🌙Moon – Chapter 2; The first trial

Read from the start

Characters: Pearl, Lillie, Hau, Ilima

AN:

this is based on my actual real battle agaisnt totem raticate because fun fact! in game it only knows normal type moves

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Pearl awoke the next day to Azul nudging her with his nose. 

“Fine… what, I’m awake…” Pearl muttered to herself, sleepily. 

She flailed her arms around in front of her haphazardly, in an attempt to find her phone on the bedside table. At first her hand landed on Azul’s head, and she made sure to give him a good pet. Pearl lifted herself up and sat on her bed, where she reached to grab her phone.

She had a couple of text notifications, all of them were from her parents.

‘Crap’ Pearl thought, as she remembered she had forgotten to text them at all about the events of the night prior.

Pearl opened her messages.

>Pearls? You there? It’s around 9pm for you now, hope you don’t mind us saying goodnight!

>Goodnight Pearl! We think you’re a superstar!

[…]

>Goodmorning Pearl! It’s getting a bit late here but we both hope you have an exciting day!

>Emmy is already asleep but she says good morning as well!

Pearl went to reply.

>>hey, sorry, i had a busy day yesterday and kind of passed out.

>>i got my first pokemon though! meet azul!

>>IMG_34098.JPG

The attachment was a picture Pearl had taken of Azul with his snout up against her phone’s camera.

>Aww! Very cute! Make sure to give him lots of love for me. It’ll be exciting to watch you two grow together!

>Alright, it is pretty late here, I should be going to bed soon too. Have a good day and remember to take care of yourself

>>i will! love you mom!

Pearl put her phone down and sighed, looking up at the ceiling. From the looks of it, Pearl had a long day ahead of her. 

She looked back at her phone to check the time and jumped with a muffled ‘oh shit!’ – it was 9:34am, and Pearl was supposed to meet Hau for malasadas at 10.

She pushed herself off of her bed and quickly went to get ready for the day, Azul flopping behind her.

Once Pearl was ready, she picked up Azul and carried him under her arm, and was ready to head out the door, until…

“Oh, good morning Pearl! Where are you going in such a hurry?” Melba asked, as she sat on the couch watching TV.

“Sorry, can’t really stop to talk – I’m meeting Hau for breakfast!” Pearl said as she rushed out the door.

“So busy and so many places to be, my goodness.” Melba said, watching Pearl leave out from out the window. 

Pearl’s pace was that of a slow jog, as she tried to go as fast as she could while combating the humid summer air. She made it to Iki town in good time, but got lost trying to find the malasada shop – eventually resorting to using the map app on her phone.

She eventually made it to the small store, where Hau was sitting inside right next to the front window. He saw Pearl and waved, and as Pearl entered the shop, a small jingle rang out as she opened the door.

“Hey Pearl! Did you oversleep?”

“…Maybe!” Pearl said as she caught her breath from running and pulled out a chair to sit down on.

“But that’s excusable, right? Yesterday was real busy, after all.”

“Haha, yea, I guess. Speaking of which, I wanted to talk about the island trials more, if you’d be down. I got the info pulled up right now!” Hau said, tapping at his phone.

“Yeah, I had a question about that… when I went to the website all the photos they had were of little kids, are you sure we aren’t like, too old or something?”

Hau gave Pearl a bit of a confused look.

“No, not at all! It’s for anyone 10 to 17, I think they just use pics of kids to help get more younger people into it.”

“Ohh, okay, that makes sense. Yea, you can go on about them, I’m interested in hearing what we have to do next!”

Hau opened his mouth to speak, but was interrupted by the barista at the counter calling his name. He gestured to Pearl that it’d be a second, and got up to grab three large malasadas and a juice.

He sat back down with Pearl and handed her a malasada.

“You got yourself two?” Pearl asked as Hau quickly bit into his first malasada.

Hau signaled that he was going to finish chewing before speaking, then he spoke up.

“Hey, don’t judge me! These are like, the best malasadas in the whole world!”

“Fair enough, I’ll have to try this one then.” After she finished speaking, Pearl went and took a bite, and she nodded her head.

“Hey, this is really good! Alright, let’s hear it about the trials.”

Hau took another bite and waited until he was done chewing to talk.

“Alright, so basically, Alola is made up of four islands, right? And each island has a Kahuna that keeps trials there running smoothly. But to challenge the Kahuna, you gotta complete the island’s trials first.” 

Hau paused to take another bite, crumbs falling onto the table.

“Each island has a different amount of trials… Melemele has… only one, if I recall right. Oh, oh, and each trial has a trial captain! We should see Melemele’s trial captain if we wanna get started!”

“Neat! Do you know who it is at all?” Pearl asked.

“No… but I assume Professor Kukui can tell us! Though he hasn’t replied to any of my texts in a while, I wonder if he could be sleeping in too…”

Suddenly, someone burst into the store – and it was someone Pearl and Hau recognized – it was Lillie.

She ran in front of Pearl and Hau’s table and started huffing as she caught her breath.

“Woah, Lillie, where’d you come from?” Hau asked, giving her some time to respond.

“The professor’s… internet… went out…” Lillie said in-between breaths.

After a moment, Lillie finally gathered herself and sat down.

“So he sent me to tell you that Melemele’s trial captain, Ilima, is out painting a fence near the marina in Hau’oli! Now would be a good time to head over there to see if you can catch him!”

“Like, right now?” Pearl asked.

“Yes, right now! His internet went out only a couple of minutes after Ilima told him that he was ready to have any trial-goers sent his way.”

“Well, I guess we should get going, Pearl! We can probably make it to the bus in good time if we leave right now.” Hau said.

“Wait!” Lillie said, urgency in her voice. “Can I, uh… come with you two? I don’t get the chance to get out of the house much, and the way you two battled yesterday… I’m still thinking about it! So… would it be okay if I tagged along?” 

“What, of course you can come along! Give me a sec to finish this malasada and we can get going!” Pearl replied. 

Hau looked down at his remaining malasada, before grabbing it and getting out of his chair. Then, he handed it to Lillie with a smile.

“Is it really alright if I have this?” she asked.

“Yeah, of course! It’ll be nice to have a snack as we walk!”

Hesitantly, Lillie grabbed the malasada, with a bit of a confused look on her face – but after taking a bite she did her best to smile back at Hau.

With that, the three were off to the bus stop that ran between Iki town and Hau’oli city, since the two were so close in proximity. The three got on the bus, with Pearl sitting in between Hau and Lillie.

Lillie was slightly more talkative this time around, though it was clear to Pearl she was still rather anxious in general. 

As the bus passed a building in the outskirts of Hau’oli, Lillie pointed it out.

“That’s the trainer’s school, where Ilima usually works. I thought you two would want to stop there…? They teach a lot of useful information about pokemon battling.”

“Psh, nah, I’m goin’ straight to Ilima! I’ve been doing research into battling for years! Plus, my mom’s one of the best trainers in the whole entire world, and I got to go to work with her when I was a kid!” Pearl said, looking a bit smug.

“W… wow, really? It’s amazing to have a mom like that… even letting you into her work…”

Lillie’s words trailed off a bit, as she looked distracted while speaking. Pearl thought it was odd, but didn’t think much of it. The three were mostly quiet for the rest of the ride, until they got off at the Marina’s bus stop. Pearl scooped Azul up, and the three were off.

Once they arrived, the trio was able to find a fence with fresh paint, a trail which they followed until they came across a pink-haired teenager with a smeargle, who only seemed a couple of years older than her. The two were standing next to a spilled bucket of paint, and two men dressed in black in white were wildly gesturing towards him.

“You weirdos get nothing done – look at all the paint you’ve wasted!” the young man with the smeargle said, a look of disgust on his face.

“Yo yo, it’s not our fault you’re the trial captain! We wouldn’t be messin’ with you if you weren’t such a prep!” one of the two men said.

The young man noticed Pearl, Hau, and Lillie standing in the background and waved to them.

“Hey, you! Are you trainers? Could I have a little help here?”

The two men stopped gesturing and turned towards Pearl.

“Hey, yo, don’t get in our way! We’re team skull, and this is our biz only, so stay out of it!”

Pearl looked to Hau with a confidently smug look on her face. She knew of the past, and how young trainers had stopped troublemakers and criminals with a pokemon battle, and right now, her mind was rushing with the thoughts of taking the two men down.

“You wanna take em?” Pearl said, and as she spoke, Hau reached for his belt to grab his pokeball.

“Heck yea, let’s do this!”

The two men in skull masks looked shocked.

“Hey now! Don’t go ruining our mojo! We’ll pound you kids into the ground like there’s no tomorrow, yo!” said the other man, and both men reached and grabbed pokeballs of their own.

Pearl let Azul down onto the ground, and Hau let out his litten. The two skull-masked men each released their own zubat.

Lillie stepped back as the battle commenced, and just as her last battle had gone, Pearl yelled out her first attack with a tone that exuded confidence.

“Azul, water gun, let’s go!” 

“Hit the other one with an ember, litten!” Hau quickly followed.

The two had very good sync with each other, which left the opposing men bumbling over their commands after the swift attacks.

After a couple of turns, it was over. The two skull-masked men recalled their fainted zubats and rescinded in defeat.

“Mark my words, yo! You kids might have gotten us this time, but this won’t be the last you’ll see of Team Skull!” said one of the men. As that was said, both of them did a pose and did a sort of dance off into the distance.

“Team Skull…? Those guys just seemed like some mean weirdos.” Pearl said, going to pick up Azul to dust him off.

“Ohh, that explains it! Yea, no, Team Skull is a group of hooligans that likes to mess with the island trials. Grampa’s had trouble with ‘em before, but they’re mostly harmless. Those zubats went down quick – they weren’t any match for the both of us!” Hau replied, recalling his litten back to its pokeball after giving it a hearty victory pet.

“Hey, you two!” a voice called out. It was the pink-haired painter with the smeargle, who had propped his paint can back up again. 

“That was a good battle! Thanks for taking care of that for me – normally I’d deal with them myself, but smeargle here got too upset over the spilled paint to be able to battle.”

He extended his hand out to shake Pearl’s.

“The name’s Ilima! I’m assuming you two came at the professor’s word that I was here, no?”

“Yup, that’s why we’re here, all thanks to our friend Lillie!” Hau said, as Lillie meeped and covered her face with her hat.

“Haha, well, unfortunately I can’t help you right now – I gotta clean up this mess those Skull grunts made. But if you give me your number, I can text you two when… oh?” Ilima stopped talking, noticing his smeargle was tugging at his pant leg. The pokemon stopped once Ilima noticed, and pointed up at Azul.

“Oh, well, it looks like someone was definitely enthralled by your battle – I think smeargle wants to battle with you – oh, what was your name again, I don’t think I ever got it.”

“Pearl! My name’s Pearl.” she said. “If I win against you, can we go do the trial now?”

Ilima thought for a second.

“Eh, sure, why not? A wins a win, after all.”

Ilima’s hand went to his belt, where he revealed a second pokeball. 

“I’m a normal-type specialist, so unless you have any fighting types, we’re on a neutral playing field here”

“Azul here is my only pokemon…” Pearl said.

“Well, I guess that makes this a two-on-one – hope you’re ready for it!” Ilima said, shortly after he spoke, he released a yungoos from it’s pokeball.

Since it was the weaker of Ilima’s pokemon, Pearl knocked it out fairly quickly without taking much damage on Azul’s side. 

“Good job! But how do you think you can handle… this! Smeargle, get out there!”

Smeargle moved from standing behind Ilima, and bumbled into the field. 

Pearl still had a smug confidence in herself, and was about to call out her command to Azul, but Ilima spoke first.

“Leafage.”

It was a quick and swift command, and it seemed instant from the moment the leaves hit Azul to the moment Azul fainted.

Pearl was out of usable pokemon. She had lost.

Pearl stood by with a shocked look on her face, trying to properly process what had happened. She had gotten so full of herself that she couldn’t quite fathom the idea of losing. 

‘But I’ve studied so much, it’s impossible…’ she thought, as she ran towards Azul and scooped him up, recalling him to his pokeball once he was in her arms.

“Hey, don’t sweat it. You’re a new trainer, right? You’re gonna lose all the time once you’re out there, it’s no big deal.” Ilima said, giving his smeargle a pat on the head.

But to Pearl, it was a big deal, even if it was so small. Her lip was quivering, but she didn’t want to come across as a sore loser, when really, she was. She had never lost before – she wasn’t quite sure how she was supposed to react. 

“I… think I need to head to the Pokecenter. I’ll… catch up with you later, Hau.” Pearl said, as she started to walk away.

“Er, ok Pearl! Me and Lillie will catch you later, I guess?”

The Pokemon Center was moderately crowded, being that it was the peak of the day. Still, Pearl didn’t have to wait long to heal her fainted pokemon. The nurse who took her pokeball noticed she looked upset, and tried to make some smalltalk as the Center’s machine did it’s job.

“Hard loss, huh?”

Pearl didn’t reply, and only glanced to the side.

“It’s ok, there’s always next time! We’ll have your pokemon raring to go again in just a second. If you’re looking to train, Route 2 is the best training ground around, it’s just to the north of the city.”

As the nurse finished speaking, the healing machine beeped to indicate it was finished, and the nurse turned to grab Azul’s pokeball and handed it to Pearl.

“Say, you only have one pokemon, why don’t you take advantage of a promotion we have going on right now? New trainers can get 5 pokeballs for free, just take this coupon to the Pokemart over there!”

Pearl simply nodded and thanked the nurse, and walked over through the busy Center to the Pokemart portion of the building. There, just as the nurse had advised, Pearl exchanged the coupon for 5 free pokeballs, which she stuffed in her bag. Pearl left the center swiftly after that, and checked the map on her phone for the location of Route 2.

It would only be a short walk away, so Pearl made her way through Hau’oli’s downtown portion to the more open and grassy Route 2. 

There, Pearl hiked around, battling wild pokemon and a few trainers – whom she won against. The wins helped calm her sour mood a bit, but Pearl remained frustrated with herself.

As she continued to wander, Pearl noticed that she had stumbled across a graveyard, though there were few people there. She made sure to tread carefully while looking for pokemon. 

After a few moments, Pearl felt something bump into her from behind – she slowly turned around, expecting to be spooked by a gutsy ghost pokemon that was out during the day. But to Pearl’s surprise, it was a cute drifloon.

“Aww, look at you!” Pearl said as she grabbed the balloon pokemon’s strings, almost by instinct. The pokemon tried to pull Pearl up, but was too weak to do so. Pearl just thought it was cute, and laughed. 

Then, a bright idea hit her. This cute ghost would make the perfect teammate!

Pearl sent Azul out from his pokeball and instructed him to use water gun on the balloon pokemon. 

Instead of running away, and drifloon seemed to become engaged in the battle, as Pearl whittled down it’s HP to a level she was confident in. Then, she readied one of the pokeballs she had gotten from the Pokemart and entered a confident stance – and threw it at the drifloon.

1… 2… 3… click! Drifloon was caught!

Pearl recalled Azul back to his pokeball and picked her newly-caught pokemon’s pokeball off the ground. With a gentle tap of the ball’s button, Pearl released her new drifloon from the ball and grabbed it’s strings again.

Instead of trying to tug her off, the drifloon looked to Pearl with a sense of trust after she had bested it in battle. Pearl smiled at it.

“I think I’ll name you… Poppy! A cute name for a cute pokemon!” she said, as she wrapped the ghost’s string around her finger, as to make sure it’d stay with her.

Poppy looked pleased with its new name, and followed Pearl along as she left the graveyard.

As Pearl was walking along Route 2, she found a rest stop motel where she stopped to get some water and sit down. As she was resting, she could feel her phone buzz in her back pocket, so she grabbed it.

>Hey Pearl? You doin better?

>>yea. i think i’ve cooled my head enough… i kinda overreacted i guess (￣□￣」)

>I understand, I was frustrated when I lost my very first battle but what matters in the end was that I had fun!

>>i guess i need to focus on that aspect more.. idk i think it comes from my mom. grandma jokes about her being a really sore loser lol

>Maybe that could be it 🤔

>But I wanted to say I finished Ilima’s trial and he said he’d be glad to let you take it! It’s down by verdant cavern which is across from the pokecenter on route 2!

>>oh wow, i’m already on route 2 so i guess i’ll head that way!

>Oh, sweet! You probs won’t see me there because I was gonna head back home and chill, and Lillie’s doing some exploring on her own.

>alright, cool! i’ll see you later then!

Pearl put her phone back in her back pocket and patted the tuft on Poppy’s head. After she had significantly rested her legs, Pearl jumped back up and looked at the map provided in the rest stop – it wouldn’t be too long of a walk until she hit Verdant Cavern. 

She left the rest stop feeling refreshed and ready to go.

During the walk, Pearl was talking to Poppy a bit.

“So… if Ilima is a normal-type trainer, that means that this trial is likely gonna be normal types, yea? And that’s why you’re perfect for the job, Poppy! He won’t know what hit ‘em!”

After about 15 minutes of walking, Pearl could see Ilima standing out front of a cavern moderately covered by vegetation. Pearl waved with her free arm to him, and he just put his hand up to indicate he had seen Pearl.

Pearl ran over to Ilima, and Ilima was quick to notice Poppy, who was still being held by Pearl.

“Got a new friend, huh?” he said, gesturing at Poppy.

“Yup! I feel like I’m ready to take on the trial now!”

“Well, that’s good news! I just finished re-setting the place, so you’re welcome to start now if you’d like. Oh, first, let me go over the terms of the trials here – do you know them already?”

“Nope! I wasn’t aware there were terms at all.”

“Well, there’s really only two. First, you can’t leave the trial area once the trial starts unless all your pokemon faint or you give up. Second, once you complete the trial you have to battle… a special pokemon.”

“What do you mean by ‘special pokemon’?” Pearl asked, cocking her head.

“Well, it’s a larger-than-normal pokemon called a totem pokemon that’s extra strong. But I feel you’ll have no problem! Hau told me all about how much you care about battling and your pokemon, I’m confident that you’ll be able to do this.” Ilima said, turning towards the entrance of the cavern.

“So, what do you think? Wanna give it a shot right now?”

“You bet I do!” Pearl said as she got into a confident stance.

Ilima nodded and gestured for Pearl to follow him into the cavern, which she did. Once inside, Ilima explained what Pearl was to do.

“Since this is the first trial, it’s not too tricky. I’ve hid two pokemon treats in the holes around this cavern! They’re marked, so they shouldn’t be hard to miss. Your job is to retrieve those treats to lure the totem pokemon down! But he warned, there’s some Alolan rattata guarding them, and you’ll have to defeat them to get to the treats.” Ilima explained.

Pearl nodded her head along with Ilima’s explanation.

“Uh-huh, got it. Can we get on with the trial?” she said.

“Haha, you sure are eager to get started, huh? Alright, you’re free to go ahead! I’ll be waiting here at the cavern entrance in case you wanna go back.”

And with that, Pearl’s first island trial officially started.

Pearl was quick to find the first marked hole, but there was nothing inside. As she looked around a bit more, she could see another marked hole, this time with some skittering noises being heard from within. 

As she approached the hole, an aggressive Alolan rattata jumped out at her!

Pearl was a bit off-put by its appearance – because while she knew regional variants existed, she wasn’t quite sure what they had looked like until now.

Still, Pearl untangled Poppy’s strings from her wrist and commanded her pokemon use gust against the rattata.

It didn’t do much damage, but Pearl quickly realized – the rat pokemon could do nothing to hit Poppy. All of it’s attacks must’ve been normal-type attacks, because none of them affected Poppy whatsoever. 

Even with the little damage that gust did, it was still a completely one sided battle, as the rattata couldn’t do anything. 

Pearl won against the rattata, and retrieved the treat from the hole. And so, Pearl went to investigate the other holes. It took a couple of holes until Pearl found the one the rattata was hiding in, and it was largely the same battle she had with the previous one.

Without breaking a sweat, Pearl moved on deeper into the cavern, and entered a dead-end bathed in sunlight. Poppy was cautious, and Pearl could feel it too – something was watching them. Pearl left the treats out on the ground and waited.

Suddenly, Pearl could hear scuffling and rocks falling around the cavern, and in an instant, a huge mass jumped overhead of Pearl and landed right in front of the treats. It was a massive Alolan raticate, and it was hastily stuffing the small in comparison treats in it’s mouth. It turned to notice Pearl and Poppy and hissed, causing the two of them to get into a battle stance. 

Pearl called out her move to Poppy – gust, again. It’s not like Pearl had any other moves she could call to it, as all of Poppy’s other moves were ghost-type and would have no effect.

The gust did a minimal amount of damage, and Pearl was expecting the worst for Poppy – likely a bite attack.

But to Pearl’s surprise, that bite attack never came. The huge raticate just tried and failed to tackle Poppy, who just gently bounced off the rat.

The raticate only knew normal-type attacks.

A glint shone in Pearl’s eyes, and she commanded Poppy to keep using gust. Gust after gust, the raticate’s HP slowly dwindled, and eventually, out of energy to fight, it fled back into the depths of the cavern.

Pearl jumped in victory and gave Poppy a big hug, and the two exited the cavern together.

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