Welcome to Gaia! ::

(A post playing catch up)

After failing to catch the right Pokemon, Allen was fully awake. Of course being splashed with so much cold water kind of forced his awareness into full effect. He had come out to join everyone else. Most of what he had done was just stand around listening until the topic of regions visited had been brought up. He mentioned that the plane he took to get to Hoenn had a very short layover in Mistralton in the Unova region. But it had only been about a half an hour and he had to stay inside the airport anyway.

From that point he just sat back in a seat, keeping to himself. He really had no reason to speak out and after a little while managed to drift back to sleep. It seemed but a moment later that Maddy announced they were coming up on Castelia City. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes and gave a yawn.

When the sub finally docked and he climbed out he took a deep breath of the city air. It felt... dingy. It wasn't a bad scent, surely... It was just not what he expected. Oh well, they'd be staying here for the time being so he had better just get used to it. He pulled up some info on his TADS. Oh! there was a nice little Ice Cream stand that wasn't too far from this dock that apparently had a 4 and a half star rating. He actually wanted to visit after his stuff was officially put away. He heard Maddy's order to stay out of trouble and not to attract any unwanted attention. He nodded but looked at everyone else as she left them.

"Hey guys, wanna go to an Ice Cream Shop?" He pulled up the directions on his TADS. "It's not far." One of his Pokemon burst open revealing his Banette. Lydia swayed back and forth happily, waving to everyone.

ICE CREAM?! Marshtomp wasn't missing out on that. He rushed out of Caleb's room and hurried back to the hotel lobby, where he could've sworn he heard talk of ice cream.

"Marshtomp?! What the heck?" Caleb said, sticking his head out of the doorway. He sighed, noticing Marshtomp was missing from the hallway already. He made sure to close and lock the door before walking down the hall, finishing up a message on his TADS before sending it. He stowed the TADS away in his pocket. Having lived in a cave most of her life, Noibat wasn't sure what ice cream even was. Ice. She shivered at the thought. Hopefully it tasted better than it sounded.

Caleb found Marshtomp waiting over beside Allen, waving his arms.

"Uhh...." seemed to be all that Caleb could muster up.

Rei laughed. "Why get the others when you can get what they're famous for?"

The Countess flew over to Noibat and quickly explained the frosty drink to her friend, recommending a few flavors if they had the option. Rei looked at the windows lining the streets. Even at this hour, the city never slept. It reminded him of Lumoise City.

"Well, I guess we won't be missing much from Kalos yet," he muttered. The fashion was certainly different, though.

The colorful menu displayed the list of what was available in neat, flowing handwriting. Rei couldn't decide between the Original Castelia Cone or the Count Chocolate Blast (now with more sprinkles!). He looked to the Countess, but of course, she couldn't see. After careful consideration, he made a decision.

To hell with it, he thought. "I'd like an Original Castelia Cone and one Count Chocolate Blast, please," the Hoenn native said, pulling out some PD for the exchange. "Can you put the chocolate one in a cup? My Zubat can't hold cones too well." The cashier grinned and happily complied, scooping up a thick chocolate scoop filled with dark chocolate chips. She plopped the heavy scoop into a bowl, drizzled chocolate fudge on it, and topped it with whipped cream and a mountain of sprinkles.

She then turned to her Vanilluxe and said, "you heard the man. Give him what he wants." Rei's jaw dropped.

"Oh, Arceus! Nobody told me-" The girl laughed and shook her head.

"Sorry, sorry, it's a horrible joke, I know. I've just been so bored today!" She couldn't stop the rolls of laughter from escaping her mouth. Seeing that Rei was clearly bothered by her prank, she collected herself and grinned.

"Tell you what, you can have a free cone for letting me bother you," she said. "How about it?" Rei figured it was a fair deal, so he looked at the list once more.

"Hmm... Oh, Orange Sherbet sounds tasty. Let's try one of those."

"Coming right up, sir!" She pulled out a new ice cream scoop and plopped a mountain of orange milky sherbet onto a waffle cone.

"Looks just like you!" she joked. Rei took his ice cream and offered it to the Countess and his Charmander before taking the sherbet and sitting down at a table.

Allen approached the counter, "Do you do year round event themes?" The woman nodded, looking over to his Banette.

"In fact I myself am the best artist in the city." She boasted, "Well, aside from Burgh~" Her pitched instantly changed to swooning.

Allen chuckled, "Uh-huh~" He chuckled. He had no idea who Burgh was, but he must have been a good artist to pull that kind of response. Either that or very good looking. He internally shrugged and turned to his Banette. "Alright so you wanna get some Ice Cream that looks like you?" She nodded vigorously, eagerly looking to to woman.

"And for you?" She looked to Allen, "Just a cookie dough Castelia Cone for me." He grinned, pulling out his wallet to pay up the fair price.

A few minutes later he moved to the table holding his cone of ice cream in one hand and an almost perfectly cloned version of his Banette in the other. Of course, it was sized down, but incredibly impressive nonetheless. There was even a little marble-sized candy that looked like her Mega Stone tucked down next to the ice cream version on her.

Allen's eye twitched at the amount of food that Marshtomp was about to inhale. and he was sure the Pokemon could do it too. Allen checked the time, oh right, he never adjusted the time to match Unovan Standard Time. Between tinkering with his TADS, taking bites of Ice Cream and looking over every no and again to see how much Caleb's Marshtomp had scarfed down, he didn't really notice the small crowd gathering around to watch feast. A few of them looked past the Marshtomp to look at the shop like they'd never even seen it before.

Allen's eyebrows went up as he scanned them. So many people out this late at night. He shook his head looking back down at his Ice Cream and continuing to mess around with the tiny device. Lydia had finished her Ice Cream and her head was drooping. The poor thing was about to fall asleep on the table. He returned her to her ball.

He finally fixed the time and looked to the others. "Well, I'm heading back." He sent Rei and Caleb directions back to the hotel and left them to whatever they wanted.

Marshtomp was like an ice cream vacuum, sucking up the ice cream like it was air.

"Pace yourself..." Caleb warned. The last thing he needed was a Marshtomp with an ice cream headache. Aside from a cleaned out wallet already. Marshtomp just waved Caleb off. He knew what he was doing. It wasn't as if he hadn't encountered an ice cream headache before. He had learned from experience!

After what seemed like an eternity for Caleb, Marshtomp was licking the plate clean. "Whoo! Looks like we have a winner!" the woman announced, looking at her stop watch.

"16:34! Not bad at all!" she added. After helping Marshtomp clean up, the lady handed Marshtomp a shirt to put on. I overcame the Split! was written in bold letters below a design depicting the banana split. On the back of the shirt was the ice cream shop logo. Marshtomp stood there proudly holding up the empty plate over his head as the woman took a picture.

"Excellent. We'll be putting up your pokemon's picture on the wall with all the other winners!" the woman added before Caleb paid her for the Castelia cones.

Caleb breathed a sigh of relief. "Well that was enough excitement for one night..." he said exasperatedly. Noibat was busy cleaning the stickyness from her fur. At least that turned out better than she had expected!