Desolate [Pokémon Arven x Protagonist]

The Last Member

I sat quietly in my room, thinking about what had happened earlier. Every time he crossed my mind, my entire body shivered with an excited twinge. We had sat beside the fire for a while, cuddling in its warmth. It was hard to move. I was so stricken with my own shock and fear of what was to come to think about what to say or where I was. Maybe it was best that the moment was as silent as it was. The way he held me against his body, head resting on top of mine, breathing in sync as we listened to the fire, it was all so comfortable. We had stayed there for a while until the wind outside the cave settled down and we agreed it was calm enough to walk back home. I would've offered to allow Arven to ride back to the academy with me, but I was too nervous to even imagine his arms around my waist, squeezing me for his dear life. On his end, he could've asked me if he really wanted a ride, but he didn't, and I was slightly relieved at that.

Umbreon was curled up on top of my feet, brow furrowed and eyes focused on the ground in despair. She was clearly upset that she wasn't able to help more and was traumatized believing she would be abandoned again. I let her stay although my toes were going numb. I was terrified about the next titan. We agreed to wait a day to have time to train our teams, but even with the break, the five day school week still wasn't enough to easily take out the titan. I felt like the only thing I could do was catch my last teammate at a high level. The only issue was that Arven wasn't sure what the last titan was. The Scarlet book didn't show any picture of it, no name to call it by. The only thing we knew was that his mom had seen it in Lake Casseroya all the way in the North Province on the other side of the island. I opened back up my notes on my laptop to analyze my previous notes.

"One more member for our team, and we're not covering four of our bases," I observed. "The titan could be any one of these: normal, water, dragon, fairy." I crossed my fingers over my chin. "We shouldn't worry about normal, huh?" I turned to the team and they shrugged. "I don't think a basic normal-type Pokémon would rampage like that." I thought about each possibility. I only had one more Pokéball and one more slot on my belt. "I have a good feeling this last one is going to be either a rare fairy or dragon-type Pokémon. Reasonably, we'll want an ice-type Pokémon for dragon-types or a poison or steel-type for fairy-types." I thought about Arven's team. I never asked him about his full team, but as I knew, he had Mabosstiff who was unable to battle, nacli a pure rock-type, toedscool a duel ground-grass type, scovillain a duel grass-fire type, and cloyster a duel water-ice type. "So if Arven trains his team as strong as us, he'll have..." I took a breath before turning to my team. "Fire, ice, flying, bug, water, ground, rock, electric, poison, steel, grass, and dragon-types covered." I gasped after that long exhale. "I'm glad we don't have to worry about dragon or fairy-types with his team, but I do want to be extra safe. The last titan was brutally more challenging than orthworm was. I could imagine how strong this last one will be."

I knew we would be safe if we trained enough, but I still wanted a full team to fight with. I figured that if dragon-types were the rarest Pokémon, the chances of the last wild Pokémon to have stumbled across Herba Mystica in the middle of the lake would be a dragon-type. If anything, I thought, fishlike Pokémon would be abundant at the lake, and most fishlike Pokémon were water-types, weak only to grass and electric-types. I studied my team. Grass-type moves were also strong against rock and ground-types but Quaxwell already had that covered, so I thought about electric-type candidates. Immediately one came into my head. "You know what would be perfect?" The team blinked. "A pawmo! It's a duel electric-fighting type which will cover water-types and normal-types, as much as I doubt the last titan will be a normal-type, but who knows?" Pawmo and pawmi were plentiful in the fields of Paldea, but they weren't normally found at very high levels, and I was running low on time.

"The longer I sit here, the less time I have, I guess," I decided, standing up. There were plenty of pawmo just outside the school. I wanted to catch one to start its training that evening and have a whole preparation day tomorrow. I made my way down the stairs to Mesagoza and held my sixth Pokéball tightly in a fist. "My last Pokéball," I whispered.