[ti]open[/ti][003] …what’s your name?

Sidra had never thought the day would come. But after the whole Running-Shoes debacle she was starting to consider that maybe doing the Tutorial Quests were a good idea.

And so, as she had logged in for tonight’s session she had decided to go looking through what she had now come to learn was the Tutorial Area to see whether there was any more quests to do.

And fate would have it that it didn’t take long for her to stumble upon the next one, and lo-and-behold a certain someone had decided to be there as well.

And so she approached cheerily, completely ignoring the guitar-wielding rival nearby. “Well isn’t this quite a coincidence! What are you doing?”

Tag: Altair

It was only when Altair gestured toward the Rival scenario that Sidra became aware of it, or maybe the focus on it had pulled her into Altairs. The possibilities were endless.

For a moment there was only one, but then as Sidra checked her HUD to see if there was a rival assigned to her another manifested out of thin air, as if the game attempted to fix the weirdness of their background story in real time.

"Yeah seems like I got a Rival too."

Either way the name box appeared to her as well. She looked toward Altair and spoke. “So, what are you naming yours?”

Tag: Altair

He wondered where she’d gone off to—perhaps there was an ‘emergency call’ in their Free Company on Primal, or something—because she’d logged out without warning.

This, in turn, would make the ‘second’ rival seemingly disappear into the aether as well, which would leave him with his own.

“Ah. So this is truly inevitable, after all,” he would sigh, preparing himself in case things went south—which it most certainly would.

After a few minutes of quiet indecision, he would finally pick out his Rival’s name, to which the catboy would scowl.

(What, it wasn’t his fault he picked that for a name!)

“Oh, bring it on, you jackass!” he would hear over the strumming of the electric guitar as their features changed into—yes, he’d actually gone and done it.

From the other side of the field, a Lillipup would emerge. On his end, since at the moment he only had two Pokémon to use, he would sigh with immense trepidation before popping out the Purrloin. Sure, it was going to be literally a cat versus dog challenge; but the Rival would then go first with a surprise Play Rough attack—

“Hey, what the hell!” he would shout as the Purrloin was absolutely, definitely caught by surprise at the sudden attack. “How does it know that attack we’re not even—”

“You know I do have the advantage, right?!”

“Oh, come on!”

Little did he know that this was going to be the start of a frustrating saga.

At least the Purrloin was smart enough to snap back with a Tormented glare; which secured the fact that the absurdly strong Play Rough couldn’t be used more than twice in a row; because that’s exactly what happened and another attempt at Play Rough was made; but nothing happened!

“Hey!”

“Hey, what can I say?” the white-haired elfin shrugged with a roll of his shoulders. “She knows her shit.”

“Absolute jackass, that’s what you are!” came the taunt from the other side of the field and that’s when the Lillipup would try and take a big Bite out of the Purrloin; only for the attack to… not do as much damage as they’d expected.

“Clearly someone forgot their type match-ups!” he would snark back; before whistling once and the Purrloin, yowling in surprise would lash out with Swipes of unmatched Fury on the canid Pokémon.

“Oh, did I? Well, this is just the beginning!”

The… the guitar noises were definitely going to get annoying after a certain point; and he hoped that the motor mouth would shut up because—wait, was there an option to full-customize the Rival after this point? He sure hoped so…

The Lillipup would them slam back with a full-body Tackle; which the Purrloin would intercept with a surprise Scratching gesture. The two were really going at it like their real-world counterparts; a cat and a dog… several more minutes of trading blows and the Purrloin would emerge victorious—by a hair; because of the last-second surprise Play Rough attack that would bowl them very close to the limit!

“But we’re not done yet!”

purrloin vs lillipup