Welcome to Gaia! ::

Rala teleported Ulla, Leon, Keiko, and myself to the Castelia City Pokemon Center. I smiled immediately, comforted by the familiar sight of Castelia's buildings.

"So, where to first?" Keiko asked, looking happy as she looked at me. That one actually stumped me until I saw the date. "Ooh, that's actually perfect. Follow me." I said, leading the procession done one of the streets, which would be mostly empty except for a woman manning a booth on the sidewalk. "One for each of us, if you please," I told her, paying with my savings card. With a smile, the lady clerk produced four Casteliacones, and I passed them out to the others following me.

"It's a bit early for ice cream, isn't it?" Keiko asked, confused.

"Trust me, it's worth it,' I said with a wide smile. "Casteliacones are so popular with the locals that there's only one day out of the week that you can reliably get them. The rest of the week, this little booth is crowded with customers to the point where they sell out quick.''

The clerk thanked us for our business the second I moved to walk away. I thanked her for her time before actually walking away. I found a table just outdoors from a restaurant and sat at it, motioning for Keiko and the Hanabi siblings to join me before I started licking at my Casteliacone.

"Pokemon trainers are allowed to go wherever they please in this city - even inside the buildings, regardless of what they're used for. That'll make looking for Proton's men easier. Nobody will think twice about where we go because of that."

"What if we run across your mom?" Keiko asked.

"I'm counting on it at some point. We need to introduce her to Ulla," I explained, almost done with my Casteliacone at that point. I lacked discipline when it came to those things.

"Are you sure that's a good idea?" Keiko asked, looking worried.

"Two of her adoptive grandparents know about her. We might as well introduce her to the other pair. Besides, it'll be fine so long as Dad's not around. It'll be easier if he finds out about her from Mom," I explained.

"Well, if you're sure," Keiko said, still worried.

"By the way, I meant what I said about that tour. I'm serious about punishing Proton and his men for doing their business in MY town, but there's no reason we can't enjoy ourselves while we're here," I smirked, tossing the paper that was wrapped around the now consumed cone at a trash bin over ten feet away, watching in satisfaction as it bounced off a support pillar and into the bin.

"Nice shot, Senpai!" A man's voice run out from the crowd. I flinched, recognizing that voice immediately.

"That had better be who I think it is," I grumbled as a guy about my age walked up to our table. "Who else could I be?" the guy smirked. "Judging by your voice? Inpuza," I explained, causing the guy to reel back in disgust. "Dude, that's seriously messed up."

"Yeah, sorry about that. At least it's you, though,"I said before turning to the others at the table. This is Jun. I don't remember his full name, but everybody called him Junior in the academy, so I called him Jun," I explained.

"And we've been best friends ever since!" Jun beamed. "We've been friends ever since," I corrected him. "Yeah, whatever," Jun said, brushing my comment off. "So, ya gonna introduce me?" Jun asked, continuing to smile widely.

"Right. This is my fiancee, Keiko," I said, motioning to her. "This is our adopted daughter Ulla, and her older brother Leon."

'Hi!" Keiko said with a happy smile.

"Man, you've really moved on from your academy days, huh, Senpai? Already settled down and raising a kid. To think a loner like you could do something like this in a mere decade," Jun exaggerated.

"Ten years is a long time," I assured him with a smirk. 'Besides, it's like I keep saying, I only isolated myself so I could study in peace."

"Was it really that hard back then?" Keiko asked, unsurprisingly curious about my history with Pokemon Tech now that somebody that knew me back then was around.

"I didn't help that I took on as many majors as I could," I said, my smirk widening. "I still don't get why you did that to yourself," Jun retorted, looking confused. "I explained that to you before. Some of them I took because I thought they'd be useful to my future as a Pokemon Trainer, and others I took because I was interested in them."


"And some you took because of your dad, like that Pokemon Technology Studies & Discussion course," Jun insisted, smirking slyly.

"Nope, that falls under interest. Father didn't have a say in what courses I took - so long as I was getting good grades, he was happy. Practically had to beg him for that fifth year, though - it was harder to convince him once he found out how many courses I was taking."

"Yeah. I'm surprised he let you finish the year when you called him halfway through to let him know you finished them all," Jun shrugged. "Same here. Victory lap was the last thing I expected to hear from him."

"Victory lap?" Keiko asked, confused. "Yeah. Basically, he told me to relax and socialize for the remainder of the semester. Though he said he was giving me the time because the tuition and dorm rent were already paid off for the whole year, 'so might as well make use of it'. Of course, he found out how hard I'd been working by then, and it was basically his way of telling me to not stress myself so much," I explained.

"Yeah, your dad turned out to be okay, although he acted serious as crap in person," Jun commented. "Still does," I sighed, although I couldn't help but smirk.

"So," Jun said with a wide smile, finally taking a seat with the rest of us. "Where to, first?" I shrugged. "Basically, I was just gonna roam the streets and see what we find. But then, I doubt I'm any more versed in the city than anybody else sitting at this table." "You lived here, though," Keiko spoke up, catching Jun's interest. "Like I said before, I stayed indoors all the time as a kid, an went oversees for Pokemon Trainer's School and Pokemon Tech."

"Man. I was about to say that it must have rocked growing up in a huge city like this, but I guess you were as sheltered as I thought you were when we first met," Jun spoke up. I nodded - I wasn't ashamed of my upbringing, but looking back, it did explain some things regarding my first foray into being a Pokemon Trainer, despite my education.

I felt my heart sink when Ulla asked that. I wished I'd thought about her feelings before mentiong Father out loud. "I'm not worried about him approving of you. In fact, I have no doubt that he would. He might just be worried that it's too soon for me to become a parent, with how long it's taking me to go through the gym challenge," I tried to explain, although now that I thought about it, I was starting to want them to meet him, if only to set my father's heart at ease.

"The only reason anybody showed interest in you in the first couple years is because of how easy you made the classes look," Jun explained. He must have heard stories about me seeing as how he first enrolled in the academy during my second year there. "Seriously, every class in Pokemon Tech is rough going. Even Honors students had a hard time of it, but not you. The way you acted when class was out didn't help things, but once people realized it was because you were studying your a** off, they pretty much left you alone," Jun explained, not noticing my conversation with Ulla.

"How was he acting?" Keiko asked. She caught Ulla's question and my response, but was more interested in my past since I didn't talk that much about my academy days.

"I got a bit grouchy whenever somebody interrupted my study time," I admitted, feeling a bit bad about it, now. "I mean, I was only given four years and I had to practically beg for the fifth when the fourth was done, so I did a lot of cram studying, and yeah. Wasn't very good for my emotional health."

"I guess that explains how laid back you can be sometimes," Keiko remarked with a gentle smile, to show that she wasn't trying to offend me by saying that. I nodded in agreement, smiling back at her.

"Aww, crap, I forgot. I'mma be late at this rate," Jun suddenly grumbled, standing up quickly. "I'll catch up with ya later, Senpai. Nice to meet you all, too!" Jun said before running off.

I sighed in relief - I did like talking to Jun, but we had business to attend to as well, and I was a bit worried that he'd be talking with us so long that Rocket Admin Proton would slip away without us being able to stop him as a result.

"Right," I sighed, trying to stop thinking about my parents and my academy days and focusing on the mission at hand. "Unless we get really lucky and run across Proton himself in the act of stealing Pokemon, our best bet is to try to locate their black markets. They operate both in Nimbasa and Castelia, so we'll need to split up so we can hit both cities at once."

"I'd be fine with that if there were more than four of us," Keiko spoke up, with a very worried look on her face. "But we don't know which city they favor, and they could overwhelm two of us before the other two showed up. I think we're safer clearing them out one city at a time."

"I guess you have a point," I sighed. "Alright. Since we're already here, we can go ahead and walk through the alleyways looking for their black market here, then once we find it and clear it out, we can head north to Nimbasa and clear them out there. Any questions/concerns?" I asked, looking to Ulla and Leon.

"We'd better find her quickly, it'd be dangerous if she got lost in a big city like this," I said worriedly, standing up immediately. Keiko stood up quickly, as well. "Yeah, let's go look for her," she added, sounding just as worried as I was. "She couldn't have gotten far. Should we split up to look for her?"

"R-right. She might... she might hide from us if I call out to her. I don't know what she's thinking, but... I think Leon's right, that she's trying to do recon for us. So we should quietly look for her until we find her," Keiko said, though she didn't seem sure of herself.

"Alright, let's get moving," I agreed, trusting in her for now. Since Leon had a lead on Ulla's energy we followed her. Keiko kept her ears open, but with most of the streets crowded with talkative people, it couldn't have been easy on her.