Alice!'s Bonding [REFRESH]

For the past few minutes, Alice had been enthusiastically scheming with Stella against her own Pokémon - the Impidimp she'd just caught - and had to pause for a second with a little frown. "Is this... wrong?"

<He's not going to clean himself,> Stella pointed out. <He just ate garbage. We have to do something.>

"Yeah, but we could do like... an intervention? We can't just dunk him repeatedly in the river, that's a bit mean... and not exactly the best start to a friendship."

<Even if you don't like it, I'm going to do it anyway,> said the Chikorita somewhat darkly.

"Okay, well, let's just take a minute. Let me talk to him first." When Stella gave a tiny, reluctant nod, Alice let the Impidimp out of its Pokéball. With it came that reek that'd prompted the scheming in the first place. For a second, Alice considered just letting Stella go through with the river-dunking, then she saw the happily oblivious look on Impidimp's face and found she didn't have the heart.

"Hey... bud." She needed a name for him at some point, but for some reason she was drawing a blank with anything creative - only Kirby was coming to mind because he was predominantly pink. If only he were rounder and less filthy, then it might actually fit. "I've gotta talk to you about something."

His face fell. <You going to release me?>

"What? No - relax, okay, I'm not getting rid of you. It's just--"

<Phew. Still have to find mushroom circles,> he chirped.

"Right." She still had no idea if that was going to be some sort of trap or not. "I promise we'll get around to that. But first... you really need a bath. You stink."

<I know,> he said proudly. <I will take mud bath for more stink.>

"Not really the kind of bath I had in mind!" Alice wrung her hands and happened to catch sight of Stella sneaking behind Impidimp with all the menace of someone who she knew for a fact wanted to throw someone into a river. "You see, Impid--you know what, I'm just going to call you Kirby. I doesn't fit even slightly but at the same time I don't think I could come up with anything better. Kirby, the stink bothers me and Stella. If you can tolerate five minutes of unpleasantness, I think everybody would be happier for it."

She opened her bag and dug through it. "We found some grooming stuff in the settlement - clean linen, vanilla, something with berries, uhh... whatever this is? Essence of man?" It smelled suspiciously like Axe body spray.

Kirby seized it at once and held it covetously. <Smells strong!> he said excitedly.

Stella sighed, but his vines disappeared and he visibly relaxed as the Impidimp accepted his fate. "Alright, let's get you all washed up!"

IMPIDIMP'S RARITY HAS INCREASED TO RARE +10