The Story Continues:

Another few weeks of back and forth… trying to make it to the next city, my pokemon becoming stronger, our bonds becoming stronger, and joy… so much joy.
I was happy. I like to think they all were too… and when Lily and I, while making our way across the forest paths, again, for the umpteenth time, came across a Silcoon, I jumped at the chance. I settled Lily on the ground, and backed up. She rocked there, for a long moment… a soft sheen shimmering on her silken cocoon, before she glanced at me. “What?” More staring. “... what?!”

Okay… I would admit, setting a cocoon to fight a cocoon was not my best moment. I returned her, grinning stupidly, before tossing out Ayanna, watching as my favorite Raltz danced around my feet, before turning glowing eyes on the Silcoon infront of me. The soft white cocoon’s eyes screwed up, and it seemed to almost want to invert itself… yea… that was confusion all right… I tossed my pokeball, grinning broadly, and checked the stats…
“IT’s even a boy!” I laughed and laughed, dancing with Ayanna, before bringing out Lily. “I caught you a boy, Lil-” I blinked… Lily was cracked… “Oh… oh no… Lily, did I drop you? Oh… please dont be hurt…” I knelt beside her, placing my hands on the hard silken shell. “Lily… please….”

I could see something, moving inside the shell, and my breath caught. She wasn’t hurt… she was evolving… “Oh…. Oh!” The crack widened, and the ovoid body, bright purple and slightly slimy, pressed itself out of the cocoon, a pair of broad green wings followed, unfolding and fluttering, before she skittered around to look at me on stubby yellow feet. “Oh Lily! Look at you! You’re lovely! … Your wings even look like lilypads… neat…” I hugged her, smiling brightly, I didn’t even care that I was getting wing-dust on me, or cocoon slime. She was my first fully evolved pokemon, and we’d only been together… what… two months? At most. “Oh Lily… I’m so happy…”

We stood, and with her, I finally made it to the next city, Rustboro… This… had been the place I called home for almost half my life… or rather, the hospital… I looked up at the buildings again, a bright smile on my face. This was a new feeling. “I’m not here to be sick… I’m here to be a pokemon trainer.” I grinned, glancing at Lily, and Ayanna, and Kito as well, kneeling to hug them all, the dustox landing on my shoulders. “Lets go get Ren out of storage!”

“...” I stared at the silcoon as I walked out of the pokecenter. “This is gunna take a while…”

A few days I attempting to train the silcoon passed, and I had more or less given up. Nothing more dull than watching a cocoon harden. I stared at the creature a little longer, before I felt a poke. “Hey Missus… wanna trade pokemon with me?”

I looked up. The kid was… what… five? I blinked and rolled over on the bench I was laying on, “Uh… sure kid, why not. What do you want?” I pulled open my dex, and pulled out the line, attaching it to the kid’s dex. “Uhhh… how about yer Slakoth for my punchy thing…”

“What’s a punchy thing?”
“I can’t remember what it’s called, but its a fighting type… it kinda looks like a pork bun… with fists.”

I blinked, imagining that, and suddenly I was hungry. I could go for a pork bun right now… “Uh… yea, sure…” I wasn’t planning on using the Slakoth anyway, and it was a free dex entry… plus, I could train with the thing to improve my own fighting skills, and maybe make friends… that would be pretty sweet.

The trade took maybe twenty minutes all in all… the kid’s dex was a little old, the connection freyed, so I didn’t really judge all that harshly. I grinned and patted his head as he wandered off in the end. “Sweet… I’ll have to stop by the Center in a bit to look at it…”

Maybe a week later, I was seriously regretting coming to Rostboro… “Okay, so… maybe challenging a rock-type gym with a team made up of mostly normal and bug ty-EEP” A large stone landed a little too close to Dancer for comfort and I called her back, tossing out Kito, again. This was only the fourth trainer… and Kito was becoming my standby in here. I needed to train up everyone else, something crazy. I was actually kind of shocked my seaskrit had taken such a beating… Dancer was a water type too… then again, perhaps the bug type gave her too much of a weakness… Yea, water was strong against stone, but stone wasn’t exactly weak against water, and it was strong against bug types. I swore under my breath. “Mudslap, Kito!”

Kito responded with an excited “kii!” and spun across the arena, shooting water from his mouth like a little jet, using his tail to send up a wave of soggy wet dirt. Eventually the Geodude toppled over under it’s own weight, flailing around for a long while, before falling still, and it’s trainer recalled it, frowning. Passing her, I gave her a meek smile, and looked up at the dias. “I’m so not ready for this…”

I turned around, sprinting back out the door and to the pokecenter… start off with a fresh team… just like always, and then I headed back..

I forgot to switch Ren, the Silcoon, back to the rear of my party… I cursed myself for being slow witted, and quickly recalled him, digging for my mudkip’s ball. “Okay, Kito… lets flatten… roxanne? Yea, Roxanne… lets flatten her, get our badge and go.”

Amazingly enough… We did… Mudslap and watergun combined, and a superpotion just to make sure Kito was still raring to go, and we won… I grinned, hugging Kito tightly, and took my badge. “Thank you, so much… Oh my god, this is awesome…” I hugged Roxanne too… the shorter woman was obviously flustered as I ran out the door, waving as I went.

A little while later, at the Pokecenter… my silcoon… Ren, I needed to call him Ren, started doing the same thing Lily had… He cracked, and shivered and shook, and I waited with baited breath to see him emerge. I knew better than to help… age old adage… if you open the cocoon for the butterfly, it will never fly. I waited… and waited, and finally… finally he pried himself free and drifted there, looking around… almost lazily. “... Sweet…”

He looked at me… and turned away. “Eh?” He… didn’t like me? Hadn’t I been nice to him? Maybe it was because I caught him as a cocoon… maybe I just needed to show him some affection like I did the rest…

I’m sure we’d get along eventually. I smiled, and called him back. “I have a Dustox, and a Beautifly now… Awesome.”