After a few hours Grandpa decided it was time to start heading back towards the town. He was still feeling spry enough to keep going for a while, but he didn’t want to push it on his first expedition. Plus, with three new members to join his team he thought the trip had been an unqualified success! His kids and grandkids had been so disparaging about his starting this journey at his age, but he bet they would change their tunes when they found out how well he was doing. (Not that their opinions would change his enthusiasm.) The change of scenery and the walking was doing wonders for his health as well, he was sure. Fresh air was good for the soul!
He let Arita (the rattata) ride on his shoulder, and he ended up recalling Francisco (the fuecoco) back to his ball when the little fellow started getting too tired. It probably was a lot more walking from the perspective of someone with such little legs! Next time he’d make a point to switch out who was walking with him more frequently. He was so caught up thinking about who he should take out with him next time and didn’t realize he had disturbed a nest of pokemon!
Grandpa was as startled at the Nauwillian scatterbugs that, well, scattered. However he recovered himself well enough to get one of the pokeballs the research centre had provided, but without the time to line up his shot his throw went wide and missed the pokemon all together. He chuckled. “So many and I didn’t manage to hit a single one!”