[attr="class","witness"]His embarrassment and frank comment simply rolled off her back. She didn't mind comments like that one way or the other. Why? Because she was Francie, and people were just nice like that all the time, right?

But what did stick out to her, was his advice. Keep fighting.

Francie's smile grew at those words. She couldn't have stopped the smile if she tried. It was bright and just as radiant as usual when it came to Francie.

"I will! Thanks Matthew."

Slowly, a red sludge started to emerge from the rocks behind them. Francie nodded toward it, furrowing her brow in confusion, before she finally saw the face form. A laugh later and she grinned.

"Oh! It's a slugma! I wasn't sure. Looked crazy at first..."

From her waist, she pulled her lycanroc Lincoln from her waistband and nodded toward the fire type. "Rock climb up there, and get it down here with a crunch."

After the combination of both moves, the lycanroc dropped the heap of magma to the ground and watched his trainer capture it. Not that he understood why she would catch it, but, y'know.

@matthew - capture attempt slugma

[attr="class","witness"]"Unfortunately, one can't teach nature, it's bred."

Francie's response is due to her traveling with a breeder for far too long. She rattles off the information while taking her new prize and smiling over at the two of them.

"But, you can train manners. It's just a matter of technique. I'm sure we can do some training together, when we're through here."

After dealing with the slugma, Lincoln moved over toward Francie, but stopped and listened, pausing his panting for a moment. It's about the time he feels a stare, or something like, and turns to see a litleo that's approaching. He ignores it, and the magby, having no real rhyme or reason to fight either and promptly takes a seat, with his back toward the trainers, as if guarding them from the wild. Which, he was.

@matthew - pass

[attr="class","witness"]"Mm--"

Something like a muffled squeak escapes Francie as she stares at Matthew and the litleo and rockruff. They're not unnoticed, but honestly, she doesn't think twice about them. Instead, she's running his words over and over in her head like they're a broken record.

SOMEBODY CALL THE MEDIA: SHE HAS BEEN ASKED OUT ON A DATE??

"A...date?"

And like a dope, she decides to voice the fact that he's mentioned it as a date because, did he really mean it that way? Should her heart be beating this fast? Should she be excited? Or was it all for naught because she misunderstood the meaning behind 'date?'

@matthew

[attr="class","witness"]He really did ask her out and Francie's blushing. A big, red, fresh blush. She was smiling, though. Like she'd been given a birthday gift she'd always waited for.

It wasn't like she'd ever been asked out, but, really had she ever? She'd always crushed on the wrong kind of guys or found herself completely floored when people wanted to ask her about her friends when they 'took her to dinner' but 'it wasn't a date Francie.'

"I'd love it to be!"

Regardless of her eager words, she's just riding with it. Girl's on cloud nine, and she's so excited.

"We'll do some puppy training and dinner! It'll be a lot of fun! Besides, socializing them is a big important part of getting them to be service dogs."

@matthew

[attr="class","witness"]Francie's tickled three different shades of pink at the fact that Matthew's handing her his phone to put his number in.

Her mind travels... very fast. She's already wondering if she should put the heart next to her name or not--but too late, cause she did, and she's handing the phone back to him.

"Yeah! We can um, we can work out the details in like, in text and all that."

God, she's nervous. But at the same time, she's so excited! Her bundled nerves have her tucking her hair behind her ear and smiling so widely it would make somebody's face hurt just looking at her.

@matthew