The Trail We (Attempted to) Blaze [Gamzee]

[peregrinealbatross]

At the very least, Aradia would've been about halfway through Route 6 is she didn't have to look over Gamzee, but at least his Shuppet helped keep him on track. If it didn't, she wouldn't doubt that they would've ever left Saffron City. She should have gotten to Vermilion City by now according to her 'calculations', or so she thought, but her calculations were definitely not foolproof, as she'd never tried testing them before now. So, of course, she was going to be off by a bit but she wasn't thinking about that possibility at the time. And then there was the somewhat unexpected Gamzee factor.

Not that she was totally and completely regretting bringing him, of course. She really was just a tad bit miffed that she didn't get to Vermilion when she wanted to. Gamzee was just being himself, and it's all about the journey and not the destination, as the saying goes, right?
Then again, she was going to hopefully meet up with someone coming into Vermilion and adventure with them and that was going to start yet another journey. One that included actual exploration rather than trying to get somewhere at or before a certain time. And being rushed by time was never really fun to her.

On the bright side, she's been able to look at her surroundings better than she normally would be able to if she hadn't brought Gamzee along, which means she knows what to expect a little bit when she actually begins exploring at her own pace. Same went for her Mareep.

Speaking of which, she and the Mareep have only recently met. It was while the rust-blooded troll was out and exploring the area around Lavender Town, and found the little sheep-like Pokemon following her around out of curiosity and things of the sort. Naturally, Aradia tried to befriend it, as it followed her around whenever she went to the area where it usually lived, and when she left Lavender Town, it agreed to go with her.
She ended up using a Pokeball from the local Pokemart to contain the Mareep in. However, it was out for the time being because she thought it would really stink if she, herself, was in that Pokeball while someone was heading somewhere and may find something interesting.

Leaving Lavender was actually a little harder than she expected, as she realized that although there would be spirits of wild Pokemon around and things, they wouldn't be as friendly as the spirits that were back in her home town, and she had grown somewhat attached to the ones she had grown to know, and there was also her lusus who stayed behind, and that doesn't really need explaining.
I mean, it's her lusus.
And there was also the matter of packing and planning the route(Which didn't really require much planning, it was more of how fast should she go and when to leave) and really just getting ready to go.

Aradia turned behind her to ensure Gamzee was behind and following her and Mareep. This was the last route the four had to pass before they got to Vermilion, so she really wanted to speed through now, but she also had to make sure Gamzee would be behind her. Leaving him in her dust seemed like a rather rude move, after all. "Hey, Gamzee, we're on the last route before we reach Vermilion City, okay?" She stated with a smile on her face, somewhat to to see his thoughts on that fact, and to inform any one of the three who was unaware. Just in case..
Mareep looked up at her, with a little grin on her face because holy crap we're almost there who will I meet I'm trying to contain my excitement okay?
From what Aradia knew, there was a lake on this route, it was somewhat s-shaped, and a cliff was a bit ahead of them. And, of course, this route would lead into Vermilion City. But that's somewhat old news at this point.

It was soon after Aradia said that this was the last route to go through did that fact really hit her, and she was suddenly overwhelmed with excitement. Or was this nervousness? Probably not, but either way, she was definitely itching to meet anyone she knew was coming that she had been talking to through the internet. And if that wasn't a smile when she told Gamzee that the four were almost to Vermilion, then this was really how a smile would be.

[Gamzee Makara]

Gamzee: Be the competent companion

Pfffff. Fuck that.

In all honesty, though, Gamzee at present did not happen to be quite as big of a nuisance as he could have been. He'd managed to only get off-track a handful of times, all of which were quickly corrected by Buddy Rich, who at present was floating happily between the Gamzee and Aradia. Of course. Aradia. The main reason Gamzee was getting as far as he was. It was pretty well known that he couldn't get anything done on his own (not to say he didn't try), but following Aradia's lead made it a fairly safe bet that Gamzee would at least make it to Vermillion, possibly further depending on how long his travelling companion could put up with him. Thus, she lead, he followed, and tried to be helpful wherever he could. Gamzee did love to be helpful, even if the indigo-blood's main use was typically as a high-status pack-mule (and only that because of his inborn ability to carry heavy things).

That aside, Gamzee's second talent was that, despite what his glazed, dazed, lights-are-on-but-nobody-is-home appearance, Gamzee had a habit of noticing things. Odd things, small things, but sometimes important things. Details, if you would. Approximately half the time, he would make some inane comment on the subject or go on a strange mental tangent, resulting in an even bigger grin on his face and maybe some slightly stupid, slightly creepy giggling.

On the subject of creepy things, there was the matter of the shuppet. Ghost types weren't exactly rare in Lavender Town, granted, but the thing was, Gamzee wasn't in Lavender Town when he'd come across the creature. He'd wandered off near the caves north of the town, and when he came back, he had the small puppet pokemon in tow. This wasn't too absurd, trainers met their partners by chance encounters all the time. It was just the matter of, why a shuppet? A whimsical fellow like Gamzee, a far cry from the grudge-baring sorts that shuppets usually gravitated towards. Why, indeed. But I digress. The point is not how he got it. The point was, he'd accepted it, named it, and though he almost never kept it in its ball (mostly because he tended to lose the ball more often than not), he'd accepted it as a member of his team.

The two of them both seemed to perk up at the sound of Aradia's statement. "Aw, shit. Hear that, Buddy Rich? We're almost there!" exclaimed the juggatroll, followed by a sort of honking-laugh. It'd quickly become apparent that Gamzee's honking wasn't just a typing quirk. He legitimately honked on a regular basis, sometimes at the most unfitting of times. The abnormally tall male grinned further, showing his excitement through razor teeth (which somehow managed to be utterly unthreatening, perhaps due in part to his painted-on smile) and a glance towards the rust-blood. "Man, I ain't guessin' I ever been this far from home, y'know?"

[peregrinealbatross]

The honking laugh always got her. Aradia giggled a little bit, because she didn't know that is was actually a thing Gamzee did. You'd think that she would, seeing as the two lived in Lavender Town, but even if she did see Gamzee on a regular basis, it would be unlikely she'd be completely used to the honking and honk-laughing. But seeing as she was often out with her ram-like lusus, that didn't happen.

She glanced at the troll's Shuppet. In her opinion, he and the little ghost Pokemon seemed to get along quite well, and the fact that the Shuppet would keep Gamzee on track would definitely be helpful to him in his journey. Speaking of which, what was Gamzee's goal, anyway? She'd have to ask him in a minute, but she wanted to get a bit further ahead on this route first.

When Gamzee mentioned this likely being the furthest he's ever been, she nodded in agreement. "Yeah, I actually haven't been anywhere past Saffron City, Route 12, or the Rock Tunnel! My lusus didn't want me going too far from Lavender Town, and it was always too dark to explore the Rock Tunnel with my lusus, so I wasn't allowed to go in there. So this is very exciting, going out on my own!"
And it was true. If being free from the set boundaries of her lusus wasn't exciting to Aradia, then nothing was. She would finally get to explore the whole region instead of those few places, and maybe she could finally find out what was in that dark cave after she was done in Vermillion. She was extremely curious about that tunnel.

A few seconds after finishing the sentence, she looked down to where a little sheep pokemon was to find it not there. Mareep had ran ahead of everyone else and apparently wasn't too fond of jumping any small ledges, as she was weaving in between all of the ones she was passing. When the troll girl saw this, she was suddenly breaking into a full sprint trying to catch up with her partner, because losing her in the route could turn out very badly. So very badly.
Actually, leaving anyone alone in a place where wild Pokemon lived and any one of them could be vicious and attack at any moment of weakness was a bad idea.
"Mareep, get back here! The last thing we need is you getting hurt in some way and all of us getting lost because of any wrong turns any of us make!"
Mareep either didn't hear or didn't care about what was being said behind her, because she showed no sign of slowing down, and hearing the wild Pokemon moving all around wasn't making this any easier on her trainer.

[Gamzee Makara]

Gamzee: Tally ho?

Sure? The whole mess was just a big pile of confusion at the moment. One second everything had been fine, chill conversation and smiles, and the next, everyone was running around. Gamzee stared for a moment, gears in his head turning until it finally dawned on him what had happened, then began following them. Slow-paced, Gamzee never seemed to move particularly quickly (not to say he couldn't), but keeping up fairly well because, unlike mareep, he had no trouble stepping over the ledges. Little fucker was fast anyway, apparently, which Gamzee figured was a type thing. Most of the things Gamzee figured tended to turn up as bullshit. "Hey, wait up, little sheepbro!" he called after the two.

Meanwhile, Buddy Rich was taking a much more proactive approach. The little shuppet had zoomed ahead, floating alongside the mareep with next to no effort, because that's just what ghosts like to do. Unfortunately, Buddy Rich's low actual mass made it impossible for him to put a stop to the absconding going on here. Even worse, that wasn't exactly the plan. See, Buddy Rich was of a Serious nature, which meant that when a plan was laid, he did not like to deviate from it, despite the wishes of his whimsical trainer. And when someone got them off track, be it Gamzee or Mareep or even a wild pokemon, Buddy Rich intended to fix the problem by any means necessary. To go with his nature, he also sported two moves: Lick and Shadow Ball. The latter had been added by Gamzee almost immediately (seeing as he'd had a tm for it for the longest time, but no use for it), but the former he'd come with. Bred in, maybe? Who knew, who cared. The point of the matter was that most deviants found themselves with a face full of horrifying slobber, not quite as nasty as a gastly but somewhere close. And if mareep managed to slow down before Aradia or something else got to it, it'd be getting the same treatment. Oh shit.