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Did Valentine need even more cat Pokemon on her hands? Absolutely not.

Did Valentine want to have fun with the Tower of Cats challenge regardless? Yup.

Sure, she'd gotten a few cats of her own already, but the prompt was one she could do easily enough, so why not?

"Grim, use your Slash on that Patrat!"

Slicing moves didn't come much... slicy-ier than Slash, and the Weavile was glad to oblige.

Valentine wasn't the type to sacrifice Pokemon willy-nilly, that much was clear. But her box was getting full with Pokemon she didn't really need for much of anything, Pokemon that might be able to find a better home in the Everworld... and, of course, Logan had read about a way to enter some special event in the game that involved specific sacrifices. It was a win-win situation: clear Valentine's box, get the Pokemon a new home, unlock the event. Right?

As long as she didn't feel too bad for the Pokemon being sacrificed along the way, anyway...

But never mind all that. On to the sacrifices.

Red meat.

Valentine had never had to consider before what kind of meat cats were. Valentine... would rather not be considering that now, either. But it had to be done. As it turned out, cats were red meat, according to the Internet, and so she left the Poke Ball for her Purrloin--a hard-won battle at the time, but she had no purpose for the Pokemon now, and could always get more if she changed her mind--at the edge of the Precipice as her first sacrifice.

White meat.

Valentine had planned on keeping that Rufflet she caught initially, she really had. But she didn't need it, not really, not when she already had two other Flying-types that were nearer and dearer to her heart. So his Poke Ball, too, was left at the edge of the Precipice.

Vegetable.

This one had never had any other purpose. She'd caught the Paras specifically because she'd heard about this challenge, had no need for another Grass-type when her beloved Nova was by her side. The third Poke Ball was left as a sacrifice without so much as a second thought.

That would do it, right? That would be enough. It had to be.

Valentine blinked a few times, returning to reality from her idle reverie with the other Trainer's approach.

"Oh, of course, no problem! The more the merrier!" Not that Valentine terribly expected the other girl's Totodile to do much against the Paras, but hey, it was probably the Trainer's starter Pokemon, and Valentine could empathize well enough with those days of not having much in the way of choices in battling. That had been her not too long ago, after all, though now her cup runneth other with Pokemon to use as potential teammates...

Valentine turned back to her Noibat, nodding slightly at the Pokemon before giving her next command. "Try another Wing Attack, Puff! Maybe that Leer will make it hit harder this time!" It was worth a shot, anyway. The game mechanics probably didn't quite work like that, but this Wing Attack should do more than the first one, at least, and she wasn't going to turn down the opportunity to subtly thank the other Trainer for her help.

Valentine had broken out of the fairy circle, hadn't she? Then why did she still see those same mushrooms growing near her feet? Was the fairy circle mobile, moving as she herself did, forever entrapping her within its-

Oh wait. That was no ordinary mushroom there, that was a Paras!

Valentine let out a giggle at the sight of the wild Pokemon, if only because her worst fears about the power of fairy circles seemed to have been banished for good. She didn't have to fear some eldritch fae being, just a little mushroom Pokemon in front of her, one that should be easy enough to take down.

Speaking of which...

"Puff, hit 'em with a Wing Attack!"

Straightforward, perhaps overly so, but hey, it should get the job done.

"Oh good, that works out nicely for us both then!" Valentine was glad for the excuse to sit down and rest for a moment by the nice warm campfire. She hadn't realized quite how cold she was until she had the opportunity to thaw a little, to let her body warm up once more. That felt good.

Valentine wasn't sure about all that talk about the area being especially relaxing, honestly, but she wasn't disturbed by it either, though she was a little concerned about how close the other woman's foot was getting to the fire there. But the Misty Timberlands themselves being scary? Not any more than the rest of the game world, Valentine figured. Sure it was dark and cold, but it was night time, what else did she expect?

"I like your kimono, by the way." Upon speaking up, Valentine second-guessed herself for a split second, worrying that the garment wasn't a kimono after all. But it was a kimono... wasn't it? "Where did you get it? It's very nice." Valentine hesitated for a moment before adding, "Very pretty."

(It wasn't wrong to like pretty things, right? Even if the one behind the VR system was a guy?)

At first Valentine was scared to even touch the egg, afraid that she would injure it in some way, but as the egg broke open she set the fallen pieces of eggshell aside in a pile on the ground, holding what remained of the egg tightly in her hand as the Pokemon emerged...

Oh wow, that really was a small Pokemon. She knew it would be, of course, due to the egg's small size, but part of her had expected that this was like the other games where eggs were eggs and size didn't matter until after the Pokemon within emerged. But no, the Pokemon that emerged, a tiny white imp of a thing on a flower of similar color, was only a couple inches tall, fitting well within the egg that had housed it until now.

"Oh, you're adorable." Valentine said with her first good look at the emerging Pokemon, though it was still half-covered in various egg-y fluids. But those little eyes, that touch of pink on the cheeks... even a bit of icky egg stuff couldn't eclipse this newborn Pokemon's cuteness.