POV: Ace
Location: Kantonian Waters
*beep* *beep* *beep*
The noise of his alarm died down and Ace dragged his body out of the small bed to clean up for the day. Thankfully, his rank as an Ensign not only entitled him to have his only single room, which allowed him to avoid bunking with others, but it was even one that came with its own bathroom. That alone already made having to wake up at 4:30 a.m. more tolerable.
He took a quick navy shower before making sure he looked spotless, then he turned around and dealt with his bed. Once his room, as well as his body, were pristine and after checking that his uniform was in order, he purposefully strode out of his room.
Whenever he came across a sailor the exchange of salutes happened but that barely slowed him down. When he made it to the bridge, he stepped towards his commanding officer and initiated a salute himself. The others kept focusing on their work, which freed them from the salute game, and he soon joined them as well.
Ace spent the time until 6 a.m. focusing on his work before leaving to eat his breakfast. As a commissioned officer his dining area was separate from that of the regular sailors, so he only had a few others to share his meal with, but he was used to that by now.
This was not his first patrol mission, but rather the second one. The first one took two weeks, and this one was supposed to take just as long. They'd already been at sea for 10 days, so they were already on the way back. Their crew had come across no hostile vessels this time, unlike during his first voyage, where his ship came upon a pirate vessel, which they captured after a short naval battle.
Most of the time, they had to face attacks or probes by wild Pokemon and not hostile vessels. Frankly from the little experience he gathered so far the wild Pokemon were actually more dangerous. His hitting the books at the academy and the hearsay from his father, as well as other sailors, corroborated that.
Anyway, after breakfast Ace returned to the bridge until it was time for lunch at 11 a.m. The same happened for dinner at 4 p.m. Just as he thought he would be able to finish his shift without any incidents, the sailor observing the radar reported incoming Pokemon.
"Raise the alarm, code yellow. I want everyone at their stations for any eventuality," the commanding officer (CO) ordered and the bridge crew worked on executing them.
The sirens began and the yellow warning lights lit up, informing everyone that they had possible hostiles incoming. Everyone knew that they had to head to/be in their positions and stay at full alert until told otherwise. Ace could see sailors standing on the deck of the ship with one or two Pokemon at each sailor's side. There were also a few Wingull, Pelliper, and Fearow in the sky to keep an eye on the situation from above.
The most common Pokemon on deck were members of the Poliwhirl, Staryu, and Marill lines. Those three were the most recommended Pokemon lines by the Kantonian Navy for out-of-water activities/battles. On the other hand, the Dewgong, Seaking, and Lanturn lines were the three most recommended lines for water/sea battles. This naturally meant that each sailor had at least one Pokemon from each group.
It only took a few minutes before they made contact and they were surrounded by a swarm of Tentacruel/Tentacool. Protocol dictated that they had to probe the intention of the other party, just in case a violent confrontation could be avoided, but before their CO could say anything, the swarm began attacking the ship.
"Raise the alarm to code red, defend the ship, and drive away the assailants," the CO ordered instead before turning to Ace. "Be on standby. You'll reinforce them if it proves necessary," was his order, and Ace gave him a salute along with a "Sir" before leaving the bridge to head to the deck.
While he was heading there he saw the light turn red, directly skipping orange. Ace knew that the battles had already begun and honestly sea battles were the most interesting part of this whole Navy job. Once he arrived on deck he saw that the battles were already underway.
Most of the fighting was happening outside the deck, on the sea, but there were some Tentacool that had managed to land on their ship, and Ace even saw a Tentacruel trying to get on board as well before being sent over deck by a combined attack from 3 Pokemon.
From what he could see the attackers were mostly at the iron or bronze stage, with the occasional silver stage being among them, so he was assuming that the boss of the swarm was at the gold stage at most. That was in line with the usual experience of their vessel.
Their patrol mission had a maximum coverage of 800 nautical miles/1481 km, and since they were slowly heading back, they were currently about 600 nautical miles/1111 km from the shore. Within this range the attacks they suffered by wild/wandering Pokemon generally all fell into the same range, with the majority of the swarm ranging from iron to bronze, along with a silver minority, and a few golden leaders.
There were the occasional dark golden outliers, but the CO or his/her deputy were supposed to step up whenever that happened. Anyway, Ace observed as the sailors managed to drive off all assailants from the deck, and the seaside battle also went in their favor.
He could see the Pokemon on their side steadily driving the Pokemon on the other side further away from the ship. He tensed since he could tell that they had reached the critical moment where the enemies either retreated or attempted a second more focused/stronger wave.
It turned out that the other side chose number two, and even the boss or at least one of his deputies had to have taken part in the offense since he heard the exclamations/warning from his sailors alerting him to their presence just as he felt the ship shake rather strongly. This was no doubt a strong one, and it didn't take him long to spot it.
He noted that the Tentacruel was indeed at the gold stage, so he stepped forward to confront it before it could properly attempt to turn the tide. Since this was a sea/naval conflict he directly called out Feraligatr, Golduck, as well as Floatzel and had them gang up on the Tentacruel.
Had he come across it in private he would have liked to face it with just Feraligatr, but he was on duty, so he had to do everything he could to ensure a swift and decisive conclusion of the conflict to avoid as much damage to the crew, their Pokemon, and the ship.
Ace's trio swiftly confronted the Tentacruel and they directly gained the upper hand in their confrontation despite being at a slightly lower stage than their foe individually. He watched as they exchanged attacks for a while before Golduck managed to make use of an opening, while Tentacruel tried to slap Feraligatr, to completely immobilize two of Tentacruel's tentacles while also restricting its general movement.
Floetzel used the opportunity to thoroughly freeze the two tentacles before Feraligatr bit them off with Crunch close to where they grew out. Ace knew that they would completely regrow within just a week or two, but it was enough for the Tentacruel to start pulling back.
Within just a minute or two, the whole swarm began retreating and after 200 meters their Pokemon stopped pursuing them and instead began to gather the floating bodies that were left behind. Thankfully Ace only saw Tentacool among them and there were not that many of those since the confrontation only went on for less than 15 minutes.
Most naval conflicts with wild Pokemon swarms were like this. This exchange was the swarm simply probing our ship/defenses to see if they could deal with us or not. While Ace was keeping an eye on things, he saw the warning light turn from red to orange, so he let his trio stay out for another 10 minutes before he recalled them.
During that period, the sailors hauled 17 Tentacool bodies onto the ship before some of them moved the bodies to the storage/freezer. Ace knew that he and the sailors would still have to be on alert for another 5 minutes before the warning light would turn green indicating that they could be at ease and return to their positions.
After that happened, Ace went back up to the bridge, and gave a brief status report to the CO, before resuming his usual duty. An hour later his 14 hour-shift was finally over, so he left the bridge to head to the wardroom to chill a bit before heading to the gym for some exercise. Once he cooled down from that, he would have an easier time getting some restful sleep.
POV Yu:
Location: Orre, Phenac City
Agreeing to travel with Sarah was truly one of the best decisions he made during his journey so far. When Sarah approached him to ask if he wanted to travel with her, he had hesitated for a moment before ultimately agreeing since he knew that there was no conflict of interest in their journey goals.
Sarah wanted to gather ribbons to take part in the Orre Festival, while he wanted to gather Gym Badges. The Orre Festival had been a relatively "new" addition that had been introduced to Orre only 311 years ago.
The Orrean council made the decision once the number of prospective Coordinators and actual Coordinators coming from their region had grown to a respectable number, which took a bit longer for Orre than it did for other regions.
Anyway, Yu was really glad that he had made the wise decision to partner up with Sarah for the journey. She took care of organizing their accommodations whenever they made it to a settlement, along with gathering information on where to stock up on essentials and ingredients.
She also agreed to take care of the cooking most of the time since she was simply a much better cook. He did help her set up the table and stuff, along with cooking whenever she wanted a break or was otherwise occupied, but that happened only once or twice a week, which was more than fine with him.
They were currently taking a break in Phenac City to rest and stock up before moving on toward Drywood City for his first Gym challenge. The Gym was a fire-type one, and his team had a good enough type advantage for their first Gym Challenge.
Besides, the two cities were not too far from each other, and once Yu had his first badge, they would head back to Phenac City for Sarah's first Contest, which would happen in two months. Two months gave them ample time to travel between the two cities and to prepare for their respective challenges.
"Make sure to stock up on care products for Dewgong and Vibrava. You were about to run out of those," Sarah reminded him, proving once more why she was a great traveling companion.
"Right," Yu acknowledged, "I'll do that. Thanks," he thanked her for the reminder. "I wonder what the best place to buy everything would be," he began to muse out loud and Sarah just gave him an amused look, before pulling out her phone and fiddling with it for a bit.
"I've already looked up all the stores we would need to pay attention to, and I just sent you the address of the Pokemon supply store you need to visit, along with the address of the restaurant we'll meet up for lunch in two hours," she clarified with a slight laugh.
Yu had felt his phone vibrate just now and that explained why. He gave her a thankful nod, before jokingly asking what he would have done without her, making her laugh.
"You'd probably be lost in the desert," she joked before heading to her room to freshen up. Meanwhile, Yu went out and made his way to the address Sarah had sent him.
Once he was inside the store, Yu also stocked up on some care supplies for Sandslash, Staraptor, and Zebstrika. No reason to wait until those were close to running out when he was already here after all. After thinking for a bit he also bought a new brush for Sarah's Vulpix to thank her for her help. He had to keep up those affection/friendship rates after all.
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