‘Let me guess. It has wings?’

“You know me a little too well,” he would chuckle. He also knew that there was some kind of ‘call’ for the new Pokémon sent out by… hm, that was interesting. The place that him, Alicia Westfield, Josh Devlin and Sidra had cleaned up was… occupied now? Funny how that worked.

‘If it’s not in the water, it’s up in the air. You’re way too easy to read, you know,’ the amphibious Pokémon croaked, keeping their eyes peeled on the horizon just in case they saw something coming out of the water—or dive-bombing them down from the skies above.

“Can you blame me, Hanzo? I just like the freedom of either swimming, or flying…” he hummed with a contented sigh, spreading his arms out and pretending to take off and leap into the air.

Let him live!

lessee how this goes

The two were actually walking along the shores of the Harbor proper itself—in a way, it reminded him of the Beta Coastline, only this time instead of seeing a whole bunch of starter Pokémon, it was another thing entirely.

He knew he’d brought some color back to some of the other Pokémon while the World Event was going down, but who knew what was going to start appearing after the strange invasive species had disappeared?

‘Is there something on your mind?’

“…kind of.”

‘Want to tell me about it?’

The whitehaired elfin would come to a stop for a few moments, lost in thought. There were… there were so many things on his mind, not just one thing, and he knew that bringing them all up at once was going to overwhelm the Greninja.

So he settled for the most inane thing possible.

“I don’t know why other people have been so vicious lately.”

‘What do you mean? The… the people you meet?’ the amphibious Pokémon would confirm with him.

“Yeah… some of them have been just downright nasty. Is it like, my fault that what they ordered wasn’t available? I’m the one who gets yelled at when I bring the bad news to them, and then they just cancel the order, so that’s some more money lost from my take-home for the day, and…”

lessee how this goes

Admittedly, it didn’t have wings, but the lure of submitting Pokémon for further study was there, so… he would consider that as a bonus.

Plus, at least he was familiar with… a Gastly, right?

‘This one’s rather cheeky!’ he heard the Greninja call out from somewhere above, keeping up the pressure with the Night Slash barrage of attacks as the spectral Pokémon continued to float around, attempting to Lick the ever-living daylights out of his face.

“I can tell! Just—stay away from that tongue, it looks nasty!”

The Greninja would nod, barely disappearing in time in a cloud of smoke as the Gastly got too close; before releasing another barrage of the Night Slash shuriken at the spectral face.

not a birb, but for Ash!

It wouldn’t take too long for him to make his ‘triumphant return’… only to see that Hanzo was still in the middle of the fight with the spectral blob!

“Did you get licked?” he would chuckle the moment the Greninja had dropped close enough to where he stood, golden Pokéball at the ready.

‘Almost! That tongue…’

“I told you! Despite the small size it can reach real crazy proportions!”

‘No need to tell me twice!’ the amphibian Pokémon huffed, before jumping back into the heat of the battle—because wait a second, was that a Curse attack that the blob had just—

“Be careful!” he warned the dual-type. He knew that there was one particular attack that worked differently for Ghost-types as compared to anything else that used it, so…

‘Alright!’ he heard the Greninja acknowledge him as even more of the Night Slash-shaped ‘shurikens’ flew from the amphibious Pokémon’s direction.

not a birb, but for Ash!