"Right?" Mel gasped for her own spot giggling helplessly. "That was awful."

Ithica's giggles tapered off into hysterical little hiccups as she gasped for breath. After the day they'd had, the laugh had felt really good.

Mel calmed down slowly, still pink from laughing, and leaned back.

"Oh my," she gasped. "Oh that felt good."

"It did," Ithica agreed, the occasionally giggle still slipping out. "Oh my, I needed that. We needed that."

"Yes we did." Mel smiled, settling back again. "Oh man. Okay. Calm now, no more mad giggling needed."

"Yep, yep, you're right, working on it," Ithica said, sitting back and stretching a bit.

It didn't take Jenny long to come back with another trainer. That trainer had a Kadabra out, and Mel sat up, taking a closer look at the pokemon. Still no confirmation of where they were, but still awesome.

Ithica sat up too, fascinated.

"Okay, I wasn't too far off," she murmured to Mel. "It's close to an Abra."

Mel couldn't help but snort at that.

"Ladies, this is Jin, please cooperate with him and his Kadabra," Jenny said, nodding to the trainer. He looked at them both, as did Kadabra.

Ithica nodded.

"Of course," she said, sitting up straight.

Jin nodded to his Kadabra, who stood in front of the two, looking at each of them in turn.

"And everything you told me before is the truth?" Jenny prodded one last time, since Kadabra was listening in to them anyway.

"Yes," Ithica replied, nodding. "It's all true." And hopefully, as soon as this situation was resolved, they could figure out how to go about getting registered as trainers, so it didn't happen again.

Kadabra looked at them both for several more moments before it turned back to Jin and nodded.

"All true," Jin told Jenny. "Their story is true."

"I see," Jenny said. She nodded once to him. "Alright, thanks for your help. Sorry to drag you out in this sorry weather."

Ithica gave a small sigh of relief at that.

Jin nodded. "No problem." He and his Kadabra left.

"So what now?" Mel ventured after a moment of silence.

"Well, clearly your story is true, so I'll have to start an investigation into this Rocket base," Jenny said. "You, on the other hand, need to be registered as trainers if you're going to carry pokemon around. It's the law."

"Okay," Mel agreed easily. "We're okay with that. There's a test, right? When can we take that and how many tries do we get? Just in case."

"Actually, there's a school in town," Jenny said. "You should go there in the morning. They'll tell you everything you need to know."

"Great, thanks," Mel said with a little smile. "We'll go check it out in the morning, then. Um, for now, is it okay if we stay the night here...?"

"If Nurse Joy let you stay, then by all means," Jenny said, nodding. "I'd never kick people out of a pokemon center who weren't causing trouble."

Mel nodded. "We'll go double check with her. Thanks again." She stood and glanced at Ithica.

"My pleasure," Jenny said. "Don't waste time getting registered, you hear?"

Ithica nodded and got up to follow Mel.

Mel nodded and hurried out.

"Okay, so, school tomorrow," she said. "And here I thought I was all done with school. Blech."

"Hey, it's pokemon school, I don't think it counts," Ithica pointed out. She grinned. "We'll be fine. We probably know like three-quarters of what we need to know already."

"Probably," Mel agreed. "Should be easy. I wonder if we can test out of it?" She grinned. That was kind of a nice thought, actually.