Finding Floaroma City turned out to be fairly easy. During the night, the light was widely visible, a shining beacon in the distance. In addition, the area was covered in low grass and shrubs, with few trees to block visibility. In turn, that meant there was little for Pokémon to hide, giving swift and enduring hunters like Poochyena, or concealed predators like Budew and even Seedot an advantage.

When we saw the first Poochyena, maybe a day of travel away from Floaroma City, I stepped up, sending Vio to deal with it. A quick scan told me that the Poochyena had some viable innate values, but given that I wanted to use it to show Vio how far she had progressed in just a short, two months, I was hesitant to even try capturing it. Compared to helping Vio progress, catching another partner was of lesser importance.

“Remember, you can’t muddle its mind.” I reminded Vio. Thanks to her growth during her evolution, Vio now stood slightly higher than the Poochyena, though the quadruped had a lot more mass. In addition, Vio’s psychic abilities were completely nullified by the Poochyena’s Dark-typing, making it almost immune to such attacks. Unless the attacker had a massive advantage in power, the attacks would just glance off.

“Let it hear your voice.” I ordered Vio, as the Poochyena came into range, its gait allowing it to cover a lot of ground rapidly. Vio started to emit a soft, pink glow and her voice started to fill the air, a sweet, gentle sound that made you want to slow down and listen. Even I was slightly affected, my lips curling into a silly grin and I wanted to just hug my little cutie, but that would have to wait until she had dealt with the attacking pooch.

Said pooch staggered for a moment, the sound obviously taking a toll, but not enough to dissuade it from attacking. It even sped up after a moment, its fangs shrouded in darkness. Just as it lunged, Vio pirouetted backwards, her now longer legs easily carrying her out of the way. Her whole body exuded a graceful vitality that her former, child-like form never had, and I thought there was a mischievous giggle in her song as she dodged the bite, akin to a teenager, gleefully playing with a pet.

She didn’t even try using her Draining Kiss, instead she simply stepped back and out of the way, as if taunting the Poochyena, daring it to try biting again. When it did, she happily evaded, the giggle intensifying, as her song was taking its toll on the Poochyena.

Learning its lesson after two failures, the Poochynea didn’t lunge and tried to bowl its petite foe over, instead if slowly moved forward in an attempt to get its teeth into Vio. Sadly, that left Vio a lot of time and now, her lips started to glow with pink light and when she lifted her fingers to her lips, she suddenly moved forward, into her attacker. Surprised by the sudden, physical offensive, the Poochyena tried to bite into her arm, but only managed a glancing blow, only scraping its teeth along her skin instead of sinking into her flesh. In turn, Vio’s finger made clean contact, the hot-pink aura jumping over to the pooch and enveloping it.

For a moment, the Poochyena was stunned, allowing Vio to spin away again, giggling as she moved. The Draining Kiss, in addition to the constant use of her Disarming Voice, had driven the Poochyena almost to exhaustion, but it was not done just yet. Noticing that it was in a dire predicament, it let out a deep, threatening Growl, trying to exploit the momentary opening as its voice collided with Vio’s. Only, there was no such collision. Instead of trying to overpower the Poochyena’s Growl, Vio simply harmonised with it, letting it carry her own voice to greater heights.

The sudden reversal of its trick caught the Poochyena completely off-guard, just as it was trying to bowl Vio over so it could finally get its teeth into the mischievous fairy that had tormented it. Instead of bodily pushing Vio over, it faltered right before its lunge, causing it to crumble and roll, stopping right at Vio’s feet. There was the faint giggle again, and Vio stepped forward, not even trying to use her Draining Kiss again, instead she simply stepped onto the prone form of her opponent, her voice reaching a crescendo. With a stomp, she pushed the Poochyena’s head into the ground, and just as her song faded away, so did the Poochyena’s mind. Standing on her defeated foe, Vio gave me a deep bow, accompanied by a happy giggle.

Laughing at my cute partner’s antics, I could only cheer and applaud. After a quick check to make sure the Poochyena hadn’t suffered any permanent harm, I pulled Vio into a hug, ruffling her hair a little.

“Well done, little one. See how far you progressed these last few weeks? You didn’t even need me, did you?” I asked her, proud of her progress and ability. In response, she let out a distressed squeak, sounding suddenly almost like she had before her evolution, and she wrapped her arms around my neck, holding on for dear life as she snuggled in.

“Oh, don’t worry, I won’t abandon you. I promise, you’ll be with me as long as you want.” I carefully rubbed her back, holding onto her as I rose. Vio still clung to me, rubbing her face against my body, but now the noses were distinctly happy, no longer as if she was afraid.

“If you like, I’ll apply some Potion and afterwards, you can return to your Pokéball to rest.” I told her, and after rubbing against me a little longer, she leaned back so I could easily set her down.

After spraying her arm with a spritz of Potion and carefully massaging it into her spongy, soft flesh, she made another happy sound, gave me a nod and I sent her back into her Pokéball.

Claire and I continued on our way towards Floaroma, again switching off when it came to fighting. As I wanted to try catching either a Budew or a Seedot, I carefully scanned each that we came across. After leaving the forest, we came across two Budew with adequate values and a Seedot with excellent values. In all three cases, I had my partners carefully weaken them without knocking them out in an attempt to catch them.

Sadly, when Prince Charming tried to use his new Firefang-attack against one of them, the damage was quite a bit larger than either of us had expected, the move wasn’t yet perfected causing the energy to fluctuate quite a bit. As a result, the Budew that had already been hit by his Embers, was directly knocked out, robbing me of the opportunity. Given that it only had good innate values, I wasn’t too disappointed, at least not until the next Budew and that Seedot both broke the Pokéball I used in my attempt to catch them.

“Maybe you should try befriending Twiggy and Nuts a little, before trying to catch a Grass-type of your own.” Claire suggested, looking at me with pity in her eyes after Prince Charming knocked out yet another Budew that I had scanned and judged too mediocre.

“You think that’d help?” I grumbled, frustrated at my bad luck.

Claire simply shrugged, “I don’t know either. But look at Nuts, by now she can look at you without starting to whine and hide. That’s progress, right?” she managed to give a grin, before adding, “If not, I don’t know how you can improve your plant-relations either. You might just have a bad affinity with the Grass-type in general.”

The truth, as so often the case, hurts. It was a simple, sad fact of life that some people had good affinity with some types and a bad affinity with others. It seemed that for me, the bad affinity was with the Grass-type, much to my annoyance.

“If we come across another good Grass-type, I’ll try again.” I stubbornly decided, knowing that I’d be able to replenish my Pokéballs soon. Otherwise, I might just give up on the Grass-type in order to keep a few extra Pokéballs in reserve, just in case we came across one of the Pokémon on my wishlist. Luckily, that list didn’t contain a single Grass-type.

Sadly, I didn’t have much luck with Grass-types on our way to Floaroma. There were a few more encounters, but none of them had good enough innate values and so, as we reached the low wall that separated the meadows from the actual fields, I still had only Vio and Prince Charming as my partners.

But we had reached Floaroma City.