Over fifteen hours within the confines of the ship proved too suffocating for a certain blonde ranger-to-be. Noah looked out the window in her increasingly claustrophobic cabin, but the sight of the endless expanse of blue-green sea, stretching onto forever with the destination nowhere in sight, only made her agitated. She had been up hours ago, before the sun rose to liven up the dark skies, and had circled the entire ship at least thrice since then. Still she felt restless. Her feet ached to return onto solid land, where she could bounce around and skitter off as she pleased. 

It was exactly as her brother warned the day before, during one of his many attempts to dissuade her from leaving. After hearing about her spontaneous application (and subsequent acceptance) to the PRA, her worrywart of a brother just about had a meltdown, and actually exploded on their parents for giving her permission in the first place. They laughed off his outburst, used to his overly theatrical tendencies when it concerned her (he took his older brother duties too seriously), and simply proceeded to help her pack, even picking out her clothes for her since they knew she'd just grab the first thing she could find. Anyway, since then, her brother tried different methods of persuasion to get her to stay. Threats, bribery, pleading. They were all lies or exaggerations, but he was right about one thing. He told her about how much she would hate the boat ride there, because it would be nothing but hours of idleness, and that couldn't be more accurate.

Noah paced along the length of her cabin, pulling at the single braid she'd tied her hair in as she tried to muster any ounce of patience she had left. She assured herself that they were nearing the HQ—she talked to the ship's captain earlier this morning (don't ask her how; it was a complicated series of events that began when she tried to jump off the ship to swim with the mantykes) and he said that their ETA was 'very soon, so try not to drown yourself in the meantime.' Luckily, it seemed that patience was no longer needed. 

The foghorn rang out across the ship, and it sounded like freedom to her ears. They have arrived at last, and unlike her brother threatened, her head hadn't blown up at all from the boredom. Noah was unable to quell the excitement bubbling up, and her hands jittered with over a day's worth of pent-up energy as she gathered her belongings and hastily stuffed them in her purple Aipom backpack. All her mom's efforts in keeping her things organized were wasted, but she didn't have time to worry about that now. [i]I'm going to be a full-fledged ranger soon![/i] 

Slipping on her backpack, she did a quick check to make sure everything was in order, just like her brother implored her to do many times over. What did it start with again? Oh, right. [i]Clothes…[/i] For today, she wore a light blue sleeveless romper and matching short boots, perfectly suited for moving lithely. [i]Check.[/i] Noah debated on finishing the checklist, but it had about thirty items on it, and she decided that if her clothes were all set, then everything else should be as well. Nodding to herself in approval, she offered her brother a quick mental apology, just in case he somehow finds out that she got lazy, and raced out the door, expertly weaving through the throng of people as she made for the deck.

Noah had explored the entirety of the ship so thoroughly that she knew the quickest route to the deck. She was among the first to disembark, and actually the first to descend the staircase with a reckless running start. It was only thanks to the person that arrived before her that she managed to stop—she would have skidded and tumbled to ground otherwise. 

Before she could offer the person a quick thanks, experienced rangers had emerged from the other side of the port to welcome the crowd. There were four of them, but there was only one that immediately caught Noah's attention. She barely paid attention to the information they relayed—it all sounded familiar anyway—as she stared, wide eyed and grinning, at the human-Blaziken hybrid. There were so many questions she wanted to ask him, like whether he really was half-Blaziken or how he'd gotten his hair styled like that if he wasn't, but they were on a tight schedule and were afforded little time for messing around. After receiving her tools and stuffing them in her backpack with a little more gentleness, she was ushered by the other overly eager rangers through a path that led to the rainforest.

Noah grinned. Her eyes were alight with unadulterated delight as they skimmed the forest ahead, automatically taking note of its layout and picking out easy routes. Years of playing in the ever-changing topography of Lostlorn Forest (which was really all just Zoroark's illusions) have made her prepared for various terrain. If she had her way, she would have forgone walking completely and opt to swing and leap from tree to tree instead, to avoid any anxieties about falling in the muddy pits. But since that wasn't the case, she settled for hopping from boulder to fallen branch or whatever happens to be there, trying to get as little muck on her boots as possible.

The palpable enthusiasm that coursed through many of the new rangers was infectious, and it served to fuel her own. She didn't like keeping her excitement all bottled up, so she turned to the person beside her, a dark-haired boy dressed in jeans and a white shirt specked with red, and regarded him with a nod and a grin. 

"Isn't this exciting?" she asked him. "We're actually gonna be rangers~"