Pokémon mystery dungeon: Tides of Madness

Chapter 2: The Recruits

Axel squeezed his way through the crowds of people filling the main area of the village. Accidentally poking several people with his tusks as he made his way to the front where all the other recruits were. He had to get to the stage so he could get introduced just like the other recruits. Normally the recruits were introduced up front, but then the trials were done privately.

The trials were categorized in 3 core areas. Speed, Mind, and the one he least liked, Strength. Speed was simple and sweet. All Axel had to do was navigate a maze and have the fastest time. Mind was always fun for him since his love for puzzles and mystery gave him a BIG advantage. For this he would have to do was look for clues to escape a small room. Then Strength, the trial he loathed. He would have to battle one of the other recruits, or fight everyone at once. Which always made his stomach drop.

He eventually climbed up the stage and assessed the recruits. Axel always compared the recruits ranking them from weakest to strongest. Every year he seemed to get the worst type advantage or ended up having to take on the strongest one of the bunch. But something else caught him off-guard while doing this, there were way more recruits then normal though. Normally Orbit only let 16 recruits into the trials. This year there was over 48 recruits. They all stood side by side in a line Axel being near the middle of the line standing next to a turtwig and a zorua.

"Lot of recruits this year huh," the turtwig spoke.

"Yeah," Axel said uncomfortably.

Axel felt the turtwig's heavy gaze as he started to fidget with his everstone.

"You got a lot of scars for just an axew," the turtwig stated, "You must be tough!"

Axel remained silent feeling uncomfortable with how open this complete stranger was.

"My name's Turly by the way,"

"Axel,"

"Nice to meet you Axel," Turly replied with a smile.

Axel nodded in reply. He looked up to see the position of the sun growing impatient. What's taking so long? He thought.

After a few more clicks, the leaders came to the stage. The first was the fire leader Amber, a large Charizard catching multiple eyes of the crowd. Then the water leader Blake, followed close behind with his large cannons out ready to shoot any threat that popped up. Following up behind him was the grass leader Soran, a gigantic flower blooming on his back giving off a wonderfully sweet aroma of scent of apple pie for some apparent reason.

The audience roared as each one stepped onto the stage. There, the leaders waited for the cheers to cease before giving the opening speech Axel knew too well.

"Quiet please," Amber spoke with a claw held up.

The audience silenced immediately.

"Alrighty then," Blake said in a gruff voice, "First of all, before we kick off the trials we have a few things to announce..."

Soran resumed from there, "As you can see, we have quite a lot of recruits here today..."

"And this is because we are doing something different this year," Amber said. "Instead of the tests being individual... We have decided to break our recruits into teams of three,"

Axel's heart sank. Teams? Now? After I trained so frickin hard for the individual tests. Now we're doing teams!

"Now for the teams, we have each made a list already assigning them together which I shall call out now," Blake said. He took a slip of paper out of his bag and started calling off names.

"Yes thank Arceus," Turly whispered a little to loud.

Axel stared at him in confusion.

Sensing his gaze Turly replied, "This is my 2nd year trying to join. I seemed to mess up on the mind trial last year,"