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Wait, no, didn't they all have to go to a specific place here, now that he was thinking about it? But was that not always the case? Nico put a hand to his chin, thinking hard. Sometimes when an old memory overlapped with something that he ought to know now, it could get a bit confusing. And this did feel like an old memory, if only because he couldn't think of any other way he might have come up with that assumption.

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After all, around these parts everyone he'd heard of had gone to  a specific place to evolve...

... Then again, that didn't explain all the evolved Pokemon he met in mystery dungeons either. They couldn't all have been visiting the same location, or else it would be inundated with visitors every single day. So what exactly was happening there...?

"Are you okay, Nico?" said Joli. Nico snapped out of his thoughts with a slight start at the sound of Joli's voice.

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When he glanced over at Joli, Joli smiled apologetically back at him. "Sorry, I didn't mean to startle you. But you look like you're thinking hard about something... Do you want to talk about it?"

Joli seemed so genuinely concerned that Nico actually felt kind of bad. His thoughts at the moment were all full of nonsense, and it really wasn't anything important. But if he just brushed it off, he didn't think Joli would feel very reassured, and probably he would just keep worrying.

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Worse, he might think that Nico didn't trust him enough to talk about it... Though Nico hoped that after all this time, they were past the point of having those types of misunderstandings.

Still, in the hope of keeping things simple, he decided to just voice a little of what he had been ruminating on. "Say, everyone visits the Well if they want to evolve, right?"

"The Well? Nico, are you thinking of---"

"Oh, no. Not me. I haven't changed my mind about that," Nico amended quickly.

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He really didn't anticipate his opinion on the matter changing any time soon, and he didn't want to give Joli the wrong impression even a little bit.

Joli looked a little taken aback, probably by Nico's vehemence, but he recovered quickly enough. "Okay," he said. "Well, um... Yes, more or less? I guess I don't know very much myself, since Audinos can't evolve." Again, his apologetic smile made its appearance.

Nico shook his head. "It really wasn't important," he said.

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He went on: "I was just wondering where all the really powerful Pokemon we meet in those big dungeons came from. I just thought, the Well doesn't see that many visitors, right? It's always kind of dead there when I pass by, so..." He gave a little shrug, to drive home how little it mattered to him.

But now Joli looked as if he was thinking about it too. "You know, I've never really thought about that. Maybe there are places hidden away in dungeons where Pokemon can go to evolve."

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"Maybe," Nico said. "It would make about as much sense as anything." After all, there were a lot of things that didn't make too much sense if he thought about them. Sometimes it was easier simply not to question things, and simply accept that something worked a certain way because it was observed to work a certain way. Besides, it wasn't like worrying over stuff like this would make his job any easier, so why would he give himself the added headache of doing it on his spare time?

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"We could go look for it, one of these days," Joli suggested. "Go to a dungeon and try to find a place like that."

Nico glanced over at him again, and Joli actually had a bit of sparkle in his eye, as if he was looking forward to the prospect. Nico laughed. "Do you want to?"

"I think it would be interesting to see if we can!" said Joli. "I really never thought about it before, but now that you mention it, it would make sense if one existed somewhere, right?"

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"You'd better go by yourself then," Nico joked. "Maybe these aren't as nice as the Well, and won't ask you nicely if you want to go through with it or not. I'll get too close and then -- bam. Marowak. All my hard work staying small for nothing." If this had been earlier on in their acquaintance, Joli might have apologized or backpedaled, but by now he knew Nico well enough to be able to tell that Nico really was just joking.

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And so Joli laughed with him, and didn't apologize at all. "I can go with Acheron. Neither of us can evolve," he said. "Though maybe Lupin will want to tag along. He's always talking about how he wished he would get bigger faster."

"Mmm, you're right. Where he is now, he can't evolve either, huh?" Though it was definitely not for a lack of trying on the Zorua's part. Most likely he just hadn't gotten strong enough, or some other aspect of what he required was missing.

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Lupin dropped by the Well a couple times a week, just to see if that day would be the day. When he had first reluctantly joined them, he went every single day, but apparently his little heart could only take so much disappointment. Now it had tempered to something more reasonable, even if the visits were still pretty regular.

"Don't let him hear you say that," Joli said, only half serious. He was smiling too, though he wasn't laughing outright. "You know he's sensitive about that."

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"Yeah, I guess so." It wasn't that Nico hated Lupin, or even that he disliked kids, though if you asked him, he wouldn't have said he was especially fond of kids either. But of the two of them, Nico was definitely the disciplinarian leader of the rescue team. Joli was more the... what? The guy who cheered everyone on and tried to keep people getting along. Nico didn't think of himself as too stern a 'bad cop'; he'd always felt that he was pretty mild as far as authority went.

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But if Lupin was going to be anyone's headache, inevitably he was Nico's, and Nico was maybe a bit less charitable toward him in light of that.

He didn't have Joli's patience and understanding, and he knew that. So he left the soothing of ruffled feathers to Joli, and tried not to think about it too much. Most of the team did like him, even if they occasionally had little disagreements, and he just had to hold onto that knowledge and not let his thoughts get the best of him.

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But Lupin wasn't here, and Nico didn't have to think about him at all because of that. In fact, right now he was out on a reconnaissance mission with Acheron and Tomoe, which was a funny combination if there ever was one. Nico was hoping that Acheron would be able to keep the other two more or less placated, if not necessarily in line, since Acheron had the best relationships with both of them out of everyone on the team.

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That he was close with Tomoe went without saying, since their relationship predated Acheron ever even meeting Nico or Joli... And if push came to shove, Nico strongly suspected that Acheron would choose to side with his mistress over Nico. But when it had happened in the past, he had tried very hard to find a sort of middle ground between the two of them. And his loyalty to Tomoe was more towards things in her best interests, rather than blindly listening and acquiescing to anything she said.