I wanted a constraint on my character, so I selected a two-color pair or three-color triplet at random. The spin of the wheel gave me RWU -- fine by me -- so here we go:
Name: Fritz du Polidori (born Alexander Adams) Gender: Male Age: 18 H/W: 5'7", 135 lbs. Appearance: Picture David Tennant in your mind. Now make him shorter, give him a less attractive facial feature of your choice, and turn his hair ashen with an ever-so-slightest hint of mauve. I won't tell you how to dress him, because it'll be different every time you see him. But since you hardly know a thing about him, let's start him off with a deliciously Neapolitan look: a white vest over a brown, sleeves-rolled-up collared shirt and a pink scarf or neckerchief. Origin: Saffron Starter: ♀ Remoraid (Poulpentrique)
Fritz du Polidori is his father's son and his mother's child (which, of course, is not to say that he's his father's child and his mother's son). His father, Anton Adams, is the COO of Silph Co., a position he climbed to after six successful years as the company's product manager -- and his mother couldn't care less about that. The estranged Isabella Rossetti is whimsical, eccentric, and rather foppish; the sort of woman Anton felt increasingly reluctant to associate with as his position at Silph Co. grew increasingly influential. She's a ball-jointed dollmaker who would wholly qualify as a "starving artist" if Mr. Adams didn't keep her plate filled; that is to say, Fritz's parents maintain some semblance of a relationship with one another in their separation. And likewise, Fritz's relationship with both his parents is amicable -- if tenuous -- because he could be qualified as Anton Adams' son and Isabella Rossetti's child in equal measures. So: let's talk about Fritz himself.
Fritz du Polidori is a self-styled Liquescentrepreneurial Architectrix, which I can assure you means nothing to anyone but him and is surely the result of his obsession with phonemically overlapping portmanteaux (what it means in practice is whatever Fritz wants it to mean on any given week -- but I won't bore you with a point I'll be touching on in a paragraph to come). Finishing his compulsory education at age 13, Fritz (who at this time was still Alexander, or "Alec") stood before a world he had been waiting for since he toured a good portion of it on his tenth birthday, aboard the S.S. Anne. But he also stood before a career at Silph Co. that had been waiting for him ever since his father reached a position in the company worth bearing the legacy of the Adams family name. And so Alec became part of Silph Co.'s product differentiation team.
Alec's appointment to his first job was certainly nepotistic, but it became apparent that he was more qualified for that job than at least one member of the team. And then, it became apparent that he was overqualified for the job: it was Alec that made the initial suggestion to make the upper hemisphere of the Great Ball imperfectly smooth (a suggestion he made by setting a pitching machine to fire baseballs across the conference room during a meeting). That idea, of course, led to the addition of the Great Ball's two distinctive red, raised stripes. And that addition led to a 10% increase in Great Ball sales over four quarters -- in a fiscal year that saw a 9% decrease in overall Poke Ball sales.
However, by the time Silph Co.'s annual report attributed the Great Ball upturn to its latest design innovation, Alec had already left the company and found a job elsewhere. Or, rather, I should say that he had already left the company and found three jobs elsewhere. The realization that boredom had somewhat of an asphyxiating effect on him ousted the word "career" from his vocabulary, and kept his mind in a constant state of flux -- and he also realized that the oxymoronic irony of "constant" and "flux" appearing in the same phrase was a commentary on his own life. By the time he turned 17, Alec had dabbled in real estate ("not surreal enough"), civil engineering ("I'll come back when you want to build a floating city"), and actuarial science ("how are you not bored of human mortality when there are 649 other sapient species to analyze?"). He couldn't replicate his success at Silph Co. in any of those fields, but for lack of passion and not for lack of talent. He wasn't so much a "jack of trades, master of none" as he was a "jack of trades, master of this week's trade" -- and a week is too short a time for anything.
After leaving his job at Cerulean Mutual, Alec found his calling...as a gallivanter. Well, perhaps I'm being disingenuous: I say "gallivanter," but even in his idle wanderings he was, at least, of service to society (where before he would sell a beachfront cottage to a young couple, he would now spend a day helping Mr. Newlywed deal with flooding in the cottage's cellar). But with no need for "professionalism" in this way of life, Alec gave himself up to certain eccentricities; including, you may have surmised, changing his name to Fritz du Polidori on the eighteenth anniversary of his birthday (there seems to be some esoteric logic in that name, but as before it's lost on the rest of us). It was also at this time -- the advent of Fritz's legal adulthood -- that his father, now in his second year as Silph Co.'s COO, contacted Fritz.
Subordinate COO or product manager: Anton Adams offered his son one of the two positions, and called him to his 10th floor office at the Silph Co. Building to make his decision. He had placed the odds of Fritz accepting the offer at 1:1. When his son entered the office with an opera cloak flung over one shoulder (or was it an especially long scarf?), he dropped the odds to 2:1; when his son stopped and turned on a dime in a perfect right angle (and look at that smile!), he dropped the odds to 3:1; when he saw an effervescently pink parasol in his son's right hand, he threw the book out the window. In the space of a second -- and without a hint of frustration -- Anton acquiesced to the existence of Fritz du Polidori and to the fact that Fritz and Alexander Adams were quite mutually exclusive. And in the space of the next second, Anton realized exactly what Fritz du Polidori needed.
"Your own enterprise."
To say that Fritz hadn't at least considered it before would be downplaying the galvanic restlessness of his mind -- how many neural impulses had delivered that notion to his conscious mind, let alone his subconscious mind? But to hear the thought in this context, and to linger on the notion behind it for more than a fleeting second, instilled him with a singular understanding of what the future held. His own enterprise! Isn't that what it means to be a Liquescentrepreneurial Architectrix? And isn't that -- if you'll draw this as a Venn diagram in your mind -- the intersection of Anton Adams' and Isabella Rossetti's otherwise incomparable lives? His father had become the skeleton of Silph Co. through his superlative product management, and his mother had become the spirit of her own atelier, Resination, through her single-minded commitment to the art of dollmaking. His own enterprise!
"How else can it be?" And with those words, Fritz du Polidori flung his scarf around his other shoulder (it was a scarf, after all), turned exactly 180 degrees on a dime (with the same smile, of course), and opened his parasol as he floated out the room in the manner of Drifloon (insofar as a human can float in the manner of Drifloon). And that was that.
From there it was a matter of choosing the enterprise to which he would venture. I say "choosing," but to Fritz it was more a matter of calculating what his future self would have already chose. To that end, he studied the problem objectively, subjectively, quantitatively, and qualitatively; he filled pages with words, pages with numbers, pages with some combination of words and numbers, and pages with symbols that could be considered neither pictures nor numbers; he applied his sense of logic, his sense of intuition, his sense of aesthetics, and his sense of emotion; he looked to the past, the present, the future, and some intangible span of time that at the same time exists outside of time. He did all of this until -- summarily -- the solution came upon him: Fritz du Polidori would own and operate a Pokemon gym.
And so he devoted himself to the task of building a Pokemon gym; or, for the time being, testing the feasibility of the undertaking in his mind. The overhead would be tremendous. He wouldn't need venture capital, because he had an angel investor in his father. But! -- the thought crossed his mind twice in quick succession -- he wouldn't need an angel investor, because there needn't be anything to invest in. What good would it do to build a new gym when there are so many already-existing ones to annex? It couldn't be done in Kanto: the leadership of all of the Kanto gyms is either hereditary, inbred, or otherwise immutable (although the thought of managing the Celadon Gym amused him for a moment). Johto is certainly worse; some of the gym buildings themselves are hundreds of years old. Fritz didn't know enough about Hoenn and Sinnoh -- from a business standpoint -- to even consider them, and Unova was a world away. That left Ageos, a region without a Pokemon League as renowned as Kanto's -- and, following that, a region without gyms with the same prestige as Kanto's. So, once again, that was that. Fritz would go to Ageos without another word to build his own enterprise out of nothing (and at this time, I find it rather important to mention that "nothing" just as well refers to Fritz's total lack of experience in Pokemon catching, handling, battling, and just about anything else related to the pocket monsters).
So. That's Fritz du Polidori. Or, rather, as much of Fritz du Polidori as I care to write here; I'll let Fritz himself fill in the rest of the blanks.
The spray of water from Poulpentrique washes over the face of Ekans, causing it to sputter a bit. Shaking the last drops from it's scaly head, the snake pokemon coils up and jumps at the Remoraid. Mid-leap, Ekans opens its mouth, and a storm of purple-hued needles erupts. (Poison Sting)
Poulpentrique is thrown aback by the Ekans' gaze and dips under the surface of the pond, poking her head above the water every three or four seconds.
Ah! Let's turn this to our advantage -- could a wild Ekans follow a trick of this sort? Fritz waits for Poulpentrique to surface, and then issues the command: "Fire a water gun again, then wait for it to leer at you. If it does, dip back under the water. Wait another five seconds, then resurface and fire a water gun at it again. Let's see how many repetitions we can keep the ruse going."
The Ekans fell for the ruse. As water washed across its scaly face a second time, it shook the leftover droplets off and continued to leer at the Remoraid as the fish dipped back underwater a second time.
Fritz smiles as he considers his options. Of course, he only has one "option" -- Water Gun -- but that restriction has forced the hand of his ingenuity.
"Poulpentrique: keep repeating that cycle until I give the word. Then," he traces an arc from the Remoraid to the Ekans, "we'll catch it unawares. Jump out of the water and fire a water gun at it from a downward angle."
After two more Water Guns and two more Leers, Fritz gives the signal and Poulpentrique propels herself from the pond; she reaches two meters at the tip of the arc and dives downward at the Ekans at quite the steep angle.
Fritz smiles once more. Her aim still isn't perfect, but I can't imagine a Water Gun at point-blank is all that pleasant. Is this it?
The hissing response to the overhead attack confirmed Fritz's thoughts about the pleasantness of the strategy. The downward force of the water was enough to drive the young snake's head down into the ground. Clearly weakened, it struggled to bring itself upright again. (hp red-zone)
Poulpentrique's water attack washed the snake from fangs to tail, driving its entire body into the muddy ground. The snake ceased movement monentarily, then regained consciousness after a couple minutes and slithered off into the wilderness.
Congratulations! Poulpentrique defeated a wild Ekans and gained 5 exp.
Hmm, no pokeball eh? If you intended to capture it, then just edit your previous post, and I'll do the same.
"A word of warning," Fritz says to Poulpentrique as he drops his voice, "we're at a disadvantage here. For now, fire a water gun at it, but keep your distance."
With a whistle from Joyce, the Spearow managed to dodge most of the water gun. With droplets streaming from its feathers, the Spearow acknowledges a second whistle and turns the dodge into a diving attack on the Remoraid. (peck)
Poulpentrique is far enough from the Spearow to dodge the full force of its attack, but the peck still breaks the skin of her ventral surface.
Fritz winces, but takes to analyzing the situation immediately. She doesn't have the speed to evade a Spearow outside water, but we can't use water like we did last time. All we need is another way to reduce the meter-long surface area that she's leaving open to attack. In another second he brings his eyes to an oak tree with a half-meter hole hollowed out of its trunk, and -- with the same immediacy -- takes to directing Poulpentrique into the hole. She's not entirely secure in that position, but couldn't possibly take another peck at the speed of the first one.
"Now," Fritz says with a wave of his hand, "fire another water gun, but take your time and don't bother yourself with the counterattack."
Thsi time, the water gun connects solidly with the airborne Spearow, knocking it out of the air briefly. As it takes to the sky, it growls and Joyce shouts another command to it. "Get up close to it and use that fury to your advantage!" Seeing the Remoraid dive into a knothole, the Spearow starts attacking the rest of the tree with a furious attack barrage of claws and pecking.
Poulpentrique is better suited to attacking than defending -- if she'll be hit either way, why waste time sortieing when her water gun's just as effective under siege? Of course, I can concede, but I can't imagine Poulpentrique would want that so soon, either. Fritz smiles inwardly at the thought.
"Poulpentrique," he issues the command, "take the hit, and counter with a water gun." He then notices that the Spearow is unrestrained (and effectively blind) in its frenzy, and adds another directive to the command. "Aim for its mouth -- let's get it choking on the water."
Poulpentrique takes a talon to the left side of her face and a beak to the right side of her face, hesitates for a second in pain, and fires a water gun in response.
The spray of water does catch Spearow across the face, breaking its fury and causing it to start sputtering. The bird is forced to land and spit out the water, but it can still leer menacingly. "That's it, make it scared!"
Fritz isn't ready to relinquish the advantage of their makeshift tree fort, and following Spearow's leer, he can't imagine a better opportunity for the thrice-damaged Remoraid to rest. "Poulpentrique, fall back as far into the trunk as you can -- we'll wait for its next move."
...and if the Spearow is hesitant to expose its face again, all the better.
"It dove into that tree, Spearow! Drive it out again!" Spearow took flight and gripped the side of the tree. It started to hammer on the outside like a woodpecker, using its peck to both try and break through the wood, and to create excessive noise to disorient the Remoraid.
Fritz looks at Joyce and nods in admiration of her strategy. "I don't mean to be wry, but your Spearow is playing the part of a wryneck quite nicely -- which I don't say to jynx you; I'm hardly psychic." (Even in the midst of battle, Fritz would never pass by an opportunity to fit four puns into a single sentence.)
He turns toward the oak tree and shouts his command over the din of Spearow's pecking. "Poulpentrique," he begins, "hold fast for a bit longer. If I'm right, a Spearow can't possibly withstand woodpecking for that long -- it takes a special sort of head to mitigate the feedback from all that pecking. With any luck, she'll be just as disoriented as you. The moment she breaks through the tree, fire a water gun through the hole!"
Fritz pauses for a moment. It won't do a bit of a good to keep stalling. If I want to cast our lot into one attack, now would be the time. In another moment, he continues. "If the water gun hits her, jump out from the tree. And if you can get it off before her next attack, fire another water gun!"
I'm counting on Spearow fighting disorientation from both the woodpecking and the water gun, and Poulpentrique only fighting disorientation from the pecking. And I'm also counting on Poulpentrique having a sound enough mind to fire a single water gun in the first place. But if this works....
"Spearow, break off and away, use the tree to shield you from attacks!" The bird pokemon quickly dove around the tree and flew off, with the water gun just missing its tail feathers. It soared around behind the tree, then arced overtop of the branches. "Perfect! Now charge in one last time, and hit the weakened area with all of your fury!" As the Spearow charged into the area it was pecking - the assault appeared to have substantially weakened the wood (if a Remoraid could comfortably fit in a knothole, it had to be a rather rotted-out trunk) -and started to rip into the side with its claws. Bark and rotted chunks of wood began to fly off the side of the tree, as the Spearow worked its way inside to corner the Remoraid.
Fritz clicks his tongue at the setback. There's the disadvantage to battling a trainer. But I can still play into the advantage -- I can concede at any time.
"Poulpentrique, how much more can I ask of you? One more water gun; if that fails, we'll be done with it."
Poulpentrique takes two stray shots from Spearow's talons, and moreover, the space in front of her is filled with blurs of those thrashing talons and the wood chips they're tearing up. Of course, she wouldn't need aim from that range -- just a solid jet of water. After another talon scratch to the face ("can she possibly take another one of those?"), Poulpentrique fires the water gun.
The last spray of water was all that needed to happen. Spearow took the hit dead-on and tumbled out of the air. Joyce quickly returned the bird to its pokeball before it hit the ground. She walked over to Fritz with a smile and said, "That was a great battle. Your Remoraid is pretty tough, but I think I gave it a good fight. I guess this is yours as well," she says as she hands Fritz $120.
Congratulations! You have defeated Bird Keeper Joyce!
Name: Fritz du Polidori (born Alexander Adams)
Gender: Male
Age: 18
H/W: 5'7", 135 lbs.
Appearance: Picture David Tennant in your mind. Now make him shorter, give him a less attractive facial feature of your choice, and turn his hair ashen with an ever-so-slightest hint of mauve. I won't tell you how to dress him, because it'll be different every time you see him. But since you hardly know a thing about him, let's start him off with a deliciously Neapolitan look: a white vest over a brown, sleeves-rolled-up collared shirt and a pink scarf or neckerchief.
Origin: Saffron
Starter: ♀ Remoraid (Poulpentrique)
Fritz du Polidori is his father's son and his mother's child (which, of course, is not to say that he's his father's child and his mother's son). His father, Anton Adams, is the COO of Silph Co., a position he climbed to after six successful years as the company's product manager -- and his mother couldn't care less about that. The estranged Isabella Rossetti is whimsical, eccentric, and rather foppish; the sort of woman Anton felt increasingly reluctant to associate with as his position at Silph Co. grew increasingly influential. She's a ball-jointed dollmaker who would wholly qualify as a "starving artist" if Mr. Adams didn't keep her plate filled; that is to say, Fritz's parents maintain some semblance of a relationship with one another in their separation. And likewise, Fritz's relationship with both his parents is amicable -- if tenuous -- because he could be qualified as Anton Adams' son and Isabella Rossetti's child in equal measures. So: let's talk about Fritz himself.
Fritz du Polidori is a self-styled Liquescentrepreneurial Architectrix, which I can assure you means nothing to anyone but him and is surely the result of his obsession with phonemically overlapping portmanteaux (what it means in practice is whatever Fritz wants it to mean on any given week -- but I won't bore you with a point I'll be touching on in a paragraph to come). Finishing his compulsory education at age 13, Fritz (who at this time was still Alexander, or "Alec") stood before a world he had been waiting for since he toured a good portion of it on his tenth birthday, aboard the S.S. Anne. But he also stood before a career at Silph Co. that had been waiting for him ever since his father reached a position in the company worth bearing the legacy of the Adams family name. And so Alec became part of Silph Co.'s product differentiation team.
Alec's appointment to his first job was certainly nepotistic, but it became apparent that he was more qualified for that job than at least one member of the team. And then, it became apparent that he was overqualified for the job: it was Alec that made the initial suggestion to make the upper hemisphere of the Great Ball imperfectly smooth (a suggestion he made by setting a pitching machine to fire baseballs across the conference room during a meeting). That idea, of course, led to the addition of the Great Ball's two distinctive red, raised stripes. And that addition led to a 10% increase in Great Ball sales over four quarters -- in a fiscal year that saw a 9% decrease in overall Poke Ball sales.
However, by the time Silph Co.'s annual report attributed the Great Ball upturn to its latest design innovation, Alec had already left the company and found a job elsewhere. Or, rather, I should say that he had already left the company and found three jobs elsewhere. The realization that boredom had somewhat of an asphyxiating effect on him ousted the word "career" from his vocabulary, and kept his mind in a constant state of flux -- and he also realized that the oxymoronic irony of "constant" and "flux" appearing in the same phrase was a commentary on his own life. By the time he turned 17, Alec had dabbled in real estate ("not surreal enough"), civil engineering ("I'll come back when you want to build a floating city"), and actuarial science ("how are you not bored of human mortality when there are 649 other sapient species to analyze?"). He couldn't replicate his success at Silph Co. in any of those fields, but for lack of passion and not for lack of talent. He wasn't so much a "jack of trades, master of none" as he was a "jack of trades, master of this week's trade" -- and a week is too short a time for anything.
After leaving his job at Cerulean Mutual, Alec found his calling...as a gallivanter. Well, perhaps I'm being disingenuous: I say "gallivanter," but even in his idle wanderings he was, at least, of service to society (where before he would sell a beachfront cottage to a young couple, he would now spend a day helping Mr. Newlywed deal with flooding in the cottage's cellar). But with no need for "professionalism" in this way of life, Alec gave himself up to certain eccentricities; including, you may have surmised, changing his name to Fritz du Polidori on the eighteenth anniversary of his birthday (there seems to be some esoteric logic in that name, but as before it's lost on the rest of us). It was also at this time -- the advent of Fritz's legal adulthood -- that his father, now in his second year as Silph Co.'s COO, contacted Fritz.
Subordinate COO or product manager: Anton Adams offered his son one of the two positions, and called him to his 10th floor office at the Silph Co. Building to make his decision. He had placed the odds of Fritz accepting the offer at 1:1. When his son entered the office with an opera cloak flung over one shoulder (or was it an especially long scarf?), he dropped the odds to 2:1; when his son stopped and turned on a dime in a perfect right angle (and look at that smile!), he dropped the odds to 3:1; when he saw an effervescently pink parasol in his son's right hand, he threw the book out the window. In the space of a second -- and without a hint of frustration -- Anton acquiesced to the existence of Fritz du Polidori and to the fact that Fritz and Alexander Adams were quite mutually exclusive. And in the space of the next second, Anton realized exactly what Fritz du Polidori needed.
"Your own enterprise."
To say that Fritz hadn't at least considered it before would be downplaying the galvanic restlessness of his mind -- how many neural impulses had delivered that notion to his conscious mind, let alone his subconscious mind? But to hear the thought in this context, and to linger on the notion behind it for more than a fleeting second, instilled him with a singular understanding of what the future held. His own enterprise! Isn't that what it means to be a Liquescentrepreneurial Architectrix? And isn't that -- if you'll draw this as a Venn diagram in your mind -- the intersection of Anton Adams' and Isabella Rossetti's otherwise incomparable lives? His father had become the skeleton of Silph Co. through his superlative product management, and his mother had become the spirit of her own atelier, Resination, through her single-minded commitment to the art of dollmaking. His own enterprise!
"How else can it be?" And with those words, Fritz du Polidori flung his scarf around his other shoulder (it was a scarf, after all), turned exactly 180 degrees on a dime (with the same smile, of course), and opened his parasol as he floated out the room in the manner of Drifloon (insofar as a human can float in the manner of Drifloon). And that was that.
From there it was a matter of choosing the enterprise to which he would venture. I say "choosing," but to Fritz it was more a matter of calculating what his future self would have already chose. To that end, he studied the problem objectively, subjectively, quantitatively, and qualitatively; he filled pages with words, pages with numbers, pages with some combination of words and numbers, and pages with symbols that could be considered neither pictures nor numbers; he applied his sense of logic, his sense of intuition, his sense of aesthetics, and his sense of emotion; he looked to the past, the present, the future, and some intangible span of time that at the same time exists outside of time. He did all of this until -- summarily -- the solution came upon him: Fritz du Polidori would own and operate a Pokemon gym.
And so he devoted himself to the task of building a Pokemon gym; or, for the time being, testing the feasibility of the undertaking in his mind. The overhead would be tremendous. He wouldn't need venture capital, because he had an angel investor in his father. But! -- the thought crossed his mind twice in quick succession -- he wouldn't need an angel investor, because there needn't be anything to invest in. What good would it do to build a new gym when there are so many already-existing ones to annex? It couldn't be done in Kanto: the leadership of all of the Kanto gyms is either hereditary, inbred, or otherwise immutable (although the thought of managing the Celadon Gym amused him for a moment). Johto is certainly worse; some of the gym buildings themselves are hundreds of years old. Fritz didn't know enough about Hoenn and Sinnoh -- from a business standpoint -- to even consider them, and Unova was a world away. That left Ageos, a region without a Pokemon League as renowned as Kanto's -- and, following that, a region without gyms with the same prestige as Kanto's. So, once again, that was that. Fritz would go to Ageos without another word to build his own enterprise out of nothing (and at this time, I find it rather important to mention that "nothing" just as well refers to Fritz's total lack of experience in Pokemon catching, handling, battling, and just about anything else related to the pocket monsters).
So. That's Fritz du Polidori. Or, rather, as much of Fritz du Polidori as I care to write here; I'll let Fritz himself fill in the rest of the blanks.
Battle No. 1
And with that the fight with Ekans begins.
There are 10 meters between Poulpentrique and the wild Ekans. "Send a water gun at it. No need to be fancy."
...yet, he thinks with a smile.
In response, Fritz motions toward a nearby pond with a wave of his hand. "Hop in. We'll flush out the poison and wait for his next move."
Ah! Let's turn this to our advantage -- could a wild Ekans follow a trick of this sort? Fritz waits for Poulpentrique to surface, and then issues the command: "Fire a water gun again, then wait for it to leer at you. If it does, dip back under the water. Wait another five seconds, then resurface and fire a water gun at it again. Let's see how many repetitions we can keep the ruse going."
"Poulpentrique: keep repeating that cycle until I give the word. Then," he traces an arc from the Remoraid to the Ekans, "we'll catch it unawares. Jump out of the water and fire a water gun at it from a downward angle."
After two more Water Guns and two more Leers, Fritz gives the signal and Poulpentrique propels herself from the pond; she reaches two meters at the tip of the arc and dives downward at the Ekans at quite the steep angle.
Fritz smiles once more. Her aim still isn't perfect, but I can't imagine a Water Gun at point-blank is all that pleasant. Is this it?
Congratulations! Poulpentrique defeated a wild Ekans and gained 5 exp.
Battle No. 2
"A word of warning," Fritz says to Poulpentrique as he drops his voice, "we're at a disadvantage here. For now, fire a water gun at it, but keep your distance."
With a whistle from Joyce, the Spearow managed to dodge most of the water gun. With droplets streaming from its feathers, the Spearow acknowledges a second whistle and turns the dodge into a diving attack on the Remoraid. (peck)
Fritz winces, but takes to analyzing the situation immediately. She doesn't have the speed to evade a Spearow outside water, but we can't use water like we did last time. All we need is another way to reduce the meter-long surface area that she's leaving open to attack. In another second he brings his eyes to an oak tree with a half-meter hole hollowed out of its trunk, and -- with the same immediacy -- takes to directing Poulpentrique into the hole. She's not entirely secure in that position, but couldn't possibly take another peck at the speed of the first one.
"Now," Fritz says with a wave of his hand, "fire another water gun, but take your time and don't bother yourself with the counterattack."
"Poulpentrique," he issues the command, "take the hit, and counter with a water gun." He then notices that the Spearow is unrestrained (and effectively blind) in its frenzy, and adds another directive to the command. "Aim for its mouth -- let's get it choking on the water."
Poulpentrique takes a talon to the left side of her face and a beak to the right side of her face, hesitates for a second in pain, and fires a water gun in response.
...and if the Spearow is hesitant to expose its face again, all the better.
He turns toward the oak tree and shouts his command over the din of Spearow's pecking. "Poulpentrique," he begins, "hold fast for a bit longer. If I'm right, a Spearow can't possibly withstand woodpecking for that long -- it takes a special sort of head to mitigate the feedback from all that pecking. With any luck, she'll be just as disoriented as you. The moment she breaks through the tree, fire a water gun through the hole!"
Fritz pauses for a moment. It won't do a bit of a good to keep stalling. If I want to cast our lot into one attack, now would be the time. In another moment, he continues. "If the water gun hits her, jump out from the tree. And if you can get it off before her next attack, fire another water gun!"
I'm counting on Spearow fighting disorientation from both the woodpecking and the water gun, and Poulpentrique only fighting disorientation from the pecking. And I'm also counting on Poulpentrique having a sound enough mind to fire a single water gun in the first place. But if this works....
"Poulpentrique, how much more can I ask of you? One more water gun; if that fails, we'll be done with it."
Poulpentrique takes two stray shots from Spearow's talons, and moreover, the space in front of her is filled with blurs of those thrashing talons and the wood chips they're tearing up. Of course, she wouldn't need aim from that range -- just a solid jet of water. After another talon scratch to the face ("can she possibly take another one of those?"), Poulpentrique fires the water gun.
Congratulations! You have defeated Bird Keeper Joyce!