...and more story.

When the adventurers reached the Altar, the world went really quiet; no sound but the wind, their footsteps, and the little splashes they made in the shallow pools surrounding two square standing-spots.  Lillie stood on one and gestured Enya onto the other.

They played their flutes...the most beautiful, ethereal chord I've ever heard in a game or out of it.

[Playing the Moon Flute.png]  [Altar o't Sunne - Pools.png]  [Playing the Sun Flute.jpeg]


The Altar awakened.  The Sun-symbol at its apex began to glow, and long-dry channels filled again with flowing water.

[Altar o't Sunne Awakens.png]  [Altar o't Sunne - Platform.jpg]


A portal opened; a great globe of solar energy emerged, hovered over the kids...then lifted Lillie's backpack into itself, with Nebby in it.  Big energy fluctuations ensued...and what fell out of the orb, landing on thunderous cat-feet, was Solgaleo, the Lion of the Sun...who gave Lillie a kitty-bump on the chest and was still willing to answer to "Nebby".

Yeah!!  The girls had been thrashing all over the Pokémon Grand Canyon in search of the Legendary's aid, and he'd been backpacking with them all along!  The fan theory was right!  Lillie's known him since he was a wee little cloud of stars!  And Enya was right too; Cosmoem was his intermediate form, the cocoon.  You can still see the blue starry core in Solgaleo's forehead, and the remnants of the rings in his mane...  "My, how you've grown!"

Some Poni Canyon visuals...

(First two rows: Various corners of the Canyon)
(Bottom row: The Dragon trial site; Hapu becomes Kahuna of Poni Island)

::: [The Sunne in Splendour] :::

Last night, Enya was EPIC.

We left her and Lillie following a trail of standing stones that marked the way to the Altar of the Sunne.  It took them through a lot of caverns, steep places, and great spots for wild-Pokémon ambushes, most of which Enya dealt with, as their method was for her to clear out an area in advance before having Lillie catch up.  In the process of taking this trail by stretches, the pair encountered a roadblock--courtesy of some Team Skull holdouts and their admin, Plumeria (who to me bears a passing resemblance to Harley Quinn; your mileage may vary).  No telling how they'd tracked Enya and Lillie here, if they had, but they had a request.  The team, what was left of it, had been worried sick since "our boy" Guzma disappeared, and I'm not even sure they knew he'd been sucked into Ultra Space.  They just wanted him back, and for Team Skull, they were awfully polite about it...even Plumeria, whose battle challenge was only thrown down by way of making sure Enya was strong enough for the task.

[Skulls Need Help.png]  [Skull Admin Plumeria Needs Help.png]

The adventurers couldn't make any promises.  But it was becoming more clear that they might indeed have to try to access the Ultra Realm for Guzma's and Lusamine's sake, and maybe for Poké Earth's...and the whole thing depended on them finding Solgaleo and his being willing and able to assist in the task.

 -:-

Some time later, Enya came upon what looked to be an abandoned Trial site.  Umm...she thought she'd passed them all?  But when she stuck her head in there, darned if she didn't find herself fighting Dragon-types for the Draconium-Z crystal that rested on a pedestal in the middle of the cave.  The Totem was a beast called Kommo-o, which looks like a dragon in Samurai armor--all loose, round scales about the head and shoulders, down the back and at the end of its tail, which it could chuck like Captain America's shield.  OUCH!  She beat it, but not before it made mincemeat out of her team...and there wasn't jack she could do for them because she was nowhere near the only Pokémon Center on Poni Island, and she was completely out of potions and Revives.

But when Lillie showed up, it turned out she had a lifetime supply of Pokémeds on her, so she put them to good use.  Her contribution to the Cause, since Enya was taking most of the risks...  Yay, Lillie!  And Enya thanked the Guardians that her friend had thought to nab all that stuff on their way out of the Foundation.

The other end of the dragons' cavern opened out onto the steepest, most colossal staircase anywhere short of Chichen Itzá...and at the top of it was the Altar of the Sunne.

[Altar o't Sunne-Approach.jpeg]

I don't think Enya was terribly worried about the staircase.  After some of the ramps, slopes and blockades she'd navigated and battled on in Poni Canyon, she probably saw that ascent as a nice change of pace; at least she didn't have to summon Tauros to bash through any rocks.  A Trainer must have to be incredibly fit to survive the nomadic phase.  The round ones, like Sophocles, are only to be found in retirement homes and research settings.    ;-]

[Perspectives - Lillie:]

[Lillie's Z-form.png]  On Poni Island the group met up with another friend, a badass Gypsy-girl named Hapu.  Hau ran off in one direction; Hapu, a Poni Island native, had business at home; so Enya's adventuring with...Lillie.  And it's working!!!  Lillie's been a different person since the Aether Wars.  Once everyone was out of the Aether Paradise, she went clothes-shopping and came back in a much more adventure-ready outfit--still a dress, but the kind you'd wear on the playground instead of on Easter Sunday.  That gym bag is now a backpack.  And all this is because she's made up her mind that she's not gonna be timid and helpless anymore.  She has this little pump-me-up routine - she says her new look is her "evolved form", has a "Z-move dance", and when she overcomes an obstacle she calls summoning her courage "using my Z-power", and the actual victory "passing my first Trial."  She's fun!!

But her tagging along isn't just an act of hero-worship.  After the Foundation battle, Lillie was given something that was thought to exist only in legend: one of the two flutes that were played at Solgaleo's shrine when first he came to Alola, the Sun Flute and the Moon Flute.  Lillie had the Moon Flute.  But it would take both flutes to summon the Legendary.  They had to be played together.  And the other was on an uninhabited island with a forest full of territorial Exeggutors to get past.  The kiddos went there, Enya taught "the walking forest" some respect, and they found the Sun Flute.  Now they're back on Poni, searching for the Altar of the Sunne...which is at the highest point of Vast Poni Canyon.

(Whoever designed that place was totally channeling Rockhome.  The walls, the niches and caverns, even the lone tree on the far end, where Enya battled the brand-new Kahuna...Hapu!  Whose "pending business" turned out to have been a trip to the temple to ask the Tapu's blessing.  But the visuals in the canyon are stunningly Tayu-esque; I felt like I was on an Ikran, threading myself through all the fly-through places.)


I think Lillie surprised herself by standing up to her mother at the Foundation, and by going through everything she did to rescue Nebby again.  And at the end of it she was entrusted with a really important task - to find the other flute and someone to play it to help her summon Solgaleo.  That on top of her wanting to save her mom, even if that means going into the Ultra Realm...dunno if she's gonna be able to pull that off, but that she'd even be willing to speaks of a strength I don't think she knew she had.

She and Enya have already had some really good talks - Lillie's parts were scripted scenes, true, but I liked this movie.  Lillie pauses a lot to ask Enya if she thinks she's as brave and capable as she's trying to be, and Enya, under my direction, always nods vigorously and says "YEAH!!"  (The other choice: a listless "That was okay...")  I just wish there was a button for high-fives and hugs.

I left them camped out on a ledge outside yet another cavelet, and they know they're going the right way because they've been following a trail marked out by standing stones of a certain design.


Nebby, by the way, evolved into Cosmoem in that crate.  [SunMoon - Cosmoem.png]
Lillie's freaking out because he isn't moving or making his cute little "Pew!" noises or wandering outside and getting into trouble...  Enya thinks he just might be in a cocoon stage, not that he's dying or anything, but that's part of why Lillie's going to the Altar too.

We *did* get a little backstory on Lillie and her mom.  They had some really awesome moments together - dancing in thunderstorms on the beach, snuggling in bed together, that kind of thing.  Lusamine only really changed when she became obsessed with the Ultra Beasts.  But that must have been going on for years, as Gladion left home a few years before Lillie did, so even by the time of his departure/escape, things must have gotten pretty bad.

Lillie says she wants to be a trainer too.  I don't really see that happening; she's too gentle to be siccing her pets on anyone else's, and it'd probably do her soul-damage.  But if I could actually type Enya's parts, I'd have her suggest that Lillie become a breeder.  All the Pokémon, none of the battling; just nurturing them, matchmaking, keeping them happy and tending their babies.  That's even more important in the Pokémon world than training and battling; a breeder who's hatched three generations of Hall-of-Famers has something to brag about indeed.

For now, though, she's been hanging around brave adventurers who like and respect her, and that respect means the world to her; that makes it possible for her to be a brave adventurer too.  I can tell you right now that she's already a bigger person on that ledge than she was at the foot of the canyon...and Enya makes sure she knows it, too.  :-)

 -:-

[Perspectives - Enya:]

Enya's a little damaged now herself after the last couple of days.  She's had to do a whole lot of serious shit, and that first night on Poni was just the beginning of her getting back in touch with her "smiles and adventures" again.  She hasn't challenged anybody, hasn't explored much--a little, which is more than she could say on Ula'ula, but a far cry from popping into everywhere and talking to everyone like she did on Melemele and Akala.  She avoids other Trainers and their challenges as much as she can, and doesn't enjoy the battles when they happen anyway.  It's like she still thinks she has to save her team's strength for some apocalyptic Final Confrontation, and she doesn't want to be bothered by anything else...

She sees this in herself and doesn't like it, but you can't make something be fun again by force of will.  I think she's rediscovering the awesomeness by seeing the whole adventure through Lillie's eyes.  Lillie's all "Wow!" and "I wanna be like you!"; that's gotta be good for morale...  I think right now they need each other.  Maybe it'll finally sink in that, you know what?, maybe she really *is* as amazing as her companion thinks.

(Vast Poni Canyon: Standing Stone; the Canyon at dusk)

Here's something about the game that's okay on balance, I guess, but drove me crazy that night: For scenes that are important to the main plot, it takes over your character.  You still make the decisions for her if there are any to be made, but mostly it's to make sure she stays put until the Important NPCs are done saying the Important Things.  Almost the whole Aether episode was like that.  I got to skulk Enya around a warehouse dock, have her explore the Aether base, battle the few employees that noticed her, stuff like that; but for almost any scene that had two or more of the main characters in it (except the battles), I was watching animé.  Since I was watching instead of doing, I can't really give you the play-by-play, but a LOT came out about Lillie, Gladion and the Aether Foundation.  The highlights:

o   The Foundation was indeed originally set up as a Pokémon rescue, and a lot of the people working there still believed in that mission.  But they hadn't had much of a voice since Lusamine became obsessive about the Ultra Beasts, and by now she was completely off her rocker...

o   ...which is why she needed Nebby.  Cosmog, when under extreme stress, will open up a dimensional portal to escape.  That's how he and Lillie got out of the Aether Paradise to begin with, and Lusamine wanted to make him do it again so that she could "ascend" to the Ultra Realm and become one with the Beasts.

o   And what was Lillie doing in the Aether Paradise to begin with? --She and Gladion were Lusamine's daughter and son.  He ran away with Null, and a few years later, she escaped with Nebby.  Lots of family drama when they met again in Lusamine's quarters...  But it explained why Gladion had a better idea than most about what the higher-ups at the Foundation might be willing to do and why.

o   Nebby was in some kind of containment crate, where Lusamine planned to have him tortured so that he would open the portal.  She didn't care about him, her children or anything else but the perfection she was sure she'd find in the Ultra Realm with the Beasts.

o   Lillie's got guts.  She had to, to have stolen Nebby in the first place, and the reason the Skull goons were able to nab her was because she'd finally gotten fed up of having to ask everyone's help and (gasp!) headed out to go do something about it herself.  As far as she was concerned, it was her and Gladion's problems with their mother that had dragged everybody into this mess.  She was super-embarrassed that they had to come to her rescue this time, too.  She said that even though she wasn't a Trainer, she wanted to be "brave and strong like you, Enya..."  Courage: 10.  Ability: Umm...  But then again, didn't Enya make the same kind of decision about taking on Team Skull?

o   After one helluva series of battles with Foundation goons, the Branch Chief, Guzma, and finally Lusamine herself, the jelly-like Ultra Beast reappeared and saved Nebby a really hard time by opening a portal itself and sucking Guzma and Lusamine in.  Can we go home now???

o   Apparently not; because when the grateful Foundation folks put the kids on a ferry, it left them on Poni Island - the wildest, most rugged and least-inhabited place in Alola.

[Enya:] "But I not done with Ula'ula yet!!"

  -:-

So...the Foundation survived Lusamine's madness, and now they could get back to helping Pokémon.  But Lillie, drat her hide, wants the Trainers to go rescue her mom.  Enya's perfectly fine with the situation just the way it is, tell you that...  As I've said, of necessity she's developed a ruthless streak.

But there's still the other matter of the wormhole the Ultra Beast created.  It wasn't the only one.  Those portals are opening up all over Alola, and some of the things coming out of them are not nearly as pretty as the one that came for Lusamine.  The Island Guardians, Tapu Koko and the rest, have emerged to fight them - a real DtP scenario there, with four "Eywas" against several "Alphas", and who knows how that's going to turn out!

Nope, not done with the main story.  And maybe the kids do need to fetch Lusamine if Poké Earth and the Ultra Realm are to be completely separated again, and/or summon Solgaleo to correct the imbalance.  But for now, Enya's on another beach shedding the grimness, splashing through the shallows and remembering she's a kid again.  :-)

  -:-

Lusamine must have been good to her children once upon a time, even if it was way before they reached their teens.  Anyway, your mom's your mom, even if she's sick in the head, and Lillie for one won't give up on the possibility of a cure.  That's the thing with kids: No matter how bad it gets, they still want so much to believe.  Believe that Mom's just busy or angry, not that she's rejected them for more exotic things; believe that if they behave themselves, Mom will get back to normal again.  Lillie, being younger, took longer to figure it out, and it really took that threat to her little buddy for her to realise that her Ma was actually cruel, and that her brother had a reason for leaving, and that she had to get out of there too.

Now the others might find themselves having to rescue Lusamine or even go into the Ultra Realm after her to separate the two worlds.  But maybe Solgaleo can do that.  And Enya-pen deserves a break.  Her pals are waiting for her just up the road, but if it's for anything but Pokémon-hunting, she might just give 'em the slip the way she did on Akala.    ;-]

And now back to game-today; Enya and Hau have just been brought back to Ula'ula Island...


::: [ The Skull and Aether Wars ] :::

It took Enya half an hour to take down Team Skull.

It took her and her allies the rest of the night to take down the Aether Foundation.

For the confrontation with the Skulls, and to save herself the water crossing, she travelled to Po Town this time on dragonback.  Charizard wouldn't touch down inside the walls, so he left her at the main gate.  This wasn't half the problem it would have been the day before; one nice thing about the game is that once you've beat a particular Trainer, s/he won't challenge you again.  So she just marched right in like she belonged, yesterday's wave of assailants having become today's wave of "Oh shit, she's back!"...  Took herself right up to the guard in the mansion, answered the three questions, and when he asked her if she was sure, she said "No!"  Whereupon the sentry said "Yeah, you're one of us!" and showed her how to get to Boss Guzma's room.

What happened next was short, sharp, and violent, bad for the local geography, and you could have probably heard it from the next town over...but Boss Guzma is never gonna diss her as "some dumb little kid" again.  I don't think little kids go storming walled cities, and dumbass ones don't make it out alive.  Ergo, Enya is neither in his book.  He'd love to take her on again just because her team took his on such a ride, but it would be as a serious opponent, not as some bug to swat.

But by the time she returned to Aether House with the kid's Yungoos, Lillie and Nebby had been kidnapped by some Skull thugs who didn't get the memo.  Hau, who is normally the bounciest, smiliest person in the universe, looked grim and scared; whatever had happened, even he and his Pokémon hadn't been able to stop it.

Besides Hau, though, there was a young man called Gladion waiting when she got back.  The kids had seen and even battled him before; he'd been doing odd jobs for Team Skull at the time - not that Team Skull appreciated it, pretty much treating him like the dog that cleans up the leftovers.  That battle was Enya's (and my) first look at Type:Null, the Griffin in the iron mask, a "synthetic" Pokémon who seemed to be Gladion's only real friend.  Some of the things the boy said hinted at their having a common origin, that they were both what they'd been made to be.  And he seemed to know Lillie from someplace, and it didn't surprise him that she'd made off with Nebby...

Anyway, it was Gladion who made the connection: Enya's Yungoos chase had just been a diversion, a way to get the strongest trainer in the group off the premises so that Team Skull could pull off the kidnapping.  And he was pretty sure who'd ordered the kidnapping and where they were taking her: the Aether Foundation, about which he seemed to know more than a street rat ought to...and none of it was nice.

There was a lot of discussion about what to do; and really, what could a trio of Pokémon trainers do against a regionwide organisation that had the resources to build its own island?  But it was what Hau said that finally got Enya to go all-in:  "We've gotta do this so we can get back our smiles and our adventures again!"  Smiles, indeed; Enya hadn't cracked one since after the Ghost Trial, and if anything she was in an even grimmer mood now.  I don't think she was really Enya at that point, but a commando disguised as an eleven-year-old, and she didn't like it.  She wanted to be able to exit that mode and get back to rambling the countryside and only battling because she wanted to.  Heck, the most she'd seen of Ula'ula Island the first time was the beeline she'd taken from the Ghost Trial site to Po Town.  So she was in a "Yeah, let's get this over with" frame of mind, where she didn't really care what she'd be up against, only that she wasn't gonna be nice about it.  She missed her "adventures and smiles" and resented the crap out of the people and situations that had taken them from her.  If that bunch of lab rats was what stood between her and getting her childhood back, she'd just have to demolish them, that's all...

She remembered how Guzma had kinda shaken his head after their battle, tipping it towards the Yungoos and going "You did all that for this little thing??"  He might not have wanted to piss her off about anything important.  Only he did, see, when his goons took Lillie and Nebby, so It. Is. ON.


[Gladion's stolen Pokémon, Type:Null]

Ah, yes...perhaps you'd like to know what came of Lillie's and Enya's research?  Why *did* almost everyone seem to want Nebby?  I don't know if the girls found a definitive answer, but they sure picked up some tantalising clues...

If you've ever done any kind of historical research--the kind that involves finding, authenticating and possibly translating original manuscripts--then you know how much has been lost to us over the centuries, and how much info we have to squeeze out of what little remains.  Some such remnants are decent-sized sections of scrolls.  Some are mentions, possibly no more than a paragraph (if you're lucky) or as little as a sentence fragment (if you're less lucky; the unlucky don't find anything at all) in works that were written around roughly the same time (sayy, within a few centuries while people's memories were still "fresh").  Such it was for our girls' efforts.  They were among the more fortunate scholars; indeed, they were positively blessed...no doubt because these matters had been passed on by oral tradition for centuries, maybe millennia, before anyone worried enough about their continued preservation to write them down.  But whether what our heroes found had much, or anything, to do with Nebby's situation was less than clear...

Enough of my palaver; here's what they came up with.  :-)


  ::: The Legendary Pokémon and the Tapu :::

A great and terrible battle waged between the Tapu and the Legendary Pokémon, but neither side could claim victory over the other.  Upon finding themselves equals, the Legendary Pokémon then gifted the Tapu with great power of unknown providence.
 

  ::: The Guardian Deities of the Islands :::

The Tapu regularly keep themselves closed tight in their shells as they absorb Nature's energy.  After many long years of absorbing such energy, their shells become hard and sturdy.
 

  ::: The Tapu and the Island Kahunas :::

The Tapu choose the Kahunas of their islands and entrust them with special sparkling stones.  What reasoning they use to make such a choice, however, is not at all apparent to observers.


  ::: The Guardians and the Ancient Kings :::

In ancient times, the Tapu served as the leaders of the armies of each island's king, but if they used their Z-power in battle, it caused great destruction across the islands.  Because of this, the Tapu came to no longer lend their aid in the wars of men.

 
...And the meaty one...

  -=:=- -=:=- -=:=- -=:=- -=:=-

The empty sky broke asunder,
A hole appearing where had been none.
A single beast appeared from in it:
It was called the beast that devours the sun.

The king of Alola bowed before it;
The beast that shone so like the sun.
The island guardians fought against it,
But in the end the beast had won.

Then did the beast that devours the sun
Shine its light on the line of kings.
Then did the beast that had won
Bring nature's gift to bless all things.

Beast of sun and beast of moon,
Through their union, they brought new life.
A fragile heir in Alola born
That island guardians would keep from strife.

The ancient kings sang their thanks
For Solgaleo with song of flute.
Two tones rang out across the altar -
A perfect pair, ever after mute.


"A fragile heir..."  Whoever that was, however long ago, those words sure rang true for Nebby in the here and now.

There's another twist in Enya's story I haven't mentioned so far: something called the Aether Foundation.  She'd bumped into their researchers/rescuers a couple of times; they claim to have been founded for the protection of Pokémon, and indeed the first time she met them they were saving a Slowpoke from Team Skull.  Another time she wandered into a habmod-type structure that turned out to be one of their labs, where they were helping another Slowpoke to grow a new tail (apparently Slowpoke tails are quite the delicacy, some places...).  They did seem to have saved a lot of Pokémon from some dire fates.

But when Enya left Ula'ula, it was because they'd shanghai'd her and spirited her off to their own artificial island, the Aether Paradise, for an "informational" (more like promotional) tour.  And what she found there was...less than appealing.  Everything was white--surgical white, hospital-white; the color of sterility.  Even the "Pokémon Conservation Area", supposedly a wildlife sanctuary, was criss-crossed with elevated walkways, and the only green and blue there was to them was within the spaces of the grid.  All under a ceiling, too; like an aviary or a zoo, not anywhere she would have want an endangered species to spend its life-cycle.  And the reason they wanted Enya (and Hau) to come visit their facility was because they'd heard of strange creatures entering Poké-Earth from a dimensional rift, and they wanted to find out if these "Ultra Beasts" were Pokémon, and if so, they wanted to 'protect' them too.

[Aether Paradise 1 (HQ)]   [Aether Paradise 2 (Lobby)]
[Aether Paradise 4 (Elevator)]  [Aether Paradise 3 (Conservation)]

The Foundation President, Lusamine, was briefing the young trainers on all this when an Ultra Beast did in fact appear.  It looked something like a jellyfish, with soft flowing tentacles and star-markings on its clear dome; Enya thought it was beautiful...  But Lusamine made her fight it to see if it could be battled like a Pokémon; if it had moves like a Pokémon; if it could be caught like a Pokémon.  Enya left that place pretty disgusted with the Foundation, and with herself for going along.

[nihilego-ow.jpg]

She had plenty of time to think about these things on the ferry ride to Ula'ula.  This wasn't the first time she'd been asked to make observations for an interdimensional research institute, either; remember after her Akala trials, when they ran her into Professor Burnett's lab before she'd even had dinner?  This felt like that.  Once again she was someplace she hadn't planned on being, doing things she hadn't planned on doing, all to serve the ends of adults who were not exactly being forthcoming.  She felt used, and totally at the mercy of all the grownup crap that was happening around her, and you know how poorly she takes to that.  Too many people had been asking her to trust them while they took advantage of her sense of honor.  I mean, storming a city single-handed to fetch back someone's kidnapped pet?  Thrashing around graveyards so's she could show some lady a Pokédex entry for a balloon-critter?  She still had promises to keep on Akala, and I wouldn't be surprised now to see her take another little side-trip and excuse herself from the main storyline.  And all because of the first promise she made: to Lillie, that she would help her protect her little Cosmog, who everyone seems to be way too interested in, and who may have come from another dimension himself.

I have to hand it to Lillie, btw.  I know I've been harshing on her for being a little wuss-dog.  But even though she's not a trainer, even though she hates to see Pokémon get hurt or even look sad, even though she's so afraid of so many things, she's been doing her damnedest to keep Nebby out of all these people's clutches; and if she needs a li'l help from braver people, well, so do we all sometimes.

[Aether Foundation President Lusamine; Lillie's escape]

The Trials:  The Electric Trial took place in an observatory on Mount Hokulani, Ula'ula Island.  Its captain was a friendly "mad inventor"/video-game nerd named Sophocles.  Said he'd rigged up a device for summoning the Electric Totem Pokémon, an electric stag-beetle called Vikavolt.  The device worked, finally, but not before blacking out the rest of the plant...  So Enya, after taking an audio-recognition quiz ("When you hear this sound in the game, what is it?"), was fighting that thing in the dark except for the sparks everyone was giving off.  But the Totem was surprisingly easy to beat.  You've heard of electrical grounding, right?  Earth and rock don't conduct electricity.  That's exactly why electric attacks are pretty useless against Ground- and Rock-types.  Like, you know, Kilvana and Tibbie, respectively?  And bugs are vulnerable to fire; all in all, a dual Bug-Electric type was the best dinner-and-a-fight you could have possibly prepared for Enya's team, 'specially the two doggies and the big horse.

Enya's team for the Electric Trial:

[Enya's Team - Electric Trial]

On to the Ghost Trial.  Now, that one was really creative and fun!  The captain, a girl in patchwork named Acerola, escorted her to an abandoned grocery store, handed her a camera and asked her to take pictures of any strange goings-on, and if she actually saw a Ghost Pokémon, try to get a decent shot of it, too.  So Enya got to go on a photo safari!  Of course, anytime she caught a spook on film, it noticed and attacked her, but Hei...there had to be a battle component somewhere, right?  So after a few well-earned shots of Gastlys and Haunters and Gengars (O My!), she noticed this shabby little Pikachu scurrying around the store and followed it into a back room that was barely bigger than a broom closet.  The door shut behind her and the "Pikachu" revealed itself as...Ghost Totem Mimikyu!  Who we know has the cutest face and backstory *, but whose tail is made of Darkness and Spooky Things.  She took six pics, beat him in a good fight (Mimikyu's "Pikachu" head might have fallen to the side, but otherwise he was no pushover!), then marched out to show Acerola her shots.  Said she'd cornered Mimikyu in a back room.  Acerola said there wasn't any back room in that store.  The whole battle had taken place in a pocket dimension created by Mimikyu.

* (Mimikyu's backstory: He's a lonely little spook who dresses up as Pikachu so that maybe people will like him, too.  I have, however, seen him in other outfits...most notably and hilariously as Acerola.)

(Above: Captains Sophocles and Acerola)
(Below: the Ula'ula Totems and their allies)

Yeah, that was the fun part of Enya's day.  Such highs; such a low; no wonder she's parked Way Up There getting her head together.

 -:-

Everyone on Enya's team has evolved by now; Tron became a Magneton after the Electric battle.  And you know what? --She misses her li'l cuties!  Sometimes their personalities change when they evolve, too, and she definitely sees some rougher edges to Tibbie's temperament.  Well, he's a wolf now, not a pup; reckon she'd better get used to him...  But she half-way wishes there was an Undo button.  She'd use it on Tibbie and Sam in a minute.

Poor Enya...  Two days ago she was a happy little wanderer, traipsing all over Akala Island in search of Passimian (which she didn't find) and a lot of other Pokémon (which she did).  Yesterday she got dragged off to Ula'ula Island, ostensibly to help Lillie do some research about her little buddy at the Library there (Enya: "But I not done with Akala yet!!").  Tayu, Tibbie and Kilvana all evolved into their final forms--Robin Hooded Owl, Desert Wolf and Pa'li Mare.  (Hau really shouldna challenged Enya to battle the moment they reached Ula'ula Island, huh?)  And today she completed both trials on Ula'ula Island, still only needing to confront the Kahuna...but instead she's back on Melemele in a pretty but lonely place, head between her knees, frustrated, resentful and feeling defeated.  How...?

After she'd passed the Electric and Ghost-type trials (about which more next post; they were really fun!), she left Malie City on Ula'ula to meet with Professor Kukui and his entourage at a place called the Aether House, a halfway house for Trainers and Pokémon in crisis.  The Professor hadn't arrived yet, but Enya found Hau and Lillie in a bit of a fix, being menaced by Team Skull thugs.  She got pissed and sent the lowlifes packing (they've known her by name for quite a while now...).  But they were after Nebby, of course, and they'd already kidnapped some little kid's Yungoos, and they said if she wanted it back she was gonna have to take them on at their main base...alone.  Where she would have to either beat Team Skull or join them.  Ahh, Enya; at times, much braver than wise...

Their base was actually a whole town which they'd completely taken over.  She had a tough enough time even finding the place, having to page a Sharpedo to jet her across a couple of bodies of water, and even then she got off at the wrong beach a time or two.  She avoided tall grass and other Trainers; she had somewhere to be, dammit, and couldn't waste time having her Pokémons' HP chipped away before the big confrontation.  As it was, she had to fight off wave after wave of Team Skull grunts before she entered the town...which, by the look of the barricades, must have been a Trial site once upon a time, but was now run-down and graffiti-covered and, well, rather shabby and sad.  It didn't help that it was raining heavily by the time she got in.  She ducked under hedges and through holes in the walls to reach the Skulls' decrepit mansion, which was being patrolled, but not all that effectively; so by virtue of good timing she kept mostly out of sight.  Anyone who *did* spot her wanted to battle, of course, and she gave them a faceful...it was almost all one-hit KOs, again because she didn't want to waste her team's energy before she found the Team Skull boss.

So finally she fought and snuck her way to Boss Guzma's suite, where of course a guard was standing outside the door.  On the possibility that she might be a recruit, he asked her three security questions.  She got two of them right, but maybe she shouldn't have been so snarky about guessing that Guzma's favorite drink was Moomoo Milk...  The grunt told her she needed to get to know the boss better than that and sent her to explore the mansion for clues.

And you know what?  The more she poked around (and overheard conversations, and startled people in their rooms), the more she actually started to feel *sorry* for Team Skull.  They were just a bunch of homeless kids who had nothing left but each other, and they had to act badass so no one would think to pity them.  Heck, they hadn't paid their electric bill in months; they were stealing Pokémon for the money.

Well, she found a grocery list in the kitchen that listed Guzma's favorite drink (Tapu Cocoa!), so she went back to the guard and took the test again.  When he asked her if she was sure of her answers, she said "Yes!"  ...And then he kicked her out as an imposter, because Yes-men were not welcome on Team Skull.

She left.  She couldn't face her friends or the little kid with the Yungoos, so she summoned Charizard to take her home.  Even then she didn't want to face her mom, either.  So she spent the night at the aforementioned lonely pretty place--the bridge where she'd first rescued Nebby.

I did a rare thing here--I read ahead in the game guide afterwards.  If Enya had told the guard "No!", she'd have gotten to battle the boss, rescue the Yungoos and return to Malie City with another Z-crystal and her head held high.  She was *that close*.  I had to admit to feeling some of her frustration.

[Aether House (Ghost Captain Acerola on the right); Po Town]