Oh. 

In hindsight it makes a lot of sense that that's what people meant when they talked about fighting, and now he feels a little stupid. Maybe a lot stupid.

"Amadelphous, are you alright with that?"

Chirp chirp!

It would really be convenient if he had any idea what that meant but he thinks it doesn't sound angry...?

"I accept your challenge."

"Lilly, use Tackle!"

The dog runs straight for Amadelphous, bowling it over, but she stands up quickly.

"You've got this, Amadelphous! Hit it back!"

Amadelphous looks a little uncertain about what that means, but hits Lilly three times before looking back at Sebastian expectantly.

"Alright, Lilly, it's pretty tough! Use Leer!"

Lilly barks at Amadelphous. Amadelphous looks a little shaken.

"Hit it again!"

Amadelphous hits the dog again, though only twice this time.

"Alright, it's off-balance. Tackle it again!"

The dog rushes towards Amadelphous. This time Amadelphous looks a little more winded, but it picks itself up off the ground and stands at the ready.

Amadelphous looks more energetic than the dog at this point, and hopefully that means his "strategy" is working.

"Keep hitting it!"

Amadelphous hits Lilly three more times.

Lilly collapses to the ground, unconscious. Like the weird gray thing that attacked Sebastian yesterday, she doesn't look seriously injured, just tired. The girl holds up her sphere thing; there's a flash of light, and then Lilly disappears.

She hands him 240 Pokédollars in a mix of bills and coins. "Great fight! You should prooobably figure out what moves your Pokémon has, it looked a little confused there, but it seems really determined."

He pats Amadelphous on the head. "Thank you! Um, what do I do now?"

"Well, first we should get our Pokémon all healed up, and then you could go challenge Lenora's gym, or you could go through the forest to Castelia City, or you could go the other way to Striaton City. All of them have gyms so you'll need to go to all of them eventually if you want to fight Alder, but if you don't want to start with Lenora that's okay!"

(Amadelphous chirps happily.)

"How do we heal them?"

Blink blink. "...We just left the Pokémon Center."

"Things are very different in my ... region."

".....Okay. Well. We can get them healed inside."

She leads Sebastian inside and hands her Pokéball over to the nurse on duty at the back counter. The nurse sets it in some sort of machine, waits a few seconds, and then hands it back to her.

The nurse nods at Amadelphous. "You'll need to put yours back in its ball if you want me to heal it," she says to Sebastian.

(Focus, Sebastian. Your pops might think you're an idiot, and he's probably right, but you've seen people do this, you can do it too.)

He takes out his sphere and opens it up, trying to figure out how to operate it.

There's a flash of light, and then he's holding a closed sphere with Amadelphous nowhere to be seen.

Well. He did it, at least.

He hands the ball to the nurse. She puts it in the same machine, waits a few more seconds, and hands it back to him.

"See? Easy! ...Have you decided what you want to do now?"

From the sound of it, his options are:

• Go through the forest
• Stay here, where he's already made several clear social blunders
• Go somewhere else that probably doesn't involve the forest