buying a (standard) Safari ticket! The one that gives three Safari Balls.

It wasn’t until recently did Izumi realize that her current Pokémon collection was… leaning a little on the hot side of things, so to speak. With a wide assortment of Fire-types, of course the assumption here was that she need more types to balance the squad out!

The question was, would she be able to find what she was looking for? This was considering that Water was the most common Pokémon type and there were way too many she wanted to go after.

Of course, one of them had to be a Mudkip. Or at least, a member of that line. She knew she was ill-equipped for the occasion, but she knew she had to right this—and soon.

Otherwise she would be stuck with too many of one type, and too few of another!

The last thing she encountered was—oh, perfection. While it wasn’t the same as her strangely-colored Blaziken from back then, she did miss having that particular Pokémon around, and so figured—why not get this one for herself?

Little did she know that Josh was also looking for a Blaziken and that she’d unintentionally beat him to the chase, so, whoops.

She in fact had the perfect Pokémon to dish out that sweet, cold revenge on a platter and out came Momiji, shimmering as she unfolded herself from the beam of red light. Taking this as a sign of aggression the Combusken then charged forward with a Blaze Kick attack!

“Whoa there,” she remarked before the Gardevoir Teleported out of sight, snickering softly. The dual-type ended up hitting thin air, before a sudden blast of rainbow energy from behind heralded the reappearance of the Gardevoir as she threw out a Psychic attack in an attempt to catch the Combusken by surprise.

Izumi decided to sit back and watch the show since, well, she was very sure that her Gardevoir could handle herself, right?

The Combusken then spun around and landed a neat Blaze Kick to the Gardevoir’s face, causing her to back away and glare at the danged thing. Okay, that hurt! As the literal chicken on two feet charged forward in a Flare Blitz attack, getting all reckless, the Gardevoir then winked out of existence once again—

Only to have a sudden burst of lunar energy, a Moonblast attack, hit the Blaziken from behind once again!

Yowling, the dual-type then crashed to the dirt before a red beam of light swallowed it up.

“You really picked the right time to do that when they’re not looking, eh,” Izumi chuckled as she felt her cheeks burn red this time at the full-on kiss on the lips. “You know what they’re going to say if they saw you at that moment,” she added as she burst out into a chuckle.

“Zach, Lyra, don’t stick your heads out too far!” she called out again as she took another bite from the skewered meat on her stick. Once the stick was empty, she then reached for a burger before chuckling his way.

“Seriously, you think they can find something if they do that,” she added a few moments later. “Ah, drats, I forgot to get the drinks. I’ll be right back…”

With that she stood up and made her way back to the buffet table to get some fruit punch for them. Stopping a few moments, she then took a small cup and had a sample of the fruity drink, relishing said fruity taste in her mouth. She couldn’t tell what the other flavors were, but one thing was for sure, there was a lot of lemon in this one!

“You know, I envy you slightly,” she remarked as she turned red at his affectionate peck on the cheek. “You can go shirtless whenever, wherever. Whereas I, can’t. And that sucks,” she added with a sigh as she gave his topless form a very appreciative look before winking at him.

“Lucky I have this very nice view for myself, too,” she teased as she poked him in the side with a greasy finger before offering him some grilled meat to chow down on.

“I got some food, you want?” she gestured to the platter of barbeque on the table between them. It wasn’t just crammed with the meat sticks, there were also burgers and hotdog buns atop it. Enough for them all to enjoy.

There was a cruise offering going around now that the summer weather was picking up, and what better way to enjoy another day out with the kids?

Of course, they weren’t informed of the state of the Hoennian waters due to increased pirate activity. It was all part of the ‘plan’, so to speak. But of course, Izumi (and to an extent, Josh) wasn’t aware of this.

All she knew was that the kids were here, running along on the deck playing a game of tag, and she was lounging somewhere on a deck chair with a platter of barbecue sticks on the next deck chair. And pray tell, what was she doing?

Eating a stick, of course!

“Zach, Lyra, be careful you don’t fall over the railing!” she called out as she lowered her shades for a few moments before turning to face where Josh was.

“Nice out, isn’t it?” she said, an attempt at making small talk.

“You know they can hear you,” she muttered under her breath before she finished the rest of her ice cream. Great, count on him to subtly change the mood even while the kids were around.

Either way, she then wiped down the sides of her mouth once the cone had been downed and the kids hoisted up and off the bench, before stretching her arms above her head.

“Come ooooon, let’s goooo!” Lyra called out, impatiently pulling first at her leg, before running over to Josh and doing the exact same thing. “Dad, you look… scary. What happened? Are you okay?” she asked him, ever so curious and bright-eyed wonder.

Count on them to diffuse the situation. Hopefully, she thought as she felt her back crack after stretching out enough.

“Stay close, you two. Don’t wander off too far, okay?”

“What, are you gonna ruin the mood?” she countered quietly, eyebrows raising up to look at him for a few moments before blinking and looking down at their children. While she hadn’t touched the mint chocolate chip-flavored ice cream much, the attempt in cooling off the cheesed jets of the blonde near her…

Was it working?

She then took another bite of the ice cream in her hands, before proceeding to demolish it as fast as she could just in case he got other ideas. She looked down at Lyra, impatiently swinging her legs.

“When’re we gonna go? I wanna see the water Pokémon!” she piped up.

Ah, crap.

“Let me just finish this, okay? Then we can go,” she remarked Lyra’s way, before giving Josh a ‘well? Are you really going to go off in front of the kids?’ look.

It was like adding insult to injury, to be honest.

Izumi’s next find was… something that looked absolutely… wait, she had to blink and do a double-take, because what the hell kind of a Pokémon was that?!

She then shook her head, before wondering if she was seeing things. Fishing out her phone, she then snapped a few pictures of the…lumbering statue, before sending them to Josh Dragomir along with a caption that said, ‘Have you seen anything that looks like this?’ before giving the strange…thing a wide berth.

There was no way in hell she wanted to get caught in the path of the thing when it came crashing down on her.

She was either seeing things—was there a mirage in front of her? The heat haze was definitely enough for her to blink and squint as she thought she saw…

Wait a second. That was one of the Fire-types she didn’t have yet! Looking over at her Gardevoir, she nodded before the dual-type concentrated and raised her stats by entering a Calm state of Mind before the Braixen began letting rip with all sorts of Fire Spin attacks!

“Get out of the way!” she called out, watching as the Gardevoir then warped out of existence with Teleport the moment the incoming vortex of fire approached. Surprised, the Fire-type looked around—only to get clobbered by a sudden blast of rainbow-colored energy the moment the Gardevoir re-emerged from where she had gone off to and chucked a Psychic blast at it.

As the Braixen attempted to counter the attack with its own Psybeam, a sudden blast of lunar power in the form of a Moonblast bowled the Braixen over. Before it could recover from the prone position, she threw another Pokéball at it.

“Well, it always helps to have an extra pair of eyes on the ready just in case… wait. Joshua Dragomir, what haven’t you been telling me?” she remarked as her husband’s words took a good moment to register before sinking in.

“You’re not keeping an eye on them all the time? What if they regally…” she trailed off for a few moments, before leaning in and whispering harshly so only he could hear.

“…What if you regally fuck up and the Meowstic aren’t around to save your ass?” she ended her sentence before pulling away, allowing him a few moments to explain himself.

Clearly someone wasn’t keeping as good an eye on the kids as she had hoped, whoops.

[attr="class","omgen"]

headsmasher (Rampardos)