“Hey, June, bring this to Eris for us.”

“Who?”

“Some kid, has a bunch of weird shit, dressed in red. It’s lunchtime and we need to make sure she eats something.”

“Fine, whatever, where is she?”

“In that one cave system just–”

“Oh no no no no no, I don’t do caves. Get someone else.”

“Sure, and I’ll give them YOUR paycheck for all this.”

“... I fucking hate you.”

–
Arceus, why the fuck did she have to give some kid lunch in a dark, damp cave? If it wasn’t for her comfort Gible, which tried to escape her hands and eat all the rocks present, she’d be a fucking mess by now. Instead, she was anxious as all hell. And this all was happening during her own lunch break.

Dicks. Could’ve let her eat first. She tore off a hunk of her banana and continued on the dark path. Shitty flashlight. Shitty rangers. Shitty stupid cave system. Whatever. At least she could barely see the kid on the very edge of her vision. Then she could give the fucker some lunch and be out of… this…

June stopped dead in her tracks. It took all her willpower to not drop the Gible and banana on the ground and storm off in the opposite direction. This was a joke, right? Like, this was a Zoroark or some shit, in a cave, and they sent her on a fucking joke-trip to haze her, or some shit. Hell, her claustrophobia took a back seat for a hot second; a rare feat not seen for at least two years.

“Why the fuck are you licking rocks?”

---

Eris Halla

As if being talked down to by other Rangers wasn’t enough, now June was being ‘lectured’ by a teenager. Great. Perfect. Wonderful. She’s halfway tempted to eat this brat’s lunch right in front of her stupid face. Beef with someone probably half her age was well within her potential.

But that’d probably end very, very poorly: she wasn’t the one who got food hand-delivered in a strangely lit cave while she licked rocks without a single thought in her head. So, she angrily set the Gible down and pulled off her sling backpack. A brown sack was pulled out, and she stepped forward to offer it to the teen. “Lunch.”

She heard about this sort of thing, from memes online. About how Geologists insist on licking rocks to truly determine what kind they were. How the ‘soul’ of the formation could be gleaned by a simple taste. One lick, and you had the rock dead to rights. Some mechanics did the same with oil and other engine fluids.

They wouldn’t live to see sixty, she figured. That was the express lane to some form of body failure. Rocks couldn’t be much different. Those things were probably caked in some awful bacteria.

“Can’t you, just, get a book, or something?” She asked while she crossed her arms. “And get some other way to figure out a rock? One that doesn’t give you a good chance of being hospitalized?”

Meanwhile, the Gible was following the advice of Eris. She happily ran forward and went for the largest rock she could hold in her stubby short arms. Her teeth gnawed on the hard surface, and her whole body shivered in excitement. Mixed crowed.

---

Eris Halla

“Y-yea, that’s… what’s what I meant, when I said you– you know what,” June stepped forward and snatched the spare sandwich from the teenager, “you lick your rocks and get your lead poisoning. You can bond with all the mechanics that insist on tasting transmission fluid.”

There were plenty of old mechanics, and there were plenty of bold mechanics. There were no old, bold mechanics. The same probably applied to Geologists– minus the part about there being old geologists. She’d yet to meet a wise Geologist.

She devoured the rest of her banana and unwrapped the food with equal ferocity. It looked rather sad, having been crushed by the weight of the packaging. However, she takes a huge bite and looked to Gible.

The creature was very content with her rock. By change, she noticed the Luxray put a paw over his face. She pulled the debris from her jaw, covered in new bite marks and slobber, and held it out to the cat with a big smile on her face.

“You think this dumbass could be a Geologist?” She said through a mouthful of sad sandwich and motioned to the Gible.

---

Eris Halla

“I dunno. People say they can do whatever you’re doing but for cars,” she responded. Again, she didn’t think anyone should be putting anything from their field of profession into their mouths, but it’s not like anyone listened to her. They’d just do it outside her vision. Fine with her; she didn’t want to see it.

But she shook her head when Eris told her the basic requirements for being a Geologist. “She’s dumber than the rocks she eats. Tries to, rather. She's has the reaction time of a microwave, too.”

“Watch,” June bent down and picked up a spare rock, free from saliva. She casually tossed it over to the Gible and landed it right on top of her skull. It took several seconds for the Gible to register what happened, and even longer to turn around to face June. Like those hot pizza displays in gas stations, except this one didn’t have pizza.

Just a piece of raw Combusken for a brain and the cutest face known to man.

“See? Never getting past first grade.” She took another bite of her sandwich, now over halfway gone. “Also? This sucks hard. You dodged a bullet here.”

---

Eris Halla

“Metal? Yea. Egg or grapes? That’s the food exploding, not the microwave,” June explained. She did not even want to ask why the hell a teenager was putting an egg, or even the more questionable grape, into a microwave. Better to let that thought fade into the background and simply move on with her life.

But as Eris explained to her the strength of her Gible, she almost burst out laughing in her face. Instead, she kept most of it in her chest and giggled obnoxiously, “Wh-what? This idiot? Yea, totally strong. Real muscle head.”

“Like, yea, they evolve into strong stuff… but the base model isn’t cracking necks and cashing checks,” she said. Said Gible, meanwhile, waddled over to the new stimuli and took it in her stubby little hands. It was once again offered to the Luxray with another bright smile.

June shoved the last of the mediocre sandwich into her mouth and brushed the oily crumbs off her hands. “Anyway, ith that all you need, or?”

---

Eris Halla

“Samples? No one told me about samples,” she grumbled. June snatched the satchel from the teenager and shoved it in the place the lunch had occupied a minute prior. “Whatever. Thanks for the heads-up. And sandwich.”

Who the hell was Michael Navidson? Probably just another big-name ‘trainer’ that had too much time and way too much investment in Pokemon battling. It would make life a hell-lot easier in the Giant Chasm. However, she much preferred the idea of ‘not being forced to Pokémon battle in the first place’.

Alas, poor June. As per usual, it was either suck it up or not make money.

June bent down and picked up the Gible just as it started clapping for its newfound friend. “And to trade some advice: don’t grow up. Ever. It sucks.”

“Lick ya later, kid,” she raised a hand over her shoulder as she treaded back down the path she same from. However, her brain caught up with her words and she stopped abruptly. “... Actually, that sounds really bad. How about… smell ya later? Yea, that sounds better.”

She continued onward, back out the tunnel. Arceus, was she like that as a kid? How she made it as far as she had was truly a mystery. One she never hoped to solve. That'd take out all the fun behind it.

---

Eris Halla