Talks of riddles and the past

Steven looked at the list of riddles Vali had gotten from Blaine and had to shake his head, "How are these supposed to help us find Blaine?"

Kanto Gym Leaders were weird though Hoenn Gym Leaders could be too. Maybe it was an unknown requirement for becoming a Gym Leader, you had to be weird. Steven watched Vali rub Pippin's stomach and glanced at the bandage around Pippin's right foreleg. Vali followed his gaze and scowled to his surprise, "Empress used Bite on him despite them not being in a training match."

"What?" Steven saw Pippin's ears drop, "Why did she do that?"

"Pippin tripped and knocked into Empress. Pele was using Earth Power at the time, so the two ended up in the path Balto was running on," Vali explained as Steven wondered just how any of this would cause Empress to attack Pippin, "Balto managed to jump over them only to end up losing his footing on the sand. He ended up landing in the water somehow causing a big enough splash to drench everyone close to him,"

Vali paused in petting Balto to grab her camera and toss it to him. Steven looked through the pictures she'd taken today and had to chuckle at the look on Balto's face while he was sitting in the water, "Delia will probably love this one."

"I know. I'm going to ask her to add it to my portfolio," Vali answered with a grin, "Anyway, Empress blamed Pippin despite him not exactly being able to control where he trips. She isn't going to be getting any extra berries for the next few days. Depending on how she acts and if she apologizes, I'll either increase her punishment or decrease it,"

"That's all you're going to do?" Steven asked her with a frown.

Vali shook her head, "Balto and Smaug will be seeing over the rest of her punishment. Given that Balto is the leader of the pack, he'll likely be the one to oversee and decide the rest of her punishment."

Which made a lot of sense when Steven thought about it, Vali was ensuring that her pokemon were able to follow their instincts while still becoming 'domesticated'. He internally snorted at that thought as no pokemon could ever be considered domesticated regardless of what some people thought. Vali was also ensuring that Balto kept his place as her second and de-facto leader of her pokemon beneath his trainer. Smaug acted as the enforcer and 'beta' of Vali's pack of pokemon ensuring that there were two solid pokemon that listened to Vali making it less likely for any of the pokemon to challenge their trainer directly. It was actually pretty well thought out given that most of her pokemon were pack or family oriented pokemon. Out of her pokemon, Vali only had Empress, Smaug, and Terra as her non-family oriented species that only really interacted with their direct family/mates.

Steven nodded as he looked back at the list of riddles, "I wish them luck though I'd thought she'd gotten over overreacting like that."

"As Lance said, Empress is pretty much a toddler in mentality and overreacting to things is something they do," Vali shook her head lightly, "Anyway, do you have any idea how to answer those? Riddles aren't something I'm good at dealing with,"

"I think so," Steven wasn't too bad at riddles though they weren't his favorite thing to deal with, "I'm still having trouble figuring out how this'll help us find Blaine's gym,"

"Maybe the answers to the riddles will give us clues to follow," Vali offered looking a little unsure with herself, "We have a month to find Blaine's gym and schedule our battles,"

"We'll take our time with each riddle," Steven decided as he looked over the twelve riddles on the list.

"We could talk to Nurse Joy as well," Vali stopped petting Pippin to grab her bottle of lemonade, "Since the main one has been here for a long time and the others have been here for at least a year, they probably have experience with answering Blaine's riddles or at least has some knowledge of how to do it," She drank some of it, "Even if they can't really help, they'd be able to point us in the right direction. After all, Blaine can't make things too difficult or he'd get into trouble with the League,"

Steven nodded with a small frown, "But why hide his gym?"

"Because he's tired of the fake challengers," Vali rolled her eyes.

"'Fake challengers'?" Steven asked with a raised eyebrow.

"Tourists that are only battling a gym leader for the novelty of it," Vali explained as she set down her drink and returned to petting Pippin, "The fact Blaine is a former Elite Four member makes it worse. If Agatha retired from the Elite Four and became a gym leader, she'd probably face the same thing," The fire-type master-in-training snorted and shook her head with a soft laugh, "Nah, she'd probably scare them away if they tried,"

Steven could understand that though he had to ask, "Have you ever met Agatha?" Vali looked at him in surprise, "It's just by how you speak about her that makes me assume you've met her."

Vali nodded as she settled a bit more heavily against the couch, "Yeah, I met her. A few months after Sirius and I arrived. She had come with some officials from the League," She frowned softly as her eyes became a bit hazy, "She was there to ensure that Sirius and I weren't a threat to Kanto. Ghosts have a really odd way of knowing when you're lying," She shivered slightly and focused on him, "Agatha isn't exactly the nicest person, but I like her. She's really cool,"

Steven wondered over what Vali meant by ghost-types being able to tell when you're lying before deciding to ask later since it didn't seem like a pleasant memory. He set down the list of riddles, "Have you seen her since then?"

Vali shook her head, "No, she doesn't spend time in Pallet Town mostly because of Professor Oak and her disliking him, so I never really saw her again. Then again, I doubt she really remembers me. I was still pretty lost in myself at the time," She picked up her lemonade, "So how did your visit to the labs go?"