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So many people present left Henrietta feeling uncomfortable, but she was glad that Salieri was backing off from things. She looked over at Eunmi and shook her head. "I-i'm fine. It's just freak accidents," she said. It had to be a coincidence, right? There wasn't actually a way for this many things happening to be purposeful, right?

She stood up after letting Darumi down. He seemed out of it still. She tilted her head to the side as she looked at him. Darumaka normally moved about over and over again, but the air here didn't seem to be doing him much good. "N-now that Darumi is back I-i'm going to go train."

She looked up at the rest of the group. She wouldn't have minded training them if you cut the group in half, at least, but as it stood now she'd rather not be around so many people. Especially if they were worried about her, she didn't want that sort of attention.

"S-so I'll see you guys at the gym." If no one made to stop her, then, she'd head off.

((Luckily I have no such plans.))

Bill sneezed.

***

Henrietta wandered off a bit. Not too far, of course, she she was out of earshot now. She look over her team of Pokemon. "The gym battle," she began as they all looked up at her, "is going to be two on two. S-so, if you guys want to fight it let me know. I'll need two volunteers."

Melty slid forward. He'd originally wanted to rest his days away, but since he'd been more and more exposed to the thrill of battle he'd gained an addiction to it.

Frate stepped forward as well, before Darumi could. Darumi had intended to, he'd already faced Lenora with N. He knew how it could be. Still, that didn't matter now. He looked at Frate.

"A-alright. So I'll focus on training you guys," she said. Then she looked at Darumi and Socant. "You guys just enjoy yourselves."

Socant skittered off then, to go hunting. Darumi, meanwhile, looked at Henrietta. The tension seemed gone, the air was more relaxed. Feeling a bit better, he would go to greet the wildlife around the area. With Henrietta she'd made the route Pokemon were enemy, he'd trained against them to master his moves. N was the opposite. The end result was that Darumi was more interested in making friends with wild pokemon than kicking their asses.

Back to the training, Henrietta looked at her two Pokemon. How long did they have? A few hours, tops, if she was going to try and get the badge quickly. How was she going to go about battling? Both Pokemon were pretty small, Melty was powerful but his defensive style relied on destroying attacks by force. Frate was the opposite, his list of moves were basic, but his defensive power was high.

"Sword and shield," Henrietta said then. It was an idea, Frate could protect Melty from damage. "Frate, we're going to work on your defenses, Melty, your offense." It was a simple strategy.

"Find wild Pokemon, start with one at a time and try to work your way up. Melty will attack, Frate you defend Melty. Harden your body as you go. Don't take any hits you don't have to take."

She sounded cruel, she thought, somewhere in the back of her mind. Still, it was a good strategy, she thought.

The two set out to train and Henrietta would supervise but she also had her own training to do. She regretted the dress she was in and quickly fished out a pair of jeans, feeling silly for letting Eunmi give her pants the other day when she hadn't actually needed to. Putting them on under the dress she'd start with her stretches. Then it was mental back pedaling to Eunmi's training the other day.

From the first thing she'd taught her onwards, if no one interrupted Henrietta would begin to go over the entire lesson again, trying to get what she had learned down properly. More confident about it now, it would be complete with higher "kiya"(sp?) sounds then yesterday. Of course, none high enough for other people to her her if they were making noises themselves.

Phew And just like that, Avan was in the clear. Though he was now the suspicious one. Why wouldn't the girl care who her attacker was and just give up the hunt so easily? Oh well, why argue with a good thing, right? Or so Avan thought. I guess I'll have to watch mysel-

Wait, Team Beatdown? The name was silly, but had a certain charm to it. "I like the name." He said, trying to hide a small chuckle. It was nice to have found other who were against Plasma as well. Maybe it wouldn't be so impossible if there are others.

Avan put Baku's ball back in his bag and adjusted the strap to be a bit more comfortable. It was time to get done what he had set out to do that morning; sure it might have been in bad taste to beat the rap and run. "I think I'm gonna head out too...a bit more training to do."

So, Henrietta had given up wanting to figure out what happened. Well, these things happened. Luka tried to hide his disappointment, he'd really enjoyed the intellectual stimulation that had been kind of lacking these past few days. Still, he might as well train with these people for a bit.

He walked back over to his Pokémon who were happily chatting away. He sat down with them. "Okay. Here's how we're going to battle Lenora: Kai and Tayla are going to be the party members, sorry Squirt, because Kai has the type advantage and Tayla's Strings Combo should help us give Kai a better chance of getting in those much needed super effective hits. We need to come up with a team combo to make things a little easier."

Well, they could make use of Tayla's Protect and Kai's 'rollout'. Theoretically, it would be possible for Tayla to jump in her protect ball onto a rolling Kai and then launch herself off before doing Strings. It could work.

((Anostomus, Henrietta and co. are on Route 3, not Pinwheel Forest. biggrin ))

Eunmi looked down at D-Vee, tilting her head to the side as she observed him. She had always assumed D-Vee was a painter, not a fighter, but since they had started the journey, the Pokemon seemed excited by fighting. And the Pokedex displayed just how adept he was at it when he was with his old trainer.

So what was the focus? Speed or power? Eunmi really didn't know.

"What do you want to do?" Eunmi asked, holding out each of her hands. Lifting the left, she would say, "Speed," and then lifting the right, "or Power?"

D-Vee was by no means a weak Pokemon - he had training in both areas - but it had been a long time since he'd utilized them. He looked back at Wukong and then pressed his palm in Eunmi's left hand. For Wukong's sake, at the moment, D-Vee figured focusing on Speed would be fine.

"Speed it is then," Eunmi said cheerfully.

Ryan's presence startled her. She tensed up and jumped, messing up her kick. She'd manage to catch her balance and she'd spin around to face him, eyes wide with embarrassment, cheeks red. She wouldn't mind being caught training, but it was the whole 'did he hear me shouting?' thing that got her.

Ryan himself looked intimidating. Eunmi had gone for the styled hair look, with the colored lines. But she hadn't ended up looking how Ryan had. Probably because Henrietta found the other girl cute, Ryan looked more intimidating.

"T-t-t-t-t-training," she stuttered.