Graceful Garbage Grabbing.

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A group of Trubbish has been littering on Pricklemist Hill! Could you please clean up after them? But don't hurt the envirionment with Poison type moves!   » Client: Leafeon » Objective: Retrieve 3 pieces of trash (Uncommon item) » Place: Pricklemist Hill » Restrictions: Don't use Poison type moves. » Difficulty: F » Reward: 250 Poké » Exploration Points: 10

Tsukishiro wandered through the grassy areas taking note of the surroundings and looking for the base of Pricklemist Hill.
"Leafeon said the base of the hill was somewhere around here... so I guess we should just start heading upwards?" mused Shiro, half to herself and half to the Gastly that accompanied her.

Since once again he didn't have any other options, William used his normal attack to catch the intimidated Ratticate off guard, knocking it over.
Although the attack had its intended effect, the angle the Gastly hit the Raticate at caused him to spin around in the air for a bit, slightly dizzying the spherical Pokémon.
Why did all the Pokémon he encountered have to be Normal types, immune to status effects or both?
Not that William was complaining about his immunity, but attack-wise his options were severely limited, so he often had to resort to his normal attack.

Tsukishiro took her chance as the Raticate was knocked over, using Dark Pulse again in an attempt to knock it out so that she and William could escape to another part of the hill and continue their search for the trash that the Trubbish had left behind. The Raticate collapsed in the grass and Shiro watched it's limp form for a moment, making sure that it wouldn't leap up and attack them again.
Breathing a sigh of relief, Shiro looked to William, "That Raticate was stronger than I expected... perhaps we should have been a little more careful..."

Getting into an upright position again, the Gastly responded:
"Yeah...last time I was here, the Pokémon weren't as strong. Either we just got unlucky, or the trash is upsetting the Pokémon here. Either way, being more careful certainly wouldn't hurt. So...in which direction should we proceed?"
William tried to slow down his breathing, a bit exhausted from the fight.
Thus, he let his eyes wander, seeing the grass, the grass, the grass, the item, the grass...
Wait a minute, item? Having found something, William floated over to it, trying to find out, what it was.
Luckily, this time it wasn't a Pokémon, but:

This dice is not existing.

"That way I guess," blinked Shiro, following William over to the item he had spotted. She blinked at the Oran Berry as the Gastly put it into his treasure bag.
"Well I'm guessing that's not trash either..." she frowned, glancing around. Again, all she could see was grass, grass and more grass, so she began to move again, heading further up the hill. A short while later, the duo reached an area where the grass grew slightly longer. As Shiro walked, she didn't notice an item in a grass, nearly tripping over it, but steadying her footing before she fell flat on her face.

This dice is not existing.

Still floating over the grassy plains, William found an item, but it was already too late. While Shiro had managed to avoid tripping over the TM Solar Beam lying in the grass, her evasive maneuvers had cost her her balance, so she fell over.
Concerned about her wellbeing, William floated over to the Absol, commenting:
"Uh...are you allright? Since you "found" that TM, I guess it's yours. I couldn't use it anyways. Still, it isn't trash, so we need to keep looking. Now where could that stuff be..."

Getting back to her feet, Shiro glanced over, "I'm fine, don't worry." She paused to shake a dead leaf from her fur, "Though I don't think I can use that TM either... so I guess I'll see if anyone else in the Guild can use it," she smiled, padding back over. Using her jaws, she gently picked up the TM and put it into her explorer bag. As she did so she noticed the grass rustling in the distance.
"Is that the wind... or is that another Pokemon?" she asked, motioning to the rustling area.

"That definitely isn't wind. I would have felt it. Whatever it is, that is rustling the grass, seems to be a Pokémon. While I sincerely doubt it, let's hope, that it is peaceful. The less we have to fight, the earlier we can finish this and get to a more...dignified task. Maybe we can just ignore it. It doesn't seem to have noticed us yet."
While William wasn't too much of a fan of this mission, since its point still wasn't clear to him, he decided not to bring the discussion up again, instead focussing on finishing the task as quickly as possible.

"I think you're right... we should probably avoid it..." blinked Shiro, changing direction in order to sneak around the rustles. However, whatever was in the bushes had seemingly heard the duo conversing and had already begun moving towards them. It hopped out of the grass, revealing itself to be a Trubbish. It leaped at the Gastly as he was the closer of the two, not using any specific sort of attack.

Having already been semi-prepared for something of the sort, William leapt out of the way, recognizing the attacker as one of the Pokémon, that were supposed to have caused all this.
"Hey, isn't this...nevermind, no time for that now..."
William concentrated, focussed, collected the darkest thoughts, memories and feelings from every corner of his mind, conducting them all into a purplish-black shadowy mass in front of him. The mass was glowing, yet it didn't emit any light. It was neither warm, nor cold. It simply was painful.
Having finally collected enough dark energies, the Gastly released them in a Shadow Ball, targeted at the Trubbish.

The Trubbish landed a short distance away, quickly getting back up onto it's feet. As it turned and looked back at the Pokemon it had attacked, it stood for a moment in confusion.
"S-sorry..." it squeaked, "I didn't realise...."
The Trubbish stopped speaking as William released his Shadow Ball attack.

Thinking quickly Shiro used Dark Pulse, countering the Shadow Ball and negating it's power.
"Hold on, William. Something's wrong...." blinked Shiro, the Trubbish looking from the Absol to the Gastly, unsure of what to say.

"S-sorry..." it repeated, "I.. I thought you were another grass type trying to chase me out..."

"Huh? What's going on?"
The Gastly was surprised. Suddenly the Trubbish didn't want to kill them anymore?
Curious, he inquired:
"Well...you DO know, that you are wanted for littering in these parts, aren't you? As far as I can remember, this isn't your natural habitat either...so what are you doing here, if so many Pokémon are trying to chase you out? And if you're just littering somewhere you don't even live, I can kind of understand the Grass types..."
William was still on the edge. Too many times had Pokémon, mostly Dark types faked something like this, only to attack him shortly thereafter. And while the Trubbish was no Dark type, it could certainly be capable of doing that.

"What!? Why would I litter? Me and my friends were here to clear up the litter. We eat that stuff... we have no reason to leave it lying around!" protested the Trubbish. Tsukishiro blinked taking in the information.
"Something isn't right here..." she blinked, "Why would Leafeon think you were doing the littering if you and your friends are really clearing up the mess?" asked the Absol.
Trubbish shrugged as best as he could with his trash bag-like body.
"Well anyhow... we've been tasked with getting rid of the rubbish here, perhaps you could help us?" reasoned Shiro.

And again William had been surprised. Then again, he never really had the opportunity to talk with other Pokémon, so in his eyes, it could be forgiven, that he didn't know that.
"Uh..that certainly is a surprising turn of events...anyways, Shiro is correct. Would you be so kind and help us? Maybe we'll find out, what the true cause of this is as well. After all, someone has to have done it. And if we don't find them, maybe someone will send a team after you directly next. So...uh...do you have any idea, who might have done it?"

The Trubbish shook his head, "Sorry.... no. We only knew that unwanted artifacts like this had been found on the hill via word of mouth and general rumors. Unfortunately it looks like we arrived and the locals blamed us for the mess..."
"I'm sorry to hear that," frowned Shiro, remembering her days with her tribe. Most Pokemon on Black Mist mountain blamed the local Absol tribe for everything that went wrong up there, even though they had nothing to do with it, merely detecting the disasters beforehand as was in their nature.
"We'll be sure to clear this up with Leafeon when we return," she smiled, hoping to give Trubbish a little bit of assurance that things would turn out okay for him and his friends.

"Yeah, that's the least we can do.", William added, quite familiar with prejudices himself, seeing as they had forced him out of society in the first place.
"Now then, let's go. We should get this finished before sundown after all, or the others could get worried. Also I don't know, how well you can see in the dark. In any case it wouldn't make our situation any easier, so we should try to get this done now."
Although he didn't show it, the Gastly was quite ashamed, that he had fallen victim to the same thing he despised so much.