"I'm never gonna not," Derek pauses, does a spin with his ears and tail spinning behind him. "Daaaaance again!~"

He sings the P!NK song while dancing in the dark near the settlement. It's not the sort of place that most people visit for the sake of doing a little dancing, and he's not. Really he came to find a wild mon, and he did. The purrloin's not his cup of tea though, he figures he'll sacrifice it and see what happens at a shrine whenever you do that kinda thing.

He has absolutely no idea somebody else is there until Apollo bounces off of his head, flapping his wings and using a leafage just as he lands, watching the purrloin reel back.

"Oh! Another one, huh?" Derek knows he won't catch it, but he encourages Apollo anyway with a, "nice shot buddy."

The other looses an attack with their rowlet and then greets Derek. He knows Apollo's got this, so he gives the girl a friendly wave and focuses mostly on her. Some attention is paid to Apollo, but for the most part he's set the rowlet to autobattle for him, which leads Apollo to using a razor leaf against the wild purrloin.

"I like to explore what I can, yeah. And rowlets are definitely lil cutie dudes, right?" Derek agrees, pretending like he picked the starter. Cause that's an option, just picking one. Or the player can let the system pick for them after a few questions.

A few intrusive questions, if Derek's being honest. But maybe it's based on the person. Maybe he needed intrusive.

"What type of pokémon are you looking for specifically? I've got a spare impidimp if you've got any grass mons. I'd gift it, cause I'm never gonna use 'im, but I don't have a second trainer star yet."

Ah, rules and regulations.

Derek's momentarily surprised to see the wild purrloin ain't doin' so bad. As a matter of fact, it's doing a little too well. The fucker's pretty much toying with the birds, prancing around the area. Sly as can be.

Now he's not feeling so guilty for thinking about sacrificing the one he'd just caught around the settlement.

"This game's so different than most game's I've come across. Like, I say I wanna play with specter class but then I see like, the armorer class or whatever, and that seems sick. Who wouldn't want extra protection, y'know?"

While Derek kept to chatting, Apollo let loose another razor leaf hit the purrloin, now annoyed that the feline was dodging and able to get hits in on them so well.

"I'm such a bitch for aesthetics myself." Clearly, being that he was all black, green, and highlights of pink, orange, purple, and blue. It matched grass and ghost types pretty much perfectly. He really did love that about his mod.

"I'll probably stick to my Gardener and Specter choices. Because, well, I didn't think I'd love Gardener this much but here we are. And I just absolutely adore ghost types. I'm such an occult guy, y'know? I love all the eighties and nineties horror vibes. Not to mention most of the psychological thrillers that they come out with these days. They're like, annoyingly good. Stephen King's my favorite, I think."

Rambling, again. He stops himself with a laugh. A hand comes up to scratch around his ears and he smiles out a laugh.

"But I mean anyway so uh, are you playing the new games when they come out? The Violet and Scarlet games? I don't know if I'll have the time, being on Unovr so much."

Meanwhile, Apollo moves in front of Nova and shoots yet another razor leaf at the wild purrloin, hoping it's the last attack.

"The flowers are so so so so cute!" Derek squeals, agreeing as he turns in a small circle to show the flowers and bounces up and down.

Apollo, done with the fight, flaps over to take a seat on Derek's head, content. He gently begins to preen Derek's ears, which Derek doesn't fuss at him about. Too busy with his new found friend.

"Nearest shrine," Derek glances around. "Yeah! Here, I'll send a location pin... as soon as I remember how to do that."

He messes with the UI for a moment before sending it over, clapping as he remembers. The location's sent and with it, a friend request, because he's Derek and he sends them to people he doesn't think are totally annoying.

Like Valentine!

"There ya go. Want me to walk ya? Just in case something else tries to pop out and getcha."

The flowers really were gorgeous. And, yes, cute. It wasn't a dirty word, was it? Nothing wrong with being cute?

"Oh great, thank you!"

Valentine accepts the friend request (as well as the location pin) without really thinking about it, only realizing afterwards that it meant that she'd made her first official friend in the game... by almost getting her butt kicked by a Purrloin, of all things. Well, whatever worked, right?

"And that would be wonderful, thank you! I was actually going to ask--I'm not sure I trust my sense of direction out here in the dark, y'know? Even with these handy gadgets, it can be too easy to get lost, or get ambushed by more Pokemon, or who knows what... and besides, always nice to spend more time with a new friend, right?"

Valentine smiled at just the thought of it. A new friend! How exciting! It seemed that she really had been meant to go Pokemon-hunting in the dark tonight after all.