<sub>the moment a wild pokémon jumps out, mithril's eyes harden, and all her focus is trained on the target in question.

"go, castform," she commands, sending her companion out into battle with a pointed finger. the forecasting pokémon floats forwards, rallying with a cry of challenge against the gloom in question.

hm. she didn't really want to start a forest fire today... but that was the point of practice. besides, she had the tools to stop a fire quickly.

"fire blast!"

castform used fireblast, its white body briefly turning orange from the heat before it emitted a focused burst of flame at the gloom. the supereffective damage did its job; the gloom fainted without a problem, and blended into the surrounding nature the moment it fell prone.

well, that takes care of that. castform returned to mithril's shoulder.

"let's keep looking around, then."</sub>

shiv

it's thirty minutes later, and mithril's getting closer to the end of the woods, but not quite there. it is a forest path, after all; nobody said it would be particularly short. still, it was faster than taking the long way around from petalburg to rustboro (and a rite of passage as opposed to, say, public transportation), and that's what mattered.

but all at once, the hairs on mithril's neck stand, and she whips around, her castform floating off her shoulder and into a ready position. just in time — she backpedals out of the way of a deadly blast of toxic spores, while castform floats above the cloud.

a breloom. that's why she couldn't hear it; they were light on their footwork, so to speak. at least she noticed in time, as opposed to getting a fist in her skull.

although, this one was quite quick... hm.

"weather ball!"

"casa!"

not once questioning its trainer in her decision to hold back on the wild pokemon, castform shot a ball of condensed climate at the breloom — but the fighting-type was too fast to hit. immediately, following up its backstep, the breloom sprung into the air, going for a sky uppercut that barely missed her castform. that sealed the deal.

"castform, return! go, shelgon!"

the weather sprite floated back to mithril's shoulder, before a poke ball erupted and a turtle-like dragon emerged with a growl.

"zen headbutt!"

a psychic-boosted headbutt met the wrong end of a breloom's fist, but shelgon was a tank, through and through, and the mushroom-adjacent beast seemed to be reeling from that one. well, then. she had the upper hand.

the following battle was a one-sided one. the breloom got a lucky shot in, its feint able to break past shelgon's protect, but it lacked the durability to survive an onslaught of flamethrowers, its toxic spores immediately burning up in the heat. once it was worn out enough, mithril palmed a spare poke ball, and —

went for a catch.

---

[ attempting to catch breloom! ]
shiv