Adventure Thread - Group A

"Oh, cool. This is for the performance you were talking about?" Supportive. Supportive, not sad. Clay runs his fingers through Red Child's fur absently. "I'd ask what it looks like, but I kinda... don't know anything about fashion, so unless you have a picture it probably wouldn't make a lot of sense to me."

"Oh, uh, that's good! Good to know they're not gonna, like, rip you off or anything." Clay looks a little glazed from the barrage of dress description. Well, he warned her that he wouldn't be able to make heads or tails of most of it. "So I guess you're sticking around at least until the dress is done, huh?"

Red Child wriggles around to press his cold nose against Tiki's shoulder. Clay bites his lip, but it's probably written on his face that what he wants to say "You don't have to go."

"Yeah..."

"... Yeah. See you in the morning." Clay runs a hand through his shaggy hair and turns away with a sigh. He rests his forehead against Red Child's for a moment and gives a low woof. "Thanks, buddy."

Then he waves a hand to the rest of his team to round them up and heads to bed. Instructor Mason will probably want to know why he was gone all day, but he can explain that in the morning. Between getting up at dawn, the draining emotional mess of the big fight, and a tough battle afterwards, he's exhausted.

---

In the morning, Clay is sitting in the mess hall as usual, sketching himself out a plan of attack for the day with Fan and Sandy as an audience. "Okay, so after training I gotta go see this smith guy. I dunno how long getting a new staff made is gonna take, so better to get it done early, right?" Sandy nods his little head up and down. He has no idea what Clay is on about but he'll do it anyway. "Maybe if I'm lucky it'll be done by the time we go up and explore the canyons up there. 'Course, that's not til after... yeah."

Okay, so maybe he's still shying away from the general concept of Tiki leaving. He's not thrilled about it.

"I oughta go visit Kalani before then, though. Let her know I'll be around for a few days then." He rubs the back of his neck. "And make up to her for being gone for a while." Well, that killed his mood a little bit, thinking about this whole mess and how tired it's left him. It's selfish to complain about it when Rei and Tiki must be feeling worse than he is, but still. Even if he doesn't like how it worked out, he's almost glad it's over.

"Morning, Tiki." Fan gives her a wary look for a moment before hopping over to see if she can pinch food, which probably means she isn't holding too much of a grudge over how the fight ended.

"Got any plans for today?" Clay is going to try not to let how depressed he is over her leaving get in the way of enjoying each other's company, if he can.

"Oh! I think I used to find those on Mt. Moon sometimes. They're evolution stones, huh? I wonder if that's why the Clefairy liked 'em so much. Hang on..."

Clay starts to root through his bag. "Sis found one the other day, I think! Lemme see if I've got it here somewhere... Oh yeah, here it is, I got it here." He pulls out the stone in question. "Is this what you're looking for? Does one of your other Pokémon evolve with it, too?"

While Clay and Tiki are talking about swapping stones or whatever, the room grows steadily quieter. Strangely so, in fact. Just a minute ago the sound level was that of a dull roar, but now it's almost eerily silent.

As the room quiets, Clay instinctively goes very still, his eyes darting around warily. Fan appears to have done the same on the back of Tiki's chair, and Sandy is making himself very small and quiet under the table. When background noise disappears it usually means something scary has shown up.

Granted, he can only think of one, maybe two people offhand who would be scary enough to make the noisy Guild dining hall collectively shut up.