After walking through the door at the back of the house I and my team slid down a slide that spat us out in a much bigger underground area that had high walls and several paths going different directions. The "trick" this time was that each path had a sign in front of it that was all scrambled up. "Word puzzles eh? Not my first choice but it is what it is." I said as we walked up to the first sign and I began to move the letters around to form the correct words. "Two wrong paths and one right nifty." I commented and Vulcan complained that it was too easy.-
"I mean you aren't wrong but maybe it'll get harder the further we get in?" I suggested and my team agreed that it was possible. I was right too as the next fork had a sign with a math problem on it and each path had a number assigned to it. Yani stepped forward for this one and quickly did the math in her head before giving an answer that fit the numbered paths. Moving forward we found the scroll that had the super secret password on it and the next fork.-
This time it was two speaker looking things that spoke in the trick masters voice. "One of us only tells the truth and one only tells lies. You can ask us each two questions before needing to choose a path forward." they spoke and I grinned as I knew a few solutions to this logic puzzle. "Are you the liar?" I asked the first speaker thing. "No" It responded. I then turned to the other speaker thing "What is written on the super secret scroll?" I asked with a grin. "Trick master is amazing!" the thing spoke and I grinned wider because that was a lie.-
The scroll actually had the words{trick master is fabulous!} written on it so I ignored that speaker after it answered me. In all honesty my first question for each speaker was the only one I needed to figure out which was the liar or not. The reason is that whatever answer it gave told you what the truth was. The liar could not say yes to that question at all because then it would have been telling the truth so all it could say was no however the truth speaker could also not answer yes as that would be a lie. -
So with my first question for each speaker done with I had confirmed definitively which speaker was which. Turning to the truth speaker I asked which path was the correct one and walked away casually. We reached the door and I grabbed the pen at the side before writing the phrase on it which caused the lock to click open letting us through. It was a dug out path that of course lead straight to the secret tea table area that the trick master was sitting at.-
"Level with me mate , are you physic?" the man asked with a frustrated look on his face. I grinned " Not at the moment." I said before leaving the man lost in his confusion. Once outside I stretched with a content sigh "That was a much needed distraction." I said honestly. I got a "whatever you say" response from my team at that but that was fine. Things had been rather heavy on the mind recently for me so this let me distract myself from it all for a bit if nothing else.-
It wasn't much but it let me relax a little and forget all the bad shit recently with the horde , traffickers and harsh training regiment , temporarily at least. Setting off from the trick house we made our way along the coast under the bike bridge over top of us. Contrary to what the games made you think this area wasn't hyper infested with electric type pokemon but rather only had a few with most of them being Electrike. It was a bit difficult but after about a day of travel I could see the small island that served as an underground hydroplant connected to Mauville a few miles in the distance.-
My battling team members were regularly challenging the stronger pokemon along this route while the lower level ones were getting left to Yani. I made sure none of them were more than ten levels higher than her but I probably didn't even need to with how easily she handled them. It was honestly kinda crazy how talented she was despite being only a shiny pokemon. Yani picked up new knowledge and energy control at a monstrous rate as it only took her a day to actively move her energy freely like the rest of my team took a week to learn at the minimum.-
That's right Yani had Vulcan beat in the talent department which let me tell you hit it's pride hard. My little cyan reptile had an incredibly sharp mind and as a result shot up in levels at a stupid pace as she gained high mastery of her moves after a few uses and spent time picking apart her battles for every little thing she could fix. In the three days it took to reach Mauville she went from a level one scrub to a level forty six with a bunch of new moves all at adept. -
Absorb , quick attack , pursuit , screech , mega drain , agility , slam , detect , giga drain , false swipe and night slash were all learned by her and raised in mastery in next to no time at all. I was honestly rather off put by just how fast she grew. Her skill growing however didn't mean her stats also grow in the same way. In fact she actually complained more than once about how she was being held back by how weak her body was as she could think of ways to improve her fighting style but was not fast enough or strong enough to pull it off.-
Honestly speaking I had a headache even thinking about how I was going to train her at all. Like seriously how do you train a pokemon that learns faster than you do? The only thing I was better at in this regard was killing as that was a huge flaw that Yani had , she refused to kill. She wasn't averse to combat or blood or anything like that but she simply refused to take that final step in ending her opponents. It wasn't a deal breaker for me though as I had plenty of other pokemon that can pick up the slack in that regard , looking at you Vulcan.-
At the end of this travel though we reached Mauville city and I have got to say that the games did NOT do it justice. Sure it was a mix of nature and technology but the sheer size difference between the two was staggering. In the game the city only had like maybe twelve buildings total but in reality I couldn't see the end of the place from the start. All the building were of the sleek modern sort while the ground was a pretty nice mix of modern road and well maintained grass.