The Shuppet saw the pokeball before her trainer did. Her eyes got even larger than they already were when she saw the red and white spherical item. Ragdoll immediately zipped through the railing and made her way down to the item. "Hey..." Lace whined as she tried to figure out how to get herself down there. She had already decided earlier that she didn't want to go bother the sailors, but it appeared as though Ragdoll had different ideas.

There was a stairwell not too far off to her left. She made her way over, tapping on the metal railing with her fingers as she walked. The clang wasn't too loud, but loud enough that Lace kept doing it because it was amusing.

By the time she got down the stairs, Ragdoll was already playing around with the pokeball on the ground. The Shuppet was rolling it around with the spike on her head, clearly pleased with herself. Lace gently picked up the pokeball and pocketed it. It was empty and no one around appeared to give her a second glance. She wondered if it had fallen out of one of the shipment containers and the sailors had just failed to pick it up and return the item to its proper place.

"I guess we can keep it," she stated flatly as she looked back over at Ragdoll with a smile. The Shuppet smiled back before sticking her tongue out at Lace.

A loud bark interrupted Lace’s train and thought and startled Ragdoll. The ghost zipped behind Lace’s head as an immediate response while the women herself froze in place. It wasn’t until the second bark that Lace turned around to see what had caught them red-handed. To her surprise, the noise was coming from a Poochyena. For such a small Pokemon, he had quite an imitating bark. Normally, Lace would have just tried to walk away; meddling with Pokemon who had sharp teeth was entirely different than meddling with people. Unfortunately, it didn’t appear as if the Poochyena was willing to let the two of them off so easily. Every step that Lace took backwards, the Poochyena took forwards. It was going to be impossible to close distance between the two of them at this pace.

There didn’t appear to be any other options besides fighting. Her Shuppet was at a type-advantage in this situation, but if the Poochyena wasn’t too high-leveled, that shouldn’t have been an issue. She titled her head a little to the side and breathed in a chuckle, “let’s start with a screech and then a knock off, just in case he’s carrying any items”. Ragdoll was clearly happy with the orders; she was finally getting a chance to play! Lace was always telling her not to meddle with other people’s Pokemon while they were walking. “We wouldn’t want to get in trouble we can’t get out of” she would always tell her. But now, her trainer was asking her to interact! The Shuppet didn’t waste any time in unleashing and horrid screeching noise. The strangest thing was that the origin of the sound couldn’t be pinpointed. It didn’t appear to be originating from Ragdoll’s mouth, but it also didn’t appear to be originating from anywhere else either.

The noise startled the Poochyena somewhat, but the Pokemon immediately started howling back in response as Ragdoll dived down to hit off any items the dark Pokemon could have been holding. The Shuppet’s attack hit without any problems, but no items came dropping down to the ground. The Poochyena tried to tackle Ragdoll, but the ghost Pokemon was able to just fade her body out and allow the Poochyena to pass right through it. Huh, maybe this battle wasn’t going to be too difficult after all.

Lace looked down at the empty Pokeball she had just picked up. Maybe this was fate telling her to catch this Poochyena? She saw no other reason why a Pokeball would just be sitting around an empty ship yard where things were constantly being inventoried for further shipments. She wasn’t dumb enough to throw the ball now. Lace knew that she had to be more patient and allow Ragdoll to get a couple more hits in before she attempted to catch the Poochyena.

”Keep up the knock offs!” Lace encouraged with a new sense of excitement in her tone. The Poochyena tried everything to fight back against the Shuppet, but it was no use. He tried another tackle but Ragdoll simply allowed it to fade through her again. In between the second and third knock off attacks, the Poochyena threw a second-attack at Ragdoll. She backed up in discomfort as she tried to shake the sand of her eyes. It certainly hindered her vision somewhat, but that didn’t stop her from landing the third and fourth knock off attacks. As soon as the fourth attack made contact, the Poochyena’s legs gave out and the Pokemon hit the ground.

Lace rolled the Pokeball around in the palm of her hand once or twice before tossing it onto the Poochyena. They had been lucky this time; Ragdoll didn’t sustain any sort of damages. However, the Shuppet did look a bit worn out and irritated from the sand she was still struggling to get out of her massive eyes.

Lace watched the blinking red light on the pokeball with wide eyes. This was her first time actually catching a Pokemon in the wild. Ragdoll didn’t count; she just had to convince the ghost Pokemon to get into a pokeball so that she could accompany Lace on her journey out of the region. But this Poochyena actually put up a fight and required Lace to do some actual work in order to capture him.

Once the pokeball stopped rolling around, she skipped over and picked it up right off the ground. She was worried for a second that the Poochyena might try to escape, but Ragdoll had done a good job of keeping the guy down. ”Now a name,” Lace wondered out loud to herself. It had to be something good, but her brain suddenly got distracted by two circular objects sitting on the ground just a few feet away from her. They looked just like the pokeball she was holding in her hand but colored different. Placing the newly captured Pokemon into her pocket, Lace tip-toed over to the two objects. They were pokeballs, but the designs on them were foreign to Lace. She had heard that pokeballs could come in several different colors that determined their special properties, but most of the ones she had seen were the plain ones an individual could just buy at a store.

They must have fallen off another shipment or it was a single that there were even more wild Pokemon around these parts. The second seemed unlikely given how there were too many sailors around moving boxes. The place they were standing in was starting to clear out some, which meant there was not a lot of hiding spots left for wild Pokemon. She quickly scooped up the two new pokeballs and deposited them into her messenger bag. ”Lets get going,” she suggested to Ragdoll.

She made it right up to where she had been before when the boy’s bug net whacked into the back of her head. “Oh,” she exclaimed absentmindedly as her hand instinctively went to feel the contact location on her head to see if it had swollen or started bleeding. When she turned around to face her assailant, she was greeted by the image of a pokeball being hurdled at her face. Lace’s reflexes were good enough that she managed to dodge the pokeball with a sidestep.

Out of the glowing white light came what looked like an even larger pokeball with eyes. Oh, so her assailant wanted a battle? She was just in one, but Ragdoll hadn’t been hurt at all. “Okay!” Lace agreed enthusiastically. She couldn’t catch this Pokemon but that was alright. She didn’t find anything particularly attractive about the Voltorb. “Start off the same way,” she commanded as Ragdoll let out another eerie screech. The noise made a couple of the sailors below flinch and look upwards at what was going on. Once they realized it was only a battle, their attention went back to their job.

Oddly, the Voltorb did not appear to be effected by Ragdoll’s screech at all. Lace was a bit confused, but that was fine. She had other moves at her disposable. The knock off still landed as a solid hit on the electric Pokemon, causing it to roll away a bit before rolling back for a counter attack. The Voltorb attempted to tackle Ragdoll, but the ghost Pokemon simply let it pass through just like she had did with the Poochyena. With one more knock off, the Voltorb had fainted.

“Must not have been a very high level,” Lace giggled to herself underneath her breath. It was shame, she was looking forward to having a more challenging battle given how neither Pokemon had been able to land a hit on Ragdoll yet.