Ch 13. Quest

It was a bright afternoon and Cerulean city was in sight. It would take at least half an hour for Ares to arrive there and he looked forward to it. Every now and then he would see advertisements about swimming shows featuring the current gym leaders' daughters. They were a bit older than him, but he could see they were quite the lookers. The looked like mermaids having come straight from a fairytale. If only that were true. Most of the time the girls who looked just a bit pretty had a nasty personality to go with it. Only a few were kind, not acting like the privileged entitled brats their parents had raised them as. He would only find out if he met them.

Though it seemed fun to go to the swimming show and watch the three girls perform, Ares wasn't planning on doing that for now. The thing he wanted to try out was the questing system the league had set up for beginning trainers. As it was something completely new for him, he wanted to try it out in an area that was relatively safe. For now, he could only take the easies ranked requests, namely the rank zero and rank one requests.

Having finally arrived in Cerulean city, Ares moved towards the pokemon center to give his Pokemon a check up and look for a quest he could take. His pokemon needed the much needed relaxation and he could look up some easy quest in the meantime. It shouldn't take too long for them to get their check up.

Entering the pokemon center, Ares handed his poke balls to Chansey, asking it to give them a check up. Lucario didn't want to go with them this time and stuck close to Ares, which wasn't surprising as Lucario hadn't really fought that much since the Graveler event. Pichu was also kept with him, as she too had done very little. Maybe the following quest would be a good chance to give her a little bit of experience.

"Why don't you help me pick out a quest Lucario. Maybe you see something interesting we can do."

Lucario happily barked in agreement, glad he could do something interesting. There were a lot of quests that would certainly be appealing.

Lucario and Ares walked towards a giant board with quest flyers hanging on it. On every quest a difficulty level was placed. This difficulty number ranged from zero to eight. The number on the quests wasn't there for show and had a deeper meaning. It referenced to the rank he would need to have. The quests were mostly those belonging to rank two, with only a few being rank three requests. There was even an X-rank difficulty for those who had participated in the league, but he didn't see it anywhere on the board. Looking at the requests with only one badge requirements, Ares noticed there weren't a lot of those. The few that were, were those about clearing up Weedle nests and run away pokemon pets. Not so keen on taking any quest that had a Beedrill in it, Ares chose a more interesting sounding one.

It was a quest to clear out a Rattata and Raticate infestation in one of the warehouses. The quest asked for three trainers and it indicated only one spot was left open. Lucky him. Ares showed the quest form to Lucario, who seemed to agree with Ares's choice. It wasn't too difficult and it was a nice warm up before the gym battle.

Taking this particular quest, Ares let nurse Joy know, who put it in the system and contacted the other trainers that were participating. Ares waited patiently in the restaurant for the others to show up, sharing a sandwich with Lucario and Pichu as they had become a bit hungry.

Not more than ten minutes later, a boy and a girl came towards him. They were both very young, about twelve years old, but they must have gotten permission from the pokemon center. It was likely their parents wanted to give them a little more experience. The boy was relatively tall, about 4'7 feet. He had short blue hair and a goofy smile on his face, waving happily at Ares as if they were already the best of friends. It made Ares want to stay a bit further away from him. He wasn't really that good with people like that, as they were always acting a bit too overly familiar with others. It was even worse, as the kids was younger than him, having a lot more energy than necessary.

The girl was about the same height and had black hair in a bob cut. She was quite nicely dressed, as she wore a dark purple kimono with butterflies on it, giving her the feeling of a doll. She seemed more like the quiet type, the ones that didn't talk a lot and had few friends. In her arms was a Espurr who looked around in curiosity. It was a pokemon that didn't originate from this region, as they were more commonly found in Kalos. The girl must be native to that region, as she didn't appear to be from this area.

"Hey, you must be Ares right! Nice to meet you. I'm Tim and this is Misha. Wow. Your eyes are a freaky color! Like an Old Amber, they are so weird! Why do you keep your face hidden like that? Are you just ugly underneath or do you have a complex about something? You're Lucario is awesome. I love the different color it has. Would you like to trade it for my Growlithe?"

Ares just wanted to plug his ears as Tim kept yapping on and on about nonsense. The girl seemed to be used to it. Ah wait, her eyes are dead. She must be annoyed by it too. He is really annoying.

"I'm Ares. And no, I won't trade my partner."

Ares kept it short, not wanting to continue speaking with this chatterbox. He would only get on his nerves.

"Ah, bugger. That's too bad. Well maybe some other time then. Why don't we get to know each other better. It helps with the mission. I also would really like to become friends with you. So I'll start first, alright? I'm Tim, I come from Fuchsia city and I am on a journey to make a lot of friends. My uncle, who I am visiting, arranged for me to take part in this. Um, what else, ah right. I love making friends and eating sweets, I don't like bullies and I hate being talked down to. My hobby is... bla...blabla....bla...bla... what about you guys?"

Ares had stopped listening when he talked about his goal. Misha didn't seem to have listened at all. Even Mew had become annoyed. She had stuck around close to Ares and had taken the form of a Ekans and was snaking around Ares's arm, as she wanted to see what the fuss was about. She hissed angrily at Tim in annoyance, shutting him up from talking any further.

[He's loud and a blabbermouth. He is a lot like a Chatot. Chattering till my ears fall off. Oh wait, I don't have any right now.]

Was Mew's opinion as she slithered into Ares's bag and returned to being herself. That was her usual spot and it didn't seem like she would come out that often as she really enjoyed sleeping.

"Can we just begin? I want to get this done with and if we keep stalling it will already be dark when we get there."

Having had enough of the continuous barage of words, Ares quickly put an end to the next words Tim was going to say. Misha nodded at Ares's words, as she too wanted to finish this as soon as possible.

"Oh right. Let's go. It's at the warehouses storing the food of the supermarkets. According the client it happens a lot and its driving him insane. He is losing a lot of money and precious customers."

Ares nodded, understanding the client when he spoke of annoyances. He was walking besides one right now.

"Any specifics, their usual sightings for example? Their numbers and the amount final evolutions present."

Ares asked, wanting to know a little more about the content of the quest.

"Time, at noon. Four Raticate, two dozen Rattata."

This time Misha spoke, speaking as few words as possible. She obviously wanted to stop Tim from explaining further.

"Then we should hurry. It's almost noon."

The three of them quickened their pace towards the warehouse the client had written about.

"Ah, I'm Ares from Pallet. This is my partner Lucario. Nice to meet you Misha."

Misha nodded, giving a short introduction in reply, as they still had some time left before they got to the warehouse.

"I'm Misha, from Anistar city in Kalos. My partner is Espurr. I'm aiming to become a psychic master."

Misha finished, her eyes once more facing forwards as their destination came in sight.

Arriving at the warehouse, they were just in time to see the Raticates and Rattata enter the warehouse.

"Time to get to work."

Ares called out Clefairy, Pichu and Eevee. Lucario was already going towards the Raticate, knowing that was what Ares wanted. To be more precise, Lucario knew that Ares wanted him to prevent the Raticate from eating the food. So it ran inside to keep them occupied until the others came to help.

"Eevee, go help Lucario in keeping the Rattata and Raticate from destroying the warehouse. Clefairy. I want you to use Sing as soon as you get close to them and put as many as you can to sleep. If it doesn't work, use Pound to attack the Rattata. You're not strong enough for the Raticate yet, so leave that to Eevee and Lucario. And Pichu, I will guide you in battle, so don't worry."

The two of them ran inside the warehouse to join Lucario, Pichu remaining with Ares to wait for his orders, while Tim and Misha released their own pokemon. Tim called out a Machop and a Weepingbell, while Misha called out Abra. Her Espurr joined in as well and the three trainers quickly followed their pokemon inside.

Inside the battle had already begun, as Lucario had already knocked out a Raticate. It glanced at Ares who immediately understood what Lucario wanted him to know. The Raticate were his. The other pokemon understood it as well, as Eevee, Clefairy and the pokemon from Tim and Misha were all focussing on defeating the Rattata.

Misha and Tim were calling out moves, while Ares let his pokemon move for themselves. It would be for the best if they knew what the best course of action was. If they were ever separated due to something, they would be able to act on their own. With a lot of the Rattata asleep due to Clefairy's Sing attack, it was already a bit easier to handle the rest. As Clefairy was relatively new to the team, Ares called out directions on what she should do, as the Rattata were clearly with too many for her, even with a lot already defeated.

"Clefairy, back away a bit and use Disarming voice."

Doing as told, Clefairy backed away from the Rattata, allowing herself a bit more space. She breathed in deeply and blasted out a loud but cute cry, damaging the all the Rattata. This gave the other pokemon the opportunity to attack again, giving them a slight respite from the constant attack.

"Pichu, use Thundershock on that Rattata. Dodge its attack when it comes, following it up with Disarming voice."

Following his orders, Pichu joined the fray as well, only doing what she was told. If she had a bit more experience like Eevee and Lucario, he might let Pichu get a hang of the battle situation itself. Group battles weren't a good choice for that, so he kept with giving orders for now.

The battle continued in a rapid pace.

Espurr was really helpful as it knew the attack Psychic and could use it very well, blasting any opponents back whenever they broke through. By the end of it, all the Rattata and Raticate lay fainted on the ground. All Ares's pokemon looked satisfied with the battle they had partaken of. Especially Lucario as he had been able to battle fully evolved pokemon and multiple at that. Pichu seemed a bit more confident as well, as she had taken out three Rattata by herself.

Tim and Misha were throwing around empty poke balls at the Rattata and Raticate. They had been given those to capture the attacking pokemon if possible. They could keep those they wanted, but needed to return the rest to Nurse Joy, who would hand them to a pokemon ranger to be released in the wild.

"Nice work everyone. Let's go to the pokemon center to report our success."

Happy with the result, Ares's pokemon were returned to their pokeballs while Lucario walked besides Ares as they went back to the pokemon center, looking forward to a well deserved meal.

[Great! I was getting hungry too.]

Ares chuckled, hearing Mew so excited to have a meal. Guess sleeping wasn't the only thing she enjoyed. At some point he had even begun to wonder if there was something wrong with her, but seeing she was still glutinous made that thought disappear.

[Hey! I'm not only sleeping mind you. I'm also enjoying seeing you strut around as well. It's really fun.]

Ares stubled a bit. 'I don't strut around.' Ares thought, but he wasn't planning to argue. Mew was Mew and there was nothing he could do to change that.