How To Fail At Camping

[Aura]

An icy wind blew through the city of Icrrius, making a teenage girl shiver as she walked home from guitar lessons. The Woobat soaring beside her cried out in alarm as it was blown off to the side, and flapped her wings quickly to catch up. The wind was a clear indication that while winter was technically over, it still didn’t want to leave just yet and let spring take over. There was still snow on the top of Twist Mountain.

“Remind me again why we’re going camping in this weather, Sera.” The girl asked the Woobat, Serafina.

“Woooo…”

“Oh right. Because we’re idiots.”

In actual fact, the real reason was because a friend of this girl – Tommy Hunter – had receieved a two man ten for his birthday, and he was desperate to try it out. For a kid who had always lived in the city, the prospect of going camping just with friends in the wilderness was an exciting event. However, he’d never been camping before, so he hadn’t exactly chosen the best time to go.

“Well, at least we’re bound to get some turnouts.” The girl continued. “After all, he announced the trip to the entire school at least, and told everyone to bring a friend or two. It wouldn’t surpise me if the entire city knew about this. I’m sure the more adventurours, naïve or just plain insane of us will go for it.” She paused, then sighed. “I just don’t like it that I got dragged into this. But, what else was I supposed to say when people were doubting him coming, and he announced that I was going? Peer pressure much?”

Sighing again, she unlocked the door to her house, and headed inside with Sera. Her mum was cooking dinner, with a rather annoyed expression on her face. Karen hated cooking, cleaning, and anything to do with household chores, but because Dad was hardly ever at home, he couldn’t really do any of it, so she had to.

“Ari!” Karen exclaimed, her face lighting up a bit. “God, what took you so long?”

“I took a detour to go give Tommy a kick up the ass. I can’t believe he’d be so stupid to go camping now, and refuse to wait a few weeks until it was warmer… And he had to invite everyone! It’s going to suck if heaps of people decide to come along.”

Karen smiled deviously at her eldest daughters winging. “Oh stop it. You’re actually really excited to be going camping, you’re just really moody at the moment.” Her expression became suspicious. “Your not on your p-“

“Muum!” Ari groaned. “Leave me alone!”

“I will if you go pack.”

In a cyclone of moody teenage fury and humiliation, Ariana Fitzroy stormed her way down the hall to her room and slammed the door shut.

Ariana was a sixteen year old girl, slightly taller than most in her year at school. She’d been blessed with few pimples and fair skin, although according to the girls at school, fair skin was ‘out’ at the moment. Her light brown hair was naturally dead straight, and flowed down just a little way past her shoulders. At the moment, her moss green eyes were a blazing green fury, caught up in her teenage emotions and she tackled the task of packing her hiking bag for that bloody camping trip.

***

At 10.30am the next day – Saturday – Ari dragged her pack and herself over to the start of Route 8. Tommy was already there, and bouncing with excitement. He was shorter than Ari, which she mercilessly teased him about. He had moved here from Orre, so his skin was dark, and looked out of place in the cooler area of Unova. He had a loose afro of burgundy hair, and dark blue eyes. He was dressed in all black and red, his favourite two colours. Upon seeing Ari and Sera, he happily bounded up to them.

“Good morning my darling rose.” He said mockingly. “Aren’t we just looking fabulous today!”

“Shut up Tommy.” Ari growled, not giving him the satisfaction of seeing her glance down at her trashed camping/hiking/getting dirty clothes. “We’re going camping remember?”

“Ah, but my dear! I swear you look beautiful like this every day!” Tommy proclaimed, before pretending to be mortally wounded when Ari gave him the finger.

As she’d suspected, they did have some people who wanted to come along, which was a good thing really, if it had been just Ari and Tommy… that would have been awkward. Well, not while they were camping on the long weekend, but at school when everyone heard it was just the two of them… no doubt the rumours and assumptions would be embarrassing at the best.

She knew some of them, but only a few people actually looked as if they were actually coming along. It appeared that a lot of people were just here to see who would actually go along. There were also a few trainers standing about, who seemed slightly confused about what was going on.

However, of those who looked like they might be going, Ari realised that her earlier assumptions were probably right. Those that she knew were all idiots, adventurous, thrill seekers, insane, or any combination of the above. A few of them had an annoyed and slightly worried expression. They’d probably been forced into this the same way she had.

“Hooray for peer pressure…” Ari murmured to herself.

“What did you say?” Tommy asked, sounding normal again now that he was done with his mocking greeting.

“Don’t worry.” She said, taking a deep breath. Come on, lets been optimistic about this. She looked around, and spotted Sera greeting Tommy’s Cryogonal, Cryo. Upon seeing the giant snowflake, she wondered about Tommy’s other Pokemon. “Did you bring Romeo?” She asked him.

Tommy winked, pulled out an Ultra Ball. “Of course I did!”

“Uh, is that really a good idea? I mean, that Deino tried to eat my arm when I first met him.”

“It’ll be fine. I need to bond with him more, and besides, there’s strong trainers here. It’ll be fine. Speaking of trainers…” Tommy wandered off to go speak to some of them, who were clearly curious about what was going on. Knowing him, he would probably invite them all to come along if they wanted.

They waited for another ten minutes for people to arrive, while Tommy became more and more obviously impatient. Finally, he had had enough, and gathered everyone up.

“Oi!” He called out to the crowd. “Who here is actually going? If those who aren’t would leave, that would be awesome. So, go on! Shoo!”

After the crowd left, there we left with a small group of people who were clearly ready to get going. “Okay!” Tommy announced. “I’m sick of waiting, so if anyone’s late, they will have to deal now won’t they? Come on Cryo, lets go, lead the way!” The duo turned and marched off along Route 8.

Exchanging a slightly worried glance with Sera, Ari took a deep breath, and followed Tommy in the first steps of this insane camping trip.

 

[Mr.RMA]

The room was dim, with the only source of light coming from the window shutters, along with another gust of cold air, just how the boy inside the room liked it. Quiet, peaceful, and chilled. Any other place he was fine being loud and talkative, but within the confines of his small room, within his small house standing like many of the others in Icrrius, he sought only serenity.

"They're going out today...I've got to make a choice, now or never." Claude, the name of the boy, murmured quietly to himself.

He was spending his alone time pondering over a recent invite to join a rather eccentric kid he didn't even know very well to camp to a location he wasn't informed very much about. In short, he had no idea what he was planning on taking part in, which lead to his contemplation being nothing more than a waste of time, considering he didn't have many facts deciding for or against it, minus his lack of knowledge on the subject of camping, and the fact that he didn't know of any of his small line of friends who were willing to participate along with him. Two cons. Still, there was one pro that kept him reconsidering.

Throughout high school, Claude was always considered average, not up there on the popularity level, but not quite fitting in with the considered "losers" either. He wasn't mockingly overweight, but he wasn't stunningly muscular either, his complexion wasn't spotless, but it wasn't completely pimple faced, and he wasn't always getting straight As, but he never failed his classes. Simply average. Thus, he wasn't exactly given a warm greeting by either side of the extreme spectrum of kids in the social structure, and found himself simply disappearing within the large crowd of other average students like himself. After many years of this, and considering how he didn't have much more time to be a kid at the age of 17, his status was something he wanted to finally stray away from.

"I'm sure to at least fit in with a more distinct group of my peers if I go. Maybe I'd finally get a few friends that would actually remember my name and treat me like an individual." He said to himself, something he had been trying repetitively to convince himself while he was deciding over what to do.

Sighing as he still couldn't come up with a set choice, he reached in his pocket for a single great ball and activated it, releasing the Pokemon it confined.

"What do you think, Achille? Should we go?" He asked the Accelgor.

"...gor..." Achille replied, his helmet shaped head nodding in a way of saying "yes".

"Yeah, I'd figured you say that. We haven't done much traveling together since we became a team. You probably had a lot more excitement and adventure with your first trainer, huh?"

Claude had gotten Achille after taking a rather long walk through route 6 on his 17th birthday. He had been given a dozen great balls as a present from his father, and having used up 6 of them unsuccessfully, he finally got lucky enough to capture a strolling karrablast with his 7th. A trainer passing by had witnessed the capture, and quickly rushed up to Claude to ask for a trade for his shelmet, which Claude, knowing full well what resulted from this specific trading procedure, easily agreed to. Achille seemed fine with the switch in trainers...at least, he didn't seem to reject Claude or anything. Probably simply treated him like everyone else: average. Well, hopefully this trip could change the Accelgor's opinion of him as well.

"Well then, who am I to hold us back? Come on, Achille, we're going on a camping trip!" He said, sending the Accelgor back into its Great ball as he headed out his room and downstairs to tell his parents, and most likely listen to their whole safety and preparation spiel. Small sacrifice to finally do something worthwhile.

***

Route 8. It had only just then occurred to Claude that he had never gone this way before, his only treks always headed towards the direction of Route 7. He never even considered taking Route 8, seeing how its swampy ecosystem was something he didn't want to trudge through all that much.

He spotted a small crowd of people and, like he usually did, slipped into the group, once more becoming just another face in the crowd. He got in a small conversation or two, talking mostly to trainers he had never seen before, hearing about their journeys, and explaining his lack thereof. Though he introduced himself to several of them, he expected most of them to forget all about him as soon as they all parted ways. Why would they bother remembering just another person they simply happened to pass by?

After a short while, the loud kid who had invited them all here in the first place got them all together and asked for everyone who wasn't actually going on the trip to leave. Once more, Claude started having second thoughts, but he shoved them aside and stayed where he was as a large chunk of the crowd left, leaving a considerably smaller number of people remaining in the group.

As the boy and some girl of which Claude felt he knew from somewhere, but wasn't quite sure exactly where, started walking off towards the Route ahead, he let out a heavy sigh and looked around him at the others.

"Anyone else a bit hesitant about all this?" He asked, though he had a feeling he was the only one feeling this sort of way at the moment, as he was sure most of them were simply eager to get to the journey.

Letting out another sigh, he adjusted his pack, straightened out his shirt, and slowly started following after the two up ahead.

 

[Blazi]

"Camping! Camp camp camp!" the small parrot-like pokemon flew around the room, squawking out the most important words of the hour.

"Iago! Would you please stop! I'm trying to think of what to pack here!" The teenager shouted back up to the Chatot, before returning to his half-packed bag.

"Tent! Sleeping bag! Campingcampingcamping!"

"Iago! Shut! Up!", Alistair or Al to his friends, sighed. He had only been given notice about the camping trip tomorrow that day, and as such, was in a rush to pack. Al had been born in Sinnoh, so he wasn't to fussed about going camping at he end of winter, but he was unsure how his other campers would react.

"Up! Shut! Shutup!" The over-energetic parrot shouted, obviously adding a new word to its' vocabulary. Al smacked himself in the forehead, before returning to packing.

--------

Al got to the meeting site the next day, everything packed and accounted for, including the (thankfully silent) Chatot on his shoulder.

"Camp?" Well, almost silent. The boy that had pretty much invited them all called out to the large group, and asked anyone who wasn't coming to leave. Once they had left, Al was standing in a smallish group.

The boy started walking off, and Al started following. "There we go. Let's hope something doesn't go wrong."

OoC: Woo hoo~ Short post. I'll be describing Al a bit later in the RP

 

[Aura]

Ari turned her head, to glance back at some of the people who were coming. Of the small group that had said they were coming, a few of them had turned and walked away. She knew one of them, a rather er large girl, her face caked in make up. Bethany and herself didn't get along very well at all, probably because their ideas of how to live and stuff were completely different. Ari wondered why she'd even thought about going camping in the first place. She had no idea.

Two boys however, were following them. One of them had a slightly hesitant expression on his face, and she thought she had seen him somewhere before. He didn't have a very memorable face, but then, neither did she. The only reason she got noticed at school was because of Tommy, and that she did okay at school. The other boy, she didn't know him either, but the strange bird on his shoulder set him apart from the other. She'd never seen one like that before, with a black musical note for a head. He had to be from another region.

"Hey Tommy!" She called out to her outgoing companion. "Wait up a bit!"

Tommy sighed, running his hands through his hair. "Fine." He grumbled, and stopped where he was.

Ari and Sera walked (or in Sera's case, flew) back to meet their camp mates. She quickly hid her own uncertainty from her face and smiled at the two of them.

"Hi there." She said kindly. "Sorry about Tommy- he's incredibly headstrong and impatient sometimes. Okay, all the time." Behind her, Tommy coughed loudly. "Anyway, I'm Ariana Fitzroy, Ari for short really." She directed her next words at the average boy. "I swear I've seen you before, at school maybe? Do you go to Icrrius High?"

After a few moments of conversation, they caught up with Tommy. He studied all three of them, then broke out into a grin. "Tommy Hunter." He said, sticking out his hand to the guy with the strange musical bird. "Glad to have ye aboard, me hearties! Welcome to me ship, mates! An adventure filled with gold and treasure awaits! Hahahahaha!" Tommy chuckled, pretending to be a pirate.

Ari face palmed, half expecting the two boys to turn around and walk away. "This is going to be an interesting journey..." She murmured to herself.

 

[Mr.RMA]

Claude watched several more of the group fall back as he followed after the two ahead, with only one other boy still around as well. It seemed rather strange how he was the hesitant one, yet he was still one of the few following through with this strange trip. 'Guess I wasn't the only one with second thoughts' He thought to himself. He probably could have easily backed away like the majority of the crowd, but he had put too much effort into bringing himself this far to simply quit now, not to mention he didn't want to put that...unpleasant, experience of last minute packing to waste.

As he continued walking, he looked towards the other boy close by, the chatot on his shoulder catching his attention. High chance that this kid must have traveled a lot if he had a Sinnoh native Pokemon as his partner.

Delving into his own thoughts, Claude was snapped out of it when he heard the girl up ahead approach. Surprised that she found him somewhat familiar, he was a bit slow to answer.

"Uh..yeah, I go there as well. You probably passed me by once or twice before. Name's Claude, Claude Felch. Nice to meet you three." He said.

As the loud boy introduced himself in a rather out there kinda way, Claude gave a slight chuckle.

"Well, 'least we don't have to worry about any pessimism on this trip." He said, though mostly to himself. "In any case, what's our destination looking to be like?" he asked, the details he already knew few and far between.

 

[Dinova]

Zack snored quietly as the alarm clock on his dresser continued to go off. For once he had tried to do something on time, but as usual he had screwed up. Luckily his Oshawott, Dori was more prepared than he was. The small, blue otter pokemon climbed onto her trainer's bed and began to shake his shoulders to try and get him to wake up. After failing for several minutes and becoming very annoyed, Dori gave up on being gentle and blasted the dozing boy with a blast of water from her mouth, waking him instantly.

"Hey, what was that for, Dori!!" Zach asked indignant at the rude awakening.

"Shawott, Osha." she replied, her white paw pointing at the still buzzzing alarm clock which now read 10:30 am.

"What?! Oh no, we're gonna be late!" He quickly began to scramble around the room, grabbing his pack, which he had had enough foresight to pack the previous night, and slipping the strap to his camera around his neck. The tall, scrawny 16 year old grabbed Dori, placing her on his shoulder
and ran out the door.

A strange kid from his school had invited anyone who wanted to, to come on a camping trip. Zach had gotten really excited about it so, of course, he overslept as usual and made himself late. When he got to where everyone was supposed to meet up, everyone had already left.

"Great, now we're gonna have to catch up." he sighed as he tore down the path towards route 8. Fortunately, the others weren't that hard to find. The strange boy who had invited everyone had suddenly began imitating a pirate which was hard to miss.

He called out to the other four to get their attention as he ran up,"Hey, wait! I'm not too late to come along am I? I slept in and fell behind. I'm Zach Rayner, and this is Dori." he said, pointing to the Oshawott on his shoulder.

((OOC:Sorry I'm coming into this sorta late, but I asked aura and she said it was okay.))

 

[Secad MS]

(OoC: What's the weather? I seem to be getting confusing readings from the posts.)

"Shut up! Shut up!" an avian voice cried, apparently a bit past the bushes near where Olive Pendergast had set up her tent.

"Aaaagh!" the unusually tall girl cried, curling up in her average-single-person sized grey tent, shoving the small travel pillow further over her ears. At six foot two, there wasn't much room left for her old Liepard, Letta, and her Servine, Drew. Thankfully, the Deino (Agnes) her parents bought her as a graduation present was in his Pokeball. The tent was already full, and would be bursting with that hungry devil in it.

The tanned, slightly pockmarked face of the seventeen year old popped out of the purple sleeping bag, short, spiky blonde hair disheveled. The angular face was licked by the old 'Cruel' Pokemon, letting out a reassuring purr before settling back into a sleeping position. In between her front and back legs was Drew, taking advantage of the heat through the thinning fur. He hissed at first in annoyance, then softened into a sound of pleasure. The annoyed expression of the brown human eyes lessened.

"Thanks, Let." Olive patted the Liepard's head, struggling to wiggle out of the sleeping bag, revealing a glittery mauve t-shirt over a grey waffle-weave shirt and dirty blue denim jeans. Three Pokeballs rattled in her pocket. Hearing the conversations of the humans and Pokemon, Olive sighed. "I guess I'll get up and get them to shut up so we can nap some more."

Letta stepped out of the crunchy wood onto the path, which wasn't far. Seeing a group including an Oshawott, an unidentified bird-looking Pokemon that was chattering annoyingly, and some people, like that guy whose features one could forget after looking at them (they were sooo plain, Olive thought), and a girl with flat brown hair.

"Excuse me," Olive said loudly, annoyance leaking through her tone, the crunch of her hiking boots accentuating it, "But you are disturbing me, as well as Drew and Letta."

~@~

(A few weeks earlier)

"Congratulations, Ollie!" Miss Pendergast exclaimed, seeing her daughter walk back down the stairs after her graduation ceremony. "That navy gown absolutely flatters you; as does the Mistralton High diploma."

"Thanks, mom." she replied, adjusting the flat navy cap upon her head, while hugging her mother, careful to avoid tangling the sky blue tassel in her mother's elaborate blonde hairdo. Her mother was taller even than Olive, at six foot five. That's probably where I got my height. Olive thought.

"You're welcome." As if remembering something, Miss Pendergast jumped slightly, popping up a finger. "Ooh, that reminds me. You did ask earlier if you could go on a camping trip, and I said maybe. I was worried about you getting hurt with only aging Letta and young Drew to protect you. Because of this, I got you a gift."

"A gift?"

"Yes." Olive's mother rummaged in her black leather handbag, the buckles matching perfectly with her metallic silver sheath dress. She withdrew a Pokeball with an 'OP' drawn on it in an elaborate typeset. "I got you a Deino from the Day Care. It's young enough you can control it--even with one badge I must add, but training was never your thing, art was...where was I? Yes! It's young enough to control, but strong enough to protect you."

"Does this mean I can go?" Olive asked excitedly. "I can finally see the wonders of nature, maybe even a rare Pokemon, to inspire some paintings before college."

"Yes."

No words came out of her mouth after that, only an ecstatic, happy smile.

~@~

So much for art. That was Olive's thought on day two of her camping. The weather could be really hot, really cold, but no where inbetween that was comfortable. Her socks got wet and squishy, which always distracted her from inspiration. Now, we have noisy Trainers or campers. Grr.

 

[Aura]

(OOC: Sorry guys, I've had a bit of a massive writers block. And to answer your question, it is at the very start of spring, so it is still coldish, but it will get warmer)

BIC:

"Uh..yeah, I go there as well." The average looking guy said to Ari. "You probably passed me by once or twice before. Name's Claude, Claude Felch. Nice to meet you three." Claude... yeah, she'd heard of him before in class, maybe maths? She wasn't sure.

"Well, 'least we don't have to worry about any pessimism on this trip." Claude said "In any case, what's our destination looking to be like?"

Ari smiled. "There's a clearing, some way from here, but it's within walking distance. I went there as a little girl all the time with my dad - it's a great camping spot..."

She trailed off as someone, a female voice screamed. "Aaaagh!"

Ari stared towards the direction of the sound, which seemed to have come from beyond a group of bushes. Tommy and Ari glanced at each other in confusion, as Sera landed on top of the green eyed girls head. Without a word, Tommy pulled out a Great Ball, and in a flash of white light, a four legged blue Pokemon appeared, covered in places with black fur. It had sharp teeth, it's eyes were covered by it's black mane, and it was covered in wounds and scars. Romeo the Deino sniffed at the air suspiciously, then growled.

"Lets find out what that was..." Tommy said, suddenly serious. "Sounded like someone was in trouble."

He barged through the bushes first, his eyes fierce. Probably because the voice had been too high to be a male; he never missed a moment to show off. In the area that followed, there was no 10 feet tall Gyarados trying to kill some poor kill like Tommy had probably hoped. But there was a tent there. An ordinary, everyday tent. Moments later, a girl stepped out, looking bed ridden and annoyed.

"I think we've woken someone up..." Ari murmered.

"Excuse me," She said, anger lancing her tone. "But you are disturbing me, as well as Drew and Letta."

Tommy grinned flitatiously. "My dear, I am soooo sorry. We never meant to disturb you, but as I can see, we are obviously great minds, for we think alike." He pointed to the group. "We're going camping, just as you seem to be right now. How about you come with us hmm? Things are more fun in numbers."

Behind him, Ari, Sera and Cryo facepalmed. Would he never learn?

 

[Mr.RMA]

((OOC: Don't worry about it Aura. My imagination hasn't been on its A-game as of yet either. In fact, it still isn't, (Thank god I'm not in the Dissidia thing...that would've been disastrous me'thinks) but hopefully I can salvage enough of it to post something decent here...))

Claude barely had time to blink before several events happened almost immediately one after the other. First, someone was running up to catch up to the rest of the group, and as he looked back to see who it was, another person somewhere farther off was screaming, but before he could turn to see which direction the noise came from, Tommy and Ari had beaten him to it, running off towards some bushes. Taking a deep breath, he decided to check out the newcomer running towards them, as the matter with the screaming person was already being dealt with. He turned towards the slightly younger looking boy and his Oshawott, waving back as they approached.

"I don't think you'd cause any real trouble if you came along. We haven't really gotten very far anyways." He responded, smiling as he held out his hand to shake. "Name's Claude by the way. Claude Felch. Pleasure to meet you both."

Upon a closer inspection, this kid, Zach he was apparently called, seemed familiar in the same way that Ari was. Most likely he was also a high school student that he had come across before. He wasn't too surprised about this, as it wasn't that hard to spot familiar people around Icrrius, at least, not to Claude. After all, it wasn't like the city was swarmed to the teeth with people like, say, Casetelia was, and aside from the large crowd gathering from earlier, Claude was more prone to seeing only individual to small groups of traveling trainers pass through the town, and they usually only stayed for as long as it took them to get a gym badge off Brycen, the gym leader. (Though sometimes this took a while. Ice Mask was definitely not a push-over)

Pushing that thought aside, Claude looked back towards the bushes that the other two and their pokemon disappeared off to. "That loud kid just ran off that way. We should probably follow after him to make sure everything's alright." He suggested, keeping the great ball that held his single pokemon at the ready. Achille hated being left out in the light for fear of dehydration, so Claude was still hesitant on bringing him out unless there was a true emergency

 

[Secad MS]

A dark-skinned boy with a reddish afro grinned. "My dear, I am soooo sorry. We never meant to disturb you, but as I can see, we are obviously great minds, for we think alike." He pointed to the group accompanying him, including a Cryogonal (great to draw, Olive thought, with all those angles) and the plain looking boy and girl. "We're going camping, just as you seem to be right now. How about you come with us hmm? Things are more fun in numbers."

Taken by surprise, Olive was searching for words. More people with her meant less time to draw, but that boy looked so interesting, so rawly appealing, the charisma...

"Er--um, sure. Just let me pack up my stuff." Olive replied, haltingly, distracted by the unexpected response. Noticing that one person had a Deino like hers (except awfully scarred) "Hey, I have a Deino, too. His name is Agnes. What is your's?"

 

[Aura]

The girl seemed rather taken aback from what Ari could see, and she hid a smile. Tommy could do that to most people, expecially like that one time when he'd decided to wear his hoodie as pants... Wait, why was she friends with him again? ... Yeah, she had no idea. Zach and Claude both appeared from out of the bushes at the same time, seeming slightly cautious. Ari gave them both a casual smile, just as the blonde spoke.

"Er--um, sure. Just let me pack up my stuff." She said, seemingly slightly unsure. Then her eyes brightened. "Hey, I have a Deino, too. His name is Agnes. What is your's?"

"This is Romeo." Tommy said, sounding slightly normal for once. "I won him in a compertition a couple of months ago, and camping seemed like a good way for us to bond, and make some new friends too. So, what's your name?"