Shalin would.

Her synced Flygon peered toward the lake, keeping a close eye on her trainer as she stroked one of the towering Floatzel's golden tails. Prower lowered them to the water's surface, Shalin resting her hand near the Pokémon's rear as she waded through the shallows. Rather than climbing onto the saddled water-type conventionally, she let go of Prower, floated on the surface briefly, and sumberged her legs once again when they were straddling his tails. He turned them so that Shalin gently landed on one.

"I can't believe how strong you've become, Prower!" she cheered as the Floatzel drifted toward a support pole for an offshore platform she had recently installed. Parts of Shalin's upper body were rapidly bobbing: a sign that she really was sitting on one of the Floatzel's tails. It was whirling nowhere close to fast enough to provide meaningful thrust. "Now, grab onto that pole and let's go!"

Once the golden, floating Pokémon wrapped his arms securely around the pole, water began to ripple all around him as Shalin's upper body turned into a blur, appearing to move like the head of a jackhammer from the distance Johanna Joy would have been at. The Flygon's scales glowed a bright green as an Infinity Energy spike shot between Shalin and her Sygna Pokémon, their peak bond the only thing keeping Shalin from flying off the tail in a split second.

"So it's the bugs that are poisonous or that can sting, is that it?" Shalin asked, though mostly rhetorically. It was making sense; insect venom was intense, Beedrill and Scolipede capable of paralyzing entire limbs with just one sting. Michiko and Sol don't have stingers or mandibles. It was little wonder the Scizor scared him; they were vicious bugs. She was curious about this one, though; how could this one fly so effortlessly? Scizor didn't use their wings to fly; they used vibration to regulate their internal temperatures. It was how they could survive in anvironments both hot and cold.

It was a curious discovery, and gave Shalin the idea to evolve Hayabusa. Even so, she would have to study the metallic bug-type more. She noticed the wild waiting for him... beckoning him, almost. "See, Zachary? They don't hurt you unless you hurt them." Sol fluttered closer to his trainer, the bright Volcarona's presence forcing the Scizor's wings to churn a little faster to keep cool. "We've got your back if things get out of hand."

Shalin sighed, perhaps being a bit too open with Lathiel's seedy origins. There were enough of them running around Hoenn now that she felt it was common knowledge. If he didn't follow the news much, then it made sense. Still, the Three Day War was pretty well-known in Hoenn. The Type: Null in the region turned on their trainers, and it showed in how difficult Lathiel was to raise. She felt like she was gettig close, though: close to at last breaking through and feeling like she was working with a normal Pokémon.

"If you have a problem with authority figures, I can't recommend you join Law Enforcement. Commanding officers are pretty... blunt and intolerant. You do what they say without objection or even questioning them, or they punish you. Rangers have a lot more freedom, and from my experience, build lasting relationships with their leaders. I've been on both sides of it, believe me."

Shalin, checking the entrance upon hearing a loud wind gust and a rumble associated with it, saw the storm was really picking up. Thankfully, they were upwind, minimizing the risk of snow piling up in front of them. Even if the wind suddenly shifted, they had Scar to melt their way out. "The worst of it's out there now. If we can survive this, then we can get to work."

Shalin and Sandy started to glow brighter as the pitch of the desert dragon's song grew. Their wake whipped up a whirlwind that turned into an intense but highly localized sandstorm, the rider's SYGNA SUIT protecting her from being sandblasted. It protected her from many other things, including vibration so fast that it would have reduced her to paste without her suit on.

"Alright, Sandy, I think I'm warmed up!" she cried, though in a voice so distorted by the vibrations that it was likely only the Sygna Flygon could hear her clearly. "Time to ride the BOOMBURST!"

Before she accelerated her wings to invisible speeds, the Flygon saw a Ranger doing work on a weather vane, a Hisuian Decidueye keeping a close eye on them both. Such an attack would put them in great peril! Rather than churn them at full speed, she brought them to a stop, easing Shalin away from the speed to save her energy for the second run-up later.

Were Yuina and her Pokémon to take a closer look, she might recognize the green-scaled suit. Shalin herself was far too dizzy and delirious to recognize anyone, coming down from the intense Infinity Energy high that came with riding on her Flygon's wing fluttering at furious rates...

Elaine's Flygon didn't go unnoticed; she smiled, pushing off the back of the Seismitoad and letting the Flygon catch her in the dense environment that the duo could swim through if they wanted. "It did," she answered as Sandy slowly sank toward the trench, the low-light conditions beginning to get progressively darker the deeper she went. "Even if he was big enough, I don't think I could have handled him. He was doing somersaults with his hooves so fast it would have made me sick just trying to hold on." Not to mention with such high-pressure jets on his feet, he could buck Shalin with bone-shattering force if he wanted.

Even Hoenn's wildest Pokémon rider had her limits.

As she continued to descend, and Elaine as well if she followed, the hum of Flygon wings seemed to become louder as it drowned out what would have been resounding silence. "What was weird?" she asked, reaching for another Poké Ball as they were soon to reach a point where the realm's natural lighting would not reach...

It was relaxing, for a change, for the Tera Crystals inside the RKS Simulation to manifest in this way. A way that was less serious, and more where the duo could let their imaginations run wild. "I couldn't be a Gym Leader," Shalin admitted to Lutgarde as her Type: Null mount paced about the white space before them. "Too much like running a business. I'm not detail-oriented enough. But if I was..."

The gears began to turn. Once, inside the RKS Simulation, she had designed a Gym around exploration. Another time, a rodeo. This time, she had a much better, more applicable idea. "What about a Gym around the energies that fuel apex Pokémon's forms?" It was a special place where trainers could get their feet wet with Mega Evolution, a Sygna Suit, and the like, without having to own one. "Imagine being able to try a Sygna Suit before buying one!"

The two designs took form: Shalin's, a dirt field where candidates did their best to bask in their eight seconds of glory; Nikita's, a giant escape room that trainers and Pokémon had to solve if they wanted the detective's Badge. Not all of her Pokémon were violent about it, either; challenger after challenger fell to Treble and Sonnet, two Kommo-o that unseated them with vibration. All it took was losing focus for a moment to go sliding off their scaly backs, particularly when feeling a single muscle in one's limbs was nigh impossible.

The inspectors came, loving both ideas. Sure, Shalin's was a tad unhinged, but it sure was entertaining, both for challengers and for observers. Whether there were grunts from being hurled off or triumphant whoops from enduring ferocious bucking from the Captain's Pokémon, it was a fun time... until the presence of a POWER SPOT brought a sense of fear to the forefront of Shalin's thoughts.

"That's not supposed to be here!" Shalin gasped.

Bass Boost landed on the dark, rocky ground with a thud. It was the opposite of sweltering; their environment was very cool. Not cold like a tundra, but certainly not a pleasant Spring day in Hoenn. With a loud ribbit, all the bumps on her head, arms, and back, including the four beneath the saddle Shalin was sitting in, began to shake with EARTHQUAKE-level vibrations. Their strange environment seemed to slow visual perspective; were she to peer in the amphibian's direction, she would not only be able to see individual vibrations of each of the bumps, but also individual wingbeats of the Flygon above that was powering the Captain's SYGNA SUIT. With the Infinity Energy flowing, Shalin gave the Pokémon a gentle pat: a signal that the warm-up was over.

Once she had recovered her awareness after the intense thrumming sensation coursed through her, Shalin answered Elaine's question. "I wasn't ignoring you. Just had to get my Sygna Suit warmed up. Not too deep - most of my time here was spent excavating the Quaestor Lucis. Today, the League wants me to take some readings at the very bottom of the Ultra Sea. We'll need some Pokémon that can shine light down there."

Once Elaine was ready to go, Shalin would lead the way to the sunken Megalopolan vessel, past it, and to a field of trenches. Bass Boost swam through the strange, viscous atmosphere as though it were water, occasionally tickling Shalin with her vibration to keep her wits about her. "So, remember how I wanted to befriend and ride Keldeo? Well, I met him. He's... a lot smaller than the legends I knew of. Too small for me, even."

With Shalin firmly in place, Saria started swinging the vine about in loops resembling the wildest carnival rides in the world. She let out a whoop with every flick of the Vine Whip's business end as its undulations caught up with her, much like the lurching twists of a roller coaster. "Whoooo-hooooo!!!" she yelped at the apex of a particularly fast flick that threw her to one side of the vine.

"It's soooooo fun!" she cheered as the Venusaur's vine slowed. With no longer having to intensely concentrate to keep both Shalin and Dorian safe, the grass-type extended her other vine toward Dorian, roughly at waist level and right next to him.

The Hisuian Braviary was impressive; though its sheen was different than Sirocco, the black one under Josh's care, it would still be a fine choice to survey the crater with. She smiled briefly upon receiving eye contact from Beckett before turning serious again.

"Wow, he must be making some real lettuce if he's hiring that many people," Shalin remarked. "He keeps the place running so well; I drop by from time to time. Transformed Mauville from a military city to Hoenn's sports hub months after be became Gym Leader there." While she wasn't terribly sports savvy, she could appreciate it through her friend. "Anyway, how about we saddle up and survey the trail?" she asked, Sol's wings beginning to flutter silently.

Leo purred in appreciation of Caelan's scritches before crouching near them, as if beckoning them to hop on. She was going to ask if the Lycanroc was trained to carry them across the land, but refrained from it when she noticed the rock-type's aggression, already sniffing to get on the trail.

Regardless of whether Caelan rode alongside Shalin and Balan, she would try to learn more about the issue at hand. "Were you able to ask the farmers if they knew what kind of Pokémon was snatching the Wooloo?" she asked them. "We can narrow our tactics if we know what we're hunting down."