The Girl's Dorm

The girl’s dorm is quiet, and the only one up seems to be Elizabeth. She’s sitting on the couch with her hair down and wrapped in a throw blanket. She’s focused intently on her book, and she’s only distracted for a moment by the two girls’ arrival. Her eyes look up to greet them, but after recognizing them, she wordlessly goes back to her book.

Elizabeth continues to focus on her reading until Vess speaks directly to her. She jumps a bit and looks in Vess’ direction, but keeps her eyes downcast. “I-It’s about grass type pokemon and their physiology and stuff. It has a lot of diagrams and it’s, um, really detailed…” She pauses for a moment to look at the cover of her book. “It’s called “The Truth About Grass Types.”” She mumbles.

“Um, not yet. I’m still in the section about single typed grass types. I read the author’s book about steel types, though, and they’re pretty interesting. At least from what I remember… Inside their bodies they have these pouches that they keep all of the minerals they absorb, kinda like stomachs. They’re right under their metallic shell, though, so they can eject new spikes whenever they need them.” Her voice gets a bit more confident as she speaks, but she still keeps her eyes away from Vess. “I don’t have the book with me, but I bet the library has it.”

An excited smile creeps onto Elizabeth’s face as Vess speaks. She even looks up a bit! “I’d, um, like that a lot. Thank you. Let me just get my pokedex out…” After retrieving the battered device from her pocket, she continues. “All at once is okay, as long as they get along with each other of course!”

While she still doesn’t seem confident enough to lock eyes with people, Elizabeth has no problem being friendly with pokemon. While Fury and Roggenrola are more than happy to roam around the room, Solace and Ferroseed stay close to Vess. Solace cautiously eyes everything and everyone in the room unlike Ferroseed who stoically stands guard in front of his trainer.

Elizabeth slides down to the floor, getting to Solace’s level and locking eyes with her. The girl smiles broadly and waves. “Hi Solace, I’m a friend of Vess. I’m very happy to get to meet you!” She says quietly and slowly, but with a confident and steady voice that had yet to use when speaking to another human.

Solace looked the girl over before slowly venturing towards her. Once she’s close, she circles around Elizabeth for a moment before determining she’s alright and sits beside her. Her eyes follow Elizabeth, but the pokemon seems content to silently sit beside her. Meanwhile, Elizabeth makes a few notes in her pokedex.

Hearing Elizabeth speak, Roggenrola stumbles over and begins checking her out as well. It shuffles around her, occasionally bumping into her and leaning closer to hear the faint typing noises coming from her Pokedex. She laughs at his antics and gives the curious Pokemon a pat on the head before it wanders off in the direction of another noise only it can here.

Fury seems determined to stay away from Elizabeth and walks away every time she calls her closer. Elizabeth doesn’t seem bothered by it though and keeps her distance. Eventually Fury comes a bit closer, but bares her teeth at Elizabeth whenever she looks in her direction. Citadel rolls in front of Fury, sheathing and unsheathing his spikes in apparent annoyance, causing Fury to stop.

“It’s okay Citadel, Fury is probably just in a bad mood.” Elizabeth says cheerily, prompting Fury to run over to her and start trying her best to annoy the girl. Elizabeth doesn’t say anything though, which leads Fury to quickly get bored of pulling on her shirt and messing with her hair. Eventually the Mankey gives up and sits down near her, occasionally poking at Elizabeth’s pokedex.

With the help of Citadel, Roggenrola makes it over to Vess and stays put long enough to hear her question. After a moment, he nods, punctuating it with a happy, “Roggenrola!” He then wanders off again, stumbling into almost everything in the room as he walks around.

Vess’ question causes Elizabeth to shift a bit and blush. “N-no, I’m um...I’m not very good at battling. I’m more of a researcher than a battler! I know I need to catch something eventually, but, um, I’d rather do my research first…” She explains quietly, focusing intently on her Pokedex.

Elizabeth’s cheeks look more flush as she pauses her typing to ponder the proposal. A few moments later, she quietly responds. “N-no, I couldn’t burden you like that. I won’t be very useful in a battle or anything, so I wouldn’t want to slow you down or anything.”

“Oh, um, sure…” Elizabeth seems a bit hesitant and surprised by the offer, but she puts her number in Vess’ pokedex and lets Vess put her number in her own pokedex.

Vess can clearly tell the age of Elizabeth’s pokedex now that she’s using it. The screen is slightly smaller and not as responsive as the newer models. The menus are quite different as well, so it takes a few minutes for Vess to input her number, but she figures it out eventually.

Early the next morning, both Vess and Trista are awakened by hushed conversation coming from the kitchen. Most of the girls are trying to whisper, but it’s still quite loud.

“What do you think she’ll be like!?” Chaika asks excitedly, leaning across the kitchen island in anticipation.

“I think the real question is why she gets to get in now even though she was denied before. It’s like a real mystery!” Anna exclaims, notably louder than the rest of the group. She stands up from her seat at the island to punctuate her point.

“Anna!” Adora angrily whisper-yells at the girl. “You’re gonna wake everybody up!”

“It’s so late in the morning, though!” Anna grumbles, sitting back down. “Besides, there’s a good reason to be up and excited!”

Elizabeth tries to interject something, but her small, quiet tone of voice barely comes across normally, nevermind in a whisper.

“What was that, hun? You’re gonna hafta speak up.” Adora gently explains.

“Um, not everyone is used to getting up early, so you have to give them time to get used to it Anna.” She pauses before continuing. “And, um, I don’t think this is too common, at least from what I’ve heard. I don’t know why they’d let someone in late like this…”