The Beginning of a Long Voyage

Izumi stood at the entrance to the Black Spiral Staircase early one peticular morning, her medium-sized treasure bag hanging from her neck as per usual. The Black Spiral Staircase lead straight to the very peak of Black Mist Mountain, the place she and her sister Tsukishiro called home. She and her sister were leaving for a new town that day, but first Izumi wanted to procure a certain item from the mountain's peak. The Black Mist's most sacred and valuable treasure. Or, in any case, it was valuable to them. Izumi had no clue how much the item was actually worth, she wasn't even sure if it existed. But she was sure as heck she was going to find out. She waited patiently for her sister to join her at the gaping entrance to the inside of the mountain.

Tsukishiro gently wandered over to where her sister was waiting at the entrance to the Black Spiral Staircase. She smiled as she joined her, looking up into the tunnels that headed upwards.
"So this item...." she began, "What is it supposed to be?"

"I don't really know. I've never personally seen it." Izumi replied honestly in response to her sister's question. "However, my gut instinct tells me it has to be something useful to us. It won't take us too long to get to the top and find it, of that I'm sure. It'll be good excersize before we start our journey to that town we were talking about." she added with a slight grin. Izumi's motto had always been "look before you leap", so she often did things on a whim. This was one of those instances.

Shiro grinned back in return, not minding that they didn't even know what the item was. She thought that it was actually rather exciting that it could be anything they wanted right now and still would be until they actually found it.
"I wonder what the town will be like..." she wondered out loud before she took her first steps up the Black Spiral 'Staircase', which really wasn't that much like a staircase at all.

Izumi also began to walk up the "staircase" at the same time Tsukishiro did, listening for any wild Pokemon or trouble around them. "I was just wondering the same thing. I hope it's not a place full of conformists. I've had all the conforming I can take." Izumi grumbled, sniffing at the air slightly. "Keep your eyes peeled for items. It's going to be a long trip and we need provisions. Preferably Black Gummis. I mean, thats all we ever really eat at home." she laughed, thinking about the Absol tribe's one main food group: Black Gummis.

The Absol laughed. She couldn't complain really. Black Gummis didn't half taste nice, though the occasional Apple was also welcomed. Her thoughts having gone off on this tangent lead to her walking with her mouth half open as she thought about finding a nice juicy apple.
Blinking as she realised what she was doing, she chuckled to herself before turning to Izumi.
"Do you know exactly how far away this town is?" she asked after a short moment of silence.

Izumi pulled a map out of her bag and stopped for a quick moment to observe a route she had drawn on it in read ink. "Well, if I'm correct we can take a route that cuts through a corner of the Eastern Desert Area below the mountain range, and from there we can travel along the ocean until we reach a smaller town called Rainfront Town. We can stop to rest there, and then we can travel though a place called Serene Cave which should dump us out right near the town." Izumi explained, tracing the red line she had drawn with her claw as she talked. After she finished talking, she waited for a response from her sister.

Tsukishiro nodded slowly as she drew imaginary pictures of their route in her head.
"Sounds like fun!" she smiled, looking forward to the journey. "It beats being stuck in this place for eternity anyway."

Anyone watching how Shiro communicated with her sister would think she was a bouncy young Absol with a thirst for adventure... and with the latter they wouldn't be entirely wrong but when speaking to anyone other than Izumi, Tsukishiro was as quiet as a lone blade of grass on a windy day.

Izumi grinned at her sister's enthusiasm. She had always been able to understand and relate to her sister because they were both quiet Pokemon, although in very different ways. After a moment of thought, Izumi rolled the map back up and stowed it in her bag. "We can use this map to record all the places we see as we travel. Whenever we come across something interesting, I'll mark it down on the map." Izumi smiled as she began walking again.

Tsukishiro began walking as her sister did. The dark rocks around them would be quite formidable if the two hadn't lived on the mountain for the whole of their lives so far. The young Absol began daydreaming as she walked, dreaming of all the places they would see and could mark on the map just like Izumi had suggested. Though Shiro herself didn't notice, you could hear the soft pawsteps of both Absol as they padded quietly towards their destination.

Izumi walked on a little while longer in silence, the only audible noise being the padding sound as she and Tsukishiro's paws hit the ground gently. After a few minutes however, she stopped abruptly and started sniffing the air again. "I think I smell an item neaby, Tsukishiro." she alerted her sister.

Occ: Rolling for an item.

This dice is not existing.

"Are you sure?" replied the younger Absol.
"How can you smell an item anyhow?" Tsukishiro chuckled before she padded onwards, keeping her eyes peeled for the item that Izumi had smelt. She wondered what it could be... though it didn't look like anything interesting was going to be found here.

"It's sort of a metallic-y scent...." Izumi mused as she put her nose to the ground and started sniffing around the area, then stopped when she came to a small rock. She pushed it aside with her paw and revealed a stack of around five little silver thorns on the ground. "Aha, this was what I was looking for." Izumi grinned as she grabbed the little thorns up into her mouth and stashed them quickly into a pocket in her treasure bag before she did damage to herself. "We can use those as weapons if we come across a Pokemon that we can't fight against very well or something along those lines."

"That explains the metallic smell then," commented Tsukishiro. Her bright red eyes watched her older sister intently as she uncovered the items and put them into the bag she was carrying. They did look rather sharp, especially to be just lying around like that.
Tsukishiro shrugged it off, blaming it on careless explorers as they moved on.

As Izumi and her sister continiued to climb the inside of the mountain, the sounds of other living beings began to become more common and frequent. Izumi looked around cautiously, pacing herself so that she wouldn't be caught off guard. She hadn't noticed, but she was clenching her teeth together. "Just don't make too much noise. As long as we stay quiet, they most likely won't attack us. Probably." she whispered through her clenched fangs.