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I've been a Pokémon fan for a long time.  Almost from square one; my first acquaintance with it was the TIME Magazine cover article that ran in November of 1999 after it became a hit in the US.  I've drawn Pokémon, collected the cards, read the manga, haunted the forums, watched the animé and some of the movies, created a comic strip, written lots of Pokémon fanfic and even taken part in a Pokémon online RP like the ones Kiye and I have made for Avatar.  But in the seventeen years I'd dwelt on the outskirts of Poké Earth, I had never actually played the video game...until a couple of months ago.

On 18 November 2016, Nintendo released Pokémon Sun and Pokémon Moon, the seventh generation of the game, just in time for the 20th anniversary of Pokémon's Japanese debut.  It had a lot of selling points; it had more of a storyline than its predecessors, the gameplay had been simplified somewhat, and it played on a console whose controls were friendly to my numble fingers.  But the best thing about it is that the region Sun and Moon are set in is based on the Hawaiian Islands.  I've been to Hawaii; my Ma's husband was stationed there for three years.  I've loved it and gotten to know it in a way most tourists don't...the history, the language, the cultural mix, the ancient lifeways, the realities of living there now.  Much of what I've written for the Eastern Sea Clan comes from what I know of Polynesian culture.  I guess you could say my experiences left an impression...

Oh, and there's a Pokémon, Rockruff, that looks enough like my Little Dog who passed away far too recently.  Oh, and in Pokémon Sun, it evolves into my totem animal, the wolf.  Other Oh: There's another Pokémon based on a Griffin, my favorite fantastic beast, and it comes with a tragic backstory.  Long story short...there was no way I was gonna pass up the chance to play this game.  So I didn't.  So here we are.

And why am I sharing this on a board for Avatar RPs? --Because my player-character in the game is none other than...Enya.  Enya as an adventurous human eleven-year-old who's about to become a Pokémon Trainer.  Here she is...

Of course, I had to tell Kiye all about my experiences.  Some of them were typical beginner's fumbles ("How do I get Enya out of bed??" to which I'm sure Brenda would say "When you figure it out, let me know!!").  Some of them were probably a-typical beginner's blunders, like the three days it took me to figure out how to get NPCs to interact with her [insert deep blush icon here].  But eventually, the stuff I was sending Kiye started looking more and more like a story, a pretty good one too, and she's encouraged me to share it here.  So if you don't like it, it's all her fault!  j/k

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El Sigh...

If you're wondering why there isn't any story here yet, it's partly blank-page syndrome...but mostly because of how densely-illustrated this was on the GroupSpaces board, the images being integral to the text.  I haven't figured out how to make this happen here (click for full-sized):




And even if I did...I've played three other characters in four other Pokémon games (Random in Moon, Brenda in Ultra Sun, and Ramona the Pest in Let's Go Eevee!; currently I've got Random and Brenda running in Pokémon Sword and Pokémon Shield, respectively).  The stories kinda blend together...  The overall scenario hardly varies from game to game.  The creativity is in what I have going on between my Trainers' ears and coming out of their mouths in my imagination.

What I'd really like to see from GameFreak (developers of the Pokémon games) is a full-blown RPG with character classes (not everyone is a trainer, and not all Trainers are pursuing the Championship!); post-Championship career options (Enya really wanted to be a Kahuna, which you can see reflected in her Borderlands story; Trainer Random, for his part, hopes to become a Trial Guide); the ability for your character to not just get through the story, but influence it and even change the outcome; and, per Deos immortales, a lot more complexity in the dialogue.  My Trainer should be able to invite a previously-defeated NPC opponent to another battle, or, conversely, turn down a battle against someone when she is obviously WAY out of their league.  (Nothing quite like a toddler with a level-3 Yungoos challenging a returning Champion who just wants to kick around the beach while home on leave...)  In so many of these games, the storyline seems to serve only as a means of stitching together the battles.  I'd like to see a much heavier emphasis on the story, which would mean, among other thing, developing a more complex story with enough ad-lib opportunities to "write" some of it yourself.

Well, GameFreak hasn't come out with *that* game yet, but a fellow can dream...  Meantime, I'll see what I can do about posting as much of Enya's journey as I've got.  (The panel below is nowhere near the end!)   :-D

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OK, OK...Story Here Yet.

The site the original version of this story sits on, GroupSpaces.com, is going down in April.  Yes, I have a text file for it, and I'll be quoting that once we get past the part that was already published on GroupSpaces.  I even archived the page itself, including the illustrations.  So it's not like it'd be lost forever, but...I have a spot for it here, so why not port it over in as much of its original glory as my knowledge of how images work here allows?  Besides...I like the way it looks on a forum.  :-)

Here comes nuthin'... *g*

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Enya's first adventure happened before she even had a Pokémon.  She'd been invited to a small village called Iki Town on Melemele Island to meet the Island Kahuna, Hala.  After Professor Kukui introduced them, she was free to do some poking around.

She spotted a fragile-looking girl on a path leading away from the hamlet and decided to follow her.  A good thing, too; she caught up with the girl only to find her in dire straits.  Her name was Lillie, and her Pokémon (which looked like a little ball of stars) had wriggled out of her gym bag and wandered onto a rickety plank bridge, where it was being attacked by a flock of Spearows (they're good at that, aren't they...).  Lillie was too scared to go on the bridge, so ENYA charged out there, hunched over the little Pokémon and drove the Spearows away.  'Course, it being a rickety plank bridge, it did what rickety plank bridges do when heroes are standing on them: It broke.  Enya and the Pokémon went tumbling into the abyss.

So Lillie was doing the "OMG!!!!" thing on the cliff when...the Guardian Deity of Melemele Island, a Pokémon called Tapu Koko, who does not normally get mixed up in human doings, swooped in and saved Enya and the mini-nebula!  Everyone, from Lillie (easy to impress) to Kahuna Hala (*NOT* easy to impress), was in total awe about that when the girls returned to tell the story...and no less so when they saw the sparkling stone the Tapu had given her.  If anyone in Iki Town needed to be told that Enya was a trainer to keep an eye on, that was one way to do it!  And Enya-pen had already established her reputation as a Very Brave Girl.

Lillie shared a little of her and "Nebby's" backstory.  She was on Melemele Island because Nebby had teleported her away from a bunch of baddies at some Institute.  Now Lillie keeps him in her bag all the time, admonishes him to stay out of sight, says she'll be in biiiig trouble if she gets caught with him...  She said he was a Cosmog, and that he might have come from another world.  I have a feeling that Institute really super didn't want anybody to run off with their Precious.

(To be clear: I'm not real into "Chosen One" narratives, and I confess to rolling my eyes a bit at Enya getting the Tapu's personal attention.  But this doesn't turn out like that at all, and the way it *does* turn out will make that encounter make perfect sense.)

-:- -:- -:-

The Alola Region:

From left to right are Poni Island; Melemele Island; Akala Island; and Ula'ula Island.  The player-character starts out on Melemele; that's Enya's house just north of the extinct volcano on the island's eastern side.

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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...

[Random the Navigator]

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!

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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.

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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.  ;-)

[Random the Navigator]

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.

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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)

   

[Random the Navigator]

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]

[Random the Navigator]

- 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.

[Random the Navigator]

-:-

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.

[Random the Navigator]

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.

[Random the Navigator]

[WIP - Will add piccies later!]

And now for the saga of...

::: [ The Dragon-Rider of Akala! ] :::

Yester-gameday was HUGE.

The evening before was pretty interesting too.

When you last saw her, Pokémon Trainer Enya was on her way to Brooklet Hill to meet Trial Captain Lana and undergo her Water-type Trial.  She went in not even knowing how to fish.  She left having learned to ride a Lapras and having defeated...this.

[Wishiwashi, solo form]  [Wishiwashi, school form]

No no, the second one.  Clothed in a demigodly aura, no less.  From astride her Lapras, it looked kinda like this... [Totem Wishiwashi]

See, Wishiwashi in its normal form is one of the smallest and weakest Pokémon there is.  But it does one thing, and does it extremely well: Summons every other Wishiwashi in the area to assemble into its School form.  Totem Wishiwashi showed up looking like a pixellated whale that could have swallowed Enya and her mount whole!  And the Totem even made it rain to amp up its Water moves.  But trusty Tayu, Tron the Magnemite and the other members of her team took that thing down, yes they did, and its little wet helpers too.  But she knew better than to get cocky; after all, she had two Trials left to go...  Herself having come a long way and the battle having ended after dark, she spent the night on the hill, which has the most awesome set of interconnected rock pools that Na'vi Tayu could ever have wished.  She wanted to wake up there and see what it looked like in the daylight...as did I.  :-)

Her team for the Water Trial:

[Enya's Team - Water Trial]

The next morning she caught a Wishiwashi of her own, which turned out to be really important in the Fire Trial.  Senator Sam evolved into a Gumshoos that morning; still deciding how I feel about that, 'cause his mannerisms made him a capital-C Cutie as a Yungoos even with the toothy grin, and now I find myself petting a Trumpy-'mon.  (Must...overcome...association...  It's still Sam under there, dangit!)  And Maynard the Lillipup is now a Herdier.

Some pleasant rambling and a Pokémon Center visit later, Enya had reshuffled her team for the Fire Trial.  Finding her way up the volcano to Captain Kiawe's domain was a bit of a challenge, but she managed it.  And then she learned that not all Island Trials are battles.  (Yes they are.  Don't even believe that line!!)  But before they got down to business, Kiawe had her watch a trio of Alolan Marowaks do a fire-dance with their bone clubs, then repeat it, and she was supposed to spot the difference between the three performances.  *Then* this nasty poison-fire-lizard thing called Salazzle appeared, with its little Salandit buddies to make things unpleasant for Fletcher the Wingull, Shimmeree the Wishiwashi, and, oh yeah, Kilvana, Tibbie, Pity-Kitty and Senator Sam.  Most of the members of her team got burned, poisoned or some flavorful combination of the two.  But Fletcher evolved into a Pelipper (pelican) mid-battle, and little Shimmeree discovered her School form!  It was Kilvana (Mudbray; Ground-type)'s Mad Earthquaking Skilz that put Totem Salazzle down for the count, though.  Not bad for a donkey foal, not bad!  Spaz, a former muledriver, would be proud of her; I know Enya was.

Her team for the Fire Trial:

[Enya's Team - Fire Trial]

The Grass Trial was...interesting, and not in a good way.  What Captain Mallow, who is regionally famous for her cooking, wanted was for Enya to go foraging in the Lush Jungle.  She was supposed to find four ingredients.  I will save Enya the embarrassment of describing her search in detail except to note that she got totally lost.  Yeah.  Enya...got lost...while gathering...in the forest.  She had no idea what any of the desired herbs, seeds, roots and berries looked like, and she did a lot of bumbling around, and her desire to be done with the Trial before dark was hopelessly crushed.  And then--and THEN!--Captain Mallow expected her to cook the damn stuff!  The porridge whose delicious scent and rare ingredients would summon the Totem and bring on Enya's doom...

The Totem was a creature called Lurantis.  Nobody's sure whether it's a mantis mimicking a flower or a flower mimicking a mantis, but what I think all Trial-goers would agree on is that battling the thing is a PAIN IN THE ASS (and very dangerous).  Since it was after dark, the creature couldn't photosynthesise the normal way...so it called on a little weather Pokémon called Castform to lend it a ray of sunshine, after which it got two attacks every turn and nothing could hit it, and if something *did* hit it, it immediately recovered all its HP in that portable sunshine.  Enya ended up with just two tattered Pokémon remaining after Totem Lurantis and its allies got done slashing, cutting and otherwise pruning her team to bits.  But one of those Pokémon was Fletcher, who, being a Water-type, really ought to have stayed as far away from a Grass battle as he could.  But he also had Flying attacks, which tear the hell out of Grass Pokémon for some reason.  And once he cut loose with those, it was almost over...

Enya's team for the Grass Trial:

[Enya's Team - Grass Trial]

Enya never wants to see that jungle again, but she's gonna have to if she's gonna catch me a Passimian (the football lemur).  She hates me now...  ;-b

[Trial Captain Lana]  [Trial Captain Kiawe]  [Trial Captain Mallow]

(Above: Captain Lana; Captain Kiawe; Captain Mallow)
(Below: Totems, their allies, and grown-up Fletcher)

[Akala Totems and Allies]

[Random the Navigator]

Enya has been to some really pretty places.  You might figure that a region based on the Hawaiian Islands would have its share of beauty spots, and you'd be right.  You've seen Verdant Cavern, above.  Here are more locales important to the story so far; the places Enya's seen and been seen.  (On all of these, click for full-sized.)

Melemele Island: Iki Town; Hau'oli City; Mahalo Trail; Melemele Meadow; the savannah inside Ten Carat Hill

[pics]

Akala Island:  Brooklet Hill; Paniola Town; Wela Volcano Park; Lush Jungle; Hano Grand Resort

[pics]

[Random the Navigator]

Okay, now the part with the dragon in it.  :-)

Enya wasn't in the best mood after the Grass Trial, 'k?  So she didn't exactly take to it kindly when Professor Kukui showed up and dragged her back to Heahea City, that town on Akala where she couldn't get a room in Lillie's hotel.  Well, now that she'd passed her Trials, she had access to more of the city than just the hotel and the Pokémon Center.  But Kukui escorted her to the Dimensional Research Institute where his wife, Professor Burnett, and her team were studying the appearances of strange Pokémon(? ...No one was sure if they were Pokémon or something else entirely) from, apparently, another dimension, and that somehow Lillie and her little Cosmog seemed to have attracted their attention, and would Enya please familiarise herself with the situation and let them know if she saw anything?

She wanted nothing to do with being cooped up in a lab; she was tired and cranky and it was way past her bedtime, and you know how she gets on not enough rest!!  And now the Alola Region knows it too.  She only stayed long enough, read enough, and talked to enough people to meet the bare minimum for being allowed to leave the lab, whereupon she ducked into a Diglett tunnel, beat three Trainers and those Team Skull grunts again, and popped out in Konikoni Town, which was much more welcoming.  There were shops and street vendors and !!!restaurants!!! (including Captain Mallow's; Enya got a serious 'friend discount') and a dock, plus the obligatory Pokémon Center and malasada shop.  She bought stuff, sold stuff, learned stuff.  And the reason she knew she had to be there was because that was the part of the island where she was to battle the Island Kahuna.

An interesting thing about the Kahuna battles: they're just...battles.  No Totem Pokémon, no Island Guardians - just a good ol' knock-down-drag-out Pokémon battle.  Okay, you're fighting the Trainer who raised the Totems, and all her regular 'mon are max-level final evos, no big deal...just a battle.  Uh huh.  And the Atlantic Ocean is just a body of water.  Ayyup.

As it happened, Kahuna Olivia specialises in Rock Pokémon.  Ohh, Enya had her number already!  'Cause her little Tiblet is a Rock-type, and she loves him to bits, so of course she knows what he can beat and what can beat him.  If a move of a certain type would be bad for Tibbie, it'd be bad for Olivia's team too.  So she brought Tayu (Grass), Pity-Kitty (Dark), Fletcher (Water), Tae Quon Lee (Fighting), Tron (Steel)...and good ol' Kilvana (Ground).  You can see how this went, right?  The biggest moments were when Olivia released a Midnight Lycanroc (the werewolf); when Tayu, taking a leaf from Totem Lurantis' book, learned the move Synthesize, after which nothing could keep him down either; and when Kilvana ended the nice, long, good fight by doing her li'l earthquake thing.

[Enya's Team - Rock Trial]

As part of her reward, Enya was granted the ability to summon a Charizard with her Pokémon Ride Pager.  But before she flew off to parts known (he can only take her places she's already been), she bought a fire stone, fetched Pepper the Growlithe, and gave him his well-earned evolution into an Arcanine.  I left her on the Lighthouse Point observation deck playing with her big puppy while a lady showed off her troupe of dancing Pikachus.  :-)

[Kahuna Olivia; Midday and Midnight Lycanrocs; grown-up Pepper]

[Kahuna Olivia]  [Midday and Midnight Lycanrocs; grown-up Pepper]

  -:-

Those Pokémon Professors: Personally, I think they're *all* a little loosely-connected between the head and shoulders...  I mean, they've supposedly dedicated their lives to studying Pokémon.  So how come they need sixth-graders to do all their field research?  And if the profs are having people search for new species, that means they don't know those species exist, right?  Yet when a kid finds a new Pokémon, his Pokédex pulls the data right up and tells him what it is!  A real head-scratcher there.  So, yeah, Kukui's a nice guy (did you know he sidelines as a masked wrestler? --Enya ran into him at the Royal Battle Dome!!  She didn't recognise him, but her buddy Hau did), but he obviously doesn't know *jack* about the new Pokémon species called "a Enya", or he would've offered her dinner and a place to crash for the night lest he fall victim to all four of her attacks (Pouncewag, Astonish, Grapple, and Teh Cyoot).  *fg*

And what's with those kids' parents, anyway??  For one, I've never seen a Trainer with a dad living at home.  They all have single moms.  And those moms, faced with the full responsibility for safeguarding the young'uns, are perfectly okay with their kids leaving school in fifth or sixth grade to go on a solo wildlife safari?

...Yeah, the Pokémon world has its peculiarities.  It's just one of those things you accept in-universe and carry on.  ;-)

[Random the Navigator]

Here's a really good video review of Pokémon Sun and Moon, with lots of game footage; the guy thought the story was merely "okay", but the worldbuilding, the accessibility for new players and the improved mechanics won him over. 

https://www.gamespot.com/reviews/pokemon-sun-and-moon-review/1900-6416574/

 -:-

More Poké-fun:  You remember Lillie, the frail girl with a Cosmog in her gym bag?  Guess Enya's not the only Trainer who's had to rescue him when he strayed.  There's a whole meme now: "Get in the bag, Nebby!"  Personally, Enya thinks Lillie is a smother-mother and really ought to let the little thing romp and play and explore anytime it's safe; heck, after the Akala Trial, he even tried to wriggle into *Enya's* bag.  But the SunMoon community has had some fun with Lillie's frustrations...  (as always, click for full-sized; you will be rewarded!)

[Get In the Bag, Nebby]  [Lunala Still Nebbin']

There was a fan theory that Nebby eventually evolves into one of the Alola Legendaries.  That's the Moon version, Lunala, still having to take it from Lillie.  ;-p

I think of Lillie as being like those helpess-unless-you-help-'em NPCs.  She's the only one like that I've run into in the game, though; the only other person to ask specifically for Enya's help with a task was a rancher who needed someone to tame his new Tauros, and figure a battle would be just the thing for him to work out his ornery streak.  Enya is only too glad to help with stuff like that; it makes her feel useful, not just going on some self-indulgent adventure; her particular skills were needed.  Any civilian could have rounded up Lillie's little buddy; you don't have to be a Pokémon trainer--a decent dogcatcher would do.

[Random the Navigator]

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]

[Random the Navigator]

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.

[Random the Navigator]

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]

[Random the Navigator]

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.

[Random the Navigator]

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]

[Random the Navigator]

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.    ;-]

[Random the Navigator]

[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)