Session 3, VP2

Awakening from a restless night, our heroes tried to shake off their grogginess with a fresh breakfast from the inn. Once refreshed, the party decided to take a short walk through the farmer's market. The market was flush with visitors from outside of town, drawn in to view the spectacle of the League Entry Tournament.

Among the new faces was a merchant selling some Pokemon wares. The party wisely avoided buying any of his "guaranteed-win bracelets", but did restock on a handful of supplies.

Well-prepared, the group made their way towards the town center. Here they found staff setting up a stage and stands for the tournament. As they watched the bustle around them, they noticed that Gyda walked out of the Pokemon Center. She glanced over, saw the party, and quickly left in the other direction without greeting them.

The party started to discuss what they could do before the Tournament began around noon, when they were interrupted by cries for help coming from the farmers market. Hurriedly rushing to the scene, the party found a farmer in distress.

Lauren asked what they could do to help, and the farmer led them to his cattle pens. He explained that he raised Tepigs and Paras, in two separate pens. Somehow, the Tepigs had gotten loose, entered the Paras' pen, and were attempting to eat their mushrooms.

The group jumped into action. Through a combination of using food as a lure and intimidation, the trainers worked alongside their Pokemon to corral the Tepigs back into their own pen. The farmer thanked them profusely, giving them a small reward for their troubles. Before they left, Sylvie noticed something about the Tepig's fence door: the lock holding it shut could not have been opened by hooves, meaning a person had to have opened it.

They started the walk back into the town center. Sylvie began to bring up what she had noticed to her friends, only to be cut off by another cry for help, coming from another nearby farm. Unwilling to turn away from someone in trouble, they found a young woman trying to wrangle up a herd of Skiddo.

She quickly told them that her Skiddo had gotten loose, and gotten into her neighbor's apple orchard. The Skiddo were headbutting the various trees and scarfing down as many apples as they could. Sylvie & Lauren made a crumb trail with some apples to lure some of the Skiddo back into their pen, while Reinhold & Pontiac managed to scare some back home.

After some time, only one Skiddo remained loose. Despite the party's best efforts to lure it home, the Skiddo kept eating as many apples as it could. Pontiac eventually tried to spook it with some flame. Unfortunately, this had the side effect of pushing the Skiddo into evolving.

The infuriated Gogoat began pawing at the ground, aiming to charge straight at Reinhold. Thinking quickly, Sylvie had Darjeeling tease the Gogoat by blowing raspberries at it. Darjeeling was successful, but this meant the Gogoat shifted its aim towards Darjeeling & Sylvie. Luckily, Sylvie had been standing in front of the open gate of the pen; Darjeeling dodged the Gogoat's charge, but Sylvie ended up getting knocked into the air, landing on the Gogoat's back.

As soon as the Gogoat ran into the pen, the farmer slammed the gate shut. Exhausted, she thanked Reinhold & Sylvie for their help, before confusedly asking where their third friend was. The Gogoat suddenly shoved its head through the fence to blow a raspberry at Darjeeling. As the Gogoat turned away, Sylvie slipped off its back, and hopped the fence.

While the farmer thanked them and gave them a reward for their assistance, Reinhold saw something on the pen's gate. The latch area was covered in some sort of odd, sticky water-like substance. Once they had taken their leave, Reinhold mentioned this to his friends, causing Sylvie to chime in with what she had noticed at the previous farm. The party started to debate what was going on. Clearly, someone was deliberately causing the chaos, but to what end?

Some of the theories brought forth were that it might be a Pokemon that enjoyed causing trouble, or a thief of some kind. Lauren pointed out that Gyda had been acting odd that morning when she snubbed them, and wondered if perhaps she was behind it somehow.

The previous day, Gyda had seemed put-off when she heard the party was sticking around to enter the Tournament. Before their debate could get too far, they heard yet more cries of alarm coming from over a nearby hill. Sighing to themselves, yet unwilling to turn a blind eye, our heroes trekked towards the commotion.

Upon cresting the hill, they saw two ranch-hands milling about outside of a large pen. Inside the pen was a small herd of Miltank, and one very large Tauros. The Miltank were huddled together around something, as the Tauros rampaged around the pen in a berserk frenzy.

After speaking with the ranch-hands, the party found out that, somehow, a wild Kindloof had gotten into the pen. The sight of its red fur caused the Tauros to go mad in an attempt to drive it off. Now, the Miltank were trying to protect the baby Kindloof from the Tauros, but with it still rampaging around, the ranch-hands were too afraid to climb into the pen.

Suddenly, Reinhold stepped forwards. With a flourish, he swept his cloak from off his shoulders, revealing its bright red interior. Lauren and Sylvie ran to the side of the pen where the Kindloof was, while Reinhold made his way over to the pen's gate. Once in place, he instructed the two ranch-hands to be ready to open the pens gate, and their nearby barn's doors.

Reinhold released Kuze, and explained the situation to him. The plan was to drape the red cloak over Kuze, then have him float towards the barn, hopefully drawing the Tauros into it. Kuze gave a nod, and Reinhold covered him with the cloak. As the ranch-hand opened the pen's gate, Reinhold let out a shrill whistle, getting the Tauros to look in his direction.

Once Kuze was in its sights, the Kindloof was forgotten. The Tauros broke into a thundering sprint as it barelled out of the pen after Kuze. With the Tauros distracted, Lauren leapt into the pen to approach the Kindloof. As they drew near, the herd of Miltanks prepared to agressively protect the injured Pokemon. Lauren calmly reached into their backpack, pulling out a Potion.

Gently, Lauren showed it to the Miltank, who hesitantly allowed them to apply it to the injured Kindloof. Lauren attempted to convince the Kindloof to get into a Pokeball, but the Pokemon was too panicked. It began to limp its way towards the gate of the pen.

At the same time, Kuze led the Tauros into the barn, where the second ranch-hand slammed the barn doors shut. Kuze floated back over to Reinhold, with the cloak tied around his neck like a cape. Just as the Kindloof reached the pen's gate, the Tauros burst down the barn doors, speeding straight back towards its pen.

Reinhold had Kuze release a Haze in an attempt to mask the Kindloof from the Tauros' sight, as Lauren threw a Pokeball. The Tauros charged straight through the fog, and the ranch-hand slammed the gate shut behind it once more. When the fog cleared, they could see that the Kindloof had managed to safely escape.

As everyone caught their breath, the ranch-hands thanked them profusely for their efforts, before giving them a reward. Lauren had an itching in the back of their brain that there was something about the Kindloof that seemed off, but was unable to put their finger on exactly what it could be. Weary from their morning's efforts, the party checked the time: it was nearly noon!

Moving as quickly as they could, they made their back onto the dirt roads leading to the town center. Just as the Pokemon Center's roof was coming into view, they skidded to a stop.

Somehow, there was a large tree standing in the middle of the road. Our heroes were certain there hadn't been a tree placed there before, and approached it warily. As they got closer, they could hear buzzing and chittering coming from the tree's foliage.

Sylvie attempted to scan it with her Pokedex: the Pokedex was able to inform her that there were 5 Pokemon, but couldn't get a solid read on what kinds. Lauren released Auda, and asked her to fly into the treetop to investigate.

Nearly as soon as Auda disappeared into the leaves, she came bursting back out, with 4 Pokemon in pursuit. The exhausted party prepared themselves for battle. After a few rounds of combat, the 4 ambushing Pokemon had either been defeated or caught. The party looked around confused, unsure where the 5th Pokemon could be.

Suddenly, the tree's foliage all fell to the ground in a heap; this was no tree blocking their path, but a massive, 30-foot tall Sudowoodo!

Our beleaguered heroes refused to back down, despite the intimidating size of their opponent. Reinhold led the charge himself, landing several powerful punches into the Sudowoodo's tough skin. After a few well-aimed strikes, Reinhold managed to break off a portion of the Sudowoodo's bark-like hide.

Sage grasped the moment, and released a flurry of leaves that sliced into the Sudowoodo for extreme damage. With a groan, the large Pokemon fell over backwards, knocked out. Before the party could react, suddenly a beam of light came from bushes on top of a nearby hill recalling the Sudowoodo into a Pokeball. As quickly as they could, the group ran up to the bushes, but their assailant had already fled.

Sylvie examined the area, and noticed that whoever it was had been wearing cowboy boots, and had left behind more of that odd, sticky water. This cemented Lauren's earlier theory that Gyda had been responsible for the morning's troubles. Unfortunately, she had still eaten up a lot of their time, and check-in for the Tournament would be closing any minute!

Pushing themselves to go as fast as they could, our heroes dashed to the Pokemon Center. Without even giving the nurse on duty time to greet them, they hurriedly had her heal their injured Pokemon, and sped out the door to the town center. The stands were full with an audience for the Tournament, and they could see the man working the check-in desk about to close his ledger.

The party leapt forward, stopping the man from packing up. Out of breath, they told him they were there to join the Tournament. Bewildered, he signed them in, gave them contestant numbers, and the party was rushed into the competitor's box.

The MC of the event introduced the Judge and host of the Tournament: Cypvriss, a member of the Elite Four. Valkryn, the League's Champion, was supposed to have been there, but was unable to attend, so Cypvriss had come in his stead. After giving a short speech and wishing all of the contestants good luck, the match-ups began to get drawn.

While they were waiting for their numbers to be pulled, the party managed to catch Gyda's attention. She looked extremely upset to see they had managed to make it on time, and turned away in a huff. For the first round, Lauren & Reinhold faced off against people who had travelled to Seeder Grove for the Tournament, while Sylvie went up against a local she recognized. Alexander had the misfortune of getting paired with Gyda.

The first set of rounds ended in a flurry. Perhaps Gyda had accidentally only strengthened her opponents with the obstacles she had placed in their path.

Reinhold, Sylvie, & Lauren all advanced to the second round, but Alexander had been unfortunately taken out by Gyda. Sylvie & Lauren were drawn as opponents, while Reinhold stepped into the ring with Gyda. He bandied a few friendly taunts her way, as Gyda stood fuming with a fake smile on her face.

As the second round began, Gyda released her Pokemon, Stickums, revealing it to be a Froakie. This explained the odd, sticky water the party had found at several of the scenes that morning.

Reinhold's Shadow began to engage in combat with Stickums, as Lauren & Sylvie wished each other luck. The battles in this round were well-fought, and went down to the wire, leaving Reinhold & Lauren as the victors to advance.

Cypvriss came onto the stage to drop the flag for the third & final round. After once more wishing each other good fortune, Lauren & Reinhold released their Pokemon. Shadow and Hilda faced off from either end of the arena floor, ready to push to their limits.

Hilda coiled herself inwards, strengthening her Defense, while Shadow missed on an attempt to Leer. The second round flipped their fates, as Hilda missed with a Rollout attack, leaving herself open to a Fury Cutter from Shadow.

After these brief stumbles, the combatants found their rhythms, and the attacks came in quicker and quicker succession. Battered but unwilling to give up, Hilda sped across the arena as fast as she could, slamming into Shadow with her full might.

Shadow braced himself to weather the blow, and got pushed mere inches from the edge of the arena. Barely able to keep himself standing, Shadow threw everything he had left into one final Fury Cutter, which knocked Hilda unconscious.

Cheers erupted from the stand as the Tournament came to an end, and Cypvriss came onto the stage to declare Reinhold the winner. As a prize for first-place, she presented him with a Luck Incense. The other participants who placed were awarded smaller prizes as well, and all entrants received an official Rune Bracer, Pauldron, or Belt. Possession of these indicated the bearer was an accepted competitor in the new Pokemon League, and would allow them to safely carry the Runes guarded by the Gym Leaders.

Reinhold ran over to his friends, and they all celebrated the results of the Tournament, only stopping to laugh as Gyda stormed off into the hills.