Molly Learned Metal Claw!

Molly glanced up at the ceiling of the basement store room beneath the house that she shared with her trainer Rebelle as the sound of something metallic dropping to the floor echoed through the floorboards, her head tilting in curiosity as the noise was followed by the sound of cursing. A few minutes later footsteps crossed the floor towards the ladder and Rebelle climbed down into the store room with what resembled a crude shield held onto her left arm with worn cargo straps that were riveted to the back of the metal. The shield itself Looked to have been built around the garbage can lid which had taken the brunt of Molly's explosive mishap in an earlier training session with additional sheets of scrap metal welded to the front. Grinning, Rebelle walked over and crouched down to show the Ferreanie the new piece of training gear.

“What do say Molly? Think this will hold up better against those spikes of yours?”

The question was met with a look of concern from Molly, who glanced over at where she had managed to punch a hole clean through the door of the broken fridge during their last session before looking back to Rebelle, still obviously unconvinced. In response to her partner's concern Rebelle scoffed and rolled her eyes.

“Oh come on; have some faith in me Molly. I'm a tough girl and besides, if that basic bin lid was able to protect me from that explosion you made then I'm sure this will do a bang-up job. Now come on; give it a hit and let's see what those thorns of yours are capab-”

Frustrated at Rebelle's insistence thatthey proceed in spite of her partner's lack of comfort, Molly suddenly punched straight forward at the rusted surface with one of her tendrils. A loud chunk noise filled the room and Rebelle found herself staring at a good three-quarters of the length of a purple spike poking through the back of the shield as Molly raised an eyebrow at her. Blowing a raspberry at the Pokemon, Rebelle huffed and stood back up before heading back towards the ladder.

“Fine! Yes, you were right. Just let me go weld on some more plates, okay?“

Ten minutes later Rebelle came back down the stairs with a freshly welded shield, still damp from having just been quenched in the bathtub. Walking back over to Molly, she knelt and presented the improved shield for inspection.

“There. Are you happy now?”

Molly nodded in approval and with the safety of her partner assured the pair finally began to practice. Settling into a stable position, she began to strike at the metal surface with the spikes at the ends of her front two tendrils. Starting slow to get a feel for using the limbs to slash rather than stab, it took a few tries before she began to be able to consistently attack in such a way as to carve scratches into the face of the shield with the sharpened tip of the spike as opposed to just smacking the side of it against the barrier.Once she had become more confident in her ability to slash with her tendrils Molly began to pick up speed, eventually adding in the adjacent tendrils to the ones she had started with. As their session progressed the loud clangs of failed slashes became less and less common, replaced by the scraping of sharp metal against metal as Molly grew more confident in her abilities, and by the time they finally called it a day she felt ready to face any threat which might try and too close to her.