CRATER SPAWN <BIG BEE>

Big Bee and his growing group took the long way to the crater. The walked barefoot along the shore, past the pounding waves of the High Tide Shrine, and up the basalt trail to the mountain crater. The trail was steep, and was more the suggestion of a path than a true trail. There were no stairs cut into the rock, no rope of railing along the steeper parts, and certainly no trail markers.

Not that a marker would have made much difference. Their destination was the top of the single volcano on the island, so there wasn't much mystery as to the destination. And the direction was always up. Sharp up.

Grookey had taken up residence on his shoulder in the last fifteen minutes, and had thoughtfully pinned his hair up with some little twigs. She had been the only one excited for the hike, claiming that the crater likely had <Rare and uncharted sticks>.

Taka, now a Wartortle and much too big for shoulder rides, had refused to walk until Big Bee let Rian motivate him by hanging a steak from a pole. They'd gone through a dozen steaks, and the turtle's hunger was holding steady.

Rian didn't mess around.

She threw herself at the newcomer fox, tossing a handful of ash into the Fennekin's face. The fox yelped, blinking back ash, and Rian dodged a blind fireball, pulling out her thickest stick and smacking Fennekin with it. The fox collapsed to the ground.

"That was fast," Big Bee said, approaching the crumpled black and red Pokemon.

<Nobody messes with my sticks,> Rian said, wiping away her sweat and in the process painting a long smear of ash across her forehead. <You saw how that Sobble ended up.>

"Looks like you aren't the one one who loves sticks," Big Bee joked, nodding at the Fennekin. The little fox still had a twig dangling from the corner of his unconscious mouth. He felt bad about the fast battle, but when technology upgraded from sprites to 3D models things got a magnitude more realistic. And now that they were in the realm of VR it was sometimes hard to tell where reality ended.

<Nobody loves sticks like me,> Rian stated. Covered in blood, ash, and smoking hair, there was no way Big Bee could argue. She walked over, favoring one side slightly, and pulled the little twig from Fennekin's mouth, before tucking it into her own hair. <Mine.>