With Zhen Ya leading the way, Baimu arrived at a broad clearing and met the younger generation of Meteor Village who had yet to leave on their journeys.
Mawile could not stand being surrounded by Dragon-type Pokémon any longer. She asked to return to her Poké Ball, and when Baimu failed to talk her out of it, he obliged.
Looking around, he saw three young men, including Zhen Ya, and a group of boys and girls. The oldest looked no more than eleven; the youngest was a little girl of perhaps four.
"I've heard so much about you! I'm Lianzuo!"
"Me! I'm Pengpeng!"
"Datong."
"I'm Qianjin! Nice to meet you!"
"Yuzu~"
They crowded around Baimu and introduced themselves enthusiastically without waiting for Zhen Ya. Even the youngest girl piped up with her name in a babyish voice.
Baimu answered them one by one.
There were only a dozen or so of them, fewer than he had expected.
Then again, judging by Meteor Village's size and the number of houses he had seen, its total population might be barely over a thousand. With the younger Dragon Tamers who had gone traveling taken out of the count, this was a respectable number of children to have at home.
Still, the Draconids's lineage had existed in Hoenn for two thousand years. How had their population ended up so small?
Baimu was curious, but he did not dwell on it. He was no sociologist. Instead, he took another look at the girl called Yuzu, because she was holding a pale-purple, oval-shaped slug: Goomy.
Most of the Dragon-type Pokémon in Meteor Village were native to Hoenn, but there were occasional dragons from other regions... along with Pokémon once believed to be Dragon types, such as Charizard, Gyarados, and Aerodactyl.
In this world, Pokémon types had