PMD Side-Mission 4 Part 2

Team Pennywise App: [link]
Part 1: [link]

-------------------

Creeping forest was not Page's favourite place to be. Why exactly wasn't very clear. It was the territory of the Slasher gang which made it unsafe for pokemon to travel through at night and deeper within the forest was Castle Draclugia where Merlot lived, but it wasn't in of itself a bad place. Sapling village was located within it and many good, normal pokemon lived there. Besides, with Slasher having been killed and with Merlot more or less keeping to herself it wasn't that much more dangerous than any other forest Page had visited. However, Creeping forest seemed to give him the willies more than anywhere else.

Tea on the other hand didn't seem to give it much thought, but that was hardly surprising.

The snow had indeed reached Creeping Forest. Most of it was caught on branches and treetops but some of it had managed to filter down through the canopy to the forest floor below. It was easier to navigate than the heavy snowdrifts of the village, but the air was no less frigid. The snow was unnaturally early and it was much more obvious here than back home. Flowers still in bloom were wilted and hung from their stems, wet and limp. Large mounds of snow were caught on leaves of branches that would normally have been bare. It was a rather sad sight and further elevated the already slightly unnerving atmosphere the forest had.

Page was very quickly getting less and less interested in any kind of loot Slasher might've stored somewhere in favour of getting this mission over with.

“How do we find your friends Rhodes?” Tea-Light asked, looking up at the branches above them as if expecting to see them waiting. “Will they come say hi if we call them?”

“No they won't.” Rhodes shook his head. “Remember a bunch of us already joined the Merchant Guild because we wanted to. Those that stayed behind were either scared of what the villagers would do to them or they didn't want to betray Slasher. Either way they're probably not just gonna show up to see what we want.”

“Oh.” Tea's expression sunk a little bit.

“So we gotta go find them” Page said thoughtfully. “Ok, so the logical thing to do is to think where they'd be hiding out.” He turned to Rhodes. “So imagine you were still out here, pretty much alone, and there's this snow that showed up too early and you haven't stored up enough food and stuff. Where would you go?”

Rhode's face flushed very slightly as he thought about the question. “To Slasher.”

“Yeah but if Slasher wasn't there.”

“Slasher was always there.” Rhodes said to the ground.

There was an awkward silence at this. Page frowned to himself, trying to think of how he could structure a question without getting Slasher involved. The guy was obviously still a bit of a touchy subject for the sneasel and Page wasn't really sure of how to handle touchy feely things.

“Where's a place that's warm?” Tea asked before Page could think of anything.

“Some place warm?” Rhodes blinked.

Tea nodded , waiting for an answer.

“Uhm...” Rhodes thought about this. “Well the forest isn't exactly known for warm places or anything. Normally to keep warm we'd make do with whatever shelter we could find. Caves, tree hollows, treetops, that kind of thing. But you gotta understand. We mostly just stuck together in a group and moved around so we wouldn't get caught so we had no real set shelter. Also, we're ice types so staying warm isn't something we'd need to worry about too often.”

“Perfect.” Page grumbled at this.

“Ok.” Tea nodded, obviously disappointed.

“So how about this.” Page said as a new idea struck him. “You guys tended to move as a group right? But what if you got scattered because you got into a fight with some-one or you had to make a quick getaway of some kind? How did you regroup? Was there some kind of meeting place or something?”

Rhodes' face brightened at this dramatically and he nodded. “Oh yes! There were several! Maybe some of the gang went there thinking we were gonna regroup again!”

“Right.” Page grinned. “Best lead we got anyway. So where's the nearest one?”

“The nearest one...” Rhodes looked over the surroundings, scanning the area. “...Is this way!”

He pointed in a direction that appeared no different to any other and started trotting ahead eagerly. Tea-Light made a small noise and bounded after him happily leaving Page to bring up the rear. He gave the canopy above him a glance as he walked. Heavy snow and branches criss-crossed everywhere over head. Between them he could just barely make out the sky. It was a very deep, cold blue. However the snow still stuck thick to everything, completely unphased by the unshielded sunshine. Page shivered and hurried after the others, hoping that there weren't too many of these meeting places they had to check.

------------

For Mission 4!

I used this photo for background reference: [link]

My Team isn't in this picture go figure.