Chapter 6: Jessie has a good day on the way to the Parfum Palace
In the next morning I left bright and early to start on the way to Camphrier Town. There was a gatehouse leading to the appropriate route, and thankfully this one wasn't blocked off because of the power outage. Normally, the gatehouse wouldn't even be worth mentioning, but in this particular one, I happened to be accosted by a strange man in a purple suit.
"My name is Fletching," he said with wink. "Though, if you prefer, you can call me 'Mr. Bonding.' Let me tell you a little something about O-Powers, if you know what I mean..."
Oh, great, another furry. And a perverted one this time, too. I quickly disengaged myself and ran out of the gate house, bumping into a Lucario accidentally on the way. I started to apologize, but it seemed the Lucario actually had something of a fondness for me. A Pokémon fond of me? That's new. Maybe it just smelled Riolu on me or something. It's trainer, some punk girl on roller blades, introduced herself as as the Gym Leader Korrina (really, they're just letting anyone be a Gym Leader these days, aren't they?) before skating off.
Before I could move much further down the route, my transmitter began to buzz. I quickly ducked behind a nearby patch of grass and was rewarded with another Pokémon, this time a beautiful Furfrou. I couldn't believe it, the most popular and trendy Pokémon of Lumiose City was now mine! It didn't last long, however, as the Pokéball popped out of my hands as soon as I recalled the lovely Furfrou. At first I was angry and startled, but I remembered that I had 6 Pokémon in my party, now, so the other would be automatically be sent by computer link to the Professor's laboratory. In fact, since I deposited Onix to pick up Bulbasaur, I actually had EIGHT Pokémon. The realization kind of came at me like a blow; I guess this is what it feels like to be an actual Pokémon trainer.
I debated going back to the Lab, but I wasn't quite sure I was up to meeting with Prof. Dedenne, especially after the close call with "Mr. Bonding" back there. Instead, I headed to the Pokémon Center to use their PC link to swap around my Pokémon. I temporarily deposited Staravia and withdrew my beautiful Furfrou, politely ignoring that it sneezed all over me and my other Pokémon. Poor thing must be so excited to finally have a fashionable trainer. I quickly took it over to the nearby Furfrou Boutique and had it trimmed in a gorgeous star design that just screamed "classy" then went back out to Route 5, ready to battle in style.
As I reentered the route, I happened to catch sight of a small skating park off to the side. That must have been what drew that Korinna girl to this area. I popped on my skates and did a bit of skating myself, managing to snatch a few items that careless skaters had dropped. Really, people in Kalos just don't seem to care about their stuff at all. I could make a fortune just finding crap on the ground and reselling it.
I eventually grew bored of skating and moved further down the route, dispatching a few trainers as I went. Furfrou was a bit excitable in battle, but it performed adequately. Eventually I ran into the ginger twerp and the fat twerp, and the fat twerp challenged me to a battle. He only had one Pokémon, a pathetic little lobster, and I knocked it out easily with my Fennekin. After the battle was over, I totally forgot to gloat because my little Fennekin began to evolve; I was now the proud owner of a Braixen! Could this day get any better?
I was even somewhat pleasant to the twerps, waving them goodbye as I continued on down the route. My Pokémon and I wandered through the flowers, taking down the trainers as we went, and eventually making our way into sleepy little Camphrier Town. This was where we were supposed to find information about mega evolutions? The place had almost nothing, not even a boutique. There was, however, a cute manor house in the north part of the town, and I headed there after making a quick stop at the Pokémon Center to heal my babies.
James was already already inside the manor, which I discovered was called Shabboneau Castle. There was a tour guide giving out information about the manor, and James was attempting to grill him for information about mega evolution when the guide was suddenly called away because of a problem on Route 7.
James pouted as the man left. "Aww, I thought for sure we'd find some useful mega evolution information here, but it turns out to be a dead end. Let's go see what's going on on Route 7, shall we?"
"You go ahead," I said, "I want to check out this manor to see if I can find anything of interest here first."
True to my word, I searched through the manor while James ran off to Route 7, but the only thing of interested that I found was a climbing rope, which I stole. There was plenty of beautiful artwork and decor all over the house, but as it doubled as a museum, the furniture was grimy and everything was bolted down. In other words, not worth stealing. With a shrug, I headed back out of the manor to meet up with James on Route 7.
On the way, I got a bit lost and somehow stumbled onto a farm. The old man there wanted me to plant a bunch of berries for him, and he wouldn't take no for an answer.* I finally agreed just to shut him up and started planting berries as he walked away, but I only planted a single row before pocketing the rest of the berries and heading further down the route.
Finally I managed to catch up with James and the other dorks standing by a giant Snorlax blocking the path. Go figured. Apparently they needed some kind of thing from the Parfum Palace in order to wake it up so people could go through. I hardly listened to half the words they said, but my ears perked up at "Parfum Palace" which sounded like an amazingly fashionable place to visit, so I quickly agreed to help them out. There were a few more trainers along the way, and I beat them with ease. Imagine my surprise when two more of my Pokémon evolved! Bulbasaur became Ivysaur, and Keromatsu evolved into Frogadier. Now that it had evolved, it finally allowed me to stop calling it by that weird nickname, too. 3 evolutions in one day; could this day get any better?
Just as I was approaching the Palace, I started to get another Pokémon transmission. My new Pokémon was a.... wait, what exactly is that thing? I hardly had a chance to look at it before the Pokémon was zapped up and transmitted into storage. Some kind of pink squishy thing in a helmet? I quickly skated back to town to use the PC and look at it, pulling out my Pokédex so I could get some information. The Pokémon in question was a Shelmet, some weird bug thing. Ugh. I ended up leaving it in the PC and headed back out.
It was starting to get dark now, so I decided to leave the Palace for tomorrow and get some sleep. I happened to see a hotel in Camphrier that I thought I could treat myself with a night at, but when I went up to inspect the rooms, the creepy little Mr. Bonding was waggling his eyebrows at me suggestively. I quickly changed my mind about renting a room and went to spend the night at the Pokémon Center. Man, does that guy give me the creeps. Still, all in all, a good, productive day.
