#wheeew hassel is um! something! ;;

[mischievousmeh]

warning: the following contains spoilers for pokémon scarlet/violet

aether and i actually had some errands to run, so instead of doing our usual “let’s walk everywhere on our journey!” routine, we switched it up a bit! after finding a flying taxi, we headed to the town of cortondo, a lovely little place in the south province that we’d briefly visited. and while we were there, we thought, “hey, we can do the gym challenge here while we’re in the area!” sooo, we did!

it was a big surprise to run into nemona again! she swears she isn’t following us around, but it’s getting a little… weird? uncomfortable? sorry nemona! this is a rural area that’s big on farmland, so we didn’t expect to be seeing her here. she seems so… suburban? either way, that aside, she insisted she wasn’t stalking us to beg for a battle, and then sort of let really quickly after?

and so, we are introduced to a neat little tidbit of cortondo culture! the olive roll is both a gym trial and a tradition! by doing completing the challenge, not only do you receive the opportunity to battle the sugarbug of cortondo, katy, but also, you invite good luck for the upcoming olive harvest! and that’s amazingly cool, in my opinion!

the olive roll itself takes place north of town, in a field specially designed for it. you have to push a giant, olive-shaped ball through an obstacle course and into the field at the end! there’s neat ramps and trainers you can battle to take shortcuts, but despite how heavy the olive ball is, i opted to take the long way!

after a good bit of struggling, i managed to get the olive ball to the goal! nice!! i hope the luck between both my and my boyfriend’s challenges yields a fruitful olive harvest! next stop, battling the sugarbug! i hadn’t heard too much about katy other than she specializes in bug-type pokémon, but with a title like that, she sounded quite sweet!

and sweet she is! when i met her, she was feeding one of her vivillion a nice treat. she introduced herself as katy, owner of the soapberry patisserie… but quickly realized she was giving me the wrong introduction. apparently, she’s both a gym leader and a sweets maker! i often forget that gym leaders are just powerful trainers with strong bonds with their pokémon rather than unapproachable, intimidating people known only for their prowess. with both katy and brassius, i’ve been delighted to learn otherwise!

i brought in reaper alone for this battle, confident that he was strong enough to defeat any bug type thrown his way! katy’s nymble and tarountula both fell to him before i knew it. i knew it was a good idea to teach him flamethrower! her last pokémon fit her quite well: a sweet little teddiursa! defeating the terrastilized bear was not as easy, but reaper handled it well!

after the victory, she presented us not only with a sparkly gym badge, but also cupcakes! i’m not usually a big fan of cupcakes, but her sweet treats were absolutely remarkable! also bonus points because i absolutely love cherries, haha! she wished us luck on our travels before she sent us off. i hope we’ll get the chance to talk more in the future!

and then i met this guy. his scary atmosphere is um… very off-putting? now, that could be because he’s part of the pokémon league… or he’s part of the elite four… or because he’s a teacher at uva??? this very intimidating guy is actually the art teacher of uva? he’s got a stern face and a way of speaking that makes me want to avoid going to his class in the future, even if i really love art.

like… is this guy really one of my teachers?? yikes! he followed up promising my defeat with, “it’d be a pleasure to see you in my class” and i am so not sure how to feel about that! :/ yeesh, how scary! he’s also got this weird little cape on the back of his jacket that makes him seem a liiiiittle less serious, but i’m absolutely terrified to attend that art class!

signing off for now and sincerely hoping none of the uva staff know my blog! ^^;;