"Well... you've never done any mountain bikin', right? Tell you what, take a few ride on the Trainer's Trail, just to get a handle of it." Regina pulls out a pokéball, releasing a Staravia. "While you're doing that, Shooting Star here will show your Farfetch'd the area, and help it spot the duders from above. That works with ya?"

Jake beat his chest proudly,
"I'ma city boy through and through, so beating the night challenge was a new experience. I bet I could conquer the hardest trail, but if Fetcher needs time to scope out where all them duders are, I'll start with the Trainer Trail -- after all, I am a trainer."

Jake did his best to puff himself up, but probably came off as more naive and braggadocios than anything else. Even if he did not come off in the most positive light, he set off down towards the trainer trail, slow and steady at first, keeping Skipper's pokeball close at hand in case the duder infestation somehow reached the trainer trail too.

He treated the trail like going down a steep street back home. Of course, the obstacles here were different than home -- at home there were vehicles that moved out of the way of his wild biking. Here the rocks and trees would not go out of their way to avoid him, so he had to learn how to corner more tightly.

For a first experience, it went better than you expected. You have enough reflex to manage the faster parts, and  a good balance for the slower parts. After your second ride, you feel confident enough to try the next trail up: Skid Row.

That one was more unnerving, as you spent most of the trip sliding sideways. You still make it down in one piece, but it takes a moment for your legs to stop shaking when you come to a stop.

While you're resting, Fetcher comes back and raises a wing. He seems ready to guide you down Valley Drain.

What a thrill! Jake hadn't done anything this exciting since... the night challenge. Despite the near constant exposure to extreme activities, Jake still had a mission to do, and the will to try yet another trail. Returning to the top of the trail, Jake gave a salute to the employee with the booming voice as he readied himself for Valley Drain,
"Alright Ma'am, time for the big one! I'm gunna catch them all! Or, well, a lot of them!"

As he readied himself at the starting point, he looked up to his Farfech'd and gave a command,
"Fly as low as you safely can and keep talking so I can watch the trail and follow your voice!"

With that, Jake kicked off and headed down the trail, trying to keep a slow speed as he split his attention between getting directions from his pokemon and not falling flat on his face.

If you had any doubt about how literal the names of the trails were, they're gone now. The Valley Drain is a natural cut in the mountain, making a V-shaped miniature valley nestled between The Ridge and the Wall Ride. It's classed as hard as Skid Row, but it seems a lot less scary to you. You only have to ride up one side of the valley, then slalom back down and up the other side, all to avoid large rocks scattered on each side of the trail.

Of course, your real worry isn't the trail itself, but the rock pokémons waiting to blow you up if you hit them. But thanks to Fetcher, you soon find the first of them.

The stone your companion points at (from a safe distance) seems identical to the ones blocking parts of the trail, except for one small detail: it's on the side you would use to avoid the blocked parts. You quickly skid to a halt, and decide how to approach the threat...

Jake enjoyed the ups and downs of The Valley Drain, but it also made him nervous about a potential trip down the Wall Ride. There would have the most geodudes and maybe be a sheer cliff. Maybe he could catch enough Geodudes on this path to avoid hitting the hardest one. His brief foray into considering planning for the future was cut short when Fetcher signaled to him the presence of prey.

He quietly signaled the bird back, hopped off his bike and released Mudkip. He again signaled for quiet as he looked around to see if there were other suspicious rocks around. Then, he signaled to Skipper,
"Alright, blast it with a water gun when it is still asleep, let's see how it feels when taking a bath!"

From what the employee had said, there would be plenty to try to catch. This first bout, he was more interested in seeing if he could manage to KO one with a super-effective shot from Skipper.

Skipper takes his time to aim... and douses the geodude with water. For a moment, you think it's a one-hit KO, but it keeps moving. Barely. And he starts to glow...

OOC: The geodude survived the hit thanks to Sturdy. You have a chance to catch it now, otherwise... it's gonna blow!

It didn't take long for Jake to whip out one of the empty pokeballs given to him by the employee and toss it to the glowing Geodude. He suspected it was about to explode... but perhaps it was going to evolve. In either case, it would have been bad news for him.

The safari ball hits the Geodude straight on, turning it's glow from yellow to red before it vanishes. It shakes three times... then locks, capturing the rock pokémon.

Once you're done celebrating, Fetcher flies ahead to spot the next target. Before he can even shout, you see he found it by a rock thrown at your companion. Moving closer, you see that Geodude decided to try blocking the small stream at the bottom of the trail, though right now it screaming at your Farfetch'd.

Jake tries to recall Farfetch'd into his pokeball to shield it from the angry geodude. He didn't want to risk his scout getting KO'd before he captured enough duders.
"Watch out, Fetcher!"

As he was coaxing Fetcher back to the pokeball, he released Skipper again. This time he didn't catch a geodude off-guard, so it might be a bit more of a fight,
"Alright Skipper, blast it with your water gun. Careful, this one might put up a bigger fight. It is sassy!"

Jake pointed dramatically to the sassy geodude and waited for Skipper to open fire.

Skipper jumps into action, and opens fire... well, water. The Geodude panics, throwing dirt into the air to try and stop the stream. All it does is cover it in mud. A second shot sends the rock pokémon reeling, making it easy to capture.

Jake cheered Skipper on enthusiastically,
"Heck yeah! Way to blast him... or her! No matter, great blasting!"

Despite the inane cheering, Jake found time to wrap his hand around a pokeball and chuck it at his second victim. He started to feel a little bit bad for surprising these poor geodudes, blasting them with water, then moving onto the next one. But it also made him feel like a great trainer, clearing through pokemon with virtually no resistance!

Assuming the duder stays in the ball, he'd fetch the pokeball and continue down the trail for a bit, trying to see if he can spot a geodude on the path without having fetcher serve as a scout. Given the clear pattern of rocks on the course, it wouldn't be impossible...

Remembering how Regina said they don't like crossing rivers, you climb on the south side of the trail, opposed to where the Geodudes are coming from. It gives you a great view of the area, and you can easily spot half-a-dozen rocks that seems out of place or moving.

You also get a look at the Wall further north. It does looks scary, the trail barely a foot wide, and winding back and forth down the almost vertical surface. More curious though are a few more Geodude that seem to make their way across. For big balls with just two arms, those rocks are quite adept at climbing and traversing mountains.

While you consider what to do next, your attention is drawn to a splashing noise, accompanied by panicked cries. Looking beside one of the planned obstacles of the course, you notice a small pool of water. Nothing deep, just enough to make an impressive splash as a bike runs through it. But for the Geodude who rolled in it? It acts like it's in the middle of the deepest ocean...

Jake's eyes widened as he saw the difficulty of the wall ride. Maybe if he needed to get more duders, he would just walk down the trail instead of trying to take the bike down it. Even so, from his vantage, it looked like it would be hard to keep his footing on a slope that steep.

In any case, he did not need to worry about that yet. There were plenty more duderz to shoot and catch. The mission had been pretty successful up to this point, got two captured and none of his pokemon were injured.

When he heard the cries nearby he slowly wheeled over to the source of the noise before hopping off his bike. Seeing it was a duder in distress, he decided to take a different tack from the previous encounters. Rather than release his pokemon to deal with it for him, reached out to grasp one of the geodude's arms and drag it from the puddle. Jake didn't mind ambushing a geodude taking a nice nap, but it felt bad to proverbially kick a geodude when it was drown.

As you pull the flailing arm, you're forced to step with both feet into the pool to brace yourself. It's only a foot tall, but that little stone is heavy, something not helped by his flailing.

It starts to calm down once it's free from the water. After it's panic, the Geodude is left laying on the trail, wet and tired.

Jake takes a moment to catch his breath from yanking the dense stone from the patch of water. After catching his breath, he takes out one of his pokeballs and plops down cross-legged a couple feet from the wet and tired duder. He set the pokeball between them and talked in a calm, but friendly voice,
"If you want a nice place to rest for a bit, you can come with me. I'll keep watching your back and you can watch mine. We can be a butt-kicking team!"

While he did not have as strong of a natural connection with pokemon as some others did, he felt like he did a solid for this pokemon, so maybe it would recognize Jake's actions and want to team up!

The geodude's gaze goes from the ball to you, then with a happy "Dude!", he holds up it's hand for a fist-bump before tapping the pokéball.

OOC: And you've caught your very own Geodude! I'll send his sheet through PM in a moment.

Rather than immediately bring the duder now named -- appropriately enough -- "Duder" into a pokeball, Jake released the rest of his pokemon to make friends with Duder. He also had an idea to get the dude dry.
"Alright, Skipper use your dry skin to soak up some of the water on Duder. Then, Lackey"

He pointed to his lacconey to show he now had a name for it,
"Use a weak ember just enough to dry up the rest of the water! Don't go to hard and hurt The Dude."

Putting his hands on his hips, Jake couldn't help but feel proud of himself. He new had four pokemon. Two of which he caught himself and two of which he was given. He still had to TRAIN them, but he was off to a great start. Despite his pride bubbling up, he didn't want to stand around too long; he needed to finish the job before dinner with Seymour.

"Alright all of you, time to keep going!"

He wasn't too specific about what exactly he was doing for fear his new duder wouldn't exactly be impressed by his job of rounding up all its brothers and sisters and handing it over to some rando. So, Jake continued mostly as he did before. He approached the next duder without Fetcher leading the way -- as he had spotted a few from his high vantage point. As soon as he got within range, he released Skipper and ordered another barrage.

Skipper made short work of the next few Geodudes. And when he missed one, you realized your fears were unfounded, as Duder eagerly sends the opponent reeling with a Magnitude.

An hour later, you finally reach the bottom of the trail. In your bag is almost a dozen safari balls filled with Geodudes. Despite having not taken injuries, Skipper is starting to get tired, and seems quite happy to have returned the rental place.

After sending off another customer, Rebecca notices you. "Kid! How did your trip go? Did you manage to catch any of them?"

Jake was ready for a break too. While he was not doing any of the fighting, he was certainly providing the transportation. In many ways, stopping and starting down the slope was more tiring than blitzing down the course in one go. Still, the youth had enough energy to flash a broad smile,
"Heck yeah! I got them all! Well, not even close to them all, but I filled up a bunch of your pokeballs, over 10 I think! I got one of my own in my own pokeball!"

Jake whipped out the Duder's ball and cracked it open to show off his find,
"Check him out! He even helped catch one with an epic head bang -- he is a rock star after all! I named him Duder!"

Jake then handed over the bag-o-balls without bothering to count the load. After all, that was the Bexter's job. As he chatted with Rebecca, he stretched out his legs -- it had been a while since he was on a bike last and it definitely worked a different set of muscles than walking and running.

"Great job! And it looks like you picked a great one, I'm sure he'll be great on ya team!" She counts the filled balls, setting them to the side as she pulls them out of the bag. "I'm impressed kid. I didn't think you'd managed to grab that many in one go! With some training, they'll be able to guard the trails from the wild ones. Let's take a look at them..." She gives a slap at each balls in a row, releasing the whole batch at once.

As it turns out... it was not a good idea.

Though the Geodudes are all pretty weak from fighting against you, they still got enough energy to jump around. And in a few cases... explode! Before Rebecca can react, one of them blows up in the middle of the pile of pokéball, scattering them. Scared by the explosion, the rest of the Geodudes start running about, bumping into the rental bikes, jumping into the shed, and tripping the customers.

"Thunderation! These stones needs a serious wrangling! Help!" Rebecca shouts, running after the balls.

OOC: All that activity increased Skipper's Def to Average, while Fetcher's Def increased to Above Average.

Jake was about to do a victory pose when the chaos erupted. Rather than a premature 'mission accomplished,' Jake decided to help with the wrangling,
"Duder, use rock polish, then get after some of them!"

Jake then released Fetcher and Lackey at the same time, letting Skipper rest in the pokeball,
"Fetcher, signal to Lackey and Duder for any ones in hiding. And Lackey, use your poweder stone to finish the ones you see off! They are all weak and captured, so don't hold back, go for the KO!"

Despite Jake's decision to help, he had also briefly considered taking advantage of the chaos to take a bike and run -- errr bike. He decided against this because Rebecca seemed to be cool.

Lackey and Duder do a good job helping Rebecca's Starmie in knocking out the rampaging Geodudes. But while all that is happening, you notice Fetcher signaling you from the rental cabin. At first, you think it's a hiding pokémon, until you notice a couple of kids digging through the snacks Rebecca sells, apparently looking for a five-fingered discount.

Jake was torn when he saw his fellow gutter-punks searching for snacks. He saw his old self in them. However, he was working for big business now, so he needed to be an enforcer of the rules. He took a moment to consider his choices: become complicit or turn them in. Not liking either of these choices, he decided to take the third option of halfheartedly running them off.

He quietly approached the door and slipped into the cabin and spoke in just a bit louder than a conversational level in a 'how do you do fellow kids' tone,
"Hey there, you got 30 seconds to scram before I start chasing you down and catching you like pokemon. If you put on a good show of running, you'll get away with the loot you already got."

If they cooperated, Jake would be helping kids in need get a meal and saving the business from having their supplies completely emptied... plus, he would be a hero of both groups to boot! This was a potential win-win-win...win!

The two kids look at each other, and answers with "ah... okay. GTFO!" And they run off with as much as they can carry. You chase them for a short while, but quickly come back to deal with the Geodudes.

Once the clean-up is finished, Rebecca looks over the mess she accidentally caused. "Welp, these guys will take more training than ah thought. 'Least I got something to work with, and they didn't break too much. And thanks for chassing off those thieves too. Last thing ah need teen causing trouble here." She shakes her head. "Anyway, thanks again. Feel free to tear up tha tracks! And if you come back around, be shure to drop by, ah'll give you a discount!"

And with that, you enjoy the rest of the day trying the various (reasonable) trails, until you get a message from Seymour on where to meet for diner.

OOC: Unless there's something else you want to do here, I think we can move back to the Bluweil thread.