The sun is well and truly setting by the time Ran, belt once more having all of his team’s pokéballs on it, finally makes it to an unoccupied stretch of the beach clearly meant for training. There’s a few other trainers around, but they’ve all got enough space to work out without hindering each other, so Ran doesn’t pay them too much mind once he concludes that nobody has any poison-types or truly exotic pokémon out and about.

  Taking into account the absence of exotic pokémon on the beach, prior to his arrival, he really shouldn’t be surprised by the subtle way the trainers surrounding him shift their focus from their own teams to Ran, when he releases his full team. Because whilst most of his pokémon wouldn’t merit more than a glance, Skorupi very much doesn’t fit that billing.

  He doesn’t pay the distracted trainers any mind, his focus instead solidly on his team as they form up around him. Caesar and Skorupi of course have already had a brief summary of the race and its outcome, but Aria and Golbat only take a moment to take in their surroundings before their attention locks firmly on their trainer.

  Ran meets their enquiring gazes with a proud smile, which is enough for Aria to do a happy little wiggling dance on the spot as she trills triumphantly, whilst Golbat merely closes his eyes for a long few seconds in a long, self-satisfied blink. Still, Ran isn’t content to leave it at a non-verbal confirmation, instead liberally doling out praise.

  “We won the race and gained a new team member as our reward. The other trainer, Doro, was a lot faster than me, so I absolutely couldn’t have done it without you guys’ help. Aria, I genuinely hope I’ll never have to use you as a mount again, but you did an amazing job! Caesar, the same thing goes for you, on both accounts.” Ran explains and praises in equal measure, before turning his attention to Golbat, who suddenly seems rather wary of his trainer, if the way he shrinks back slightly is any indication.

  “Golbat, I’m not going to hang on to your feet again, but I’m telling you now, we’ll be experimenting with flying together in the near future. You’ll definitely be able to carry me as a Crobat and honestly, for our first tries, you already did an amazing job. Though when we do practice, we’ll do so while closer to the ground and with something softer to land on, alright?” He encourages and comforts the large Bat Pokémon, even as he can tell that Golbat is less than enthusiastic about the idea.

  Golbat still seems less than eager, though Ran is quite confident that he knows just what part his pokémon is hung up on.

  “I promise we’ll take proper precautions and be careful about it, alright?” He offers gently, which finally draws a soft consenting screech from Golbat.

  Pleased, Ran turns his attention to divesting himself of Skorupi for a moment, the smallest of his team members having enthusiastically reacquainted himself with Ran’s back whilst he was distracted. Then, the team he started the day with fully assembled, he brings out Croagunk.

  Absently, he takes note of the other trainers on the beach, who’d picked up their own training once more once they finished ogling Skorupi, come to another abrupt halt. But his focus is on Croagunk, who appears in front of Ran and the rest of the team with a calm smile.

  From his point of view, it must be quite the sight, with Ran flanked by an Arbok and an Ariados, whilst Skorupi and Golbat stand on the respective ends of the line. Croagunk doesn’t seem bothered in the least however, merely raising a hand in a calm greeting as he lets out another ribbiting approximation of ‘hello’.

  Ran’s lips quirk up in another smile, as amused now as he was when Croagunk pulled that particular trick the first time, but the replies from the rest of his team are nowhere near as calm.

  It starts with Caesar, who actually rears back a full foot in surprise at a sound that could be mistaken for a human with a particularly bad cold. On Caesar’s other side, Skorupi outright crawls over the large purple coils that keep him separated from Ran, hurriedly scrambling up his trainer’s back once more as he distrustfully peeks at Croagunk over Ran’s shoulder. On Ran’s other side, Aria freezes completely in place, whilst Golbat hops forwards assertively with a loud screech, wings flaring out threateningly even as Aria partially disappears behind his wing.

  Ran is content to watch for the moment as Croagunk merely blinks in slow amusement as he takes in the strong reactions to his greeting. His new team member’s inaction is enough for the rest of the team to ease up in turn, at which point Ran finally speaks up.

  “Hello Croagunk, I’m Ran, your new trainer, though you already knew that. This is the rest of the team.” Ran welcomes his new team member, before gesturing to each of his pokémon as he introduces them in turn.

  “This is Caesar, he’s my starter. Then there’s Aria, whom we caught in Ilex Forest a few years ago, along with Golbat here. Finally, hiding on my back is Skorupi, he’s only been with us for a couple of weeks, so the two of you have that in common.”

  Croagunk merely offers another calm wave, this time letting out a more normal sounding croak, at which point the rest of the team finally fully relaxes. Caesar subjects the newest member of the team to a judging gaze, which Croagunk doesn’t seem too bothered by as he instead greets Aria, who is the only one of the group to actually approach their new team member.

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  Not that Ran is too surprised, as she is by far the most sociable team member as far as interacting with other pokémon goes. For his own part, he patiently removes Skorupi from his own back once more, before starting to give out orders for team training. With a new team member to work with, the rest of his team gets to work on self-directed training, continuing to master their newest moves and working out by themselves.

  As for Croagunk, Ran takes a minute to explain the idea of getting a baseline of his current physical abilities, so that they’ll have something to measure his growth against. Unlike Skorupi, who quite despised the process and had to be cajoled into it, Croagunk seems eager to learn just what he’s capable of, easily and eagerly executing everything Ran asks of him.

  Unsurprisingly, from a purely physical point of view, Croagunk excels when it comes to explosiveness and raw power, as expected of a fighting-type. However, his main problem is speed, as his short legs and bipedal stance don’t make for a particularly agile or swift runner. Still, there’s enough there for Ran to happily conclude that Croagunk should fit right in with the team, assuming he’s got a decent set of moves to back them up.

  Fortunately, whoever Chuck put in charge of sending Ran the manual on writing up a proper report, was kind enough to include another summary of Croagunk’s known moves, saving him the hassle of having Croagunk show them off or trying to recall all of them from the single quick mention Chuck gave them. It’s an impressive list focused mostly on fighting at close range, supplemented with a few surprising tricks that’ll probably catch people off guard.

  In total, the list consists of Mud-Slap, Astonish, Poison Sting, Taunt - good luck to the next Gym Leader trying to set up on him -, Venoshock, Sucker Punch, Low Kick and Brick Break. The one major thing that’s really missing, to Ran’s mind, is a close range poison-type move. Of course fixing that is more easily said than done, as, like with Skorupi, he’s once again added a pokémon to his team that isn’t well-known in Johto, ensuring that there isn’t much of anything to be found about it online.

  Still, he’s confident enough that they’ll be able to figure something out. Though his pokégear isn’t ideal for a proper in-depth research session, the pokécenter does have computers available, so that might be something he can spend his evening on. For now, with Croagunk’s baselines measured and the rest of his team still hard at work, he’s happy to simply put his newest acquisition through his paces for another half hour, before recalling them all.

  By the time he wanders back to the pokécenter, his pokégear vibrates with an incoming message, which proves to be from Doro. After some back and forth, they end up settling on an evening match the next day, agreeing to meet up at the pokécenter after an early dinner before setting out for the beach to have their battle. It’s something to look forward to, which only further motivates him to, after a quick dinner, settle in behind the pokécenter’s pc to start digging into anything he can find about Croagunk.

  Unfortunately, like with Skorupi, there’s really nothing to be found, the exotic pokémon’s information clearly not yet having made it onto the publicly available net in Johto. It’s annoying, but not surprising.

  Which is why he doesn’t give up there. Instead, he starts digging into every possible known poison-type contact attack that’s available online. Of which there are actually a fair few to choose from, though none he’s never at the very least read about before, which is just a bit disappointing.

  But it remains an impressive list, at first. Then however, he starts crossing off options that seem unlikely at best for Croagunk to be capable of. Poison Tail, for example, gets scrapped right off the bat, for the obvious reason that is Croagunk’s lack of a tail. Poison Fang also gets cut, for similar reasons. Finally, the notoriously challenging Cross Poison, which is not only a move Golbat should learn when he evolves again, but which is also part of his long-term plans for Aria, is removed as an option for now, both for its trickiness and for Croagunk’s lack of anything sharp to land the attack with.

  Suddenly, he’s left with only a single option, though he’s got a good feeling about it at least. Poison Jab, which ironically is also his next planned move for Aria, makes sense and should have the added benefit of not being particularly demanding from a technical point of view. So it’ll make for a very nice first step, before he tries to figure out if his new team member gets access to the coveted elemental punches.

  If he does… Well, that’s a concern for further down the line. One that might even merit a return to Goldenrod’s Trainer Department Store. But he’ll reconsider that later. For now, he simply downloads a few videos of different pokémon, primarily Ariados, using Poison Jab, before deciding to, now that he’s at a pc anyways, have another quick look at the profiles of his former companions.

  He starts, to get it out of the way as quickly as possible, with Spencer. A third gleaming badge has been added to his profile page, as the Glacier Badge from Mahogany Town’s Pryce has joined the previous pair of the Zephyr and Rising Badges. It’s not a surprise, but Ran is still a bit irked at Spencer seemingly managing to keep pace with him, despite having taken the ‘harder’ road.

  As for his known pokémon, there’s no changes on that front, with Forretress, Scyther, Onix and Skarmory still listed as his full team. There is one other change however, one that actually manages to catch Ran by surprise. Because, like Grady, Spencer has actually added a personalized message to his trainer profile.

  “I took the road less traveled by. It was the right decision.”

  It’s an arrogant quote and one Ran can only consider a personal slight, under the circumstances. Admittedly, Spencer’s team looks impressive and only promises to get stronger with future acquisitions and evolutions, but this feels like a dig aimed directly at him.

  An unprovoked one, at that. They haven’t exchanged any messages and Ran has done nothing to try and draw a response from Spencer. In fact, the only thing he’s really done that involves the other trainer is look at his profile page, both now and back in Goldenrod.

  Unless…

  On a hunch, he goes to his own trainer profile page, one he’s never actually paid much mind to. After a minute’s searching, however, his suspicion is proven correct as he discovers a tab that lets him see who has recently visited his trainer profile page.

  It’s a very short list of names, with Josie, Grady and Doro all being unsurprising finds. Karolina Brandt, the ice-type specialist he briefly met in Azalea Town is a very surprising find however and one he’d probably puzzle over for at least a few minutes, if his attention wasn’t firmly drawn by the most damning name of all.

  Spencer Curtis. Last visit: Today.