TRIAL OF PATIENCE: SHALIN

"It is not always strength that is the deciding factor," says the figure. Their sightless gaze regards you thoughtfully. "Though knowing your limits is a valuable skill."

They turn, and the grayness moves down the hall. They lead you to a door-shaped hole in the wall, Not a door, because that would require a barrier of some sort. Wood, a hinge. This is more like a taut black curtain strung up in a rectangular piece.

"Your spirit is nearby," Seta says, standing next to the opening, ushering you through.

You pass through the darkness. It's as brief as blinking, and you find yourself in a new world.

TRIAL OF PATIENCE
You and your Pokemon are in a park full of rolling hills and colorful gates. Each gate has a different symbol above it, and one of them will lead you out of the trial. Each hour, an incorrect gates disappears until only one option remains.

If you exit through the wrong gate the trial will reset.

Find the right gate and exit the park, or wait until the way forward becomes clear.

SPOILER: Click to show

{THEME}

Shalin Nariya

Even if Shalin could keep herself occupied all day, and sleep all night waiting for all the incorrect gates to disappear, waiting out this trial all the way simply was not an option. If she did, she would be ripped away from her WorldScreen in a stretcher once her neighbors caught wind of the horrific stench that would come from not taking care of herself properly.

For a trial of patience, she sure was on a time crunch, in a sick and twisted way.

As Shalin wandered about near the museum, she heard a strange sound akin to lashing vines. Peeking around a corner, she saw Saria incessantly cracking them toward what she could only imagine was an imaginary foe. "Saria!" she yipped, giving the Ivysaur a hug. "I'm so happy to -- wait, what happened to your colors?! They're all messed up!" It certainly looked strange to see blue leaves and vines growing out of a yellow bulb, the grass-type looking more like a poison dart frog in her now-purple skin.

The two circled around the museum, finding even more gates. There seemed to be five colors involved: red, yellow, green, blue, and purple. Three of the colors represented on her Pokémon. One of the gates she had passed around the museum had a purple, star-shaped symbol, and the gate itself was yellow. Giving it a try, she opened it and stepped through it. Her vision faded to white for several seconds before finding herself outside the museum again, hearing the sounds of her Ivysaur lashing at an invisible foe. Only her colors were completely different this time, and all the gates had totally different symbols to them. "Wait, now you're blue, green, and red?" she gasped.

it seemed she would only get one guess, and if she was wrong, the entire puzzle would reset with a brand new configuration...

Putting the tables together took quite a bit of time, Flit buzzing near her as she was trying to compile all her clues into one place. Even with copying and pasting, it still took quite a bit of time to even get the framework together, let alone fill in everything to have a view of the big picture. "Flit, do you mind landing near me? I'm sorry, but your buzzing is making it hard for me to concentrate." The dejected insect understood why her trainer would feel that way. The spotlight was not on the discolored Yanma; it was on her and the massive effort it would take for her to recover her Onix. She also drew a very rough map of the park, recording the locations of gates she had seen nearby. Unfortunately for her, she had already forgotten the gates near the museum.

Retracing her steps back to the museum, she took detailed notes of every gate's location. One thing she began to notice between her first try and her second is that the gates didn't change locations; they merely changes attributes. This early on, was it worth trying another gate and likely being wrong, if only to gain more information about how the whole Trial worked?

No.

She still didn't have enough information... and the best way to get more information was to patiently scout. Whether for her Pokémon or for more gate locations, she needed something. Remembering more of the park's layout, there was a zoo north of the museum. Walking past it, she saw all kinds of cages and exhibits for exotic animals from around the globe... but they were all empty.

Except for one.

As she passed the African lions' enclosure, passing many other gates along the way, she heard a familiar, cute-sounding roar. Turning her head toward it, she found another of her Pokémon. "Kiara! You're here, too!" she called out to the discolored Litleo with a big smile, the cub desperately clawing at the bars of her enclosure. "It's okay! I'll get you out of here." With careful aim, she withdrew the Kalosian fire-type through the enclosure, immediately bringing her back out on the other side. The Litleo sprung into Shalin's arms, knocking her over. "Hey, Kiara, not so rough!"

There was no reaction to the lion's strange colors: green ears, yellow mane sticking out of the top of her hear, and purple fur where her normal browns were. The locations of her Pokémon got her thinking. She started near her Ivysaur, presumably because it was her first Pokémon. She had located Flit at the lagoon, the closest the park had to a wetland, where the dragonfly Pokémon was well-known for making its habitat. Kiara was inside of an enclosure designed to replicate an African savannah.

Were they all in their natural habitats?

With the pieces of the puzzle coming together, Shalin asked her Litleo to let her stand. The cub climbed down from her chest, letting her sit up and take note of her partner's colors. As she finished taking her notes, she tried to recall all the major features of the park back in the real world. "What else is there..." she said to herself, hoping it would help her brainstorm. "There's the Luthy Conservatory... there's Glen Oak Amphitheater... there's the pet cemetery on the far north... the statue park to the southeast... I guess I'll start with those four." She had an idea where her Vibrava and Espeon would be hiding, but her Buzzwole was a complete mystery.

Where would such an alien creature hide?

{Shalin's Notes}

Indeed, one of her Pokémon was performing on the stage, but not in front of an audience... until Shalin stepped within the radius of the Espeon's CONFUSION. Between pangs of her headache, she heard the sound of a cheering crowd... and even saw one when she mustered the strength to open her squinting eyes amidst the twisted dimensions. Her cute CHARM had captivated her illusory onlookers for as long as she could hold her psychic field. "Starr! Starr!" Shalin called out, the field dissipating from the concentration-breaking cries. The psychic-type bounded toward her trainer and tackled her to the ground, excited to see her in the vast, empty park. "What were you doing up there? I could have sworn I heard... people..."

"It got so lonely here that I... made my own fake crowd to entertain," the Espeon answered. "I'm glad to see you and the others. Any leads on Olivia and Sandy?"

"None," the glitch hunter sighed as Kiara bopped the Espeon playfully. Blinking, she saw that Starr's colors were different, as well. Her gem and ears were blue, and her body was green, much like a Shiny Espeon would be. Used to it from her other Pokémon, she suspected her missing Vibrava and Buzzwole would likely have different palettes, too.

"I saw something curious on the stage. Come take a look at this," Starr added, pointing her tail toward some graffiti painted on the back side of the shell. While it contained no legible words, a strange pattern caught Shalin's attention: four grey circles in a horizontal orientation, with a purple star to the right of them. The same shape as one of the shapes on the gate.

Shalin added the order and shape of the markings to the bottom of her notes. "Another element of this giant puzzle... what does this all mean?" she pondered aloud, unaware of how much time had passed since the trial had started.

For it only dawned on her now that the sun had been completely still in the sky.

{Shalin's Notes}

While it wasn't pretty, the ladies' room seemed to be fully functional. There were working faucets, hand dryers, and several stalls. Awkwardly walking so that she wouldn't miss (for it had been quite a trip across the park), she swing the door open with a creak. A loud, squeaky buzzing sound scared her, causing her to soil herself before she could take a seat. It wasn't the buzzing of any ordinary Pokémon; it was far too shrill to be any Pokémon except Olivia. Was this the noise she had heard earlier? The sound of a sharp object pecking against the door was a giveaway. Only one Pokémon species could buzz with such a high pitch and had such a sharp natural weapon.

It was Olivia, her Buzzwole.

"Olivia, is that you?" she asked, the Buzzwole responding by slamming her fist into the ground and nearly sending Shalin flying into the side of the stall from the earthquake-like impact. Olivia, too, was discolored. While her head was the proper red shade, her proboscis and the rest of her body were both a brilliant yellow.

Now that she had one of her precious ride Pokémon back, she could cover the park's grounds a lot faster. Even with a mount, scouring the cemetery would take a long time. The pickleball courts were nearby and would take very little time to scour. Guiding her unusual steed forward, she circled the courts twice, only to come up empty handed. If she was saving the cemetery for last, that left one location, and it made her raise her hand to her forehead.

"I... I never actually went inside the museum, did I..."

{Shalin's Notes}

Dejected, Shalin had exhausted all other possible locations in Glen Oak Park. The only other place to look was the gigantic cemetery covering the park's north end. And it was going to take a long time to search, even with the added speed of a Buzzwole mount.

As she passed by the gravestones, she noticed something unusual about them. Instead of having the names of real-world people on them, they had the names of Pokémon etched in stone. Big Bee 's GUZZLORD. Tuesday 's CRYOGONAL. Yggy Br00ks 's DEWOTT. Laguna 's CETODDLE. There was one missing, and that was Rumble, her ONIX.

Riding all the way to the back of the graveyard, Shalin happened upon a spire-shaped gravestone that appeared to be painted red. Its shape was unusual, composed of a spire that was taller than she was. It looked narrow and sharp, too. Etched toward the bottom of the stone was humbling text that weighed upon her heavily:

RUMBLE THE ONIX >> JUNE 17, 2024 - AUGUST 17, 2024

Two months. That was all the time she got to spend with the male rock snake. Sliding down from Olivia's seat, the trainer hugged the red, spire-like stone and shed tears. "Your life was far too short, Rumble..." she trailed off, not knowing what else to say. Folding her hands in prayer, she meditated for the safe passage of the Onix to UNOVR's equivalent of eternal paradise.

The moment the tears touched the spire, an earthquake-like rumble knocked Olivia off her feet. The ground beneath her rapidly rose well above UNOVR's height limit, Shalin's skin tingling as she felt and heard something roaring beneath her.

That roar was Rumble, her Onix.

"Rumble! You're okay!!" her tears turned from sorrow to joy, ecstatic to see her long lost partner.

"How long have I waited to see your face again," Rumble answered in a low, cracked voice that badly startled her trainer and made her instinctively squeeze his head spike more tightly.

"You can talk?!"

"Of course I can. Just like any other Pokémon." The Onix had never spoken to Shalin before this. Was it their traumatic separation that activated the rock-type's PokéSpeech for the first time? "I am the key to our escape," Rumble continued. "Study me closely."

As Shalin turned around, she noticed carvings on the opposite side of Rumble's head spire. They were a sequence of shapes matching the ones on the gate:

▲ ■ ♦ ● ★

Furthermore, the Onix's colors were, like the rest of her Pokémon, not their natural gray. Each segment was a different color than the previous. The first neck segment was yellow; the next, green; the third, blue; the fourth, purple. That pattern repeated itself all the way down to the end of the tail. "Rumble, these colors and shapes... what do they mean?" she asked, confused.

"I... can't tell you. For Seta's Trial to be successful, you have to figure it out on your own. Think about everything you've done. Once you have what you need, you'll know which gate leads both of us out... and back into the outer world. Take all the time you need. If you need a fresh state of mind, I'll do what I can to help."

A fresh state of mind. Maybe that's all she needed...

{Shalin's Notes}

After a few minutes of pondering the park's layout and features, Shalin raised her palm to her forehead. "There's only one place in the park that's got deep sand. The playground. Sandy's gotta be there. Rumble, let's go!" While Shalin didn't move from the tail, Rumble didn't rattle her, either; instead, his slithering tail swayed back and forth, the girl's seat lagging behind her Onix's model with each swish.

Leaving a rainbow-colored trail on top of every strip of asphalt she crossed, she asked, "So you say you're the key to the correct gate, Rumble?"

"That's correct," the Onix replied. "I can't say any more, but I am the key. Study me carefully and completely." Perplexed, she tried to dissect the meaning during the noisy ride back to the playground.

"Can you give me one quick rattle to clear my mind?" Shalin asked.

"I don't think that's going to help," Rumble deadpanned, surmising that his trainer was asking simply for the out-of-body experience his powerful tail could provide. He got one last laugh out of the Beta Tester before they arrived at the sand pit the wooden fortress's slides all led to.

"Alright, let's start digging!" Shalin cheered as she slid off the snake's tail. After she took cover, Rumble got started by powerfully rattling his tail, sandblasting the surrounding parts of the fortress. While she was hiding beneath one of the slides, she noticed a red triangle on its underside, with four grey circles to the right of it.

It did not take long for a second hum to accompany the tail, an oddly-colored Vibrava flying out of the sand pit and toward Shalin. "I'm so sorry it took so long to find you, Sandy," she apologized, taking note of the colors. It looked very odd seeing her blurred wings purple instead of green as they whirred, the dragon-type stretching her red body and gazing toward her trainer with her yellow head and eyes. "But now the whole gang's here! We just gotta... piece everything together and figure out this mess." And what a mess it was.

With four of the five colored shapes and their order located, she could easily conclude that the final shape in the colored-shape sequence was a yellow square that went in the second position. She now had the order of the shapes and the order of the colors. Furthermore, all six of her Pokémon's colors pulled from just those five. She felt she had all the pieces of the puzzle now.

Putting the puzzle together would be the true Trial of Patience.

{Shalin's Notes}