'Ugh, was it...? No, no, 'cause that way was... No. Maybe?' Adrian flipped the map in his hands again, tilting his head. The bizarre shapes and symbols made no more sense than they had a moment ago... or a half-hour ago. He must have been wandering around for hours by now because he could hear his stomach rumbling. No, wait. Wrong again. He felt a raindrop land on his head, then another on his nose as he looked up to the overcast skies. He sighed, glasses already fogging with the humidity, and folded up his [i]Battle, Listen, Shop!!![/i] 'Welcome to Goldenrod' brochure. The friendly smile of the petite blonde on the cover seemed almost taunting to him as he stowed it away and adjusted his overstuffed pack, squinting around for some cover.

Normally, he didn't mind the rain one bit. He'd camped his way through hurricanes, floods, snowstorms... The problem was, he couldn't very well pitch a tent in the middle of a bustling thoroughfare. He'd learned [i]that[/i] a long time ago, the hard way. Uncharted jungles? Check. Precarious precipices? Fine. Pitch-black subterranean aquatic caverns? Basically home. The [i]problem[/i] was the city itself, convoluted and unnatural, crowded with buildings and people. He always, always lost his way in big cities like this- something about them just made his infallible inner compass go haywire. And the stupid guidebooks were just as confusing, all bright icons and grinning Sunflora cartoons. He'd take yellowed parchment and elevation markers over them in a heartbeat.

Adrian wiped his spectacles on the cleanest corner of his shirt only to succeed in adding to their opacity, smearing them with dirt. He was practically covered in it head to sandal, still fresh from the Ruins that he was itching to get back to. But this was a precious opportunity, as he reminded himself. It wasn't often both Adrian and Bill were in the same hemisphere. Their travels took them both far and wide so an instance like this was almost like a lunar eclipse. And he had backlogs of journals full of notes and theories he was eager to dissect with him.

If only he could [i]find [/i]the house in this [i]mother-Sludging[/i] piece of [i]Muk[/i] labyrinth of a [i]Marshtomping[/i] town. As far as he was concerned right now, the whole place could [i]go suck a Cacnea[/i].
He continued muttering to himself, noticing neither the commotion up ahead nor the blurry person-shaped thing he was about to run into. He collided with Force=(Sp: brisk walk)x(Wt: Adrian+backpack) 

which was 

Pretty Damn Hard.