Nero finally slowed to a halt as his legs began to push through long grass, head craning left and right in search of any sign of the scream's origin. He seemed to be in some sort of unkempt garden now, an overgrown lawn brushing at his clothes while a distant broken fence showed the way into the next door's garden. It was almost quaint, a moment paused in time and taken over by nature once again. It felt like the place that children's stories began... which perhaps subconsciously was putting Nero's mind at ease that this scream wasn't anything to truly worry about.

The grass at the edge of the garden had started to twitch as Numel approached, shuffling happily along as Nero paced back and forth in search of a hint at where to go next. Numel didn't hesitate though. As she reached Nero and his growing grumbling, she tromped straight past him, confidently heading to the north edge of the grass. It took Nero a while to notice her, still glaring off towards the sunset in case he spotted any movement. By the time he turned around again, she was almost at the edge of the grass, leaving Nero to frown in confusion about where on earth she was headed. With no other leads to follow though, he moved after her, forcing himself to slow down but still having to stop and wait for her to move every now and again anyway. The temptation to nudge her along a little with his foot was hard to resist, but he resorted to kicking at a stone instead. It didn't do much to ease his frustrations though and he was soon snapping out a "Oh come on!" at her all the same.

Maybe that complementary nature they'd had so far was about to fracture at last...

Or maybe Nero was going to be forced to learn the value of patience at long last as she directed him towards a broken shed on the other side of the garden,

It seemed the answer was yes, she absolutely did have that speed. Or, no, that wasn't quite right. It wasn't speed but skill. She had aimed her Ember not at where the Zubat currently was but at where she thought it was about to be. And she'd worked it out correctly too. Genuinely impressive: between that and her tracking, this little hatchling was doing a truly stellar job here.

The Zubat dropped from the sky, and Numel moved over to guard it as Nero fished out a Pokeball from his pocket to toss towards the fallen Pokemon. He'd need to start making some decisions soon if he carried on catching things willy-nilly like this. He'd run out of slots soon enough, and while he could buy more, maybe that would be a wake up call to actually plan what he was going to do with all of these and make a more functional team... Or maybe it wouldn't be. This was just a video game after all.

The Zubat was sucked in, and with the danger gone, Nero turned towards the woman who had first let out the shriek. "You all right?" he asked, keeping his distance in case she decided she wanted to hug him as she got back to her feet again. She nodded, gave some vague story about being chased down here and fearing for her life (Nero often wished you could skip dialogue in this game), before handing over some bytes as a reward. It seemed he'd stumbled on a side quest of all things, and Nero felt a little smug for managing to get something out of this strange little diversion. "Guess you deserve these," he said towards Numel, turning back towards her and scanning the UI as he did so. "Want to evolve?" he asked, raising a finger to press the button... but pausing without clicking it. She was shaking her head, and with how slowly she took everything else, that was no surprise really. "Fine, maybe later then." He had no reason to rush her right now after all so there was no harm in following her lead.

Instead, he opened up his inventory and clicked on the strange black icon that had appeared in there when he'd tried to make a purchase at the arena shop. He'd assumed the transaction had glitched out at first and had only spotted the symbol later when scanning for other items he'd picked up. There had been no way to do anything with it, but there had been an option to duplicate it at the cost of a few bytes.

And well, curiosity had done him well so far today, hadn't it?