[PKMN OPEN] The Pokémon Trainer Academy (T) [Best Veteran 4Q '11]

With such meticulously groomed hair and overall so much time dedicated to her appearance it may or may not come as a surprise to Hei that Olivia was not remotely a fan of getting dirty. Luckily, snow came off on it's own, so she had handled that fall pretty well. When Hei explained what she was doing to Olivia all she got was a frustrated look in response. Creeper... /creeper/!

And then Olivia went out of her way to lean over and eat out of Nemo's hands again. Cue suggestive eyebrow waggle. Olivia took the peeled berry and popped it into her mouth with her fingers like a normal human being, because nobody said she didn't have some level of self-respect. She responded by smiling at Nemo as a warm sensation spread from her belly outwards. It's getting hot in here "Thanks... I never knew berries could do stuff like this!~" she commented, apparently impressed. "I guess I owe you~" she continued, that note of flirting in her voice. She could never know how hard Hei was judging her, though in all honesty it was probably better that way. Watching a hopeless romantic defend herself would probably just be sad at best. In all fairness, her flirting could easily be taken for lust. She's Shezo Wegey's sister

...But could a teenager really be that depraved? One had to stop and consider that maybe things weren't quite as they appeared. Or not. They could just call Olivia a pervert and nobody would /blame/ them. I mean honestly, that skirt?! Sheesh...

Olivia suddenly seemed to notice something and tugged slightly on Nemo's hand. "Look..!" she exclaimed, directing one pointed finger into the distance. There was not one, not two, not three, but approximately six snorunt chilling out in the direction she was pointing. What appeared to be an exceedingly large eevee, quite a few times the size of a normal one, sat with it's back turned to them in the midst of the pokemon.

"Woah..." Olivia commented in seeming shock before rushing to the scene. Was that an eevee? She wanted one! This one was kind of big though...

Whack! A ball tossed by Olivia bounced off it's head, failing to recognize it as a pokemon. The sound of a male voice saying 'Ouch!' could be heard as the 'eevee' stood up tall, illusion fading as the boy wearing an eevee suit turned to address his attacker. Only his face was exposed to the elements.Olivia was... dumbfounded for a moment, and it showed on her face. Her expression was something between restrained laughter and /fear/ because oh god she had just assaulted a dude.

Ironically, the boy didn't seem to mind all that much. He smiled and glanced in Hei and Nemo's direction for a moment before turning his full attention on Olivia. "Hey!~ I was just trying to 'become one with the pokemon'." he explained, his tone suggesting he was quoting someone. Olivia just sort of... stood there for a moment trying to swallow what he'd just said. "Uh—what..?" she asked, a bit skeptical for obvious reasons. "I guess I can't blame you, though..." the boy continued with a helpless shrug of his arms. Pardon? "It was an easy mistake to make, I guess~" he finished with a grin. Oh, /snap/! The flirt was being flirted with! Things just got all kinds of real! Olivia just sort of deadpanned for a moment. On one hand, she couldn't help but be impressed with the boy's handywork. On the other, if romance novels had taught her anything it was that pursuing two love interests at the same time could only end in an intervention that left exactly nobody happy and one person without a house.

"...Sorry, but I've already got my eyes on capturing someone else!~" she quipped in a cheery manner. Ouch! Rejection. The boy frowned at this, but seemed to product a pokeball from... somewhere. "Perhaps you'd consider entertaining me with a battle, then?" the male asked, to Olivia's surprise. She hesitated a moment before gleefully producing a pokeball of her own. "Okay..! But first—What's your name? ...And what's with the outfit?" she asked, apparently not satisfied with his earlier explanation. The boy shook his head for a moment as if amused in a condescending sort of way. "Dave—It's a leftover from Halloween. Wanna take a guess what my favorite pokemon is??" he joked.

"Is it /skitty/??" she asked, simultaneously throwing her ball onto the ground, where a skitty emerged. The boy responded by sending out an, you guessed it, eevee. Just like that, a battle had started. Olivia looked pretty pumped, but she seemed to be enjoying herself. The first to make a move was Dave. He ordered his skitty to use takedown, and Olivia... didn't actually issue a command. Her skitty seemed to be playfully jumping around, wagging her tail slowly through the air and mewing at the eevee even as it hesitantly rushed her. The attack connected head on, and Olivia's skitty slid back an entire foot through the snow before regaining it's balance. However, something seemed to be wrong with Dave's eevee. It now looked incredibly guilty, and refused to move as Olivia's skitty pranced up to it and rubbed her cheek against it affectionately.

...Now what in the world was going on? Dave issued orders, but his eevee ignored him. Perhaps Hei or Nemo might recognize what had happened. Eevee was infatuated! Finally, however, it seemed to snap out of it for a moment and abruptly shove skitty back, though it's attacks lacked heart, and therefore power. This time skitty barely seemed to mind. However, this time Olivia issued a command. "Alright Skitty, payback!" she commanded, and the kitten pokemon flashed her teeth before abruptly turning tail and smacking Dave's eevee hard... with her tail. The eevee was sent flying a good distance before it landed in the snow, standing up slowly in a dazed, infatuated, and injured state. She had completely crippled it with her pokemon's flirting! Dave seemed rather frustrated with the whole deal, as regardless of how he strategized he had little guarantee his eevee would even do anything.

With two more orders of the move payback, Olivia's skitty finally downed the eevee. It had taken longer than simply overpowering it, but one couldn't deny how effective it looked. The boy released his next pokemon, a jolteon. Olivia commanded her skitty to use wish, and th larger pokemon was immediately ordered to use thunderbolt, which scored a direct hit and seemed to push Olivia's skitty to the brink of her endurance. However, a seemingly supernatural glow seemed to drop from the sky onto Skitty, visibly healing her wounds to some degree. This was moot however, as Olivia could tell she wouldn't be able to pull that off again. Another thunderbolt rocked skitty's body and Olivia grinned. "Alright, Skitty! Use your /last resort/!~" she chimed in, a slightly musical note to her tone. At this, Skitty rushed the jolteon in response and quite literally decked it with surprising force as it attempted and utterly failed to dodge. The kitten pokemon seemed to be fighting it's hardest, and whacked the jolteon several times with her tail before a jolt of electricity shot through her body, causing her to freeze up. She was then cleanly knocked out by yet another thunderbolt attack.

Olivia produced a second pokeball with an audible 'hmph!', still smiling without a care in the world. She would look around before turning her gaze on Nemo from wherever she'd chosen to be for the moment being, winking to the other female for an unknown purpose. She then turned and tossed the ball, releasing a buneary. The buneary made a rather aggressive looking fighting stance and was promptly assaulted with a thunderbolt. This time however Olivia had a counter ready. "Buneary, mirror coat!" she ordered, and the bunny pokemon seemed to brace herself. Her fur coating shone with a supernatural power and though the electricity clearly hurt her it seemed to linger on her body. A very short moment later Buneary abruptly let loose a blast of magnified electricity back at the jolteon, striking it with enough power that it promptly dropped like a rock, fainting on the spot.

"W-What?? That's not possible!" Dave exclaimed in pure disbelief as if believing that life had cheated him, somehow. "Why's that?" Olivia asked as if genuinely curious. ...Or perhaps she actually was and didn't understand. The boy didn't respond to this question, needless to say, but he did release a third pokemon. This was yet another eevee, which he promptly ordered to use bite. "Alright, buneary! Use Work Up!" Olivia commanded, but this seemed to go unheeded by her pokemon. Rather, buneary crouched down as the eevee approached, curling her ears in. As Dave's Eevee reached out to take a chomp out of her she abrupt and rapidly uncurled her ears to strike it with a sky uppercut attack from below! The bunny pokemon simultaneously used bounce, which literally sent Dave's eevee into the sky, only to land not long later and get almost immediately stomped on by buneary with a loud crack. Never fear though! That was just snow crunching, though the combo attack proved too much for the eevee and it fainted on the spot.

"Oh..." Olivia said, slightly put off by her pokemon's refusal to listen to her. Buneary turned to face Olivia and the young trainer immediately threw up her hands as if to ward off a blow. "No—No... That's alright! You did good." she said, only the slightest hint of awkwardness in her voice. Buneary turned back to Dave and the Olivia just sort of watched him for a moment, her hands drifting to her hips expectantly. Dave seemed to notice this as he was putting his pokeballs away and smiled awkwardly in return.

"Nah... That was actually my last pokemon." he admitted. "It's hard to obtain an eevee. They're a rare pokemon, y'know!" he said, and Olivia shrugged lightly in a mock helpless manner. "Oh, alright!~ Would you like to see the rest of my pokemon anyway?" she asked, seemingly a bit eager. Dave answered her with a slightly apathetic "Sure." and Olivia tossed out two more pokeballs, a kirlia and a piplup emerging from them. The kirlia curtsied to Dave and the piplup crossed it's flippers in a domineering manner. Olivia then proceeded to turn towards Nemo in search of approval. Did I do good, Nemo? Did I?? Huh??

The ego of Nemo crawled across her lips again, as the teacher with an urge to intervene claimed she was any wiser than supposedly idiotic or abusive teachers; she had yet to give any useful advice beyond wearing full clothes. Were there a damn to give, she would have offered it to allow Hei an opportunity to teach the students. Unfortunately, there wasn't, and she was far happier to watch the woman meander about the plains while spouting the values of friendship and working together, as though that should have been one's sole purpose.

Being aware of the situation at hand was somewhat difficult for the teen, as Olivia plucked the berry from her fingers instead of eating it from them, as she had in the snowdrift before. A small crease foremd across her fair brow, as she wondered what had changed since that moment. Something innate about her initial appearance could have been the catalyst for the shift of response; as far as she was aware, nothing about herself had changed since then. Or it rose from Olivia's state of mind, being in a haze having changed her reaction and inhibitions, in much the same way alcohol or psychic abilities would. She did catch a stray word from Hei, despite this confusion, and raised her eyebrow slightly at the teacher. "Did yo-"

Nemo was cut off by Olivia's declaration of something on the horizon, so she left the sentence hanging and turned to face this new distraction. Her gaze followed the trail of Olivia's arm, until it landed on the deceptively large 'Eevee' squatting amongst a pack of Snorunt. Before she could exclaim, a Pokeball hurtled through the air in a movement faster than she'd thought possible from the hand-holdee. Time to slip into another memory or period of bafflement was snatched away, as the 'Eevee' yet out a very human yelp of pain and sparked Nemo's incredulity instead. Olivia was a waif of a girl, and Pokeballs were practically built for soft impacts, yet this kid could barely handle one throw.

Her reactions dulled, as Olviia released her hand and left it hanging in the icy air for a moment, as the stranger challenged her to a battle and they traded names. Eevee was apparently his favorite Pokemon, which was a concept Nemo couldn't help but handle with a good dose of venom in her thoughts. She stood were she had in the snow, arm just slightly out of place with the rest of her stance, as she watched Dave summon an Eevee of his own. The day did not seem to be passing well for her, and this was only making it worse. A girl with two Eeveelutions, a snowdrifted Eevee, a girl with feelings Nemo didn't know how to handle, and suddenly the surprise of a boy plucked straight from her nightmares.

A fog glazed over Nemo's eyes briefly, as the battle continued in the background, as she remembered herself small and skinny from lack of nourishment. She was ignorant as a child, refusing to eat the foods that could make her strong and sustaining only on whatever candy she could scrounge from the other members of the Pyrite Martyrs. Then there was Krissy, the little Eevee that was something of a runt amongst the rest of Orre's Pokemon. Small and weak, yet with the potential to become something great, despite the lack of bitterness in her pure little PokeHeart. She'd help snatch snacks from whoever happened to be around, to feed her hungry mistress.

The thought of mimicking such kindness was knocked straight out of Nemo's mind, as Dave summoned his Jolteon, his Eevee having been defeated. So she just stood to the side of the battlefield, glaring daggers at the costumed boy in a way that said "I will cut you.", while she barely processed the rest of the battle going on before her. If the boy was going to mock her by not even being a talented trainer, not giving his Pokemon all the care that they deserved, then he was going to get all the glares in the world. Then he exclaimed that Eevee were a hard Pokemon to find, and she glared only more intensely. Well, bless your little heart. She remarked snidely in her head.

Finally, Nemo's reverie of hatred and bile was broken by the sound of Pokemon escaping their Pokeballs. Olivia had won the battle against the cove in costume, and engendered far more appreciation in Nemo than a battle against some regular shmuck. She noticed that the flirtatious teen had a Kirlia, as well, who she would have to introduce to Ezra...or perhaps not, if she continued to be as flamboyant with her power as in the battle with the Abomasnow. That glare was something else, and an irony that Nemo was completely unaware of.

Then Olivia shot Nemo an inquisitive look, and she seized the chance to hug Olivia closely in celebration of her victory. "That was awesome!" She congratulated, cuddling just a bit too tightly. "We should work together in a double battle sometime; I'd like to have you on my side." She added, releasing the tightness of her grip ever-so-slightly, aware of her potentially crushing strength. Before Dave could get a word in edgeways, Nemo looked to Hei. "What does the teacher think?"

Kilik would find that Valorie was glaring daggers at him after he'd made his little speech. Her expression had distorted into something resembling hatred and it was admittedly a bit unbecoming of her. The girl she hadn't even gotten the name of joined in, teaming up against her, followed by Drake. Valorie's gaze fell in such a manner that her loose hair shifted to shield her eyes from view. She oddly enough... did not say anything in response to all this. She had gone dead silent in the face of all this criticism. In truth, she desperately wanted to defend herself, but did not know how. Backed into a corner she froze up like a deer in headlights and her train of thought derailed as her emotions combined with her anxiety just... demolished her ability to think. Dragonite seemed to notice this, somehow, and shifted as if to get a better look at her trainer. However, this proved impossible for the large dragon and she gave up after a moment.

"..."

Though Valorie was not meeting Mana's gaze, a familiar feeling welled up in her chest. At first this confused her, because it was an out-of-context feeling that didn't quite match up with the stimulus it was attached to, like smelling cheeseburgers in a swamp. Valorie felt... drawn to look up, and she met Mana's deliberately cute expression with a somewhat confused, perhaps slightly frustrated expression. She closed her eyes tightly and pinched the bridge of her nose, shaking her head as if to shake away her thoughts. However, the feelings only grew stronger and she soon found herself recognizing where she'd felt these feelings before. It was... love.

A moment of panic filled Valorie's mind as she attempted to hold onto whatever bit of sanity she had left. She couldn't... /love/ Mana! They'd just met! S-She was already committed to loving someone! She wouldn't allow herself to act on this! Valorie grit her teeth, but the rational portion of her mind was being smothered however, and she soon found her inhibitions vanishing under a sea of acceptance and desire. She seemed to relax a bit and a smile even formed on her face, followed by... tears. Without her inhibitions they flowed freely down her cheeks for all to see. It turns out only her fear of being mocked further had been preventing her from breaking down and crying in the face of all that criticism, but what was with that smile?

After a moment Valorie's gaze finally shifted back up to face Mana, though it avoided that of the others. She seemed oddly happy now, for unknown reasons. "Y-You're right... Let's go back and... enjoy Thanksgiving..." she admitted in a humbled tone. Now, anyone who knew Valorie extensively would've been able to recognize that this behavior was absolutely unnatural.

Olivia was hugged and praised by none other than the one person she'd appreciate it from the most. Kiss it, Mario. My princess /wasn't/ in another castle! Olivia was surprised and flattered by the affection at first, but quickly realized that it was compressing her ribcage in a slightly painful manner. She accepted it however and wrapped her arms around Nemo's lower back, leaning forward against her to rest her chin on Nemo's shoulder. To her relief, Nemo's grip loosened and she found herself able to relax. "Mmm... I'd like to be your partner in anything and everything~" she flirted, classy as ever. She seemed to have a serious twist to her tone however, suggesting that she was completely open to the idea of being partners for pokemon battles. "I don't think I'm anywhere near as impressive as you were back there, though~" she remarked, deliberately stroking Nemo's ego. In all fairness though, it was pretty fair to say that Nemo was stronger than her. She could've probably killed Olivia with hugs if she tried. Just looking at the two's figures it was evident which one of them worked out more, and this was reflected in Nemo's ability to use teamwork and even more advanced strategies, whereas Olivia's most dangerous strategies were based on just throwing powerful attacks at the opponent when convenient and flirting constantly. Meanwhile, that boy in the eevee costume gawked as he watched this affection going on, dumbfounded. He slowly realized what was going on however, and his eyes just sort of widened a bit in realization. He was left speechless however, and just sort of watched for the moment being.

As Hei spoke, the boy wearing the eevee costume frowned. "Where are you getting these numbers from??" he asked, bewildered. Olivia shifted to look at Hei from her comfortable position in Nemo's arms. She had to admit, 30% sounded pretty specific. It didn't really make sense in the context. The way she said it almost sounded like she was reciting a quote from somewhere, which raised the question the boy had just asked. As Hei went on, both the boy in the eevee suit and Olivia just sort of... stared as if Hei was speaking in the tongue of Cthulu, likely still holding Nemo affectionately in her embrace. She was totally enjoying this more than she should have.

It was quickly becoming apparent that Hei was insane. It was the only logical conclusion.

Olivia declined to comment however, and continued to stare until the older female brought up the issue with her buneary. She wanted Olivia to take an attack from her pokemon?! Did she /look/ like she could take a hit?! Olivia seemed a bit unnerved. "...I'm still trying to recover from this morning." she said in an almost apologetic tone, hinting at an earlier incident. "Besides! Winning isn't /everything/, is it?" she asked all innocent-like.

The boy in the eevee costume seemed a bit frustrated by Hei's attitude, but decidedly departed, unable to come up with a response for the woman babbling about crazy stuff.

A comment raised itself on the tip of Nemo's tongue, as Hei criticized the technique of the Eevee boy. Were she of softer heart, the teen would have pointed out that the teacher made no effort for suggestions of how to better his battling, but she found the boy infinitely more irritating than the fact-spouting woman. Sure enough, he sauntered off after a few more moments and responses from Olivia, for which she was infinitely grateful. Being in control of her rage was something she was once again grateful for; that would have ended up with a few more broken teeth, otherwise.

There it was; that word again. Hei using a plural to describe herself, though she was quite correct with the third wheel statement, considering the way she was chewing out Olivia and Nemo like a chocolate cake instead of offering some lessons. Then Olivia had to defend herself from an accusation of being a wimp, despite the battle that she'd recently won. The flirtatious teen was no more wimpy than any of the other trainers Nemo'd seen on this island, and she smelled nicer than them, too. Though claiming that winning wasn't everything was something of an amusing comment, she resisted the urge to smirk; of course it was! But given her current befuddlement, she didn't dare say it for fear of her hypocrisy being pointed out.

"Unless our teacher can heal Pokemon as well as pulling facts out of her ass, I think we should heal our Pokemon back in town." Nemo suggested to their trio of strikingly different perspectives. While Hei silently deemed Nemo and Olivia lustful teenagers, and Olivia deemed them starcrossed lovers, Nemo wondered what the hell to do, and where the strategy guide could be found. At least that was something she could stay quiet about, and she hadn't done anything wrong with hugging just yet. Their proximity was surprisingly warming for the teen, given her apathy towards the biting cold that surrounded them, and the feeling of slender fingers resting on the toned arch of her back was surprisingly soothing for the aches that radiated beneath her pale skin.

Stupid sexy wimps.