"Yeah...Yeah." Gwen winced at her own inhibitions preventing her from putting off everything and searching for this guy. Her hands shook visibly as she was stuck in her own thoughts. The hands holding the remnants of her glasses had balled, to the point of her knuckles turning white.

"Sorry, I...don't really know why I'm angry." she said through pained gulps, unable to look at Freya. "I just...I just really want to fight something. Like really hurt it."

The ranger huffed and threw her glasses down and managed to slow pull her face back to Freya. "Thanks for the help. I owe you...way too many times. If you ever need my help, just ask and I'll be there. It's the least I can do, if anything..."

Gwen was dressed different than her usual attire. Instead of being in a faded graphic t shirt of her favorite idol band or some old hand me down, she was dressed properly for the current task that the two rangers had come to meet with.

She wore a white tank top with shorts that exposed a lot of her legs and arms. Something her previous self back home wouldn't be caught dead in. Her fiery orange hair was lassoed into a ponytail by a scrunchie she had borrowed from one of the other rangers.

Her clothing even exposed a lot of the beginnings of muscle and foundation she had been gaining since training with Gishath.

"Never better!" she answered with a smile. Gwen nodded at her friend as Gishath would be running beside the both of them as always. He eyed Robin with a glimmer of interest in his eyes before busy teething on a berry that Gwen had prepared for him.

Poor guy was still recovering from his teeth shattering against that monster.

"Thanks for going with me. I've been sleeping on working out this past week because of the holidays."

Gwen exhaled again, pinching the bridge of her nose while trying to collect her thoughts. Her ego and mindset were broken in pieces by her feet, with her only plan being to pick herself back up and start over again. Her first movements were a little lopsided and threatened to knock her off balance, but she recovered.

Freya's observation did make her stop and wonder to herself. "You think so?" she asked while glancing towards the direction that he was taken in. Another beat of silence came. She removed the glasses from her face and shoved them into a jacket pocket while standing there.

A billion thoughts running endlessly in a loop. But none of them enough to make her walk. Until one finally rose above the others.

"I...want to find out who that monster was." her voice trembled, filled in the brim with a frustration that somebody naive to the world would have. "I have to be stronger than him. All of us n-need to be..."

"A lot." Gwen said while the Iron Hands in front of them continued to work its magic on the cave entrance in front of them as a frown graced itself on her face. She hadn't really talked to anybody about it as of yet. But seeing as how it was them, and they maybe weren't coming back...

She checked up on the Cacnea currently inside of her coat before continuing her explanation.

"We've been together for a while. Sometimes I just...get flustered around her. Like my mind wants to say so much, but the only thing that comes out is just nonsense. I can think of what I want to tell her in a conversation, but I don't know why I do that though..."

The area they ventured into was dark, blocking any sort of vision that they may have going deeper inside of the cave. Gwen quickly dug into her outstretched jacket pocket and pulled out a pokeball. After a short toss, her Magneton came into being as a low hum echoed through the cave.

"Give us some light." she ordered to the steel type. A brief flicker of light came from the Magneton, some few sparks of elecirticity allowing them some limited vision.

Gwen, meanwhile, began to feel the effects of the cold in here. She was already shivering but had moved onto stumbling as she walked, or grumbling underneath her breath. Warm, bitter tears welled up in the corner of her eyes. But she continued on, refusing to take her jacket back.

The feeling of Freya's hand on the back of her head had offered Gwen a stability that she so needed. She took another moment to compose herself again and wiped the tears from her face again. Her form shook as a pained cough left her chest. The woman was right. She needed to stay strong for him. Gishath would live. Even if it was a new hurdle to jump over, they would cross this storm together.

"Right. W-We can do this..."

Her hands curled into a ball and then slowly pushed herself up onto two feet again. They shook, but she was finding her balance, slowly but surely. Gwen groaned in discomfort and watched as the technicians were slowly putting Gishath under to remove the last fragments of his teeth. Everything still hurt around but, but she'd have to force herself to go on.

"Sorry to dr-drop in unannounced. I just panicked and you were the person I only knew that could help. The other PokeCenters are dealing with an influx of people right now." Gwen still felt awful, having to run home crying in order for somebody else to solve her issues. But Freya probably wasn't in the mood to play therapist as well as doctor.

"We've been training though. I think he's slowly starting to listen to me more now. And we messed around in some of the wild areas. It's kind of hard to believe that he's that same little Gabite that I gave gems to a while ago. I think I'm slowly starting to get through to him."

[attr="class","bg"]

"Huh?" At hearing Robin shuffle closer to the ground, Gwen's rhythm was thrown off once more. Her serious posture and voice had all but disappeared once seeing her friend unable to process what had been going on.

"Robin!" she called out, swiping behind her to try and make sure that she was alright. Gishath had lunged at the Tropius again, coating his arm blade in a bright light while cutting through the quadraped's defenses in total. The tropius hit the ground unconscious, with the tiny terror hissing at the other two.

"Ah! Tropee! Oh nooo!" The grunt owning the pokemon said.
"Dammit, Magmortar, roast that Gabite!"

The Magmortar brought both hands together, the cannons glowing a fierce white as it launched fireballs around them. The sound of flames searing the grass around the side of the building caught Gwen's ears as Gishath would dodge and weave around them. One such was aimed at the two of them as she dove into Robin, knocking them both out of the way of the fireball.

The ginger rookie found herself on top of Robin, looking down at her with her glasses ajar, glancing down at her with concerned eyes. "Are you okay?"

The Gabite had eventually been hit by one of the blasts of fire, letting out a pained hiss. The Gabite steadied himself, rearing his head back and unleashing a torrent of Dragon Breath.

"The cutest little guys ever!~" Gwen let out a soft chuckle watching the Phione. Gishath watched the other pokemon with an intensity in his eyes and did a little hop to try and meet its level. While unsccessful, it did prove quite amusing to his trainer.

First things first, the entrance to the beachside needed a little face lift from the damage Gishath had done to it. She ordered the Gabite to do as he did before, though slower and able to listen to her commands about how to ease out the massive sand dunes he had created.

"Left! Now dive forward!" Gwen shouted her commands at the little guy as he sped around in the blob of sand to quickly even out the landscape. It wasn't until he got distracted with another pokemon on the beach that Gishath listened to his commands.

The avian chirped at the Gabite, puffing its feathers out in a defiant manner. Gishath hissed and kicked sand at the bird in retaliation. It was enough to distract it for long enough that he lashed out against it using Dragon Claw. The bird, stunned by the attack, fluttered backwards just in time for Gwendolyn to toss a pokeball at it.

"Draconids? Those are like the people who had ancestors to dragons, right?" Gwen asked Eva with a keen eye. Or so she hoped it seemed that way. "And what caused it to disappear in the first place?"

[Attempting to Catch Kilowattrel]

The news breaks Gwen's heart. Her stomach felt as if it was being stretched all the way to her feet. A new wave of tears was stockpiled and ready to be unleashed when she was ready. The ranger hit the ground in a brief fit on anger and let out another soft hiccup while choking on her tears once more.

"Wha-What if I'm not there for him?" she asked Freya. "He can't eat or bite into things. I can't keep him by me forever, what do I do?"

Gwen was hopelessly conflicted on what to do. Her foundation was thoroughly demolished as she lay in the rubble of what was once her vision of the future for the two of them. Nowhere in her many thoughts and dreams of getting older together was him losing all of his teeth.

"I should have just ordered him to leave. He could have been safe, gone to one of the Rangers and left me there. Or told him to stay in that closet. They need him more than some rookie who can't keep her team safe..."

It's taking a while, but Noah's been working his way through the wall of snow barricading them inside of this little ice prison. Gwen stuck closer to the Cacnea wearing her coat, watching Noah with an envious glance.

Oh, how she envied people who could do and not freeze in place like this.

He asked her the age old question anybody above the age of twenty asked to people younger than them. And it terrified her that she didn't have a concrete answer.

Gwen never really was one to made a life plan ahead of time, even more so since she had moved away from home all for Robin. But she sighed and chewed on her bottom lip in thought.

"I wanna be a Pokemon professor like Eva Morales . Somebody who knows everything there is about the natural world. But even if I don't ever become that, I'd want to protect another Ranger. She's the reason why I even came to Hoenn in the first place, robin coello . She's..."

Gwen paused, contemplating her next choice of words. Her chest tensed up for a moment while imagining that little look Robin gave her when something was bugging her. The faint flinch of her hands that wanted to stay warm.

She was such an idiot, making her friend worry about her like this.

"She's the world to me. We've been together since I was in school and a homebody. When I saw her after what happened with a Rocket, I promised I'd never let anything like that happen to her again."

"That I'd find whoever did that and make them pay."

Gwen listened to Lars continue on about his ranger experience and where he learned to be so knowledgeable about pokemon with. He really was a little walking library of knowledge! She wanted to sit him down one day and just ask him about everything he knew and went through. The mental image of such a time had been interrupted by his question about her training.

"W-Well, I mean..." she stammered out and tried to think of how to phrase her question. "It's a pretty arduous task to get through that entire packet and then orientations and on top of that, the online portions. So I kind of...haven't gotten around to them yet. B-But I will! Hoenn is just busy is all. They kind of need all hands on deck."

Hopefully that was a good enough answer.

Another wild Pokemon would stand before them, this one being a smaller reptile that stood upright in its own unique little way. Gwen had to keep herself from fawning over it too hard. Her Magneton had still been a little damaged but ready to fight again. "Electro Ball!" she called out. The pokemon jittered in place and shot out a sphere of electricity at the Frigibax.

The attack had hit its mark and Gwen followed up with a pokeball thrown at the little guy as she hoped to try and catch it quickly.

"What other stuff have you done, sir?" she asked. "I bet you have like a million stories about saving pokemon and people!"

It had taken Gwen a little while to come down from her fit of anxiety and nerves. Freya held her head so comforting while she could only be at her lowest point since coming to Hoenn. Maybe somehow, even lower than usual. She sniffled and wiped her eyes free on any bitter tears of frustration as Freya offered some well needed guidance.

Gishath allowed Lyra and Moxie to assist in easing his pain. This time, he wasn't as abrasive as before. His yellow eyes went to Gwen currently in shambles and let out a pained growl at her. His fin raised itself for a moment but went back to watching the two pokemon surrounding it and the rest of the team.

"Y-You're right..." The lowly ranger had gotten the worst out of her system. She had remembered the day she spent researching and making notes of what she had read in the Dragonology book the week before approaching Freya. The words that had seemed so distant but now, closer than ever before.

Gwen exhaled and removed her glasses as she began to slowly wipe at the bits of dried and moist blood caked to her face.

"There was a man. He was...His entire body was just crystal. Not like shining crystals you see in caves, but dark ones." Gwen shuddered in the councilwoman's grasp. In her eyes was that same glimmer of hope and a natural curiosity, now diminished to a simple ember of fear.

"It didn't have a face or anything. Just shaped like a human. Ah-I don't know how to describe him. Just black shards everywhere."

"We heard him come up and ran to hide underneath a bed, but his hands were like blades. It cut through a solid wall and more...I picked up Gishath and tried to run but he blocked our way. He reached out to me, and Gishath launched himself at that...that thing!"

"But it didn't even phase him! All it did was break his teeth and hurt his arm. I had a way out after that and ran out of the house as fast as I could. Called the rangers, then came here..."

Gwen had been slowly returning to a normal state of mind during her status report to Freya. By the end, she could be understood and thankfully had stopped crying.

"I-Is he going to be alright? I'll do anything! Ah-I can't let you down again, not after you let me train him..."

She didn't care if it was too dangerous or not. Gwen wanted to prove that she wasn't a benchwarmer to both Robin and herself. The trio of Rocket pokemon were a grab bag if they'd be a threat or not but she was certain they could take them all.

"I'm fine." she said to her friend, though her expression betrayed the sentiment. "You're Snorlax is pretty strong."

The enemies took their turn, with their own pokemon looking to get even with the damage inflicted on them.

"You dirty brats, you okay Maggy?" The owner of the Magmortar asked their fire type. It would "harumph" in response.

The leader continued on, ordering his Klefki to attack. "Try this on, girlie!" The steel type surrounded itself with psychic energy and forced the Snorlax back along with most things around it. The force made the trees overhead be pushed back with the force thrown at the target.

Gwen was still, scared, but stepped in front of Robin regardless. She had let Rocket break her down once because of her inability, she wouldn't allow them to do it again. Her expression had slowly shifted from hearing her so frantic.

"I won't let them hurt you." Gwen said to her. Gone was any hint of her usual apologetic self, replaced entirely by a serious, bitter ranger who had found her resolve. "Focus on the battle."

"Aw, lookit the BFFs. Time ta end this." The Tropius leapt into action to defend the Magmortar and began to cause an outrage all across the battlefield on its way. Gishath hissed and met the attack with his own, blocking against the Tropius. "Dragon Claw, Gishath!"

The Gabite raised its arm and slashed against the Tropius, leaving a deep mark against its neck. Letting out a small roar, his eyes went back to Gwen and growled to her. Was it saying the same thing as Robin had been? Or was this more of a threat to not tell him what to do?