Surprisingly, they actually made it back to where they cleared the last piece of debris yesterday without incident. Pip has been sure they would run into a swarm of chinchou or something, but, like yesterday, the water had been mostly clear of any obvious wild pokemon.
Lanette was a very easy ride, even in the choppy river waters. She stayed steady and only needed slight correction when they came to some of the trickier locations. They were getting splashed more regularly than they might have on a more experienced lapras, but far less than they were expecting. They made sure to dole out the positive reinforcement generously, giving her lots of praise and, when they reached their destination, a high value treat.
Pip guided her over to the edge of the water again and slid off her shell. There wasn’t a nice sloping bank to the river here, but rather a short but sheer dropoff that lined the water on either side. It wasn’t a particularly difficult ledge to pull themselves up, however, and there was plenty of foliage to use as hand and foot holds.
The area of the bank they had hauled themselves up onto was mostly clear, except for the bush they had used to pull themselves the last of the way. They set their pack down against it as they started to change from their water shoes to something that would be more comfortable to walk in for long distances. When they went to attach their water shoes to the bag, it was gone!
They looked around and quickly spotted a little Nauwillian wurmple trying to abscond with the pack into the shrubbery! Pip hastily took a ball out of their pocket and lobbed it at the escaping pokemon, just in the hopes to slow it down long enough for Mezzo (who was at that moment napping on Lanette’s shell) to catch up with it. However the ball clicked closed, successfully capturing the pokemon, on the second attempt.
Pip blinked. “Huh.” They said, then looked more closely at the random ball they had thrown to see what type it had been. It was a fast ball. Convenient. “I guess I have a local wurmple then.”
They got to their feet and went to retrieve the bag and the newly occupied ball.
Once that had been settled they called Mezzo over from Lanette and continued moving forward, signaling for the lapras to follow from the river.
After a little bit more traveling Pip thought they saw something scurrying through the underbrush and directed Mezzo to go and flush whatever it was out. The little chimecho flew in from the far side of the bush, as instructed, and started to make a discordant racket. The technique worked and a moment later a Nauwillian scatterbug came racing out of the bushes!
Mezzo was right on it’s heels, sending psychic attacks at the other pokemon at Pip’s command. When it had the bug type pokemon on it’s heels, Pip took out another ball (one of the ones provided by the research center this time) and attempted to capture it! It looked like it was going to break free, but, at what Pip thought was the last possible moment, it clicked closed.
The had Mezzo bring the ball back to them and they stuck it in their pocket next to the wurmple they had captured for themselves. It looked like this trip was off to a decent start as well! Seeing as they had now captured two pokemon for themselves in the last two days, they figured they should focus on catching pokemon for the research centers going forward. They didn’t want to expand their collection too far before they had managed to train up the pokemon they had, after all.
