A group of cute, elegant Minccino had gathered beside the winding railway tracks for a chestnut-shelling party.
With practiced flicks of their tails, they sent several black-shelled nuts sailing in graceful arcs onto the tracks.
Of course, some of the younger Minccino had to throw several times before a single nut landed squarely on the rusty rails.
"Chilami..."
After one tiny Minccino failed three times in a row, the parent beside it—a Cinccino draped in what looked like a white scarf—could no longer bear to watch. "Chila chi!"
The Cinccino motioned for the little Minccino to move aside, then took a deep breath and spat out black nuts in a rapid, steady stream like a machine gun. Every nut landed on the rail, with exactly the same distance between each one.
They were neither packed so tightly that they would be crushed unevenly nor spread so far apart that they took up too much space.
After all, opportunities to encounter the long iron dragon were rare. Every extra nut they could get crushed meant less work later.
These nuts, chestnuts, were one of the reasons Minccino and Cinccino had gotten their names.
The Cinccino's masterful technique drew admiring, worshipful looks from all the little rodents around it.
Just what they would expect from a senior who could enter Light Cave.
Wild Minccino generally had very few ways to evolve.
They could follow a Trainer who possessed a Shiny Stone, or live in mountains containing Shiny Stone deposits and absorb enough Shiny Stone dust to evolve—a theory gaining increasing recognition among researchers.
It also meant Professor Suzuki's growth promotion theory was becoming ever more widely accepted.
Light Cave lay above a Shiny Stone deposit. Every year, movements in the earth's crust brought quite a few Shiny Stones to the surface, turning