She's trotting along behind Ellie as they walk toward Pewter City, eyes narrowed at Intrepid every time the sylveon gets close.

And, one dart away, umbreon tenses -

And gives chase, scampering quickly after the other pokemon.

She laughs, darting around, leading the umbreon in a little game of chase (progressing forward along the path at roughly Ellie's walking speed, at least).

She jumps, closing on Intrepid -

Bop!

(She darts off before the sylveon can recover from having her nose bopped. Seems they're going to play tag, now.)

Aw, cute.

It's good Umbreon can have fun.

The two get tired after a while, falling into a more companionable ramble along.

Umbreon does get a bit more hesitant as they approach the edges of the forest late in the day - around the time they'd usually make camp, though if they decide to push through they could get out of the forest around sundown or a bit after.

They've still got time.

"What say we break here for tonight?"

She chirps. "Sounds good to me."

The umbreon relaxes a bit.

"Cool." Ellie puts her bag down and gets the tent set up. "Anyone want to make poffins tonight?"

Excited trill!!!

Umbreon makes a curious noise.

She digs the berries out and tosses them halfway between Umbreon and Intrepid. "Pick your favorites."

They quickly concur on a mix of spicy and sweet - Intrepid leaning a bit more sweet, the umbreon a bit more spicy, but they're willing to split the difference to make it easier.

("We definitely need to recruit her," Intrepid says to Ellie. "Where else will we find someone who knows what the best poffin flavor is?")

She laughs as she mixes the dough.

"It would save on berries if we can just buy in bulk."

 - Mrrr?

" - Oh, she can't hear me."

"Intrepid thinks we should recruit you," she says to Umbreon. "Purely based on your taste in poffins."

She makes a surprised noise, eyeing Intrepid.

She grins and waves her tendrils.

"I wanna figure out the umbreon language," she sends to Ellie. "She should get to talk to us, too..."

"She also wants to learn to talk with you more effectively. I invented a collar that lets pokemon talk directly to humans, but it works off psychic principles."

Thoughtful 'mrrr.'

Then she looks at Intrepid and - probably that is a word, it sounds far more language-y than pokemon vocalizations usually do, even if it's not quite something human vocal chords could trivially reproduce.

She does her best to say it back! It only comes out a little mangled.

Sigh.

She corrects Intrepid's pronunciation.

Wow. Umbreons do vocalized languages, apparently.

She contemplates whether other dark-types are similar while folding the selected berries into the poffin mix, and keeps half an ear on the conversation as she finishes cooking them.

Umbreon appears to be teaching Intrepid some sort of phoneme song. (She has a rather lovely deep voice, actually, and a good amount of talent at singing.)