Valorie viewed the smile Drake gave with all the skepticism of a existential nihilist. A feeling of relief flooded her. The battle had been kind of close. Crossing her arms she was almost prepared to gloating when Drake took the liberty of mocking himself. This kind of took her by surprise, mainly because he had deliberately gone out of his way to antagonize her earlier. He then handed her what looked like like a pin of some sort. Was that a badge? She couldn't tell, as she'd never owned a badge before. As Drake went on he more or less left her in the dust verbally, as she was too busy trying to wrap her head around the fact that she had been tricked. She didn't particularly like being tricked, but then again he /was/ being nice and she /had/ proven herself. Overall she found herself singificantly calmer, if not suffering from a few lingering feelings of frustration.
Had he just said second strongest dragon master in existance? But... Valorie was no Dragon Master... She'd lost all those battles!--It abruptly occured to her that the man apparently didn't have knowledge of... well...
the other dragon master named Drake! She supposed he was kind of obscure though. She only knew about him because she was, y'know, obsessed. That being said though, there was totally
yet another dragon master named Drake. (...I'm so sorry. |D) ...Huh. Valorie guessed it /was/ an awesome name for a dragon master. She silently wondered whether any of them had ever changed their names at some point and consecutively noted with disappointment that Drake was a strictly masculine name. Drake handed her a a bag of sorts that she was told contained two TMs. Valorie looked up at Drake, finally giving up her grudge in favor of confusion. She wanted to know why he had done what he had done, but she no longer felt mad. The fact that he had implied Lance was involved helped too. Perhaps this was... hardball, so to speak? Valorie attempted to say thank you, but could not bring herself to interrupt Drake. He had so much to say that she had enough trouble keeping up as it was. When he finally did pause Valorie herself was interrupted by the appearance of an unusually large Salamence that promptly roared right in her face, prompting her to attempt to save face by smiling awkwardly in response.
Drake asked her to come by the daycare center and sped off, leaving Valorie to look after him in wonder. She silently noted after a moment that she had probably looked like a dumb child, standing there all baffled while he spoke. She also didn't know if she wanted to go to the day-care center as Drake had asked. Why did she want to go there? She didn't trust someone else to raise her pokemon better than herself, and thus didn't see the point. Given, she only had a team of six battle-ready pokemon.
Then Valorie opened the green bag Drake had given her and things all of a sudden changed. To Valorie's surprise the bag had been folded in on itself and was not a bag at all! Rather, it was a cape. She quickly picked up the bag's contents, which she'd accidently dropped, and turned her attention to the cloak. It was a half cloak, meaning she'd certainly have no trouble tripping over for it as it didn't reach that far down. Sweet! Valorie was immediately pleased, but did a double take. Did a cape really fit the look she was going for? ...A brief image of Clair floated into her mind. Then again Clair's look really wasn't what she'd been going for with her own... Valorie had to think for a moment. Some might say capes were a bit tacky--Screw those guys. Lance wore a cape and he was freaking awesome.
...Dragonite casually floated down nearby, leaning over in an attempt to figure out what Valorie was looking at specifically. What was so special about that piece of cloth? Valorie responded by glancing at Dragonite and smiling at the gargantuan pokemon. She then proceeded to put the cape on, taking the time to fix her hair so that it lay on the outside of the half cape, rather than inside it. That wouldn't have looked so nice.
She then through the process of taking Drake's advice and using those TMs. She supposed he had a point--they were both useful moves in their own right. Charizard in particular was very irritable upon being let out of her ball. For some reason Valorie found this hilarious and giggled out loud in response, taking the liberty of giving the pokemon a brief hug now that they were alone. The irritable pseudo dragon took the gesture pretty well actually, and calmed down into a mildly annoyed stupor. She would have to heal her pokemon up soon. When she went and tried to teach her flygon ice beam however she was surprised to find that well... Flygon couldn't learn it! But then how?-- She silently remarked that Drake apparently had more up his sleeve than she had realized.
...But first... she had a call to make. Valorie pulled an xtransciever from her bag and put it on and powering it up. She then selected her parents numbers from a list of contacts...
