Both Connor and Umbreon didn't react very much to the waterdrops that Vaporeon had splashed them with. The lack of emotion possibly hinted a dark past between the two of them. A sharp contrast with the friendly conversation. Connor quickly tried to distract the conversation away from their overly serious reaction to the splashes. "Nice to meet you Felix. I'm Connor." "You already met Umbreon and Gyarados. My third partner is Noivern." With that being said, Connor let Noivern out of its pokeball. It was well rested by now. "Both Umbreon and Noivern prefer nighttime but when I come here to take Gyarados for a swim, they like to get some fresh air too." Meanwhile Umbreon was staring at Vaporeon with a particular curiosity. Could it be that the fact they were both eeveelutions, made them connect more easily? While Umbreon was usually quite reserved, his staring could not have gone unnoticed. Connor's cellphone rang and he grabbed it out of his pocket. "Excuse me, this will only take a second." He pressed the green button on the touchscreen. "Connor speaking. Oh hi Damian, what's up? Yeah, I heard something about it on the news earlier but I turned it off. Rough day." He peered at Felix from the corner of his eye. "Well, a lot better now." he said with a secretive smile. "I am taking the rest of the day off. Maybe you should do that too? Your line of work is stressful to say the least. Alright, talk later." While putting his cellphone away, he wondered how he ever became such good friends with Damian. It felt a little unnatural at first to be friends with someone who was associated with Team Rocket but Connor just knew that Damian was not the bad guy everyone tried to make him seem. There were a lot of worse people out there like that idiot Julien with his Mega Gyarados. Connor tried to shake off those thoughts. Today was about relaxing the mind. Yet everytime he tried to, his thoughts went back to Ho-oh. It had been a life-changing event when he encountered it. With a soft tone, he asked: "Hey Felix, have you ever seen a legendary pokemon? I heard someone saw a Mew in Venezuela." He didn't want to bring up Ho-oh yet as it was hard to explain how he thought he was revived by it. So he brought up Mew instead. A rumor he had heard from Damian earlier. Team Rocket inside information that shouldn't have gotten to his ears. In the distance there was a lot of commotion in front of a building. Apparantly a pokemon gym was opening in the city, based on the gyms that existed in the games and anime. Whoever would be the gym leader would certainly have a lot of experience in battles. Connor had read about the gym being dedicated to the ice type. Rumors had it that the leader had an Articuno. Definitely competition for Neal and his Steelix, the leader of the steel type gym that was already in the city. Connor wondered if a city was actually allowed to have more than one gym. [i]~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~[/i] [u]Characters so far[/u] Connor - Umbreon, Gyarados Felix - Vaporeon, Alolan Vulpix, Lapras, Charjabug Trainer Julien - Mega Gyarados Damian of Team Rocket - Koffing Gym Leader Neal - Steelix Gym Leader Phoebe - Articuno [i]~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~[/i]