Nathan "Neo" Winterfield (As a Ninetales) + Blitz the Emolga
Avalon Apostles
En route to Erana
ARPers: N/A

I had gotten Blitz up to speed on what had happened before we both got on the chopper to be taken to Erana. He wasn't too crazy he had been left behind on the last mission because I thought he needed a rest since he was overworked last time. I didn't want to make him think I was abusing him like I was binge-watching the latest TV series everyone was talking about.

"You go on a mission without me and this happens?" the irritated Emolga asked me. "I thought I told you that was a bad idea! Now look at you! Tell me, Foxy, how does not listening to your pal and getting busted with a whole of tails and fur feel like!?"

"Oh yeah, like I was totally supposed to know this was going to happen," I rolled my eyes at him sarcastically. "Wasn't my fault every Ninetales doesn't come with a warning label of 'WARNING: DO NOT YANK ON TAILS. DANGER OF BEING SUBJECTED TO RANDOMIZED 1,000-YEAR CURSE."

"While I get that you didn't know, of all the possible Pokémon mishaps you could have fallen into, you sure didn't pick a very good one," the Emolga shrugged before looking away. "Usually a Ninetales is a very vengeful and spiteful Pokémon. Yanking on one of its tails is like flipping it the birdie and making mockery of them."

"Pft, these?" I asked with a cynical smile, casually waving my fan of tails around a bit. "Woop-dee-do! Oooh, a little kid pulled my tail! So bad! What a vile, murderous, demonic tail-pulling cretin of pure unholy evil! Am I really supposed to be that much of a grouchy wretch that I curse the kid for a whole bloody millennium over that? That's like cutting someone's arms off just because they put gum in your hair."

The little white and dark gray flying squirrel narrowed his eyes a bit, looking off to the side and nodded a bit.

"Well... when you put it that way..." he replied, deep in thought, "...I guess it really is over-reacting quite a bit."

Unfortunately, that didn't exactly change the situation. It just meant I had some figuring of things out to do. But in the meantime, I needed his help with a few others things.

I wanted to learn as much "backup maneuvers" from another Pokémon in the event that the Mamoswine really didn't feel like chatting with another Pokémon or if I screwed up in trying to talk to it. Which was a high possibility, although even trained Pokémon wouldn't know the magic of reciprocity like people did. But what I really think was we needed someone to find out what was driving this crazy kook into frenzy mode.

Meanwhile, said "backup maneuvers" consisted of learning exactly how to Ninetales. Blitz was pretty helpful in giving me the heads up about what fighting as a Pokémon usually consisted of. Even though he was an electric type, he had some insight on what was needed for me to cough up some fire, kick some tail, conjure up a Confuse Ray, and things like that. What a Ninetales usually likes to do to things they don't like when those funny and oh-so-irresistible 1,000 year curses really just aren't enough! While one chopper ride was definitely not going to be enough for me to play catch up on being a such a happy and vindictive multi-tailed fiery fox, it got me started and maybe with some field experience I would be okay. Blitz was helpful in the sense that I got the basics down, but let's face it, I wasn't formally trained for this stuff. It was going to take a lot more than this.

At the same time, the researchers had strapped a keyboard on me that was wirelessly hooked up to a monitor that would be watched remotely by some tactical operative or something in a safe area away from the strike zone. The only issue was I couldn't see what I would be typing on a screen, so I was hoping these guys wouldn't mind a few spelling mistakes here and there. Hey, you try typing with paws for a change!

Once I propped my front paws up on the window and peeked outside, I saw Erana in the distance. I figured the plumes of smoke and signs of chaos were a good sign no one was feeling bored down there.