The next day, Chrys and Riolu were sleeping in the two beds in the room that Chrys was initially given. They were sleeping rather soundly until they heard a rapid pounding on the door. They both shot awake and looked at the clock on the side table in between the two beds.

“What do you want? It’s four in the morning,” Chrys groaned tiredly, trying not to disturb anyone that may potentially be sleeping in the neighboring rooms.

“It’s Sunset. Open up,” she commanded. Chrys got up and opened the door, an angry, tired glare on his face.

“What?” he asked sternly.

“I wanted to get going before anybody else in town wakes up. This way we can avoid stirring up an angry mob,” she explained. She was completely dressed and ready to go. She had different clothes on from the previous day, which consisted of a light blue shirt, jeans, and a black jacket with orange stripes near the shoulder area. She did have the same black boots on though, which relieved Chrys. It, for some reason, gave him the impression that she didn’t care about having multiple pairs like some of the women in his previous life that he got the ‘pleasure’ of going shoe shopping with. She also had her backpack slung over one shoulder. Her Vulpix was standing right behind her and Gallade was presumably in his pokéball.

“Whatever. Let me change and we’ll go,” Chrys said, grabbing a change of clothes and turning to the bathroom. Chrys came out of the bathroom wearing the green shirt and brown pants he had been given by Gallade the previous day.

“Uh...,” Riolu said, eying the outfit. The other two in the room also gave him bewildered looks.

“Yes. I know I look like a tree. Can we get out of here now?” he asked impatiently.

“Yeah. Lets get going.”

The group leaft the Pokémon Center through the massive hole that Ursaring made the previous day so they wouldn’t make noise with the door. There were many houses nearby and while the door wasn’t loud, they didn’t want to take any chances. Once they exited the building, the made their way to the entrance to the forest that would lead them to Las Pegasus. They all followed Sunset into the forest as they metaphorically said their goodbyes to the little village, Chrys literally flipping it off. They walked for thirty more minutes in silence, being careful so they wouldn’t wake up something like the Ursaring. It was after that thirty minutes that Sunset broke the silence.

“So, do you plan on catching more pokémon in the forest, or are you gonna wait until we’re out?” she asked Chrys. Chrys shrugged.

“It depends. I should probably catch another one ASAP so I can get acclimated with it before I take on the gym. I’m definitely going to need more than one pokémon for a gym battle,” he explained. An important question about the gym popped into his mind. “What type of pokémon does the gym use?”

Sunset scratched her chin. “It’s one of the newer gyms, so I’m not 100 percent certain on this, but if I had to take an educated guess, I’d say bug,” she said.

“Go figure,” Chrys deadpanned.

“Yeah, it seems like a pretty obvious conclusion.”

“Also a racist one,” Riolu chimed in, jumping on Chrys’ shoulder. He gave her an annoyed glance. “Sorry, I’m tired,” she said. Chrys just sighed.

“I’d look offended, but you’re absolutely right. But then again, I’m also absolutely right,” Sunset said with confidence, however she was scratching the back of her head in embarrassment.

“It is a very reasonable conclusion,” Riolu said, nestling her head in Chrys’ neck.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“I got like three hours of sleep. Sue me,” she said, her jaw opening widely as she yawned.

“Then you should go back in your ball,” Sunset suggested. Riolu vehemently shook her head.

“I’d prefer it if I didn’t go back in there unless I’m severely injured and it gets me to a Pokémon Center faster. It’s cramped as fuck in that thing,” Riolu said affirmatively.

Vulpix shook her head as if to say, ‘It’s not that bad.’

“Fine by me. I can get you a big, brown bag from Trader Joe’s and carry you in that instead,” Chrys joked. He was the only one laughing as Trader Joe’s was probably not something that existed in Equestria nor any other country on the planet for that matter.

“I got no clue who this ‘Trader Joe’ is, but he sounds like a dick,” Riolu said, raising a few chuckles from the group.

“These have been the worst few days of my life,” Chrys complained, lightly banging his head against a tree.

It was three days since they left Kokiri Village and nothing had happened. They walked, ate, walked, ate, and walked some more for four straight days. Currently they were eating dinner on the fifth day sans Chrys, who was downing several bottles of water to try and sustain himself; an effort which has been semi-successful so far. Miraculously, the group did not find a single pokémon in the forest so far, which irked Riolu to no end since she was out of the mummy-like bandages that had handicapped her for what felt like years to her. It was Riolu that finally broke their silence.

“I need to kick something’s ass,” she blurted out, causing Chrys to perform a picture perfect spit take right into Sunset’s face, cracking up at the random remark. The unicorn just blinked a couple of times before sighing and wiping her face off with a napkin.

“Well I’d love to ‘kick something’s ass,’ but we haven’t seen anything for days,” Chrys replied, finishing the last bottle of water he was going to have for lunch.

“Well sor-ry, but I’m pent up,” she said, standing up and throwing a few punches for emphasis.

“There are plenty of other things you can do to rectify that situation,” Chrys commented, causing Sunset to do a spit take into the changelings face this time. Chrys blinked and wiped his face with a napkin. “Okay, I deserved that.” This made Gallade chuckle a bit and Vulpix explode in laughter. They all ignored the fire fox since this was becoming quite the normal occurrence.

“Whatever man. I just wanna fight something. I’m getting stiff,” Riolu replied, cracking her neck.

“Gallade and I are the only ones here who can get stiff,” Chrys joked, causing everyone but Vulpix to face palm. Vulpix was, of course, laughing hysterically in front of the campfire. “All kidding aside, we have to find something first.”

“Yeah,” Sunset said. “It isn’t like something’s just gonna land on our heads.” With that comment, Sunset began to hear a buzz. She sighed, Riolu put on a maniacal grin, and the rest of the gang slouched at the cliche irony of the situation. “What’s on my head?”

“It’s a Cutiefly. What the hell is it doing up this late?” Chrys asked no one in particular.

“Good question. Usually they’re out in the daytime,” Sunset said. The Cutiefly was resting on the unicorn’s head, a happy look on its face, even though it doesn’t have a mouth. Riolu started bouncing in place like a boxer.

“Sunset, you better get that thing off your head or I’m gonna beat you to smithereens along with it,” Riolu said anxiously.

“C’mon. It’s resting,” Chrys said. “And you do realize you’re at a disadvantage, right?”

“I don’t see how that matters,” Riolu replied. “I just wanna smack a bitch.” Chrys sighed.

“Give me a sec.” He went over to the Cutiefly, who was still smiling with its eyes, and put his finger next to it. Getting the message, it climed on and faced the changeling, who smiled. “You wanna kick my friends ass?” He asked.

“Hey!”

The Cutiefly pondered on it for a second, looking back and forth between Riolu and Chrys. It ultimately nodded and flew off of Chrys’ finger into the middle of the path they were on.

“Okay, lets get this going,” he declared.

“Riolu, use Focus Punch!”

The canine lunged at the Cutiefly, winding up her fist. The bug/fairy type flew to the side at the last second to dodge the blow. Cutiefly then turned to face Riolu and let loose a barrage of blasts at Riolu, hitting her directly.

“That was Struggle Bug,” Sunset said, facing her pokémon. “I wonder how he’ll handle this. Riolu won’t be able to get close that easily.” The two pokémon next to her nodded. Chrys took all of three seconds to shout his next command.

“Blaze Kick!”

Riolu jumped up at Cutiefly, lighting up her leg and kicking at the fly when she got close enough. Again, Cutiefly dodged it and flew higher up to stay out of reach. When Riolu landed, she acted on her own. She bent her legs much more and sprung them upwards, jumping up much higher than before. She held out her palm and it crackled with electric sparks. Once again the Cutiefly dodged, this time to its right, and fired a a Stuggle Bug at her again, sending her towards the ground.

That was Force Palm, Chrys thought, as Riolu got back up. “I appreciate you showing me that, but let me do the thinking.” Riolu nodded and faced her opponent yet again.

This time, Cutiefly took charge, stirring up wind with its wings, causing Riolu to fly back, but she used the momentum the attack gave her to backflip and landed on her feet. Chrys identified the attack to be Fairy Wind and reacted accordingly.

“Quick Attack!” he commanded. Riolu obliged, speeding towards her opponent. The Cutiefly was quick to dodge the attack, flying very high up to avoid it. This made Riolu head straight for a tree, giving Chrys an idea.

“Put your feet in front of you!” he shouted. Riolu quickly righted herself so her feet would hit the tree before anything else on her would. Once she hit the tree, she pushed off of it, using her momentum to jump straight above the Cutiefly, who stared stunned.

“Blaze Kick!”

Riolu somersaulted forward to increse the force of her attack, lighting her leg ablaze again. She then slammed her entire foot over the length of Cutiefly’s body, making the bee fly pokémon begin hurdling towards the ground at full speed. This is when Chrys took action. He grabbed a pokéball out of his pocket and launched it at where Cutiefly was going to land. The ball met the pokémon right before it made contact with the ground, opening up and sucking it in. The ball closed and landed softly on the grass and began to shake, the button on it blinking a bright red color. It shook several times before the button transitioned completely back to white with a click. Just like that, Chrys had caught his second pokémon.

“That went rather smoothly,” Chrys said, walking over to the ball to pick it up.

“Smoothly?!? That didn’t just go smoothly. It was the easiest capture I’ve ever seen happen in my time as a trainer!” Sunset said, mouth agape.

“You have two pokémon Sunset, and you didn’t have to battle either of them. That’s easy,” Chrys explained causing Sunset to make an ‘o’ shape with her mouth.

“It ended way to quickly though,” Riolu pouted with her arms folded.

“Well I didn’t tell you to spin before you kicked it. That fall could’ve severely damaged it. You’re lucky I threw that ball more accurately than Bumgarner on a good day,” Chrys said, pounding his chest proudly.

“I have no idea who this ‘Bumgarner’ is, but a pokéball has a mechanism that helps guide it towards a pokémon. Of course you need to throw it relatively accurately, but the pokéball does most of the work. I guess it’s comparable to a magnet,” Sunset explained.

“Oh. Thank you for ruining my single greatest achievement,” Chrys said glumly.

“The capture or the throw?” Sunset asked.

“The throw,” he replied. “Definitely the throw.” Sunset sighed and looked to the pokéball in his hand.

“Why don’t you send it out and let it formally meet everyone,” she suggested.

“Sure, why not?” he said as he threw the pokéball a couple of feet into the air, releasing his new Cutiefly. Cutiefly looked exhausted. It had several scratches and bruises along its short body. As it slowly drifted towards the ground, Chrys put out his hand to catch it. He turned his attention back to Sunset. “Do you have a potion or something like that?”

“As a matter of fact,” she said, rummaging through her mess of a bag, “I do.” She pulled out a small purple spray bottle that look like a big glob of moisturizer. She tossed it over to the changeling and he caught it with ease. He turned back to Cutiefly, resting it on the ground.

“This may sting a bit, although I’m not really sure since I’m new to this.” He sprayed the medicine onto Cutiefly, the bug cringed for a second before relaxing as the spray stopped coming. It flew up to Chrys’ shoulder and rested on it, falling straight to sleep in the process.

“I am now very glad you caught that thing. Isn’t it just the cutest thing?” Sunset asked, a stupid grin on her face.

“Cutie is literally in its name. Besides, its speed is incredible. Riolu is not a slow pokémon and she wasn’t connecting most of her attacks.”

“Yeah. She’s unbelievably fast. She wasn’t all that weak either,” Riolu remarked.

“Wait a sec, she? How can you possibly tell that?” Chrys asked. Riolu shrugged.

“It’s much easier for a pokémon to tell the difference between male and female pokémon,” she explained. “I can just tell.”

“Well that’s nice to know. I suppose I should try to catch another one pretty soon. Three is a good number to start out with,” Chrys said.

“Yeah. Most gym leaders do three v three battles, but I have heard of some funky gym rules before,” Sunset replied.

“Like what?”

“Well I heard of a gym that does a double battle and gyms that allow the challenger to use all of their pokémon while they only use a few,” she explained. “I’ve also heard that the most challenging gym is in Canterlot. They have their challengers use only three pokémon while the gym leader uses two at a time and has six pokémon with them or something to that effect. I believe only one person has completed that gyms challenge, and it’s the current champion.”

“Good lord. The gym leader must do it to truly challenge trainers. We will definitely have to try that at some point. Make it two people who’ve completed that gym,” Chrys said excitedly. I’m starting to enjoy this predicament I’m in. It’s every pokémon fans dream to do this for real, he thought.

“It would be really damn cool if we were able to pull that one off. You seem to be a pretty capable trainer so far. Maybe we’d stand a decent chance one day,” Riolu complemented.

“Thanks,” he knelt down and pet Riolu’s head. She smiled and her tailed viciously wagged, telling Chrys that he found her favorite spot.

“We should really follow Cutiefly’s example. We wanna get to Veg-Pegasus soon and catch that train,” Chrys said, laying down next to a tree.

“Agreed, goodnight,” Sunset said.

“Night,” Chrys replied.

Author's Note

Cutiefly Information in case anybody doesn’t know much about it. I tried to make it as accurate to the thing as I could. And I made that shit about the pokéball up. I have no idea how they work but feel like that is a reasonable explanation for why it gets there evey time. Ash is no superstar MLB pitcher like Bumgarner. Someone like Mad Bum wouldn’t need such a mechanism. I also don’t know if I ever gave a clothing description for Sunset until now and I’m too lazy to check so correct me if I’m wrong.

https://youtu.be/OEKySXm1J2M