Family Matters

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Mission Thread That mean Scraggy has been terrorising my family far too long now. Please go and teach him a lesson! But don't hurt my family, please. They already went through so much... » Client: Sneasel » Objective: Defeat Scraggy » Place: Blackmist Mountain » Restrictions: Don't fight any Sneasel or Weavile » Difficulty: F » Reward: 100 Poké, Blast Seed » Exploration Points: 10

Nate reread the mission details to himself as he found himself at the foot of Blackmist Mountain. The whole area seemed a bit strange to him, as he had been there before once a long time ago. Before I even got to Grassveil, now that I think of it. A lost of stuff has happened since then, and I'm stronger now I suppose. The pikachu thought to himself, placing the mission details back in his bag. And I've even got myself a team now. Hope Shiro and William are doing well on their mission. He continued to walk through the dark and somewhat ominous fog, feeling a bit alert and jumpy as he glanced around. He was on his own, and with how heavy and dark the fog was anything could be hiding in any place. Which would most likely be bad for him if something decided it would attack.
"Whatever, just get on with the mission. Simple as that." He murmured out loud, wondering when he would find the scraggy he was looking for.

Izumi skidded to an abrupt stop, turning around to stick her tongue out at Nate. "What are you, nuts? Do I look like a horse?" she teased. She seemed to have lost her normally quiet attitude in the excitement of the mission, now coming out of her shell and poking fun much faster than she usually did. She paused a moment to let Nate catch up, then continued at a much more managable pace for her highlighter-yellow friend. "We should take this path for a few more paces, then take a right at the fork. That path should take us up past the first few way points, kinda like a shortcut," the Absol explained somewhat proudly. Not many pokemon knew about this special trail, as it was generally used by natives.

The Pikachu nodded his head, catching up to Izumi and staying beside her, looking around at their surroundings. He listened to what she had to say about where they were going, happy that he had somebody with him who knew where they were going.
"Right. So, you and Shiro are sisters, right? How long did you two live out here?" Nate was busy looking around that he didn't notice the item on the ground in front of him, as he tripped up and stumbled to the ground. The Pikachu quickly got back up, shaking his head slightly.
"Well, that was eventful." He muttered, turning to see what the item was he tripped on.

This dice is not existing.

Izumi's especially sharp nose caught on to the item well before it tripped up her temporary companion, but she just kept her mouth quiet until it was already underfoot. A mischevious glint in her eye as they neared the roadblock

"Watch out for that item." Izumi cautioned as her friend had a lovely family reunion with the ground, trying to keep a straight face. A few snorts escaped her facade, by she managed to keep her composure mostly intact. She stopped long enough to let the Pikachu pull himself back up of the ground. As for how long we lived here? Well, we were born and raised here, so pretty much our whole lives this far. It can't be more than a year or two since we left, at least I think that's pretty accurate." she recounted, doing some quick figures in her head.

Nate picked up the object that had made him trip, a TM Focus Blast, looking at it curiously. Huh...guess that might come in handy later on. He thought to himself, putting it into the bag he carried with him before picking his pace up, heading towards Izumi.
"Oh. So, you never traveled around really? Just stayed on your mountain then left for Grassveil? Must have been a bit boring, staying in one place all the time." The Pikachu stated, more of a question as he waited for a response to it. He made sure to watch the ground for any more items that could cause him to trip once more.

"Yeah, it was pretty boring. And mentally exhausting." Izumi sighed, a downcast shadow possessing her face. "Heh, that's probably the reason I've gone so crazy. My mind just couldn't take such extreme boredom and it just completely gave up!" she laughed, shaking off whatever was bugging her. She took a few quick glances around to make sure there were no guards around that would make trouble for them. Satisfied, but still wary, she made sure to keep monitoring the scents floating around in the air.

"And what about you; where do you come from?" Izumi asked curiously. She was interested in learning about her sister's teammates; she rarely saw Shiro because of both their work schedules and so Izumi knew next to nothing about the pokemon her little sister went exploring with. Cue big sister protectiveness.

It was at about that time that Izumi's nose began to twitch.

This dice is not existing.

The Pikachu went silent for a moment, thinking before breaking his silence with a chuckle.
"It's been so long I almost forgot where I started from." He commented, sighing before continuing. "I came from some middle-of-nowhere forest, a good distance away from here. Grew up there with a brother, learned the basics of how to take care of myself from my parents." Nate glanced over at Izumi as her nose began to twitch, blinking as he took notice.
"Something wrong? Your nose seems to be, well, twitching." He asked, taking a quick glance around the area and peering at their surroundings, searching for anything that she might have picked up on.

"Oh, it always does this when there's an item nearby..." Izumi stated, pausing to root around in the area surrounding her. "Hmmmmm..... Aha, here we go. An Escape Orb." Izumi sighed and slipped the orb into her bag; she had been hoping for something a little more... fanciful. "The mountain's crawling with these things. Shame really; it's honestly wasted on me. Maybe I'll be able to pawn it off later," she commented. Turning back to the Pikachu, she added, "There's got to be more to it than that. I highly doubt your whole life fits into a paragraph."

"C'mon," she prodded (being unusually chatty for some odd reason), "you've gotta have some stories worth telling! This mountain isn't exactly a fast climb, so we need to kill time anyways. Tell you what, you share your stories, and I'll tell you all kinds of embarrassing things about Shiro."

"Right, so your nose is like some sort of item-finding wonder that twitches when one is nearby." Nate commented with a small hint of doubt in his voice. "Alright, maybe it is pretty reasonable. Anyways, must be a useful ability to have." The Pikachu stepped over to Izumi's side as she searched for the item, watching her take it and ready to move on.
"Well, I mean I can talk about more. My parents sort of left me and my brother, that pretty much started our traveling and adventures. We didn't know why they left or what happened, still don't know, but we just focused on traveling around the area. There are a few stories to be told about what sort of trouble we got into, but hey, at least we did it together." He laughed when he finished, a smaller laugh that quieted down quickly into almost a sigh.

"No; it's just super sensitive to aroma, wise guy," Izumi chortled. "My nose twitches because shifting scents irritate it. It's all I can do to keep from sneezing every time I get near an item," she sighed. She listened to Nate talk about his parents and his brother; a bittersweet smirk appearing on her face as he began to close off his statement.

"Heh, this sounds familiar..." Izumi commented quietly, her voice dyed with a light shade of empathy. The statement was more or less directed to herself, as if she wears thinking out loud. "...In any case, let's hear about some of these escapades. No cliffhangers now," she grinned, this time directly at the Pikachu.

The Pikachu smiled at the playful demeanor Izumi had about her nose and how good it was at finding items, nodding his head in understanding as we explained what she meant.
"Well, I mean I can share some. There was this time when we wandered right into Scorchfall Desert. We were new to the whole thing, adventuring, exploring, and we sort of figured we would go check it out. Well, it got a bit uncomfortable. So we just figured, keep walking, it's bound to end sometime, right? Well, after a long time of walking, some side-affects and bickering, we actually made it out to the other side." Nate paused for a moment, laughing a bit.
"At least, we thought we did. Turns out, somewhere along the way we got turned around. We walked a little bit in and then turned around somewhere inside and walked straight back in the direction we came from. That's the story of how we didn't really cross a whole desert." The Pikachu finished, smirking from the memory.

Izumi was practically in tears. "Oh. My stars. You did not," she gasped in between gales of laughter. "What made you two wanna go to a desert as newbies anyways? Aren't you electric type?" she questioned jokingly. She promptly continued, "Well, I mean at least you guys made it out okay. And I bet it was an amazing experience... I bet you never leave your map at home after that, huh?"

She snickered. She had never seen the desert before herself; however, she had heard it was quite the spectacle.

Nate chuckled a bit, turning into laughter from seeing that Izumi genuinely thought it was a funny story.
"Well, we weren't thinking actually. We just wanted to go around, travel the world, that sort of stuff. We didn't have a map, or much really, so I suggested we make the most of what we have and stay on the move. It was better then staying in that one forest forever." The Pikachu continued to say, shrugging along with his comments. He seemed to be a bit neutral on the topic, smiling softly at remembering it but looking almost bittersweet.

Noticing that the topic seemed to strum a bitter chord with her electric yellow companion, Izumi tried to think of a way to move the conversation to a better topic. She was silent for a moment, raising her head to look up at the sky and the sun, which was slowly crawling westward. She redirected her gaze to the road and stopped suddenly as a familiar wall of steep rock entered her field of vision.

"Hope you don't mind heights; we gotta climb that," she observed with a slightly crooked grin.

Looking up at the steep rock face, Nate groaned a bit, nodding his head to Izumi.
"Of course, climbing that should be fun. Let's get right to it, huh?" He suggested, smirking a bit as he walked over to the wall. Stepping up and eying it over, the Pikachu grabbed onto a hold with his paw, pulling himself up and searching for another place to grab onto.
"How are you going to get up?" He asked the Absol, glancing back down at her.

Izumi was already using her claws to grip the uneven surface of the cliff, digging them into the rock wall as far as she could. She seemed to be quite the able climber despite her quadrupedal build, and the wall was filled with indents from other Absol climbing the wall as she was so there was plenty to cling to.

"Just like this..." Izumi huffed, focusing on hauling herself up another foot. "Need help or you good?"