[Game] Lord Windos' PokeRole Adventure: Celadon City Vandel

[Dragonstrike]

Among these memories of Taylor are all the prior ones I've managed to draw out as well...there's a few here and there that are new, but they're mostly uninteresting training montages for him, Horsea/Seadra, and Sneasel.  A couple years of it, in fact.  Whatever Taylor had been planning, it apparently needed everyone to be in top form.  The training was always done on the sly, after Clair and the Elders were done with Reiner's lessons for the day.  Lucy in particular recieves a large amount of focus from Taylor.  Reiner doesn't know why, but she considers the bird rather important in addition to be being a very, very close friend of hers...

A year after they first met is when Taylor first puts the hood of her cloak down.  Her bobbed, blonde hair and blue eyes are stunning, no matter how many times Reiner saw the sight.  Which he could count on two hands easily, actually, but that's besides the point.

To Reiner's knowledge, nobody ever knew Taylor was even there.  The only one he thinks knows for sure about Taylor's existence is the head elder, due to that Dragonite doing...something with Lucy 4 years ago...

...but then I come across something else of note as I explore his memories relating to Taylor...what Reiner's been feeling about Taylor all these years...

Spoiler

Taylor leaving without him, leaving him standing in the middle of the Ice Path with Sneasel, left him at a loss.  All that training they'd gone through together...what did it mean, really?  He...he couldn't help her in the end...she was always helping him...

...and now she'd left.  He wanted to help her...he really did...

...was he just not strong enough...?

...

...why'd she kiss him?  He didn't understand any of this...all this talk about them working together on something, and now...

...

...she'd be back...she'd find Lucy, come find him again...she's the stealthiest, most clever person he knows...he'd give her a week tops.  She'd have found what she was looking for by then for sure...

___________________________________________________________

...that week turned into a month.  And then that month turned into a year...

That first year was miserable.  He'd spent all that time waiting for Taylor and Jeff...nothing.

Not a single sign.  She wasn't going to come back...and if she wasn't, then Reiner didn't really have any desire to see her ever again, as he feels rather...betrayed by the one actual human friend he ever had back in Blackthorn...

Kingdra never liked seeing Reiner in a bad mood, but this...(she still only has 2 out of the needed 4 loyalty at this point)

...it was what caused her to fly into a rage that nearly destroyed the small shop that Team Rocket had setup as a base of operations in Mahogany Town.  Not that Reiner knows that, of course...

...incognito members of Team Rocket of course came out to defend the place...and the fire pokemon they had did a good job of lighting the seahorse on completely on fire and driving her away.

...and after they drive her away, they follow her.  Or rather, Petrel does.  Kingdra aren't common pokemon, even in Johto.  And the fact that there was one in Mahogany Town piqued his own curiosity...


...it was then that he scouted Reiner.  Watched him for an entire year as he struggled to control his dragon seahorse.  Eventually offered him a chance to join Team Rocket and make a better life for himself.

...and that's the abridged version of how it all began...