orendalogs | Pokémon Omega RWBY

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Pokémon Omega RWBY

Who: Ren and Nora
What: A queen and her knave on an unexpected Pokémon adventure!
When: No point in particular
Where: ~~Some random woods in the Pokémon world~~ Petalburg Woods in Hoenn? okay that works too
Warnings: n/a

It had started at breakfast in the very literal sense. Nora had managed to convince—or nag, beg, cajole, whatever—Ren that the team was in need of good luck and a morale boost, and that had somehow translated into pancakes. Not just cafeteria pancakes, but homemade, which meant Ren was going to make them. He had, for whatever reason, accepted and gone along with this argument, but after everything had been assembled, Ren had picked up a spatula—and suddenly tripped on nothing and vanished into midair.

After several fruitless minutes trying to locate him inside the cabinets or behind the fridge, Nora had grabbed Magnhild in preparation to start knocking things aside. As soon as her beloved hammer was in hand, that was when she saw it: a whirlpool of light, spinning in the air right where Ren had vanished. Naturally, Nora had jumped right through it.

One falling sensation later, she was in a forest with Ren catching her fall. Not that he seemed to be expecting it. She flew out of the air right behind him, momentum knocking them both over and depositing them in a heap. That was when they met the guide (maybe capitalized, The Guide?) or at least a recording of him, and then were promptly left on their own in the middle of nowhere.

The light slanting through the leaves overhead had an orange cast to it, warning them that night approached. Clambering to the top of a tree had revealed no readily identifiable landmarks so a temporary campsite became the order of the night. Even though they hadn’t even had breakfast yet. Nora’s stomach was a-rumble and that wasn’t fair.

So, while Ren assembled a campfire, Nora went roaming the local vicinity for something resembling edibles. Berries, mushrooms…maybe she could even find a tree leaking sweet sap to eat! What she found, instead, was something completely different and entirely unexpected.

So it was that Ren would hear Nora shouting at the top of her lungs, in a rising tone of great excitement that usually meant trouble: “REEEEEEEEEEEN!!”

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More small woodland creatures, from the looks of it. But one can’t be too careful regardless, and Ren’s heart is beating a mile a minute as he gently parts the bushes and finds…

A Ralts, already halfway into the berry before he’d startled it, and the next thing he knows the odd creature lets out a frightened squeak and stumbles out of the bushes and trips over the foliage, dropping facefirst onto the forest floor as the half-eaten berry rolls out of its grasp.

What…is it? Certainly doesn’t look threatening and it’s definitely devoid of Grimm markings1 Nora puts Magnhild away just as quickly as she got it out in the first place and steps closer, scooping up that half-eaten berry after it bounces off her shoe.

“Awwww, it’s tiny! Do you think it’s a baby? It looks like a baby.” What funny little feet! Continuing to take this whole alien world thing quite in stride, Nora brushes at her skirt and bends down, extending her arm and the fruit out to the unusual critter.

“Heeeey little guy. Good fruit for you and Pak, huh? Good for me and Ren too, you think? Sure looks yummy~”

“Nora, you—” he starts to protest, before deciding against it. He withdraws his weapons instead as the little creature draws hesitantly toward Nora, holding its hands out for the proffered fruit.

Great, he thinks. At least they get a bite to eat. Granted, he could’ve taken some for himself, but one of them has to be the sensible one around here. Besides, missing breakfast isn’t so bad if the day’s already almost over.

Speaking of…

“It’s getting late,” he observes, watching the shadows deepen around them even as the thing—rather cutely, he thinks—nibbles at its prize. And of course Nora has taken to it, despite the thing looking even more alien than the sloth is.

But he figures their business here is done; it’d be too risky to attempt another search in this dark. He gets up, thinking to leave the alien creature to its own devices, and starts to move away before he feels something catch at his pants leg.

He looks down—at those huge eyes peeking out from under the wide green brim of its cap—then he looks at Nora, and sighs.

Too bad Grimm aren’t this friendly! But, then again, if they were, who would be left to fight? She and Ren couldn’t be training to be Huntsman and Huntress if there weren’t Grimm to fight and Beacon was their only home so….

Well, Nora’s only meeting that sigh with another big grin. Nothing wrong with more company, right? As Nora saunters back to that tree and starts to load her arms up with as many of those blue fruits as she can reach, there’s really only one question to ask:

“What are you going to call it, Ren?”

It’s those big Nora-like eyes. That did it for sure.

But no, really. He’d be remiss to just leave it alone, especially after that first meeting. And why was it all alone, anyway? He couldn’t sense any other creature within their immediate vicinity.

And he knows what it’s like to have nowhere else to go…

“Only if you want to come,” he tells the creature as Nora turns back to the tree. It…seems to understand him well enough, if its bobbing its horn in their direction can be construed as a nod.

And when Nora asks, the name comes to him immediately.

He smiles, offering it his hand. “You can stay with us, Magnolia.”

Ren and Nora, Pak and Magnolia….

“Team Marzipan it is!” Nora announces cheerfully, walking back over with her arms loaded with fruit. Pak has finally finished the one he’d been eating before and looped his arms around Nora’s neck like a fuzzy scarf, his face mostly hidden behind them. Despite the girl’s loud chirruping, Pak seems sound asleep.

“Come on, Ren, let’s get back to the fire and see how these taste roasted!” she exclaims, already trotting back the way they came. (Her trampled path through the underbrush is hard to miss.)

Marzipan…

You know what? He’s not gonna question this. He’s already got an armful of Magnolia chomping happily on that Oran Berry as they follow the trail back to camp, to where the fire is still blazing—albeit not as merrily as previously. Even if he’s hungry and tired and just about ready to sleep the night away, it’s hard not to feel even a little bit chipper with Nora and the Ralts in tow. It’s like he’s feeling some sort of residual empathy or something.

There are many things his Aura can’t quite detect, after all.

“You’ll have to stay up for first watch, though.” Not that he expects a berry-energized Nora to even fathom falling asleep this early in the evening.

Well if he doesn’t approve of Team MRPN he’s welcome to offer alternatives. If not, Marzipan it is!

Not to mention, given the fact that she only woke up a few hours ago in the first place, not even the onset of night can confuse her senses into thinking it’s already time to sleep. Ren, though….

“No problem, lazybud!” she replies, flopping back down at the side of the fire. A few sticks are easily grabbed, used to feed and stoke it back up, and then she strips down another for use as a roasting tool.

While Nora’s spearing several berries onto her improvised skewer, Pak slips off her back at last and sprawls in the grass at her side. With a grumbly little sound it nudges its head onto her lap and then appears to doze off.

It’s nighttime. He’ll have to adjust to the transdimensional lag sooner or later. Sorry, a fourth of team MRPN is just that pathetic, though that hasn’t deterred its newest member from latching onto him anyway. Magnolia sits to the side, happily munching on its berry as Ren gathers up a few sticks and leaves to cushion himself from the rough ground.

It’s not much, but he’d figured that they’d put their survival training to use sooner rather than later.

Of course, once he’s laid down with a sigh Magnolia finishes the last of the berry and scrambles up to Ren’s stomach. And Ren might have…helped him up a little, but nobody saw that. His new buddy plops itself onto his stomach and looks at Pak, giving it a cheerful wave.

Since when was a stick ever a comfortable thing to lie on? That’s desperation, man.

It’s a boring night for Nora, too. Roasting and eating berries occupies her for a while, but when the breakfast need is sated she has nothing to do but listen to the sounds of the fire and the forest and the sleepers around her. Nothing even remotely like a Grimm ever shows itself, but that matches what that ‘Guide’ said, doesn’t it? This isn’t Remnant.

It isn’t too long before her restlessness drives Pak to find somewhere comfier to sleep—namely, the Slakoth shuffles over to Ren and Magnolia, and wriggles his way under the human’s head until his back is providing a furry makeshift pillow.

Did Nora let him sleep the whole night through? Regardless, Ren is not a morning person by any means—which, of course, given the comfiness of the Slakoth, has pretty much rendered him unconscious even into late morning. Maggie’s actually getting a bit concerned, patting at his face like that.

And in his dreams he’s wandering through a forest—much like this one—searching for his companions, for the rest of Team JNPR, when out of the shadows bursts a Grimm, fangs and claws outstretched, lunging straight at him…

“Wah!” Ren’s startled awake, sitting immediately bolt upright. The force of the movement knocks his Pokémon aside and he has to take a moment to breathe, to remember where they’ve been.

It’s a forest much like the one in his dreams, albeit…brighter, friendlier. Vaguely, as he shakes off the morning grogginess, his Aura begins to pick up movement within their vicinity. Animals scurry beneath the dense canopies of the trees, hiding in shadows…a pair of eyes open in the dimness, before it’s met with surprise…a trainer, in a straw hat and carrying a bug net, whoops with joy at the find…

The revelation wrenches his mind into focus, and the next thing he does is look around in a panic. “Nora?”

A couple nocturnal Zigzagoons came snuffling by in the night, lured by the smell of the berries, giving Nora at least a bit of company for a while, but they all went snuffling off in the end. Either way Nora did, indeed, let Ren sleep. The lazybud seemed to need it and Nora only would have been staring at the mottle of leaves overhead for hours. Not that she isn’t capable of naps, mind you, but when there’s been nothing to wear out her energy and warrant one in the first place….

The fire’s still burning and there’s some sticks jammed mostly upright into the ground around it, roasting more berries for (presumably) second breakfast. Nora’s nowhere immediately in sight, however—but that’s only because at the call of her name, there’s a rustling from above before she drops back into sight, hanging upside-down by her knees from a sturdy branch. Hey, a gal has to entertain herself somehow.

“Morning Ren! Get enough sleep?”

He immediately flinches back as she drops into view, nearly falling back onto his makeshift pillow as he does so.

Here, ladies and gentlemen, is the only person who could ever catch him off guard like that.

“Yeah,” he sighs, biting his lip when he feels his stomach rumble. Even Maggie can feel it too as it draws near. Absently, Ren begins to pat it on the head.

“There are people nearby. You ready to go?”

“Ooh, I bet I know where they came from!” Nora exclaims, showing all delight and little concern as she flips and drops out of the tree, brushing her skirt back into place after she’s landed.

She goes to the fire, picks up one of those fruit-laden skewers, then returns and puts it right in Ren’s hand so he can do the obvious thing about fixing his rumbly belly. At the same time, she’s saying, “We couldn’t see anything while the sun was out, but I climbed up the trees again while it was dark? There’s definitely a city—” she pivots in place, flinging her hand to point triumphantly in a northwards direction, “—that way!”

He keeps his eyes on her even as he accepts that skewer and starts pulling berries out of it without even thinking. Then he’s staring off into the direction she’s pointing as he hands a berry over to Maggie instead, quite forgetting his hunger in light of further intel as to their location.

Finally, he looks down at Maggie, suddenly feeling a pang for what this could mean.

“I’m not sure if we should take them into the city.” Magnolia immediately looks up. Ren looks away from it guiltily, and tries to press on:

“There’s probably some protocol about bringing the wildlife in, and—”

—ploop! That would be a berry getting poked into Ren’s mouth while it hangs open to speak. She heard that rumbling, man, and while it may be so that you have let her go hungry on occasion, she’s not returning the disfavor.

Without missing a beat, she turns down to Pak, who has finally roused and is reaching its long arms up to her again. She helps her furry backpack sling back into place and gives him a fruit, too, as she says, “Well that’s still the best direction to go, right? We need a base of operations to search for portals from!”

Isn’t he so lucky. But he’s well and duly shut up, and even Maggi’s delighted at the display. It’s standing up now, trying to nudge its half-eaten berry at his lips.

Ren swallows, looking at the proffered berry uncertainly, before taking a bite out of it, too. There’s no winning with you guys.

“Might as well,” he replies, tired of arguing. Maybe one day one of them can learn Hidden Power so they can fill a treehouse full of plushies and such. Right now Ren opts to put out the fire and gather Magnolia up in his arms. Hopefully they can be passed off as pets in this strange new world.

“Lead the way.” Please. So he can get some honest-to-goodness people breakfast for a change.

It hardly counts as an argument when it's only three tags long, but hey. The fire is extinguished, its ashes buried, and off Team MRPN goes in search of that city whose lights Nora glimpsed twinkling in the distance of the night.

As it turns out, though, they don't have to get very far along before greater signs of civilization are encountered. Ren said he sensed people, and so it proves to be true: a small figure appears through the trees before long, a small boy in a big straw hat with an even bigger butterfly net in hand. There's not the least bit of anything threatening about him, not even the way his eyes light up when he spots them.

"Hey, hi!" he exclaims, waving his hand as he runs up towards them. "You have Pokémon! Wanna battle?"

A strange request to make of strangers, but what does one have to do with the other? Not that Nora stops to wonder given that she's pulling Magnhild out to--

Hey with Nora you might as well quit while you’re ahead. Which is something their fellow trainers will learn soon, no doubt.

And of course, even bug nets can morph into powerful weapons, but this isn’t Remnant, and Ren’s quick enough to put two and two together to figure out what “Pokémon” means.

“Nora, wait!” With Maggie cradled in one hand, he reaches out with the other to cut between Magnhild and that kid.

Thankfully, Nora waits, much to the relief of that wide-eyed child. She hadn’t even noticed the small red and white ball he’d pulled out with the hand not carrying his net.

A ball that he has now dropped in his shock of being so narrowly saved from getting hammer-bashed. When it hits the ground it pops open and a strange burst of light comes out of it, swiftly solidifying into a red, caterpillar-like creature.

They’ll learn quickly enough that they haven’t seen them all. Ren regards the Wurmple carefully. It doesn’t appear hostile, and yet there’s no telling what it might do when its master had just been threatened.

And as alien as it looks, he can at least identify it as one of the myriad presences that this forest is brimming with.

He turns his attention to the boy, whilst warily keeping one eye on his Pokémon still. “You mean…” he begins, carefully, as he motions to Maggie. “…them, right?”

“Ye—Yeah,” the boy responds, eying Nora just as warily. “I mean…we don’t have to if you don’t want to. It’s fine! Really!!”

“Awwww, I thought you wanted to spar,” Nora pouts, but lowers her hammer. Nevermind that this kid is maybe eleven at most and even if he was a Huntsman-in-training that wouldn’t be a fair fight.

Planting Magnhild’s handle against the ground like a walking stick, she bends down and looks at the Wurmple, then over her shoulder at Pak.

“Do you wanna spar, Pak?”

The Slakoth cracks open an eye, yawns, then nuzzles his face back into the loop of his arms around Nora’s neck and returns to sleep. Guess not.

That’s why she’s got Ren.

Who, as it happens, is struggling to keep his Pokémon from wriggling out of his grip.

“Magnolia?” The critter in question struggles in the crook of his arm, flapping its tiny hands about in the Wurmple’s general direction, as if eager to make friends with it, or…

“Oh, no.” Ren immediately crosses his arms to lock the Ralts in place, preventing its escape. The aforesaid creature begins squeaking in protest. Ren turns to their challenger.

“We’re sorry to bother you.” Never mind that he’d been the one to approach them first. “We’re leaving now. Come on, Nora.”

Magnolia’s squirming gets Pak to open its eyes again, but as Ren carries him off and Nora trots after him, the Slakoth settles back into slumber.

“Poh-kay-mon, huh?” she sounds out the word as Magnhild folds back up and gets tucked back into her carrying-place. “Guess that’s like ‘Grimm’ but…not very Grimm-like?”

And Maggie hangs off of his arms in defeat, somehow achieving a rather sloth-like posture as it does so. Ren pays it no heed for the time being—his mind is still on the new information that kid inadvertently shared with them, and more importantly that…summoning device…

“They’re probably used as weapons,” he muses out loud. Definitely similar to Grimm, but…oddly tame, for all of that. He’s no stranger to kids accomplishing supernatural feats, but there’s no Dust within the vicinity (a problem, when he runs out of ammo) and that boy had maintained a rather carefree attitude about the whole thing until Nora brought out the hammer.

Maybe they’ll find some answers once they reach the city. It can’t be much further.

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