After exhaustively making his way up a stone stairway and guiltily cutting past a massive line of irate-looking Pokémon, Trevor entered the massive, rectangular tent which Aiden had previously referred to. Immediately upon entering its gaping entrance, Trevor was taken aback with how the tent's interior appeared to be even larger than its already giant exterior. Several rows of three-legged torches illuminated the several dozen lines of Pokémon waiting for their respective teams to be authenticated, disbanded or altered in some way. The air was abuzz with the sound of murmuring accompanied by an intermittent stamping sound which the Meowth couldn't quite place.
Before long, the Meowth was jolted upwards by the all too familiar sound of Aiden's voice, which emanated from the front of a particularly long line. "Hey, Treph! Over here!" she shouted while wildly waving a paw in the air, drawing the ire of many Pokémon attempting to concentrate around her. Trevor couldn't help but mutter a few flustered apologies while awkwardly shuffling forwards.
"You're just in time!" Aiden put her hands to her hips triumphantly, her yellow eyes twinkling with excitement. To her side was a massive wooden table alongside the unamused scowl of a Mr. Mime, his colorful body and silly appearance contrasting the dark shadows which sagged under his exhausted eyes.
"We're practically done with all the paperwork," Aiden began explaining, "I've taken the liberty of filling in all your information for you, so all we need is your pawprint before we can become official explorers!" The Scorbunny suddenly leaned forwards to whisper into Trevor's ear. "By the way, I don't know where you're actually from, so I took the liberty of writing that we came from the same hometown. This'll just be our little secret, okay?"
Trevor nodded, concernedly peering towards the sour-faced Mr. Mime currently overlooking Aiden's paperwork. He appeared as if one wrong word would end up with him completely breaking down into tears, and Trevor found himself wondering whether his sulky demeanor was a result to his exhausting occupation or Aiden's overbearing personality.
"Aiden, I have something I need to tell you. I've never-," was all Trevor could utter before the Scorbunny practically dragged him towards a table and elatedly gestured towards the set of applications placed on its center. He scanned the top portion of the the leftmost stack of documents, several empty lines filled out with Aiden's messy writing, and found that she had indeed labelled his hometown as "Ore Point," despite the fact that he had never heard of such a place before. Under the 'Title of Team' inquiry, Aiden had already written the name 'TEAM SPIRIT' in distractingly giant letters.
As Trevor read through the contents of the documents, the tired Mr. Mime silently motioned towards a massive jar of ink twice Trevor's size sitting to the side. Upon looking at Aiden's documents to the right, with her splattered black pawprint clearly visible at the bottom, it became obvious to Trevor what he was intended to do. Trevor hesitantly dipped his paw into the cold, thick ink and hovered it over the document, staring at the blank area on the bottom obviously intended for his pawprint. His heart began to accelerate as he considered the potential danger to come. "Printing my hand would mean facing more of those blank-eyed killer Pokémon. Ones like the Riolu that nearly killed me a few days ago in that golden forest. " he thought silently, his upper body slowly beginning to tense up from fear, "If I go into one of these... 'mystery dungeons' again, I'll probably wind up dead rather than just hurt. I can't fight! How could someone like me possibly become an explorer?!"
"You okay?" Aiden looked over Trevor's shoulder, confused as to why he had froze from out of nowhere. "C'mon, don't bask in the moment for too long, let's put Team Spirit on the map already!"
"I've made up my mind," Trevor declared internally, "I can't go through with this, exploring is too dangerous for someone like me. I'll pass on the terrifying monsters and risking dying a horrible death. I don't want to be an explorer! I... don't need to be anyone special."
YOU ARE READING
Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Rising Spirits
Adventure"All things... must eventually come to pass..." Trevor, a timid human turned Meowth, has been thrust into an unfamiliar world of talking Pokémon who view his kind as inexplicably tied to the looming, unseen threat which threatens their world. With n...
