Welcome to Gaia! ::

((Yeah, you'll be able to see the format in the first post. I can copy and paste what to just paste into the post for you if you want - you'll have to hit reply to see the html for it.

Also, like I said before, I believe Ryoku sunk Relic Castle since it's meant to be used for later. I mean, you can have Takamaru continue to explore it and possibly face Ryoku - which would end terribly - or just head to Nimbasa and join us for the meeting.))

Henrietta hung her head as she was scolded. "Sorry." Salieri mentioned super powers soon after that and Henrietta perked up, her head lifting and her eyes raising to look at the medal.

"Salieri," she said as she turned her head to look at the martial artist. "That medal I got while leading the kendo team." To be more exact, she was considered - at least last year - to be the best practitioner of kendo in the entire city. "And," she began as she lifted her right hand up, back of it aimed at Salieri, "I have this."

It was all she could manage at this point, but the middle finger nail would slowly become coated in a crystal like substance.

Salieri was already grinning when Henrietta started elaborating on her award, glad she got Henrietta to get her out of her shell a little, but became ecstatic when the crystal appeared on her fingernail. "Whoa! Now that's what I'm talking about!"

The Battle Girl jumped onto Henrietta's bed, hopping up and down excitedly. "What is that, some kind of crystal? How does that work, how do you do that? Since when?"

She wondered if Henrietta got her powers the same way she did, in the flash of light across Castelia City. Salieri had no idea what it was, but she couldn't rule out the possibility. And now that she knew Henrietta had an ability too, she just had to show her's.

So Sal stopped jumping on the bed for a moment, looking down at Henrietta. "It's Aura, isn't it? Henrietta, you're not going to believe this, but I-"

The sound of the door knocking caused Sal to stop speaking. And then she realized how loud she was just being. As cool as they were, they were bizarre, these Aura abilities. Not normal. Salieri didn't want random people -like Henrietta's parents, for instance- overhearing her. They might think she's a freak.

"Who do you think that is?" Salieri had no idea who else Henrietta invited besides herself and Wayne.

((I typically purposefully ignore people that knock really quietly on doors. I have a friend who does it constantly and we only know she's there cause the dog barks.))

Henrietta's hands were raised what might've been defensively but looked more like flinching at Salieri's jump. She wasn't sure how to react to the excitement of the other girl so she sat there listening to her, her head drawn back a quarter of an inch and her expression reading 'surprised'.

"Hum-

knock knock knock!

She looked toward the door of her room when the doorbell rang. "Takamaru, Luka, Wayne and you." She couldn't remember Prince's real name since it was pretty strange and he'd only said it all of one time when she was around and Robby's name had produced more results than she cared to remember. Otherwise she'd just left Eunmi out since the Korean girl had vowed to start a career when she reached Castelia - so she wasn't going to be in any danger.

"Let's go see who it is." Henrietta then headed out of the room and down the stairs to answer the door and see Takamaru there. "Hey," she said, turning to let him in. "Come on in."

***

Leavanny was about as blind as Hitmonlee given the whirling motion of her technique. Not that it actually mattered, considering she already had so much momentum it wasn't possible to miss - much less abandon the technique. In fact, without sufficient brute force Pokemon that used Aerial Ace for speed and then tried to back out of it typically broke whatever part they used to try and stop the technique. Too often did some foolish Pokeon belonging to a novice trainer snap a leg or a wing trying to control Aerial Ace once they'd entered their maximum speed.

Realistically the technique was designed to dominate the skies in such a way that it let one hit regardless of anything else, but lacking the priority factor of moves like Extreme Speed and having a maximum speed that did not permit enemies to avoid it, it was bound to have obvious drawbacks.

One of these was a wheel of fire that was met with the whirling blade of Leavanny. While it was impossible to deflect the flames, two sword dances versus two meditations saw to it that Hitmonlee wasn't coming out of the conflict like Mike Tyson versus some scrawny kid that'd managed their way to the top by luck.

While he might be successful in altering the trajectory, it wasn't a complete factor of deflecting Leavanny entirely. Barring luck, she was sure to pierce him regardless, just with added injury instead of just when she'd likely crash into him.

Burgh, meanwhile, was covered in a mass of blackness that continued to crawl down the steps toward the battlefield. "Would you like to see my new painting?" he gurgled to Wayne. It was quite the masterpiece, depicting a scene from his battle with Takamaru, albeit with some weird artistic habit of making everything looking insanely deformed and oddly colored.

BOOM!

The Pokemon exploded into the ground, debris kicked up by her landing, ash and dust and rock flying every which place. And as it settled Leavanny stood, burned but alive, ready to skewer Hitmonlee properly.

When, from her angle, she saw the skittering black mass. Her children, heading toward the battle.

An army of Sewaddle - naked after leaving their blanket - black with a thick coat of blood covering them.

[No!] she shouted and stepped toward them, to divert them from the conflict. She fell suddenly with a sharp pain and, looking back, she noticed her leg twisted at some impossible angle, bug goo sticking out of her exoskeleton leg.

And, realizing this was an opportune chance to be attacked, she looked toward Hitmonlee - who was probably attacking because he wasn't ********.]

"Are you ******** serious!?" shouted someone that emerged from the back area of the gym. Kevin Monroe, the man in charge of fixing the gym up for the next battle. Leavanny looked dead, all the Sewaddle were dead, Burgh was dead. Seriously, he was quitting. Too much of this s**t every god damn day.

"Yeah, here, get the ******** out." Kevin, clearly angry and not traumatized, threw the badge toward Wayne and stomped off angrily back into the shadows, cursing about mops and brooms and back ups.

"I guess I was worried about nothing," Wayne said to himself as he left the pokémon center. "Man, do I feel silly. Okay, now to cross a desert and find Henrietta's house before 7." He check his Xtransceiver for the time. "Oh boy..."

"Stop talking to yourself!" shouted some passerby and Wayne struck a frown. But he liked talking to himself...

"Kinda like Duosion. I gotta find out what the deal is with that," Wayne said, taking the pokémon out of its ball, "okay dude, I don't want you arguing with yourself but you gotta Telekinesis me to the northern city gate. No way am I walking all the way there and definitely no way I am going on public transport. Have you seen the kind of people who go on those things? People who don't have access to psychic pokémon such as yourself, that's who."

Duosion gave the trainer a blank look. [I think this counts as pokémon abuse.]
[I'm exaggerating.]

---

"Noooooo!" Wayne fell to his knees after being dropped off by Duosion, "that desert is way bigger than I remember it!"

[We have to cross that thing?!]
[I'm not sure which is worse: a desert, or being put in Wayne's pocket and rubbing up against his balls.]
[Poké Balls.]
[Whatever.]

"Oh wait, sweet, there's a coach to take people across," Wayne perked up and recalled his psychic pokémon. He ran over and with the last of his money, paid for a ticket on the coach. "Did I mention how much I love public transport?" Wayne edged past a really sweaty fat woman and a man who seemed to have a skinned Bidoof-hat sitting on his head.

It made sense for one of these coaches to run; there was probably an entire transit system dedicated to crossing the desert. Most trainers just seemed to blindspot it for some reason.

"Next stop, Nimba--"
"That's my line!" the driver grumbled, "Eh... Nimbasa, next stop. Siddown and kiss yer a** goodbye."

Wayne was just wondering about the mechanics of that when he was thrown backwards. The coach activated its anti-gravity engine and tucked its wheels in. A moment passed, and the mass of metal rocketed across the desert sands.

---

And finally, less than an hour later they'd arrived. Wayne stretched as he got off the coach glanced around. Yep, Nimbasa. Just as he remembered it.

"Okay, totally lost right now," he said with a half-nervous grin. "Sure hope this city won't take as long to get through as Castelia seemed to take."