“Whoa!”

That was the first reaction he blurted out the moment his own monkey, who was doing some landscaping around the area thank you very much, was suddenly attacked by a bunch of vines and was in a face-off with—

Another one of its kind?!

“You—you called your monkey what?” he clarified, blinking as he leaned on his left foot to relieve the pressure of having to stand for too long on his right foot.

Okay, now he was embarrassed to all shit.

“I haven’t given mine a name yet. I know, stupid me, right?” he went on with a chuckle, before his own monkey let out a huffy noise and returned to ‘gardening’.

“Sorry about that, my monkey’s more a nature lover…” he apologized with a sheepish grin on his face.

The digging, at least, was appreciated.

“Asides from trying to figure out what exactly they’re capable of asides from swinging around trees and screaming like Tarzan… well, mine loves gardening. I figured, why not channel some of the aggressive energy into the earth instead?”

The monkey that belonged to him was shuffling around in the dirt, before planting a few bushes here and there. While they didn’t flower, a Pelipper who just so happened to fly by overhead caused a light Drizzle to sprinkle over the area, effectively watering the plants that the monkey was planting into the dirt.

“Do you—do you know anything about the so-called… uhh, ‘healing properties’ that they have? Mine hasn’t manifested anything of the sort. Just likes… gardening. To an alarming degree,” he remarked as his simian shuffled off to another untended patch and continued ‘working its magic’ so to speak.

[attr="class","pokkenger"]while the drizzle was appreciated by some kazimir's own monkey just screeched at it as it flew on by and drenched it in ice cold water. the question about what its healing abilities were like and kazimir had to stop for a moment and think about that, rubbing his chin as he tried to recall anything of the sort he might have seen the zarude do that could count as "healing".

"honestly i have no idea. haven't spent a lot of time with him to really see his full abilities, heck i haven't even properly battled-" the screeching continued once again this time looking over kaz could spy his monkey fighting off a lurantis that was a bit too hungry for the green's grown by alexei's own monkey. despite the zarude looking like it was coming out on top of the fight and scaring away the other pokemon kaz could see a line of red running alongside its torso, his zarude also took notice and quickly dug his hand into the ground, small blades of grass budding form the dirt it held as it applied it to the wound and a vine emerged from its body to wrap around its torso like a gauze.

soon after the dirt that was still hanging tightly to its body began to sprout into a full on patch of green that quickly fell off as the vine undid itself and the zarude poked at the faint scar that was left behind. "i...i think we got our answer...i think it heals itself the same way it grows things? from the looks of it?" these rare pokemon sure were something else.

Just as the other was starting to explain how they hadn’t seen anything of the sort he was looking for, the other monkey had gotten into a scuffle with a wild Lurantis.

Which he was pretty sure wasn’t the one that he owned, as that Lurantis had a limp in its step. Count on him adopting injured Pokémon to take care of as well.

“Wait, what—” he trailed off as he watched the other monkey do something that involved a literal kind of first-aid; only involving dirt and…

“Whoa. D’you see that?” he blinked, his eyes going wide at the sight. Unless he’d missed it, how did that—

“It’s with the earth, then,” he continued in quiet wonder. Although, did this mean…

“Ah, shit, don’t tell me I have to eat a mud pie just for that to work?” he broke out into a fit of laughter.

[attr="class","pokkenger"]
"hey don't knock them till you try them. mud pies aren't that bad." kazimir joked along as he too was laughing at the gym leader's statement. still it was a sight to behold, a pokemon that used the earth itself to heal it as well as its allies. the most notorious moves that he knew were heal pulse and life dew that did similar things but those two were more...well energy-like than nature based, saved for the latter life dew in some ways he supposed.

"well at least that's one mystery solved. kinda makes you wonder why they aren't used by rangers or something but i guess not all of them are as chill like yours. think most of them are more...energetic like mine." he couldn't help but feel embarrassed as he remembered the lurantis just now. heck even them being given these pokemon were so that they didn't cause any trouble while they were migrating after all. "you thinking of sending it out on some pokejobs to help with poke centers now that we know about it or what?" he asked to try and keep the discussion going.

At the mention of PokéJobs, he raised his eyebrows curiously.

“Well, now that you mention it—that’s not a bad idea,” he remarked. “Although, right now, there haven’t been any listings. But yeah, if something comes up, can you let me know so we can send these monkeys out on that job?”

He then rummaged around his jacket pockets and pulled out a calling card that had his name and contact details on it before handing it to the other monkey owner.

“Although, those vines are making me consider…” he went on, limping over to where his monkey was still gardening and finding some vine growth from where plants had been recently been buried.

“Have you tried eating one of the roots you saw earlier to see if the healing also worked?” he asked.

All roads—they would lead back to Zac Ramsay, then?

“Thankfully I know him,” he remarked as he turned his attention back to his own bipedal simian, who’d returned their attention back to gardening and planting more flowers along the way.

“It’s finding where he goes to is going to be the problem—I mean did you see where he usually has his gym battles? They’re all over the place!”

Well, it did make sense being the leader whose chosen theme was biomes, anyway.

“Hopefully I can find some time to speak with him privately, he’s got a lot of things on his plate too—just as I do,” he remarked as he leaned on the cane once more, feeling his left foot starting to go numb from all the standing.

“Thanks for the information—I’ll throw in a good word for you when I meet Zac again.”