when she got done with him he mumbled that he should have done his homework...

What happened next was hilarious: Enya got paged over the loudspeaker.  Lillie looked at her aghast, thinking that her friend must be in biiiig trouble if she was being summoned to the office.  "Enya, did you do something?"  "Mmmayybe..."  "You DID do something, didn't you??"  And Enya just walked off with that saucy air of "That's for me to know and you to find out!"

What it was, though, was that the teacher was impressed and wanted to battle her, too.  When that turned out well, she introduced Enya to Trial Captain Ilima, who would guide Enya through the Melemele phase of her Island Challenge.  So: Our girl's done the preliminaries and is now on the brink of the Real Adventure.  Not bad for a day's work...

Even better: Enya finally made it downtown and totally ditched Lillie and warped into the apparel shop and the hair salon.  She looks like a Enya nao.

Oh...and little Tayu is one level away from evolving into a Dartrix.  DarTOR, if you ask me, bein' as he's a boy...  This is messed up.  The starter species' gender ratio skews heavily male, but Rowlet and especially Popplio's evos have totally feminine Latin suffixes: Dartrix?  Primarina??  BRIONNE??  Not enough Romans in the world if Nintendo/GameFreak thought they were gonna get away with that one.

After some internal debate, I have opted to publicly humiliate myself by sharing the in-game achievements, but out-of-game cluelessness, that happened concerning Enya's stint at the Pokémon Trainers' School.  Hei, could be good for a laugh...  :#)

(Chronology: Assume each new post is for a new day unless stated otherwise.  It's no burden on the reader, and it keeps me from typing "The next day..." all the time but trying to keep it creative.)

The next morning (Aaagh!!  I can't stop!!!!), Hau showed Enya around the outskirts of Hau'oli City, the largest city not only on Melemele Island but in all of Alola.  Their first stops were at the Pokémon Center just down the road from Enya's house, and at the Pokémon Trainer Academy next door to it.

A Pokémon Center is a combination medical center for Pokémon and hangout for their trainers.  There's a café; a shop where you can buy Pokéballs, healing potions and other essentials; and the all-important nurse's station, where your banged-up and weary battlers will be restored to full health.  There's also a boarding facility of sorts for any of a trainer's Pokémon who are not actively adventuring.  A Pokémon team having six slots and Enya already having seven Pokémon, she already needed somewhere to put the odd critter out; she's been very careful about letting them take turns so no one gets completely left out.

With Hau and Lillie doing all the talking, Enya had no trouble obtaining the needed services.  But then Hau left in search of lunch *, and Lillie told Enya to meet her and Professor Kukui at the Academy when she'd finished up at the Center...

...and then Enya found her own and her team's welfare in the clumsy hands and muddled head of a 54-year-old first-time Pokémon player who hadn't yet figured out how everything works.

   * Lunch: There's a tasty treat on Alola called a malasada.  This is a real thing in Latin America, a fried-bread meat turnover.  The name means "poorly broiled", but it has to be tongue-in-cheek, because there's nothing poor about them; they're f'ing delicious.  Well, there are malasadas in Pokémon Sun and Moon.  And Hau is positively addicted to them.  If Enya ever gets in a pitched battle with him, she'll make sure she's got one of those in her backpack to distract him with.    :-]

One of my chief disappointments with the game is that it doesn't really let your character speak in any significant way.  People will ask her Yes or No questions, or the game will give her a list of choices.  But there's no way for her to ask questions, make requests, challenge people verbally or even jump up and down and yell "Hey, YOU!!"  No way, in other words, for her to get someone's attention.  Which, if you know anything about any version of Enya, her being overlooked is about as inconceivable as an Ikran doing a handstand.

So Enya went to the Trainers' School.  She stood by while Lillie and the Professor talked.  She was instructed to meet the teachers and the principal, search for Pokémon on the grounds, and that she'd be able to graduate once she'd defeated the four best students, who might or might not actually be on campus.

(Here we had a generational misunderstanding.  "Campus" in the game basically meant the schoolhouse.  However, "campus" for anyone who's been to college is a vaster entity that includes the grounds, common areas and outbuildings.  So when the Professor said "off-campus", maybe Enya understood it in the former sense...but her player was smacking his forehead and going "Crap, that could be anywhere on the island!!")

So here's my log for the next three days real-time...)

   -:-

Gaah, I'm bored in the game right now!  Enya has been told to find four trainers from the school, who might or might not be on campus, and she's checked everywhere she's ever walked and not found a one of them.

   -:-

I'm giving up on those Trainers for the day; maybe they'll pop up after dark, hang 'em. by which time Enya will be so mad and frustrated that she'll probably crush them, including the principal.

   -:-

Still stuck at the Trainer's School.  You're gonna love this: Enya has walked past, stopped in front of, walked circles around, gotten in the faces of, and has otherwise made herself a real nuisance to at least three of those four Trainers, maybe all four of 'em, and they haven't said a thing!  Which, unless I missed something, isn't how the game is supposed to work.  Supposedly, if you so much as get within line-of-sight of another Trainer, s/he challenges you to a battle.  A trigger-happy lot, yes!  And you're not allowed to refuse.  Point-of-honor, that sort of thing.  But Enya's been walking up to, past and around these kids for two days and not a one of them has so much as acknowledged her presence by anything more than an annoyed glance.  Is it 'cause she doesn't have her red t-shirt yet or something??

*Enya fumes*

The same thing happens at the Pokémon Center, where (I thought) the nurse was supposed to ask her if any of her Pokémon are hurt; the barista is supposed to offer refreshments for her and her party; and the Pokémart clerk is supposed to be trying to nab her attention, not t'other way around...

Nobody's talking to Enya!  How could anyone in any alternate Universe, even the Abyssal Realm, not want to talk to Enya?!  Maybe she doesn't stand in front of them long enough??

Which is a Bad Thing, because the Enya-shirts are in Hau'oli City, and she can't go to the City until she beats those four trainers, and she's out of healing potions and almost out of Pokébeans.  (Kinda gives "shop 'til you drop" a whole 'nother dimension, dunnit?)  (:-|

She caught a Grimer, though.  They like to be petted too, so she's just gonna have to get used to squishing her fingers through all that sludge.  My girl is "Fearless in devotion"...let's not forget that.  You'll never see "Eww" turn to "Aww" that fast again in your life.  ;-)

On her first successful collecting expedition, Enya battled and adopted...

 - Senator Sam, Yungoos

Figures her/my first capture would be the mini-Trump...  But I didn't call him Trump, Donald, Cheetos, or anything else related to Trump.  I named him after a cartoon politician character I used to draw in high school.  He *is* gonna look like somebody clearing his throat to make a stump speech when he evolves.



The rest:
 - Fletcher, Wingull (from Jonathan Livingston Seagull)
 - Pity-Kitty, Alolan Meowth (I got a kitty after all!!)
 - Naomi, Alolan Ratatta (after one of my pet rats)
 - Tron, Magnemite (Magnemite are genderless, btw; maybe the next two can be Wall-E and Eva) *g*
 - Gillian, Pikipek (after my D&D character, a winged elf)

I didn't make much progress in the actual story.  On the other hand, I've gotten to let Enya do some very Enya things, like splash in the ocean and go back to the cliff where she rescued Nebby just to watch the river flow under the ruined bridge.  It's pretty out there...a good place to pet and feed her li'l buddies.  And those scenic places reeeeaalllllyyyyyy amp up the positive effects of petting them.  She *so* spoils her 'mons: Typical battle is followed by a grooming session (to knock the dust off 'em), a feeding, and lots of petting, especially for the newly-captured ones.

Pokémon battles, at their heart, are about interactions between the elements.  Every Pokémon has a "type" which corresponds to one or more of these elements, and their type says a lot about their strengths and weaknesses in battle.   Grass absorbs water, for example.  Fighting (think karate) breaks rock.  Ground and Rock sound about the same, but Rock is weak to Ground; when the ground trembles, rocks break.  Ground and Fire, same thing; dirt smothers flames.  Electric vs Water: Water conducts electricity.  Electric vs Bug...well, you've heard of a bug-zapper.  So a Bug Pokémon going up against an Electric-type is gonna have a hard time of it unless it has moves or abilities that make up for its weakness.  This is why trainers try to form a balanced team; if your Bug-type does in fact find itself facing an Electric-type, you can always switch him out for a Ground-type, which is immune to Electric attacks.

In every version of the game, a new trainer is given a choice of three "starter" Pokémon, each one corresponding to an element: Grass, Water, or Fire.  Grass absorbs Water.  Water puts out Fire.  Fire burns Grass.  It's like Rock-Paper-Scissors that way.  And the three starter Pokémon for Sun and Moon are: Rowlet (Grass), Popplio (Water), and Litten (Fire).  Guess who's who?

      

Now that that's been explained...back to our story.

  -:-   -:-   -:-

The next day, Enya returned to Iki Town where the Kahuna awaited her, along with Hau and three baby Pokémon: a little owl, a sea-lion, and a kitten.  Enya chose, and was chosen by, her Ikran...err, her Tinyowl, whom she named Tayu.  Who better than a Tayu to travel with her as a Soul-friend?  Because as attached to the rest of her party as she may become, the bond between a trainer and her starter Pokémon will always be one-of-a-kind, taking "special" to a whole new level.

Kiye and I had some fun with me naming the tinyowl after a gentle, dreamy Na'vi lad.  How well would that fit when he started flinging feather-shurikens and arrows at things?  That's not very "Tayu" at all!  But Kiye reminded me that Na'vi Tayu's dancing had the power to evoke the inherent wildness and ferocity even of something as seemingly harmless as a Yerik.  So *this* Tayu is an actual Fierce Creature who will eventually be performing arrow- and shuriken dances.  For an owl who's going to grow up to be an avian Robin Hood, that's about as in-tune with its nature as it can get.  He won't even see it as battling...

And dance is a major feature in Alola.  There's one bird Pokémon who comes in four different forms according to which dance style it learns, from cheerleading to flamenco to hula to Japanese fan-dance.  The ultra-powerful Z-moves are invoked via a special dance.  And almost everybody kinda sways like tallgrass even when they're standing still; they just can't help it!

I've already made up my mind that we're gonna have to find a way to get Lillie to chill out too.  Probably help if Enya takes down whatever had the kid on the run in the first place...

At the same adoption ceremony, Enya was presented with a Z-ring.  This is a bracelet with a socket for any one of several "Z-crystals", which focus the power of the bond between Pokémon and trainer into an ultra-devastating move corresponding to the Pokémon's species or type.  Things like Sinister Arrow Raid, Inferno Overdrive and Pulverizing Pancake (which may or may not have been what killed the dinosaurs...  j/k!)...  What made Enya's Z-bracelet extra-special was that it was carved out of the same sparkling stone the Island Guardian had given her the day before.  She wouldn't be able to perform the moves until she collected the crystals, which she would earn by means of various Trials in what was called the Island Challenge.  This quest, if she accepted it, would take her all over Alola and line her up for some very fierce battles.  But for now, it was enough that she battled Hau to honor the Tapu, who, she was told, had a great fondness for Pokémon battles...and not always as just a spectator.  *g*

(That battle, by the way, is the one that Borderlands Enya flashed back to in "Borderlands: The Wall" when she first met Rowellan.)

   


Not bad for her first full day on the Island!

A few of our dramatis personae, before we carry on:

               
Professor Kukui, a Pokémon researcher, who welcomes Enya to the Islands.  Let's just say the Professor doesn't do a lot of lab work...unless you count having Pokémon use their moves on him, the better to research them.

Kahuna Hala of Melemele Island (each Island has its own); Hau's grandfather, and the One to Beat before Enya can complete her Melemele Challenge and continue on to Akala Island.  Specialises in Fighting-type Pokémon.

Pokémon Trainer Hau, Hala's grandson.  Like most kids in his position, he is eager to prove himself - to his grandpa and his friends, yes, but mostly to himself.  He is almost always upbeat, bouncing and smiling and cheering people on, even congratulating the Trainers who beat him.

     

Lillie, Professor Kukui's assistant, a mysterious girl on the run...but from what?  Has a penchant for getting herself into fixes that only a Trainer can get her out of.  Guess who gets to be her bodyguard this time? _...Enya.

...and Lillie's Pokémon Nebby, a Cosmog.  He looks like a miniature nebula, doesn't he?  Nobody's ever seen one, and she's taken great pains to keep him a secret...