This Again

The avian pokemon's beak twitched the second it was released. It looked around warily before spotting Cinder and growling with a ferocity that should not have belonged to such an eco-friendly creature. Cinder held his hands out to his side, showing Starly that he was unarmed.

"Hey, it's okay. I—"

Starly lunged at him, snapping like a rabid animal. Storm quickly snagged Starly out of the air like with an Iron Tail, pinning it as gently as he could, but there's no gentleness in it at all. The normal/flying-type wriggled furiously and hissed, clawing on empty air with its talons. Cinder sighed.

This would not be fun.

"Starly, calm down," Cinder tried calmly. Starly shrieked at him and clawed again, but it couldn't move well with Storm pinning it on the ground on its plumage. The boy frowned at it. "Can you just give me a few seconds?"

A randomly launched Air Slash was his answer, though the attack fortunately didn't hit anything important. Storm looked ready to zap the unreasonable avian at the first sign it was escaping from his Iron Tail and Fafnir also showed aggressiveness when it saw it tried on attacking their trainer, it had his developing fangs slightly bared. Storm was just doing his best to keep a steady grip on the wriggling creature and avoid getting bitten himself.

Cinder chewed his lip worriedly. Starly wasn't responding at all. He decided that talking was out of the question. He'd have to win Starly over with a different method.

He pulled a piece of pokemon food out of his bag and cautiously moved around to where Starly could see him, but not hit him with one of those nasty Air Slashes. "Are you hungry?"

Starly took one look at the food and quieted for a moment. It glared at Cinder furiously, as if he had stolen the pokemon food from the avian. He carefully held the food closer to Starly and almost jumped when it snatched the piece from his hands with surprising quickness. Cinder checked his fingers, but hadn't been scratched.

"Storm, release Starly."

Storm shot him a wary look, but did as Cinder asked. He didn't leave Starly's side, though. His tail was maintaining its metallic coating in case the avian started moving funny.

Starly finished the piece in record time and glared at Cinder again. It didn't immediately whip up an Air Slash at him though, so he decided it was progress, however small. He was not, however, naive enough to think Starly was going to let him speak again. So he offered another piece of pokemon food and the avian took it without releasing an aggressive noise. Cinder patiently fed Starly until it turned its beak up at the food and gave him a cold stare.

"Feeling better?" Cinder asked cautiously. When Starly did not answer, he nodded. "I'll take that as a yes. Alright, Starly, I've got some things to tell you. Will you listen?"

The cold stare didn't change, but Cinder figured that was as good as he was going to get. At least he still had Starly's attention. "Okay, here's the thing. You're a part of my team now. I'm your trainer—your friend. These guys are the rest of my team. The Flaaffy is Storm, the Poliwag is Hercule, and then Gible is Fafnir. All I want is for you to feel better, alright? You don't have to be friends with us right now. You don't even have to like us. I just want you to give us a chance, okay?"

Starly's eyes narrowed like a Fearow. Cinder smiled at it in what he hoped was friendliness and not hesitance. "We only require 1% of your trust. We'll make up the difference. Can you just give us that? Just a speck of faith. Because if you can, I promise I'll take good care of you. I'll look after you and train you if you want to get stronger. Please?"

Starly did not react for a long time. After what was probably minutes, the small creature slowly, fractionally nodded. Its cold glare did not let up, but Starly had given Cinder the tiny amount of trust he had pleaded for. He sighed in relief. That was all he needed right now.

"Thank you. Okay, Storm, give our new friend, Starly, some space."

Storm made a light growling sound that wasn't quite aggressive, then moved away from the avian although he did keep his eyes on Starly as he backed away. Starly spat at the Flaaffy, but didn't attack. Instead, it looked away pointedly, ignoring the larger pokemon as best as it could. That seemed to annoy Storm, but he listened to Cinder and didn't object.

Cinder took his Pokedex out and let Starly look at it. "This is going to tell me a little bit about you, okay? You don't have to do anything."

Starly huffed and looked away from him. Cinder shrugged at the reaction and tapped the scan feature, listening as the Pokedex pulled up Starly's information that was provided by Officer Jenny's ID database which he received from the day he got ownership over the avian.

Honestly, he could have scanned the avian much sooner, but because they were too preoccupied with training on their battle against Brock, Cinder hasn't had the extra attention to give it. Sometimes, he did, but Fafnir would appear at those moments, begging for Cinder to play with the dragon.

"Starly, the Starling Pokemon. They live in the fields and mountains, gathering in large flocks. Their cries are quite obnoxious. Though small, their wings are strong—a strike from them leaves pain that persists for a week."

This Starly is female and has the Ability, Reckless. It knows the moves: Growl, Quick Attack, Air Slash, Double Team, Steel Wing, and Whirlwind. It has the egg move, Double-Edge, which has been unlocked."

Cinder whistled. "Wow, Starly, you're pretty strong." He then murmured. "Steel Wing, huh... Last time I checked isn't that a TM move for Starly?"

Starly didn't react aside from a mild growl. The anger was actually cute rather than threatening at this point, but Cinder wasn't willing to let Starly know that. He'd only just earned a fraction of her trust. Insulting her would only lose him that precious fraction.

He looked at Starly again. "Do you want a nickname?"

She didn't react in the slightest this time and Cinder withheld a sigh. Of course not. She hardly trusted him at all—giving her a name wasn't even an option at this point. He put that aside and put another question to her. "Would you like to travel with us outside of your pokeball, or inside of it?"

At that, Starly looked at the pokeball and jerked her head towards the capture device. Cinder nodded. "Alright then. I'm going to recall you now. I'll let you out later for dinner, okay?"

Starly ignored him again, but he didn't take offense. Cinder just smiled again and murmured gently. "I'll see ya in a bit, Starly."

With that, the avian pokemon was recalled to her pokeball and Cinder set it on his belt again. He let out a tense breath he wasn't aware he'd been holding. His team relaxed with him. Cinder nodded to them. "Thanks for behaving, you guys. Starly is going to take some work. Do your best to get along with her, alright? I'm sure she'll come around eventually."

His team grunted acknowledgement and Cinder sighed. "I think we're good for training today. You'll still need to rest, like a small vacation of sorts. Although, we will try and work on some training the next day. But, for now, let's do some cave exploring."

He turned towards his team. "Do you guys want to stay with me, outside? Or do you also want to stay in your pokeball?"

Hercule and Fafnir nodded at him, they wanted to accompany him. Storm didn't respond, he just got at his side with his hind legs. No words were needed, Cinder got his answer. He smiled. "Alright, then... Let's go, little einsteins!"

With that, they walked into the tunnel not far away, where he would find the bowels of Mt. Moon and whatever creatures lived there.

...

As it turned out, Cinder didn't have to wait long before he met the wild pokemon. He'd only been walking for about ten minutes when a flock of Zubat made their presence known. The small poison-types liked to nest in large groups, only attacking travelers if they were startled or had a Golbat with them. They hissed at Cinder, but Storm's sparks and a jet of water from Hercule kept the little pokemon away. He just smiled at the furry creatures, amused by their clicking sounds as they tried to determine what he was with echolocation.

Mt. Moon held more Zubat than Cinder cared to count. Most caves were full of them, but large mountain tunnels like this were almost overpopulated. Cinder found five good-sized colonies of Zubat in just the first hour they spent trekking through the caves, though only one of them had a Golbat.

He paused when he saw the evolved form of Zubat and seriously considered catching it. Golbat was a fair bit more vicious than Zubat and easier to train in the sunlight. However, Cinder didn't think it would be a good idea to catch the poison-type because it was literally buried in the Zubat masses. If he missed throwing a pokeball at it, not only could he accidentally capture a Zubat, but he could anger Golbat. That might set the whole colony on him, and his team was neither strong nor fast enough to escape so many enemies. He decided to pass on Golbat. If he saw another one alone, maybe he'd have a go at it.

As time went on, Cinder saw a few more of the mountain Pokemon, though he didn't see anything he really wanted to capture. Aside from the numerous Zubat in Mt. Moon, there were Geodude and Paras sitting around on the borders of the path. They weren't even bold enough to challenge him most of the time. That was what made most of his decisions on catching something new. If the Pokemon he encountered weren't interested in fighting, Cinder wouldn't go to the effort of capturing them. That wasn't fair to the pokemon and it wouldn't help him grow as a trainer.

Despite the lack of catchable pokemon, Cinder did run into a good few trainers. They were mostly beginners like him, but Cinder had yet to suffer a defeat. Thinking about it, the only times he'd come close to losing a battle was against Brock. Cinder was certain Brock was the strongest trainer he'd fought so far, even though the latter didn't really give even a smidge of what he got in his strongest roster.

He knew that there were far more powerful trainers out in Kanto and Johto, but for now Cinder could defeat everyone who challenged him. That helped with training his pokemon and earned him a bit of extra money. Not only that, Hercule was going along well with his mood, the tadpole was sulky at first from being defeated by a rock/ground-type like a Geodude, so everytime they came across one in the tunnel, Hercule would jump at any given opportunity to attack the pokemon, challenging it to a battle. Storm also benefited from this, he just evolved, so he was getting familiar with his new body when battling against other pokemon. Fafnir... Well, he was just being Fafnir, cheering and holding a blaze of desire whenever it saw his teammates fight. Cinder knew the baby dragon pokemon had its urge for battling now that it was slowly developing, both of them just needed to be patient and then they could work on something to start with.

However, as Cinder got deeper into the mountain, he began to notice things that made him uneasy. A lot of the Zubat colonies began to get really quiet or disappeared entirely. Cinder hadn't seen another person for a while and the lack of life disturbed him. Hercule was another reason for his worry—the tadpole seemed edgy. Slightly ahead of him, Storm had a growl bubbling in his throat almost constantly. They were not happy.

"What do you think, buddy?" Cinder scratched Fafnir under his jaw, but frowned when the little dragon didn't lighten up. "That bad, huh?"

Fafnir growled nervously and pricked those jet-like ears of his. A light mild bleak escaped from Storm's mouth and the usual swishing of his tail paused momentarily, as if he were listening for something. Cinder bit his lip. This situation... It was all too familiar, after all. When his pokemon acted like this for the first time, Cinder was ignorant at that time and didn't know what it was, however, at the present, he knew better than to doubt their instincts.

They hadn't let Cinder down before, after all.

The question is, to see or not to see? To address or not to address?

Will it be the same as last time? Or would it be different this time?

Cinder was in a dilemma, if he didn't go, he may have dashed the hopes of someone/s, pokemon or human, from being saved. But, at least he and his team were gonna be safe from all the trouble and make it double -ehem.

If he does go, the situation like last time may happen again, he remembered Bruno's advice before they departed, and instantly knew it could be possible that Team Rocket was doing some shady business in Mt. Moon. And this time, Bruno, wasn't here to save him... Nor anyone would anyway, after all... His Pokedex has no signal, he couldn't contact anyone within a deep tunnel.

What to do...