"Not exactly. I do have a couple of Apricorns, but I think I had better plant those instead of carving them." She rummages in her bag, producing a spherical green nuttish sort of thing, with a shallow brown cap a little like an acorn's but flatter. "Modern pokeballs are made of other stuff, mostly, but it used to be that all pokeballs were carved out of Apricorns, and my family still makes artisanal custom balls that way."

Decisive nod. "It's certainly better to plant your seeds than use them, if they might be the only ones anyone here ever sees. Perhaps we could get someone in who knows how to quick-grow a tree... druids are notoriously difficult to pay, but this is the sort of thing one can convince them to do."

"I'm not sure how useful they'll be, if it doesn't turn out pokeballs work on animals. Or...non-animal things like beasts or whatever. They don't work on humans."

"Nothing ventured, nothing gained," she shrugs.

Down the path, there are more voices.

"What do you plan to do with it?" wonders the first - purring, more fond than exasperated. "Do you even know how to wield a sword?"

"Please don't hit people with swords!" Lucy calls. 

There's a startled-cat sort of noise.

"Who the fuck're you?" Voice One calls back.

"I'm Lucy! I'm a pokemon trainer!"

The sources of the voices come into view. One is some kind of blue-skinned catgirl with spider legs coming out of her back.

The other is some kind of half lizard-man, half goat-man.

"Are you a surfacer?" he asks, marveling. "Or – surfacers?"

"Yeah, we fell down when the demons attacked."

"Solalala!"

Lann crouches down and extends a hand to Linty. "Hello there, little friend. Sorry I don't have a treat for you, the hunting's been bad."

Then the rest of Lucy's statement catches up to him. "Demons attacked? Then maybe we're needed up there."

"Demons attack all the time. This is the Worldwound."

"Cors!" She gently bumps his hand with a minimally-pointy part of her front. 

"She had a treat earlier." And he mentioned hunting and Lucy would really prefer that people not feed her pokemon corpses. ...But it is a kind thought.

"So the demons attacked, and you all... what, ran away and fell in a hole?"

"No, a really big one hit the ground with a scythe and made a chasm where we were standing."

"A really big one – Deskari?!"

"I...think someone called it that?"

Lann gets back to his feet. "We're needed on the surface."

"They'd kill us because we're all demon-spawned mongrels," Wenduag points out.

"Not if we have Lariel's blade."