A Westward Wind Blows

A warm, desert wind blew across the sandy dunes and rock formations that littered the area, kicking up granules of sand and blowing them across the golden ground. In the midst of all this, a single Absol trudged onward through the sand, her head hung a bit lower as she lazily kicked the sand up with her paws. Shintara had learned over the course of her life in a different desert that when traveling through the area, it was best to keep your head down so the sand wouldn't get in your eyes while it blew around. Of course, not that having her head down was too much of a problem.

As the wind blew through, she could tell not much was around. The wind wasn't bouncing off of much, instead giving the impression of a wide, open area. And with how shifty the ground was beneath her, and the sediment getting throw around in the wind, it wasn't especially hard to figure out she was in another desert. Having lived in one before sort of helped one recognize that. Lowering her head a bit more, the Absol curiously sniffed around a bit, searching for any faint traces of other pokemon around. With the shifting sands and wind, she doubted she would find anything unless the pokemon the scent belonged to was close by. As of now, there didn't seem to be any civilization of sorts in the desert, either. Maybe she should have headed the other way when she left her mother at Blackmist.

"Well, I guess it might be time to turn around...at least I got to check the desert out a bit..." She muttered to herself, still trying to look on the bright side of things as she brought her head back up a bit, her eyes simply gazing right ahead and not moving much, not focused on anything either as she came to a halt, preparing to turn around.

Energy: 6/22(-16 for entering)

"Good Arceus... mother of... oh for f... sakes...... COME BACK HERE!!" cried a disgruntled voice through the sand in the desert. "Good gravy, why won't you just stay still?!?!" A red Absol pounced through the windswept sand like a Persian after a bag of catnip, chasing a metal ringlike object through the sand as it rolled about without stopping somehow. Perhaps the Absol chasing it was just really, REALLY unlucky. She was feeling pretty unlucky; every time she thought she had her Perish Torc the wind picked it up and rolled it in a different direction.

"RATS!!!" was the last thing Izumi the Absol exclaimed before colliding with with something soft and fluffy and white and very familiarish. She toppled into the sand, faceplanting into her Perish Torc. When she stood up, it was secured tightly around her muzzle. She looked down at it for a moment, before reaching up with her paws and attempting to slide it off.

"Mmmmph. Mm-mmmmph. MmmMMph!! MMMMMMMMMmmmmMMMMPPPPPHHHHH!" Izumi exclaimed in frustration as she now was practically rolling around around in the sand, using both baws to try and remove the bracelet-like trinket from her muzzle.

Energy- 11/27

As she started to turn around, it seemed like something was heading closer to her. She could sense a shape, one that seemed to be moving on its own. The thing was, it seemed fairly familiar to her too. The shape seemed like a quadruped, with a strangely shaped head and an unmistakable horn coming out of it. Just as Tara seemed to identify the pokemon as another Absol, it continued to move closer, and she suddenly felt it ram into her.

Letting out a slight yelp, the blind Absol fell to the sand and quickly jumped back up, coughing a bit and hacking out some of the sediment before turning to the other Absol, pausing for a moment as she did. Now, it seemed to be rolling around on the ground a bit and pawing at something. It almost looked like the pokemon was in the midst of a battle, but she couldn't sense another pokemon on top of the Absol. Though, from what she could sense, the other pokemon's muzzle seemed to have a bit of an odd shape.
"Uh...your muzzle is shaped a bit funny..." Shintara simply stated, putting it bluntly, and yet innocently as she kept her head turned in the shiny Absol's direction. It wasn't like it helped her any, but even though she couldn't see, it seemed to make other pokemon more comfortable when she had her head turned towards them while she spoke.

"MMMMMMMMMMPHHHHHHHH!!!" the unfortunately-muzzled Izumi exclaimed, trying with all her might to dislodge the Torc from her aching snout. With one final push, she finally popped the item off of her face, taking a deep gasp of air. She took a moment to just lay there and enjoy her freedom before getting back up onto her paws and sliding the Torc back on her leg where it belonged. Izumi looked over and discovered the thing that she had tripped over was another Absol, suddenly feeling very terrible and apologetic.

"I'm very sorry... My item got away from me and I was chasing it around instead of looking where I was going..." Izumi said sheepishly. Some of the other Absol's words struck her as odd, however. Was her nose really that funny looking? Izumi lifted a paw up to feel; it was a little bruised but she couldn't find any evidence of swelling. "....I beg your pardon? My nose? I mean, I've heard pokemon say it's a weird color, but never a weird shape..."

Once the other Absol managed to remove her item, Shintara simply blinked, looking fairly surprised as the other pokemon's nose seemed to return to its rightful shape. Still taking this in as Izumi got up and apologized, it didn't even register to the blind Absol before she heard the shiny pokemon begin to comment on the weirdness of her statement.

"O-oh!" Tara blurted out, shaking her head and lowering it, facing down towards the sand and shuffling a bit as if trying to lower herself.
"I'm sorry, I just thought...well, it was differently shaped but now it isn't...I guess...well, I-I'm sorry!" She repeatedly apologized, embarrassed by her own error and still not acknowledging that anything else was different about the other Absol. Of course, her mentor back in her clan probably would have scolded her for apologizing like that, and making her run and spend extra time training when she did helped her to stop a bit. Only a little bit. Habits died hard, she figured.

Izumi cocked her head, looking at the other Absol curiously. She had no clue why the other Absol was apologizing so profusely; she hadn't been the one who had mercilessly plowed into another pokemon who was just minding their own buisness. Izumi took a few steps towards the other Absol, slow and nonconfrontational in her movements.

"You don't have to apologize, it was me who ran into you," Izumi offered. "I am a little confused about what you meant by 'my nose looks weird' though... Is there something on my face?" Izumi asked, honestly unsure and confused.

Hearing that Izumi didn't seem to hold any offense against her, the blind Absol let out a sigh of relief as she angled her head back up, standing back up to her full height as she nodded, still sounding a bit sheepish as she spoke.
"W-well, I wasn't sure if I had offended you or anything by telling you that your nose was shaped weirdly..." She commented, before deciding to offer a bit more explanation.

"You see, it doesn't exactly look weird to me, no. It just seems it. Like, I don't exactly know what it looks like, but the shape had been a bit off, before you must have knocked whatever it was you had on there off." Shintara continued, before starting to smile a bit.
"I should introduce myself, sorry. I'm Shintara, it's a pleasure to meet you." She bowed her head for a moment as she did so, before bringing it back up.

Izumi let a solitary laugh escape from her mouth as she heard the reason why the Absol was so panicked and upset. "Offended over my nose? No way; I've gotten waaay worse thanks to my color. Don't you worry about a comment about my nose," the Absol laughed. She listened to the Absol's description of what had happened, which still didn't make all the sense to Izumi, but she got the basic gist of what the other Absol was telling her, and she could tell that it was an honest mistake. "Don't worry about it. It's nice to meet you, Shintara. Heh, I like that name," Izumi commented. She noted the little head bow, wondering if maybe she should return the gesture. "My name is Izumi; if you've been around Blackmist you've probably heard it before," the shiny Absol chortled, bowing her head tentatively as well out of respect for the other Absol's customs.

"Your...color?" It was Shintara's turn to tilt her head ever so slightly as she mumbled it near inaudibly while Izumi spoke, as if not understanding what Izumi was saying. Which made sense, of course, considering she couldn't actually see the other Absol. Waiting for the shiny pokemon to finish speaking, she smiled a bit and nodded, happy that she seemed to get some gesture right, since the other Absol returned the head bow.
"Thank you. I think your name is very nice, Izumi. I did stop by Blackmist before, though I didn't stick around all that long. It's that weird rocky, dark mountain, right? I think I heard some call it that." She questioned, before thinking more about what Izumi had said.
"But, why would I have heard your name before if I was around there?" The blind Absol continued to ask.

Izumi didn't quite catch what the other Absol murmured under her breath, but she decided it was probably nothing that important. If she really felt like she just had to know, she decided that she would ask about it later. For now, Izumi smiled and listened to what Shintara had to say. It seemed as though Shintara didn't come from the tribe of Absol that Izumi herself had come from, which made sense because Izumi hadn't recognized her.

"Thanks! And yeah, that's the mountain," Izumi nodded, though once again the other Absol's wording bugged her a bit. Before she could ask about it, though, she was distracted by the memories of her home that all came flooding back to her at once. "Well... it's a long story, so I'll shorten it up for you," Izumi began. "Me and my sister, Tsukishiro, were both born on that mountain. We were children of the Blackmist clan's highest-ranking officials, so we were next in line to accept the clan's special treasure for a trial period. Specifically, I was, because I was the older sibling," Izumi explained. "There was a problem, though. I was born shiny, and that made others in our clan distrust me. I looked different from them, and since there were no records of shinies ever existing in our clan before, this somehow led them to believe I was born an outsider. Me and my sister were both refused our birthright and shunned, until... well, we left. And I took the clan's item. Which was the Perish Torc I'm wearing. So yeah, they've kinda got some bad blood with me," Izumi snickered.

Listening intently to what Izumi had to say, the whole talking about her coloring thing suddenly made sense. Once she finished speaking, Shintara nodded her head, frowning a bit at first before smiling.
"That sounds terrible, I'm sorry to hear about that. That's what you meant when you were talking about colors though, then? You're shiny? I've heard of shiny pokemon before, isn't that supposed to be super rare?" She asked, before thinking a bit more about the details of the other Absol's story. At first she had been so elated to figure out what Izumi was talking about as far as color went, she hadn't even registered some important parts. There was another clan on Blackmist Mountain? That was where she had split up with her mother for the time being. But, they were both still considered members of their clan, despite having to leave...

Shintara's expression changed jarringly quickly as she made the realization, frowning as she took on a shocked and worried appearance.
"W-wait a minute, you said there's a clan on Blackmist? Are they, well, are they friendly to outsiders staying on the mountain? If they were from another clan?" She rapidly began to question Izumi, sounding very worried as she did so and not even giving the shiny pokemon time to answer her first set of questions properly.

Izumi nodded her head. "Yeah, apparently red is some kinda outlawed color in Blackmist or something. Honestly though, we got through it pretty well. Now my sister is on a rescue team," she smiled fondly. "I don't know the exact numbers or anything, but I hear that shinies are pretty uncommon. I've honestly only met one other shiny like me." After Izumi had finished responding to all of this, she opened her mouth to ask Shintara about her odd way of speaking about vision and color. She would never get the chance to ask, however, as Shintara suddenly started asking her lots of questions about the tribe Izumi had come from for some reason.

"Erm..." Izumi responded, trying to figure out where to start. "Well, their policies on outsiders aren't great, as you can probably deduce. They didn't have much to do wit other tribes, so I'm not really sure about how they would handle that... They're pretty accepting towards normal Absol though. If it's got a scythe on its head and it's not shiny, they're probably gonna be pretty neutral towards it. Why do you ask?"

Izumi the Absol - 11 (bye bye energy)

FoxFireAlchemist carried out 10 launched of one Scorchfall Desert :

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"W-well, me and my mom came here from the tribe we belong to in the desert." The blind Absol began to explain, before pausing for a moment.
"A different desert than this one." She clarified, before fidgeting at the sand with her paws. Still frowning a bit, she shook her head and sighed slightly.
"Anyways, we had to leave for a short time, and so we headed out in this direction. Once we got to Blackmist, we decided to split up, and she was going to stay there while I decided to wander around a bit. I guess I'm just worried, I probably shouldn't be, but still..." Shintara trailed off a bit, feeling the wind blow sand around, probably getting a bit of it in her fur. Lifting her head back up, she tried to put a smile on, though it probably didn't seem all that convincing.
"I-I'm sure she's fine though, sorry for panicking and just dropping that on you." She apologized to the shiny pokemon.

Pikashock carried out 1 launched of one Scorchfall Desert :

Izumi listened to the other Absol carefully, her face molded into a slight concerned frown. She now understood why Shintara was so worried, and while Izumi didn't didn't have an extremely strong bond with her mother, she did know how it felt to want to protect a family member. "We could go looking for her, if you wanted. To check up on her and see if she's alright. I know my way around the mountain better than anyone; I'm sure we'll find her in no time." As Izumi spoke, she became suddenly aware of how uncomfortable her paw was on a certain area of sand. She lifted it, and suddenly the sand blew away to reveal a sun-shaped rock that had been there. She picked it up and put it into her bag; planning on analyzing it later.

Hearing the shiny pokemon's suggestion, Tara blinked her eyes open, letting them widen a bit with surprise.
"R-really? I mean, I-I wouldn't want to take up your time or anything, but, uh...if you could go with me there maybe, I would really appreciate that..." Shintara seemed to fidget a bit in the sand as she made the request, but even so, she had a small smile of gratitude on her expression. As she did, the wind began to kick up again, making her pause a moment. The blind Absol's stance stiffened slightly as she lifted her head up higher, turning her head as if looking around for something, which technically, she was, but not with her vision of course.

Energy: 4/22(-2 for encounter)