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Hey there, I'm Sinderella! Deciding to start chronicling my longfic here too! I've been planning this fic for a while, and hope to be able to keep up with semi-regular updates!
This fic has kind of become my baby in the past couple months. It's extremely OC centric, but expect to see some canon characters join the main cast in the second arc. There's also some fakemon, a new type, and a new villainous team in the mix. I hope you enjoy your read! It's still a WIP so pls pls pls pls don't bash me too hard......
Synopsis: Odette Cinq-Mars had it all--a promising career in the arts, and a solid Pokemon team to boot. However, a traumatic encounter with a colleague snuffed out her flame, leaving her lost and unsure of what she is to make of herself. But, a chance meeting with an old friend leads her on new path, and uncovers a sinister Team with an even more sinister agenda...all seemingly centered around her.
Warnings: I will be tagging each chapter with trigger warnings, but overall, this fic is rated M for mature audiences for frequent adult language, implications of sexual assault and abuse, drug usage, light gore, occult happenings, and overall angst.
The emergency breach sirens wailed through the halls of the S.S. Mystic Milotic.
Team Enigma tended to function like a well-oiled machine, but the abnormality of the sirens was prompting some chaos. None of the grunts appeared to know what to do about it, as they frantically ran about trying to gain some information from one another. But it seemed that every grunt was just as clueless as the next. Some decided to stand by and wait for instructions from their feared leader, but nothing of the sort came.
Their feared leader was dealing with the issue himself.
Florent Lambourne threw open the doors to the highly secure keep, located in the bowels of the ship, with his 11 year old son Armel at his heels. Florent's hardened features were twisted into a look of pure rage, one that appeared to make his maroon eyes glow. He pushed on the sleeves of his navy business suit, trying to keep his hands busy. Armel’s face was a little more blank, but there was an obvious glint of childish fear in his own gaze. He clutched a thick journal tightly to his chest.
The alarm sound was at its loudest in this room, bouncing off the server-lined walls and metal floors. There were no windows for the noise to completely escape out of, allowing it to swell and rattle through the high tech research equipment that had been placed throughout the space. All the light fixtures on the ceiling now blinked with that emergency red hue.
The four grunts on guard in the keep whirled around at the loud bang of the doors. Although their faces were entirely covered by their uniform gas masks, Florent could tell that they were frightened by his arrival.
As they should be.
“Your majesty!” one greeted. He was stoic in his words, but there was a clear air of distress in the way he spoke.
“Where are they?” Florent ground out.
“Um, they’re still there, but…” another grunt tried to answer.
“But what?”
He pushed past the line of terrified grunts, and quickly approached the center of the keep. It was a large space, having been built to take up the entire bottom portion of the ship. Florent had to widen his stride to cover the distance quickly. A raised pedestal stood in the center, with a Pokeball holder perched atop it. What struck Florent as alarming was the thick glass covering that normally served to protect the balls inside. It was now completely shattered.
“No, no, no, no…” he muttered to himself as he leaned over the contents. The holder was situated with five pockets, each occupied with its own neatly situated Pokeball, closed and undisturbed. Or, at least, that was how it was supposed to be.
The fifth and final Pokeball stood open and broken, as if the Pokemon it originally housed had blown it out from the inside.
Florent’s eyes went wide, much more so when he read the label that marked the pocket.
Venira.
“How is that even possible…”
“Your majesty,” one of the grunts said again. “We are terribly sorry. But we don’t know--”
“I have to ask, just to be sure,” Florent cut him off. “Did one of you take it?”
He kept his back to them, speaking in a tone of disbelief. The underlings quickly fell into a collective fit of denial.
“No your majesty."
“We would never."
“They’re your relics, your majesty."
Florent took a deep sigh and straightened his back. He calmly turned to face them as he folded his hands behind him. His expression wasn’t angry anymore, as it had grown just as stoic as Armel’s.
“You say that, and yet...why is it that my most powerful Blood Legendary has gone missing while you were the ones on duty?” he asked sternly. Like a teacher questioning misbehaving students.
“We didn’t know what to do, your majesty,” one said as evenly as he could manage. His voice wavered nonetheless. “It had a meltdown. It just busted out and we couldn’t catch it.”
“Isn’t the whole point of guards in the keep to assure none of my relics go missing?” Florent inquired. He lightly cocked his head to the side for good measure. “So you’re either going to tell me that one of you has taken it, or you failed to do your job. Both are equally as bad.”
The silence that filled the room proved to be more deafening than the alarm that still sounded over them. The fear wafting off of the grunts thickened the air of the room and caused a smirk to tilt Florent’s lips.
He stepped down off the pedestal. “Your next option is to beg for my forgiveness.”
The four grunts exchanged looks. After a beat, they dropped to their knees, and fell over into a bowing position. They then began to run through their memorized code of apology.
"Forgive us, King Florent, for we have wronged you..."
Florent let it go on for several seconds. He didn’t bother to interrupt, he didn’t bother to antagonize them further. It was in the middle of all of it that he felt an all-too-familiar tickle in his ear. His eyes narrowed, and soon, the voice followed.
“What is it you’re going to do?” it asked tenderly.
Florent considered the words for a moment, before holding up a halting hand.
“Cease and rise,” he snapped.
The four grunts quieted themselves and stumbled back to their feet.
“You should know that I am feeling peckish,” the voice said.
Florent pursed his lips, then turned his head slightly to grab a look at Armel, who had kept quiet through the whole altercation. He had moved off to the side, away from the door, to stand near a table of empty beakers and test tubes. He stood stiff straight, still clutching that little book of his. That same glint of trepidation still lingered in his eyes.
He felt that perhaps, this would be a good learning experience for his one and only heir. Even if he would probably forget it.
His smirk broadened as he looked back at the grunts and their downcast heads. “Your words have moved me,” he began. “So much so, that I am willing to forgive your transgression against Team Enigma and I.”
There were evident sighs of relief from the grunts. They held themselves quite stiffly, as they were trained, but Florent could still see the fear induced tension beginning to leave them.
“However,” he continued. He pulled his left hand from behind his back, revealing a single Pokeball he’d had on him. “You’ve outlived your usefulness to me. Your time for purification has come, my good men.”
He pushed the button on the Pokeball, and it popped open with the familiar flash. The inhabitant began to manifest in front of the once-again frightened group.
“Gulattive, it is dinner time,” Florent said calmly. He brought his free hand to his lips and bit down on his thumb until it drew blood.
The bead of red that formed on his thumb began to glow, and a stream of light shot out from it and joined the beams emanating from the Pokeball. It met with the manifestation, causing it to begin to grow in size. It grew, and grew, and grew. It didn’t appear it would stop growing, until the glowing form had nearly hit the ceiling. However, it stopped just short of it, and faded from the beams of the Pokeball and Florent’s blood into reality.
It was a towering, lanky form, with arms were as long as its seemingly legless body. This left the being floating, like a ghost. A cloak appeared to cover it, with a hood up over what should have been its head. However, there looked to be no head to speak of. Only a single, bloodshot red eye sat in place. Once formed, it loomed ominously over the four grunts.
They didn't attempt to run, knowing damn well it would be futile. Their fates were sealed. They accepted it.
"Mom, I'm coming home, pure and true," one muttered as his tears began to soak the inside of his mask. He shut his eyes and prepared for the inevitable.
“Feast,” Florent said simply.
A slit tore open in the Pokemon’s stomach, revealing rows upon rows of serrated and saliva-coated coated pincers. A pointed tongue, one that looked to be far too long to fit in its body, licked the pincers before curling outward into the open. The Pokemon emitted a threatening growl, before lunging at the grunts. All that could be heard was a set of high pitched squeals, followed by the sickening sound of their bones crunching, and the squelch of their flesh being bitten into. It took Gulattive no time at all to swallow down all of them.
Florent chuckled to himself as he watched the Pokemon finish off its meal, before turning back to the puzzling sight that was the broken Pokeball and holder. He huffed again and crossed his arms.
“Tell me. Were any of them lying?” he asked.
Gulattive slurped to itself, before turning to face it’s host.
“No, master,” it said slyly, speaking out loud this time. “They tasted pure. No trace of Venira.”
“Then where could it have gone? How did it break open its ball?”
“It seems,” Gulattive began. “Venira has selected a host. It willed an escape, enough to break any bindings.”
Florent’s brows furrowed deeply, and he whipped around to face the towering Pokemon.
“What do you mean selected a host?” he growled. “You told me that I selected the hosts for the rest.”
Gulattive hummed to himself with sinister glee. “You do.But in the event your bloodline expands, one shall inhabit the offspring. As Avareed did with the boy.”
Florent averted his gaze over to Armel, who was frozen in his spot. Sheer terror had grabbed hold of his body, and had no plans to let go any time soon. His eyes were locked on the place where the grunts had been standing. All there was left of them now was a puddle of blood.
“F-father, you…” Armel stammered.
Florent scoffed to himself. “Wipe the look off your face, boy. That’s how things are handled around here. You’ll forget it when you wake up tomorrow, anyway.”
He turned on his heel and approached the wall just off to his left, where a giant red button was affixed. He pulled a key card from his pocket and swiped it into the reader strip that was placed just next to it. The button released, and he pressed it down, halting the alarm and flashing red lights. All returned to normal, as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred.
He turned back to Gulattive. “And you couldn’t have told me that earlier?” he queried.
“You didn’t ask.”
Florent clenched his teeth in disdain. He supposed it couldn’t be helped that this particular Legendary was so conniving.
“Are you implying I have another child somewhere?”
“Not implying, master. Telling,” Gulattive stated. “Judging the speed by which Venira left, I am to assume a child of your blood has just been born.”
Florent paced back to the front of the pedestal, his eyes downcast in thought. He raised his wrist to his face, seeking the date off his watch.
December 14th, 1997. 8:16pm. The alarm had begun to go off a mere five minutes ago.
“How could I have another child born at this point?” He asked himself. He racked his brain for possible answers. Several mistresses of his were aboard the ship, but none he’d had long enough to carry a baby to fill term.
“Quite strange that master cannot remember who he has lusted after.”
“Shut up, you,” Florent snapped. “You’re Gluttony, not Lust.”
As his father conversed with Gulattive, Armel was wracking his brain for ideas on what he should do. Although he had awoken with a cleaned memory slate, he supposed, if he were to avoid the same fate as those grunts, he had to be of some use. This proved difficult when he woke up every morning forgetting the previous day, but he kept his journal on him at all times for that exact reason. It served as what was left of his memory bank.
He slowly brought his journal to his face and pulled it open, shaky hands flipping frantically through the pages, trying to find something he might have written down that could assist his father in the current predicament. He hoped, somewhere in his previous lives, he’d written some useful information down.
He turned page upon page, his eyes scanning them for any trigger words that might prove worth mentioning. In the several seconds he was turning, he found himself slightly tripped up by the recounts of preceding days, as he always was when he reread everything. Instances that he had no recollection of, rewritten clear as day in his own handwriting, and dated for his own convenience. He blew backwards through November, October, September, August...all the way back to April, where he finally found something.
April 4th, 1997.
Galar.
Father’s woman left today. He didn’t know she was leaving, so he’s really angry. Don’t mention her to him tomorrow. We will most likely be leaving Galar tonight because of it too, so don’t be alarmed if we’re elsewhere.
“Th-the Galar-rian woman…?” Armel stammered quietly. He gulped, and took a deep breath, trying to compose himself. Trying to get the image of Gulattive eating four people whole out of his head. If there was any moment for him to be thankful that his brain was fried, it was this one. He’d have no recollection of it tomorrow morning, and it wouldn’t be something he planned to jot down.
“Speak up, Armel,” Florent shouted sharply. Armel flinched at the way his father’s voice bounced off the walls, and his shoulders tensed.
“The G-Galarian woman,” he repeated, louder this time. There was no need, though, as Florent had strode over to him, and now stood over him.
“The one you met back in Spring. While we were in Galar,” he clarified. He tentatively closed the journal and held it down at his side, hoping desperately that he’d said enough.
The gears began to turn in Florent’s head, and he soon knew what his shaking son was referring to. He brought a thoughtful finger to his bottom lip, as the memories lit up his eyes.
“Vienna,” he recalled fondly. “That was her name. Beautiful, sweet Vienna.”
He felt quite stupid for forgetting her so easily. It hadn't even been a full year yet, and considering how hard he’d fallen for her, it was almost criminal. The time he’d spent with her was time he never thought he’d let leave his mind.
However, with remembering Vienna, came remembering why he’d decided to cast her out of his mental space in the first place.
She’d left him without a trace. High, dry, and heartbroken. He remembered going to pick her up from her dorm at her boarding school, only to find she’d left the region entirely. No goodbye, no note, not even a phone call.
He remembered how badly he wanted to wring her neck for it.
He began to caress his chin, allowing his eyes to slip shut in contemplation. Their last time together had been April--eight months ago. It wasn't necessarily far-fetched to assume she could have been with a child in the weeks before.
Recalling the timeline of his brief relationship with her caused him to wonder: did she leave him behind because she’d gotten pregnant? He had to wonder if she even knew at that point. If she did, it only gave him one more reason to want to feed her to Gulattive too. Keeping one of his heirs from him was a crime he wouldn’t allow himself to forgive.
Especially not when said heir had stolen his strongest relic from him.
“You told me Venira was comatose. How is it that it broke free to find my child?”
“I can’t say.” Gulattive mused. “Venira has always been an odd one out. It seems they have been reawakened by whatever presence has been introduced. It must be a strong one.”
Florent didn’t like that prospect. While the idea of having another heir was one he enjoyed, having said heir attract the attention of the otherwise dormant Pokemon of Wrath…
It just wouldn’t do.
“How could I get Venira to return?”
“The child would have to willingly give it to you, or perish.”
That was a no-brainer. A newborn couldn’t willingly give up the possession, so the demise of it would have to do. Not that he minded killing for such a gain.
“Well. Then I must do some digging, and find what it is my sweet Vienna hid from me.”
He placed a light hand on Armel’s head, who flinched again at the touch. Florent didn’t appear to notice it.
“Good on you for remembering, my boy. That journal was a good investment.”
“Th-thank you father,” Armel gulped.
“Come. We must go to the surveillance rooms at once.”
“Y-yes father,” Armel agreed.
“Is there anything the master requires of me?” Gulattive queried.
Florent didn’t hesitate to hold out his empty Pokeball push the button.
“Yes. Return,” he said, as Gulattive was sucked back into the ball in another flash of light. It sealed shut, and he threw it up once and caught it.
“Your services shouldn’t be needed until I locate my newborn. It should be a solid meal for you.”
His left ear began to tickle again, and Gulattive spoke in his head once more.
Odette Cinq-Mars’ maroon hued eyes were locked on her news app. She leaned against the backstage wall, tapping her clipboard lightly against it, keeping with the tempo of the orchestra. She was humming along to the singing of the actors onstage while her eyes roved hungrily over the words on her phone screen.
The victim, 25-year-old Gervais Morel, was found unconscious in his car. His pokemon, a Simisear, attempted to take a firearm from one of the first responders, and was subsequently gunned down. The Simisear was later found to have lethal amounts of sacrilege in his system. The Lumiose City PD declined to--
She began to shake her head, when a tap on her shoulder caused her to jump. She pressed her phone to her chest and darted her head over, meeting a set of slyly narrowed hazel eyes.
“Shouldn’t you be paying attention, Miss Stage Manager?” Noel whispered.
She scoffed. “Shouldn’t you be listening for your cue, Mister Mistoffelees?”
Noel returned the scoff and crossed his arms. “To think, after years of acting classes, you don’t have that faith in me? Purrloins is my favorite musical of all time, you think I don’t know it like the back of my hand?”
With a roll of her eyes, she returned to her read. “Those words never left my mouth.”
There was no response from him. Instead, she felt his chin dig into her shoulder, as he undoubtedly tried to sneak a peek at what she was reading.
“Oh, more Team Enigma news?” he said, his interest apparent.
Odette impatiently scrolled through the rest of the article, before clicking the phone off and shoving it into her pocket. “Just another OD case. Nothing new.”
He sighed, then removed his chin. “Lame. I’ve been waiting for a new break.”
“You and me both.”
He leaned against the bunched up curtain, crossing his arms over his chest. “Anything else to report on? Can you at least tell me what the weather’s like today?”
As if the universe sought to answer for him, a groan of thunder rocked the building. It was quite loud, but it didn’t stop the rehearsal on the stage.
“Castform mating season,” Odette chided. “So why don’t you ask one of them?”
To that, Noel chuckled. “Rainy one day, sunny the next, snowy the third.”
“Welcome to January in Kalos,” Odette said.
They were silent for a moment, and Odette heard the sound of something being rolled behind her. She turned her head, just in time to catch two of the stagehand machamps moving one of the light props to set on this side of the stage. She snapped twice, alerting their attention.
“Hey!” she whispered. “Stage right, not left. Other side.”
They frowned at her. “Mach,” one grumbled.
With that, they took to rolling it off to where it was actually supposed to go. Odette sighed deeply to herself. She brought her clipboard back to her face, flipping up the first page to double check her prop placement notes. “I swear, they don’t listen.”
“You know, I found something interesting regarding this sacrilege stuff, I figured you’d be interested to know,” Noel said wryly, disregarding her annoyance.
“You waited until now to tell me this?” she asked incredulously, shooting him a side-eyed glance.
“I was going to wait until lunch, but since you’re on your phone on the job, I figured I’d humor you.”
The actor playing Macavity the purrloin began to deliver his ending scene lines. Noel mouthed along to them, mimicking the actor’s conviction in a mocking fashion. Odette joined in, though she performed with a little less gusto. It was more like she was reciting them just because she knew them by heart. She knew the entire show by heart, actually.
The lights went out on the stage, as was slated to happen at this point in the performance. Macavity’s actor disappeared through a trap door in the floor of the stage, as the actors left began to shout and squeal in their performance of confusion.
“I was doing some digging last night before bed, getting some dirt on all the released OD names so far,” Noel continued their conversation. He ran his thumbs under the shoulder straps of his bodysuit as he spoke.
“As one does,” Odette snickered.
“Lissssssteeeeen,” Noel insisted, swatting at her. “I was putzing around, looking for some similarities. It’s not much, but so far, ninety percent of the cases have been among people in the wealthier demographic.”
Odette pursed her lips. That was indeed some interesting information.
“I might be noticing a pattern here, but sacrilege seems to be traveling around the top one percent,” Noel added. He began to examine his nails dramatically, as if he were proud of this little observation.
She began to nod to herself, her mind starting to buzz with the possibilities. She wondered why she didn’t think to look into that before he did. Then again, when Noel wasn’t at a rehearsal, he was messing around on his computer. Coding, hacking, whatever he thought was going to cause some minute internet mischief. So she wasn’t entirely surprised to hear he’d killed some time by cross referencing some of the cases on his own.
Ever since Kalos had been struck by the so-called “sacrilege crisis,” Odette had been glued to her news apps more than ever. It’d been quite a long time since the region had experienced a synthetic drug problem on such a large scale. It started as just a couple of unfortunate accidents, with hardcore party goers overdosing on some new fad. Within a few years, that substance exploded on the party and battle scene. Soon, more and more people, and even Pokemon, were overdosing, but not all of them perished. Those who lived exhibited some very strange behaviors, which is what really caught everybody’s attention.
In one police report she had read, an older woman had to be rushed to the hospital because she’d eaten so much food her stomach had actually exploded. Another case mentioned a trainer being arrested when they instructed their drugged-up Coalossal to eat the opposing trainer’s Vaporeon during a battle tournament.
All the users started to call the drug “sacrilege.” Soon, they were also starting to claim they were getting it from a group called Team Enigma. But, all attempts to uncover the group so far had been unsuccessful. So much so, that it was hard to believe Team Enigma was even real.
The whole ordeal was absolutely mind-boggling to her.
Now, hearing Noel’s new take on it was definitely some juicy news. This was something that could hold her and her observation-driven mind over for the time being. The Noble Roar hadn’t been very informative lately.
“How has Chief Cinq-Mars been lately?” he inquired.
Odette sighed again. “Exhausted.”
Noel clicked his tongue and began to shake his head. “Poor guy needs a break.”
He was preaching for the choir. She was all-too concerned that her grandfather had delved head first into such a disturbing set of cases. Of course, being the chief of police at the Lumiose City PD would leave him exposed to all the terrible things the otherwise beautiful city had to offer. But she’d seen how much of a toll this was taking on him firsthand.
Much like the news, he wasn’t telling her much either. But, she didn’t blame him. Coming up on drug death after drug death would take a toll on anybody.
She remembered how he’d responded to a call about five fatal OD cases in a residential flat. The bodies, three trainers and two Pokemon, sat there for about a week before the smell of their collective decomposition alerted the other residents. Of course, nothing on them indicated where they might have gotten the drug from. He had been so disturbed that he didn’t talk to anybody for almost a week following the incident.
She immediately regretted allowing her brain to travel there, and shook off the thought as quickly as she could. She knew damn well what it was like to bear witness to death like that.
A shudder racked her small frame. Noel seemed to take notice, because he placed his hand back on her shoulder.
“Ease up, you’re good.” He spoke tenderly, as if he’d also known where her brain wandered.
“All good,” she assured him, her words short. “Don’t worry about me.”
It was there that the sound of scurrying paws approached behind her. Something began to tug at her leg, and she looked down to find her blue-hued Sylveon shooting a droopy-eyed stare at her. A folded piece of yellow legal pad paper dangled between her teeth.
Odette frowned, while Noel gasped and placed his hands over his lips.
“Hello, Enora!” he greeted in a louder whisper.
Odette leaned down and took the note from Enora’s mouth, and the fairy type very quickly looped around her to affectionately rub herself against Noel’s leg. He leaned down to pet her, cooing softly as he did.
“Damn, Dee, I swear she likes me more than you sometimes.”
“Why do you act like this is a shock to you every time?” Odette responded, opening the note. “She’s liked you since I caught her. She just has a thing for pretty gay men.”
“Sylve!” Enora purred quietly, sitting politely next to Noel’s feet.
Odette retrieved her phone from her pocket and flipped the screen back on, using it as a light to illuminate the note. She squinted through her thick rimmed glasses to get a better look at it.
PAY ATTENTION!!!!!
If her frown could have gotten any deeper, it did. She shot her head up, her gaze zeroing in on the entrance to stage right, just across from her. She was entirely unsurprised to find Acadia, also decked out in her practice dance garb, standing in view with a stern glare plastered on her face.
Noel snatched the note, and Odette heard him laugh to himself.
“Gods, what a mum,” he said. “She’s just mad we’re more interested in Team Enigma than she is.” He tossed the note over his shoulder and proceeded to stretch his shoulders. Odette knew his cue was coming up shortly, so he needed to be ready. See, she was paying attention. Damn Acadia and her parental-grade micromanaging.
“I was thinking, Dee,” Noel said, stretching his left leg. “You and I should team up and try to uncover this bullshit together. We can give the PD a break, and it’ll be the last hurrah before you move to Alola.”
She rolled her eyes. “That’d be something wouldn’t it?”
“I’m only half kidding. I don’t know what I’m going to do without you, so I need something to hold me over,” he whined. “Two clueless entertainment workers busting the case of the decade would do it.”
“You can always fly to Alola whenever, it’s only a ten hour flight,” Odette chided.
“Only a ten hour flight,” Noel repeated incredulously. “I can barely stomach flying to see my sister in Galar, and that’s four hours away.”
“Sounds like a personal problem.”
Noel opened his mouth to retaliate, but the song began to pick up in tempo. He held up a finger.
“Hold that thought,” he said. He then strode out onto the stage, and began what Odette considered the best dance solo in the entire show. She might have been a little biased because it was Noel. He'd always been a talented performer. Back when they used to dance competitively, he was a force to be reckoned with. She kind of was too. Their duets were always flawless.
The memory made her frown. Her hold on her clipboard tightened.
There wasn’t a world where she ever thought she’d be doing the crew work for a show. She’d grown up wanting to be the person in the spotlight. She sunk herself into her dancing and singing lessons, and even picked up acting in high school with high hopes of being the next Broadway performer. Another Diantha—no, the next Diantha; talented performer and Pokemon handler. That was all she had wanted for as long as she could remember.
The strings section of the orchestra began to groove, as Noel took off into his thirty fouettes. Odette took that moment to lean out just slightly from behind the curtain, and she eyed the auditorium chairs. She could see the show’s director and his assistant watching the rehearsal, probably nitpicking every little thing as he tended to do. Other than that, the thousand other chairs stood empty.
This run of Purrloins! The Musical was sold out for the opening night. Odette began to imagine how the house would look that day, filled to the brim with those eager patrons of the arts, waiting to be entertained by some of the most talented performers in the region.
She started to imagine herself in, perhaps, Noel’s position. A big name part, with a big name solo. All eyes on her, as she did the thing she swore she knew best.
It all sounded dreamy, until she was rudely reminded why it wasn’t.
You’ll never get anywhere unless you do things like this, Odette...
She recoiled back behind the curtain, anxiety gripping her chest. It caused her heartbeat to start ringing in her ears.
Stop, stop, stop, she told herself. Shut up. Shut up.
It’d been almost a year since she last stepped out on stage as a performer. She thought picking up a job as a crew worker would help her edge back into it; make her realize she missed it. But every time she thought about it, she thought about that thing that happened. She thought about those words, and where his hands went.
She thought too hard about him. She hated it.
She told herself when she left her apartment that morning that she’d at least attempt to eat lunch today. But, as it seemed whenever she stepped foot into this building, the Lumiose Center for Performing Arts, something always happened that led her to losing her appetite. It’d become almost expected at this point. Probably not the healthiest thing in the world, but that was how exposure therapy worked, right?
Odette opened her eyes from the half-nap she was taking. It was lunch hour, and she’d decided that if she wasn’t going to eat, she could at least try to nap. She was sprawled out on the stage, using her backpack as a pillow. Her fellow cast and crew, Pokemon and human alike, sat around her, talking amongst themselves about who knows what.
Her eyes immediately landed on the untouched bowl containing her nanab berry salad, sitting next to her legs. She stared at it for a long moment, before looking Acadia square in her face. She was quick to take in the peculiar way her eyebrows furrowed, and the way her top lip slightly pulled back to reveal her clenched teeth.
She’s on Mum Mode, she thought. But, what’s new?
“What? I’m not going to force myself to eat if I’m not hungry,” Odette said, knowing her words would be futile. Once Acadia made that look, there was no turning back.
Acadia crossed her arms over her chest. “Yeah, not hungry for the fourth time this week?”
More thunder shook the building, and Odette secretly wished it kept rolling in order to prevent her from having to answer.
“My stomach shrunk,” she muttered. She flung her arm over her eyes. “Lunch has never been my best meal anyway,” she added tentatively.
“You should at least try to eat,” Acadia returned without missing a beat.
“I haven’t fainted yet, so don’t be too concerned.”
“Come on, ‘Cadia, let her live her life,” Noel huffed. He was sitting next to her head, with Enora curled up in his lap. “She clearly stopped eating because she doesn’t want to grow anymore. She’s perfectly content being a cute little midget.” He reached over and grabbed the bowl and began to eat from it. “Which means, more for me.”
“Veeeeeeon?” Enora queried, perking her head up as Noel began to chew. He stared at her questioningly before his eyes widened in realization.
“Oh right, you like these things,” he said. He picked a berry up from the bed of lettuce, and fed it to the Sylveon, who purred in thanks. Noel started to pet her, but Odette smacked him on the shoulder. He flinched, thus causing Enora to flinch too.
“Owwwwwwwwww-uh,” he whined, rubbing the contact sight.
“Sylveee!” Enora chastised.
“He asked for it,” Odette insisted. “Five foot zero doesn’t equate to midget.”
“It does for somebody who just turned twenty-two!”
Acadia sighed deeply. “Well, excuse me for trying to make sure my friend is healthy.”
“I’m plenty healthy,” Odette said flatly. “I only got seven hours of sleep last night, so I’m trying to get the full eight right now.”
“Pretty sure that’s not how that works,” Acadia said.
“Well, not now. You woke me up.” She sat up and rolled her shoulders, and decided to zero in on the current conversation of the others, to hopefully deter her motherly friend from pestering her more.
“Psychic types are ideal,” said one of the dancers. “They can sense the feelings of the audience, and therefore know when to play up their performances.” For good measure, she stroked her Hatterene on her chin, causing her to coo in glee. “Calliope here has been in a bunch of performances with me; she’s a natural.”
“I get what you’re saying, but you can’t knock Ice types either,” responded one of the stagehands. His freshly hatched Swinub sat snugly in his lap, fast asleep. “They’re absolutely glorious to look at onstage.”
“Okay, but Electric types can literally bring a house down. My Luxray has a voice to end all other singers. He’s something,” another responded. Her Luxray was laid out next to her, enjoying his own lunch. He seemed bashful at the idea of his trainer boasting about him, so he hid his head behind a paw.
“What are we talking about?” Odette asked after a few timed blinks.
“Opinions on the best performance Pokemon,” Acadia reiterated. She’d evidently been listening in.
“Depends on the performance,” Odette said simply after thinking for a beat. Her hand instinctively traveled to Enora’s head. “My Gothitelle, Solene, is the best dancer I know, but I’d never put Enora here in dance shoes,” she said.
“Syyyyyyyyyl…” Enora sighed in reluctant agreement. She indeed had four left feet.
“You wouldn’t need to, people would flock to see a shiny Pokemon do anything. People love the novelty,” another dancer said jokingly, prompting some agreeing chatter.
“Vee,” Enora said in a low voice, ducking her head into Noel’s thigh. Odette scratched behind her ear.
“Hear that? You’re a novelty,” she said.
“A cute novelty,” Noel interjected.
The conversation continued on, merely consisting of more arguing. She found she couldn’t hold her focus on it for much longer.
“So what were you going to say before we were so rudely interrupted by your cue?” she asked Noel. She shot a playfully rude look at Acadia. “That we were paying attention to, by the way.”
“It looked to me like you two were just running your mouths, so I couldn’t tell,” she said with a shrug. “Be lucky I didn’t send my vigoroth over instead.” She slyly patted her pocket, where the bulge of her trusty Pokemon’s ball was visible.
Odette pressed her lips together, deciding she had a point. Acadia had always been a stickler for the rules, even more so in a place of performance. She had an intense love for enforcing “theater etiquette,” and she did so with the use of her rather persuasive vigoroth. Odette’s head began to ache, remembering the countless head smacks she’d endured for talking during an opposing team’s dance performance.
“Instead you dragged my own Pokemon into it. Conniving,” she said dully.
“Oh I wasn’t going to say much,” Noel answered. “I was just going to ***** that all my friends are moving away.” He sniffled and ran his finger under his eye, as if wiping away tears. He sniffled dramatically. “First Claude, the Basile, then my sister, now you. Who am I going to hide behind when Acadia yells at me for drinking too much wine?”
“Hey!” Acadia groused.
“You have the group chat, just complain there like you always do,” Odette suggested, raising her RotomPhone for emphasis.
“It won’t be the same, though.”
Odette had to nod in agreement, it wouldn’t be the same. While she was somewhat looking forward to the hefty change, something about leaving behind the place she grew up was only adding to her daily anxiety load. She didn’t know what it would be like not being able to walk three floors down to Noel’s flat when she needed to get out of her head. Or, not being able to meet Acadia for lunch when she was bored and needed female interaction. Or, possibly worst of all, not being able to ride across the city to her grandparent’s townhouse just because.
It would be a new house, new town, new people. ****, even new pokemon.
She felt like she’d come to terms with it, but it was still ringing...odd.
Thinking of pokemon caused her to remember the rest of her team, whom she’d left home to start packing. The move wasn’t for another two months, but her mother had insisted they get a move on now. She groaned quietly, hoping fruitlessly that she wasn’t going to go home to a mess.
“As sad as I am that you’re leaving,” Acadia spoke solemnly, snapping her out of her thought. “I do think that’s what you need. A change of scenery and a clean slate.”
There were implications to that sentence that made Odette feel both blessed to have a friend so concerned about her mental state, and disgusted that anything even needed to be hinted at in the first place.
Why couldn’t she just be okay?
“The Elite Family dance studio is in Alola, you could audition,” Noel suggested suddenly. “Alolans are known for being great singers too, you could also find another coach!”
“I heard they’re finally establishing a Pokemon League there, that would be great to get in on as well, since you’ve gone back to Pokemon training school,” Acadia added.
Enora appeared to like that idea, because her long ears stiffened at the sound of ‘Pokemon League.’
“Syyyylll?” she asked.
Odette couldn’t help the dubious tilt that took over her lips. The idea of a clean slate was great, she wasn’t denying that. But all of those suggestions made her stomach perform aerials. She thought back to how she’d imagined herself center stage on opening night, and...no. The fear began to gnaw at her again.
“Sounds like a good idea,” she said, making sure her voice didn’t waver. They didn’t need to really know how bad her head was spinning. “I’ll look into it.”
When rehearsal finally wrapped for the day, it was 9pm and the storm had passed. Water dripped sporadically from the marquee sign overhead, and the smell of rain-soaked asphalt still lingered in the air. Odette could still see clouds in the night sky, but the downpour had indeed ceased for the time being.
The sounds of ear-shattering thunder had given way to the typical bustle of the City of Lights. Car horns rang from every which way as their tires tore through the road’s puddles; nearby bistros cranked up their stereos, hoping to attract more post-storm customers before they closed for the night.
The trio trekked out from under the marquee and began to walk a little ways down the sidewalk, passing all of the parallel parked cars and bikes. They came to a gradual stop next to Odette’s motorcycle. The wet white finish gleamed under the overhead streetlights.
“Well, the break in the weather makes my ride home a lot easier,” Odette said as she sat her motorcycle helmet on the handlebars and swung her backpack around to her front.
“Not mine,” Noel whined. “Braviary won’t fly after rain, the defiant little bugger,” he said jokingly.
“Looks like you’re coming with me then,” Odette replied. She withdrew both a keychain and a small rag from her backpack and began drying the motorcycle’s seats.
Noel’s face lit up, and he clapped his hands together. “Oh, I love a good cycling moment.”
Acadia sucked her teeth and placed a stern hand on her hip. “That’s not a good idea, you don’t have your spare helmet.”
Odette blinked a few times, wiping off the last of the rain and wringing out the rag.
“Mm, you’re right,” she said.
Without another word, she picked up her helmet and handed it to Noel.
Noel gasped and eagerly took it, then held it high above his head triumphantly. “Yay!” he cheered, lifting the helmet above his head like he’d won a Tony for Best New Broadway Performer.
Acadia now looked even more displeased than she had before. “That doesn’t solve the problem!” she said.
“Well, I’m not going to let him walk home,” Odette insisted.
“I walk home,” Acadia said.
“Yes, your apartment is two blocks away, must be nice,” Noel said as he briefly examined his nails. “Our building is a twelve minute drive away.”
“I figure, since I’m the versed motorist here, I have a better chance of surviving any crashes without a helmet than he would,” Odette explained.
Acadia didn’t buy it. Still living out what was left of her Mum Mode, she bent down so that her eyes were level with Odette’s. Her brow began to twitch, and she tightly crossed her arms over her chest.
“That’s literally not how that works,” she said.
“Then, worst case scenario, Enora uses Protect on us,” Odette suggested.
“She’s in her Pokeball right now.”
“She has a voice activation key on her ball, she’ll come out if I need it.”
They stared intently at each other for a long moment, each waiting for some sort of retaliation from the other. Noel’s eyes darted back and forth between them, before he glided over and placed his hands on Odette’s shoulders.
“With all due respect, Mum,” he said to Acadia, with a sarcastic edge on the last word. “I trust Dee enough not to get us killed.”
As Acadia’s frown deepened, Odette turned back to her bike and checked that the headlights were in order. It was two against one now.
A moment later a frustrated sigh came from behind her. “Fine. But,” she said, raising her hands defensively and turning her nose up. “text the group chat and let us know that you made it home in one piece then, ‘kay?” She paused, then frowned deeply. “And Noel? Don’t call me ‘Mum’ like that.”
“But you make it so easy,” Noel pouted, then. He jumped back to avoid Acadia’s half-hearted swat. Laughing, he pulled on the helmet and flipped down the visor over his face.
“Can we go now? It’s cold, and I want to get in front of my heater,” he complained with an exaggerated shiver. Sweeping out the coattails of his trenchcoat, he flopped down in the passenger seat and patted the area in front of him. “Chop, chop, chauffeur.”
Odette pressed her lips together and narrowed her eyes. “Who the hell do you think you’re talking to? Maybe I will crash us, just this once.”
Nonetheless, she straddled her seat, picked out her motorcycle key, and revved the bike to life. Noel’s laughter rose from behind her.
“Nonsense, what would you do without me?” he asked tenderly.
“Probably have a lower blood pressure.”
Acadia watched them with her arms still crossed. “Be careful, guys,” she warned.
“See ya!” Noel called back as Odette rolled out into the stream of traffic.
Odette had never felt the urge to trade her motorcycle in for a flying-type pokemon. Noel, when he wasn’t going on and on about how his Braviary didn’t listen to him, always claimed flying was a truly exhilarating experience, but for Odette, nothing trumped a motorcycle. She was in full control, weaving in and out of traffic and between buildings at mach speed; she decided where to go, and how fast she went. Flyers didn’t know what they were missing.
Odette tightened her grip on the handlebars as a breeze stirred her bangs, cool against her uncovered head. She’d have to be extra careful tonight. The last thing she needed was to have Acadia screaming “I told you so!” at her hospital bedside.
Or worse, over her grave.
The city storefronts flew by her in streaks of bright light, seemingly absorbed by the headlights of the other cars she was surrounded by. The brisk air nipped at her face, leaving her nose inflamed and beginning to run. She quickly reached up a hand and rubbed at it, as she switched into the middle lane of the road. Her eyes darted between the two cars that bordered her bike, and she instinctively slowed down when she saw the right car begin to swerve into her lane without the use of a blinker. It then sped up, as if trying to leave that little faux pas behind.
“Dumbass,” Odette said to herself, going back up to her normal speed. Her mind ran with observations as she maneuvered between cars.
Watch the van, they’re lane hopping...that hatchback’s driving under the speed limit, driver looks like they’re texting, steer clear…why is this stupid sedan on my ass? And there’s the stoplight. ****, it’s turning. Not going to even try to run it with Noel on here.
She slowed to a stop at the front of the pack of automobiles waiting for their chance to charge across the four way intersection. The downtime gave her the chance to rub her tingling nose again and untangle her bangs.
Noel seized the opportunity for a chat. He rested his chin lightly on her shoulder and loudly inhaled.
“Dee, I gotta ask. What shampoo do you use? The inside of your helmet smells so good.”
“Bulba and Bulba curl moisturizing shampoo,” she answered. Her eyes remained deadlocked on the traffic running perpendicular to them. “It doesn’t have much of a smell, though. You’re probably noticing the heat protectant spray.”
“I still don’t understand why you straighten your hair,” he sighed. He grabbed one of her braids and began to tug on it playfully. “Your curls are amazing, and you would rock the Luxray mane look.”
Odette pressed her lips together. “Until you have thick curly hair to deal with every day, don’t yell at me about what I do to mine,” she said. “I like my braids, and my braids like me.”
Noel kept up with his chatter, but Odete tuned him out as she watched the traffic The hundreds of tires rolling over the soaked asphalt blended with the sounds of the rumbling engines in the nearby cars near her, and the music from the storefronts just off to her sides to create a full cacophony. Odette drew in a deep breath. Most people weren’t fans of traffic noise, but she had always found the sheer volume calming.
The sound of an engine revving echoed violently from over the building off to her right, and it caused her to jolt. Even from far off, it rattled in her eardrums above all the other sounds.
Odette jerked her head in the direction of the disturbance. On the street, a few people had halted, looking around.
“Street racers? Who the hell is street racing in Lumiose at this time of night?” Noel exclaimed, pulling his hand away from Odette’s hair. Before Odette could answer, that same revving noise exploded through the area again, louder than the first.
“Look!” Noel called, nudging her back. Three cars raced around the corner. They were sleek, shiny, and probably cost more than her entire apartment and everything in it.
Rich people out for a joyride.
“Red light’s gonna rain hard on their parade,” Noel laughed. Odette’s eyes flicked over to their light; sure enough, it had gone green. The cars around them started forward, but Odette didn’t move her foot from the break. Her gaze was fixed on the three cars. Their speed wasn’t letting up in the slightest.
They’re not going to stop, she realized.
The cars behind her began to honk, and she felt Noel jostle her again, lighter this time.
“Uh, Dee?”
It all happened in a blink. As the sports cars entered the intersection, the honking became frenzied. Cars screeched to a halt. The street racers tore past, sending up a spray of mist. They rounded the next corner, and they were gone as quickly faster than they’d appeared.
Odette blinked rapidly, trying to process what she’d just seen. The passersby erupted into conversation. Even though she couldn’t make out the words, she could hear their disdain and disbelief.
Those ****ers could have killed somebody, she thought numbly. Around her, the honking had died down. The light was still green, but the traffic remained halted, all sharing in the same shock.
Odette felt an all-too-familiar tingling sensation start to form in the small of her back. Her lips curled back over her teeth. The corners of her vision began to go red.
“Those ****ing lowlives,” she spat. She violently revved her bike. “I’m gonna--”
“Hey!” Noel snapped. He smacked her lightly on the crown of her head. “Simmer down, Hothead!”
Odette whipped around in her seat, one fist raised. She couldn’t hear anything above the rush of blood in her head.
“Do you want my goddamn fist down your throat?” she shouted.
Noel flinched back. His hands came up defensively in front of his face. “I want you to drive before the guys behind us shove their fists down both our throats!” he yelled back.
She stared. The red began to clear, as the aggravated honks behind her began to register. She lowered her fist, turned around, and propelled the bike forward. Her heart was pounding as fast as her mind was moving.
“God,” Noel breathed when they were well away from the intersection. “Leave it to you to go psycho over some stupid racers. Keep it together, Dee.”
Warm-up breaths, she thought. One second in, one second out. That was a start. Now two seconds in, two seconds out. She wasn’t feeling any different. The tingle in her back had yet to lessen, and her brain buzzed with threats and ferocious thoughts of payback. She wanted nothing more than to blacken the eyes of one of those drivers. Haul him out of his car, slam him against the wall and punch and kick, until they were a bloody pulp, until—
The audacity, the sheer ****ing audacity…
The breathing wasn’t working. She felt like she wasn’t getting enough air. All of her brain power was going toward her rage. She had to concentrate on something else.
So, she began to recite the Purrloins! Script instead, starting with the opening song.
“Are you blind when you’re born, can you see in the dark, can you look at a king, would you sit on his throne…” she sang to herself. She focused on remembering how the orchestra sounded when they played along with the singers in rehearsal. The harmonies, the rests, the subtle grooves, the way they were never quite together on the sudden rests, no matter how much the conductor scolded them.
She kept on driving toward her building. The more she focused on picturing the stage as she sang the lyrics, the less she focused on the idea of hunting the drivers down, and making them pay for their bullshit.
Another turn brought her onto Gigavolt Way. She slowed to a stop outside a low-rise apartment building. The familiar sight helped in cutting her anger for a moment. Arched doors stood behind wrought iron balcony fences, and flower boxes brimmed with blooming daisies and pansies. Some of Odette’s night owl neighbors were out on their balconies with their Pokemon, enjoying the cool post-rain air. They waved as Odette drove by and turned onto the downward incline leading into the garage.
“Flat sweet flat,” Noel hummed as Odette stopped at the security gate and entered aher code. She easily maneuvered down the rows of parked cars through the parking lot until she found the spot labeled 310. She and her mother had certainly gotten lucky when they moved into the building, because the 310 spot happened to be stationed right next to the elevator and staircase leading up to the lobby.
Once the bike rumbled to a stop, Odette swung off and began to stomp toward the elevator doors. She’d forgotten about Noel. His voice caught her just as she reached out to jab the elevator button.
“Hey! Temper Tantrum!”
“That’s not my name,” Odette snapped back, not turning.
“It might as well be,” he said. “Quit stomping around and come back here.”
Odette closed her eyes. She didn’t have the patience to deal with Noel being Noel right now. All the same, she pulled back her arm and turned to face him.
“What,” she said. The word came out more menacingly than she had intended.
Noel had taken off the helmet. He held it front of him like a shield. “Pick one. We’re either gonna woosah, or we’re gonna sing another happy song.”
The tingle in her back flared again. The attempt at calming herself, wasted.
“Neither, I’m fine,” she ground out.
“Pick one,” Noel repeated as he stepped closer. He had a ridiculous grin on his face. The **** was he so happy about? “I would suggest singing, the acoustics in here are great. Don’t think I didn’t hear you singing Jellicle Songs.”
His grin didn’t falter, despite the intensity of her glare. All she wanted to do now was get up to her apartment and stretch all the anger out of her system with her Pokemon team, provided nobody was up to anything foolish. But no, Noel had to be a good friend and make sure she calmed down before any of that happened. The babying lunatic.
She sucked in a deep breath.
“Jellicles do, and jellicles can,” she sang, her voice echoing through the brightly lit garage.
If Noel’s smile could have grown any wider, it did. “Jellicle purrloins sing jellicle chants,” he belted.
As they continued through the verse, Noel dropped his things and began to do his own choreography for the song, as if he were back on the stage at the center. Although she tried to keep herself from doing so, she was soon smiling at the ridiculousness of it. But, the subdued performer part of her was aching to dance along with him. She’d spent enough time on the stage’s wings, watching the dancers run through their steps again and again and again, that she felt as if she knew the choreography as well as she knew the timings of the scene changes.
As Noel danced, she began to move along with him. Not with the same pep, but with just enough gusto to show she had an idea of what she was doing. A couple of steps in, and the tingle in her back faded almost entirely, leaving behind a bout of exhaustion.
She stopped what she was doing, arching over and placing her hands on her knees. Her vision began to cloud with sleepiness, and her insides felt like they’d melted into jelly. It suddenly pained her to be standing upright.
God, I hate this part, she thought regretfully.
Nonetheless, she made herself breathe through it. She began to smack her lips together, now longing for a big sip of water. That usually ended the dizzy spell.
She felt a hand begin to paw the back of her head as the elevator dinged, signaling it had been called.
“Maybe if you diverted more energy into smiling, you wouldn’t always get so winded every time you got pissed off,” Noel teased.
Odette opened her backpack and retrieved the water bottle she’d swiped from the backstage fridge just before leaving for the night. She chugged the water in greedy gulps.
“Smiling causes premature wrinkles,” she huffed when she finished. She blinked until her vision felt normal, then she rolled her shoulders, letting her body wake back up again.
“So does frowning all the time?” Noel said, his voice inflecting upwards as if he were asking a question. “I’m just saying, getting so mad that you’re tired afterward shouldn’t be the move.”
She pursed her lips as she wrestled the half -empty bottle back into her bag. “Clearly my anger issues know no bounds.”
The elevator dinged again, and the doors slid open. Noel sauntered in. Odette followed with considerably less spring in her step.
“They were just stupid rich kids racing their new toys. Why waste your energy on that?” he asked as they began to move up. "Based on my observations, they might die of a sacrilege overdose soon, so..."
“Because,” Odette said strongly. “They could really hurt somebody. If I hadn’t been paying attention, there’s a chance they would have hit us. Then we’d be paralyzed or dead. And they don’t give a ****. The inconsideration just…”
Her jaw clenched, and she pushed back her rising anger. There was no need for a round two of that.
“It just pisses me off,” she finished flatly. She paused. "And that's not funny."
Noel sucked his teeth again, then placed his free hand back on her head. “Sorry, sorry, my bad," he apologized. "But gods, you have so much rage in that tiny body. You must hide it all in your hair.”
The elevator soon stopped, and opened into the complex’s main floor. The interior wasn’t nearly as fancy as the exterior; just a wide open space with an empty front desk, a sitting area of mismatched chairs and loveseats, and a wall of mailboxes.
“Let’s see what BS junk we got today,” Noel said as he popped open his own mailbox. Odette’s was quite high up, so she had to stand on the tips of her toes to be able to get the key in the lock.
She was surprised at how much mail she pulled out once it was open. A couple magazines, pamphlets, and some smaller envelopes.
Mum’s, mum’s, mum’s...she thought as she flipped through the magazine covers. Finally, she came upon a pamphlet addressed to her. She flipped it over to read the cover, and her chest seized at the words that blared in her face.
Fleurrh University of the Arts
You’re almost done!
Sign up for Summer Classes Today!
She dropped the rest of her mail and tore the pamphlet in half. The sudden movement made Noel flinch. When she returned from dumping the torn pamphlet in the trash, she found him watching her with knowing eyes.
His brows raised. “More **** from Fleurrh?” he asked.
Odette didn’t immediately respond. She kneeled and began to pick up what she had dropped.
“What gave it away?” she muttered.
“I know that look on your face. But what gives, Dee? Why are they still bothering you?”
She shrugged. “I only had six credits left when I dropped out, I guess they want to keep reminding me of that.”
Noel shook his head incredulously while nudging his locker closed. He set his own mail pile down and bent down to help Odette collect the rest of hers.
“Oh yeah, because you’re totally going to step foot back on that campus. After everything they did to you.” He considered his words for a second. “Or wouldn’t do for you, more like.”
Her vision was swimming, but not with red this time. Her chest began to tighten, same as it had when she’d started thinking of him.
She hadn’t gotten anything from her former university for a while. She’d thought for sure they’d removed her from the mailing list. Her, her mother, her grandfather, and their lawyer had told the school’s higher ups where to shove it, and she figured that was that.
But life seemed determined to rub salt against her wounds. Odette began to massage her forehead.
He forced himself on you, and you killed him for it…
You killed him.
She didn’t realize she’d started staring at the floor until Noel snapped at her. She jerked her head up, catching his concerned gaze.
“Hey ma’am, up here,” he said. “You’re good.”
“Sorry,” she said, shuffling the rest of her mail pile together. “All good. I'm fine, just thinking.”
She stood up and pushed her locker closed, shaking her head as a means to rid herself of those thoughts.
“Would a glass of Domaine De La Roserade-Conti help? My mom would happily let us break into the wine cooler,” Noel said, flashing a grin.
Odette had to admit, the offer sounded tempting. A solid buzz would put her straight to bed, no wrestling with her brain needed. However, she also had to consider the possible hangover to follow.
She shook her head again, sighing. “It would, but I have trainer school tomorrow. I don’t want to be dealing with dry mouth and wrangling Loïc at the same time.”
At the mention of the name Loïc, Noel’s expression melted into one of slight fear. “Right, handling a rabid Mimikyu while hungover doesn’t sound like a smart thing to do.”
Odette scoffed as they made back for the elevator. “For the millionth time, he’s not rabid.”
“You say that, and yet, he acts pretty damn rabid,” Noel said. “I’ve never met a Pokemon that wreaks havoc on his surroundings like he does.”
“Then clearly you’ve never set foot in a Pokemon research lab,” Odette said. “Have you ever met a Gengar that’s had too many bottles of protein? It put Loïc’s tantrums to shame.”
Noel shook his head in disbelief, pushing the button on the wall. “I mean, still...he’s taking a long time to acclimate to ball life. How long has it been, six months?”
Odette groaned quietly as she re-entered the elevator, supposing he had a point. She began to recall how her mother had brought Loïc back from Alola. She’d gone to scout their new bungalow in Iki Town, and ended up finding him hiding under the deck of the house, growling at anything that moved.
“I don’t want to bring him to the lab acting like this, so maybe you can try to acclimate him to your team?” she’d said upon returning, Pokeball in hand.
“Yep, six months,” Odette said.
Since then, he’d gotten a little better, but not by much. He was still destructive, still rambunctious, still liked picking fights with other Pokemon for reasons not battle related.
Nowadays, it wasn’t uncommon for her to return home to some varying degree of chaos, typically centered around Loïc and one of her other Pokemon having a dispute. She’d left her team that afternoon with the instruction to start packing things into boxes, knowing damn well some sort of problem was going to arise. She’d had a little hope that at least something would get done; that Loïc would have an epiphany and stop acting like wilding. But, she majorly knew it was wishful thinking.
“Can’t wait to see what other nonsense is in store for me today.”
***
Beepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeep.
Foolishness had indeed struck the Cinq-Mars apartment.
Standing in the doorway, the sound that hit Odette immediately was the ring of the smoke alarm. White smoke rose in three separate columns from behind the bartop that bordered the kitchen. The dinner table was in complete disarray, with all four chairs completely toppled over, and the tablecloth dangling off the edge in a bunched-up heap. A board game and it’s many colorful pieces were scattered all over the wood floors. The only one of her Pokemon in sight was her Froslass, who was face down on the living room sofa.
“I swear to gods...” Odette said as she began to fan smoke away from her face with her mail stack. “Isaur?” she said loudly. “What the hell?”
“Fross,” Isaur said, her voice muffled by the cushion. She sounded exasperated, and that seemed to be the only answer she was going to give.
Odette kicked the door shut behind her, then threw her helmet and mail down onto the coffee table. Her eyes began to water as she stomped across the small family room, to the dining area, passing the tipped chairs to get to her balcony doors. She threw them open and fanned the rising smoke outside. She tried to hold her breath for as long as she could, as to avoid breathing the smoke in, but found the task to be a little too difficult for her. She took to staggering her breathing instead.
“What happened to packing?” she yelled through short huffs.
She moved into the kitchen, and quickly found the source of the fumes. Her Chandelure, Ange, was sitting on the floor, bright red in the face from pouting. His signature embers had flared up and were releasing them as a result.
“Ange!” she snapped. “What’s the problem? You’re going to smoke out the whole building!”
“Luuuuuuuure,” he said angrily. “Chande, chande, luuuuuuuure.”
Odette began to cough, feeling that tickle starting to return to her back again, along with a new tightness in her lungs. She grabbed a plastic cup full of water from the sink, and dumped it on the fires. They fizzled out, and Ange slumped over, clearly winded from whatever energy he’d been exerting.
“You’re ridiculous,” she said in a huff, throwing the cup aside. She went back out to the living room, and returned to fanning the exhaust. It was there that her Gothitelle, Solene, came running out from the hallway leading to her bedroom, breathless.
"Gothi-telle,” Solene said, panting.
“Help me,” Odette said. “Psychic, please.”
Solene drew in some air and put her hands together. An orb of pink light formed between them, and suddenly, the smoke still left in the room began to ball together. The ball then hovered out the open balcony doors, and said doors slammed shut behind it. The beeping stopped, and Odette sighed in relief. She began to rub her back, as if trying to coax the tingling sensation out of it.
“Guys, I wanted to come home to a calm place tonight,” she said, irritated. “Of all the days to be up to some ****, today wasn’t it.”
“Gothi! Gothi goth!” Solene said insistently.
Odette paused in her rubbing, a thought suddenly occurring to her. She looked around the room, almost frantically. Isaur was on the couch, Ange was collecting himself in the kitchen, Solene was in front of her, and Enora was still in her ball.
“Where’s the imp?” she asked.
Solene pointed up at the ceiling, evidently annoyed. Odette looked up just in time for the sound skittering feet to echo from down from it. Her gaze cut to the vent above her, and it popped open almost immediately. That familiar fake Pikachu head hung down from the darkness of the air duct.
“Kkkkkkkyu,” Loïc hissed ominously.
Odette narrowed her eyes. “How many times do I have to tell you to stay out of the vents? What could you possibly need up there?”
“Kkkkkkkkkkkkyu,” he responded. His body weight shifted slightly, and a slew of other board game pieces and cards fell from the duct. Odette silently watched them all hit the floor before speaking again.
“Why are you being a dickhead?”
“Kkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk.”
“Why are you being a dickhead?” she asked again, her anger rising. Loïc was silent after that.
Odette pinched the bridge of her nose and took another deep, long breath. “I’m going to count to three,” she said evenly. “If you’re not out of the vent by three, I’m throwing every single chocolate covered pecha berry we have in the fridge in the garbage. Do you--”
She didn’t need to finish her sentence. Upon looking back up, she saw the rambunctious ghost type floating down to the floor, slowly. He landed at her feet.
“Kyu,” he said sweetly.
“You’re so easy,” Odette huffed. She picked up the haphazardly thrown board game and unfolded it, seeing the familiar print of a Monopoly track. She frowned at it.
“Who was playing Monopoly?” she asked, peering up at Solene.
“Gothitelle!” Solene snapped. She pointed down at the now-politely sitting Mimikyu, and toward the kitchen.
“Kkkyu,” Loic replied.
“Chande…” Ange called in a wary tone.
Odette nodded slowly. “I could have told you that the two of you playing Monopoly would be a horrible idea. What were you even thinking?”
There wasn’t a verbal response from Loïc this time. Instead, he scurried between Odette’s legs and dove under the living room coffee table. That was all the answer she needed.
“Boys, when I said ‘start some packing,’ I meant ‘start some packing without getting sidetracked by random ****,’” she sighed. She sat the board on the table, along with her backpack.
“Go-thiii,” Solene spoke in agreement.
Odette eyed the Gothitelle dubiously. “Oh yeah, Miss? What’d you get done today?”
Solene wildly gestured back toward the kitchen, where there was a stack of four small boxes against the back wall, plain as day. Odette had been in such a hurry to do some damage control, she hadn’t noticed them.
“All the glassware?” she asked.
Solene nodded firmly, then gestured to Isaur, who had yet to move from the couch. “Gothitelle!”
At least the girls sans Enora, had gotten something done.
“Frosssss,” Isaur grumbled, rolling over onto her back. At that moment, Loic stuck his head out from under the coffee table and attempted to jump up on the couch with her. She immediately sat up and swatted at him.
“Froslass!” she yelled.
“Kkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk,” Loïc growled.
Odette pulled Enora’s Pokeball from the front pocket and pressed the front button. With a bright flash of blue, Enora herself appeared on the table. She stretched herself out, yawning as if just waking up from a nap.
“Loïc and Ange, clean up your mess. Solene, make sure Loïc and Ange clean up. Enora, make sure Isaur doesn’t kill Loïc. I’m going to take a shower,” Odette instructed flatly, grabbing her bag and making her way toward her bedroom. She’d typically be able to at least attempt to diffuse the situation, but her brain was fried at this point. She needed a breather, before she got upset again.
Her bedroom was a bit messier than she normally tolerated. The contents of her closet spilled out all over the floor, reaching as far as her desk chair and bed. Most of the drawers on her dresser stood open, also threatening to dump its contents. With the preparations to move underway, she had a lot of organizing she needed to do. What could be packed away until the March move, and what she needed to keep out until then. A pile of flattened boxes were leaned up against her wire bed frame, ready for use. There was only one box in the room that had been packed and taped, but she’d had that box together for nearly a year--long before this move to Alola was even finalized.
Her eyes instinctively traveled to her wall of empty shelves, catching on the amount of dust that had started to accumulate on them. Despite the fact she’d shoved every last one of her trophies and photos from her performance days into that one box, she still found herself glancing at the shelves every time she entered her room. They used to fill her with joy and a sense of accomplishment and worth. But now, they just existed, hoping to maybe one day hold something else that filled her with those same feelings.
That possibility seemed bleak.
She threw herself onto her unmade bed after tossing her bag to the floor. Laying there, she allowed herself to really take a second to decompress. Forget the day, forget work, forget her team’s shenanigans. She just concentrated on relaxing.
She hoped, in some way, shape or form, tomorrow would steer clear of the weird brushes with the past. Just a day at Santalune Pokemon Academy, focused on nothing but training. That was all she was asking for.
A small crash sounded from the family room, followed by a cacophony of angry shouts from her Pokemon. She cringed to herself and took the deepest breath she could muster.
Odette’s forehead hit the floor as she pointed her toes. She exhaled deeply, feeling the effects of her straddle wash over her. The knot in her lower back began to loosen, and her glutes began to scream a little. In a good way, of course. There was no better way to start a busy day than with a solid stretch.
A loud sizzling noise rang from the kitchen, and Odette pushed herself upright, keeping her legs straddled. The smell of vegetable omelets started to waft through the apartment, and she felt her stomach rumble. Instinctively, her hand traveled to rest on it.
“Smells good, Sol,” she said.
“Gothiiiiiiiiiiiii,” Solene replied sweetly.
From her spot on the floor, perpendicular to the coffee table, she eyed Isaur as she slowly flipped through the TV channels. She was using the arrow buttons on the TV set itself, and she’d been at it for almost five minutes.
“Just put on the news and be done with it, goddamn,” Odette said. She thought for a moment. “And where’s the stupid remote?”
A hiss rang from behind her, somewhere near the table. She heard something slide across the floor, and it struck the back of her leg. She shot a look at it, only to see it was the missing remote. She narrowed her eyes before looking over her shoulder. Loïc was sitting under one of the chairs, staring back innocently.
“Very funny,” she said.
“Kkkkkkkk,” Loïc replied.
Odette picked it up and typed in the number for the news channel. The screen flipped over to it, prompting some annoyed grumbles to rise out of Isaur. The familiar jingle played over the speakers as she hovered over to the couch, and plopped herself down between Ange and Enora. Ange was blinking drowsily, still trying to wake up, while Enora took to idly grooming herself.
“There, was that so hard?” Odette asked.
“Fross,” Isaur said defiantly.
"You know there’s nothing good on TV on Friday mornings,” Odette said. She sat the remote on the coffee table, next to her idle phone, before lowering her chest back to the floor. She exhaled, concentrating on her stretch while partially tuned in to the sound of the TV.
“We are still receiving updates in regards to the large Sacrilege bust made early this morning. The Lumiose PD received a tip late last night, and made the bust early this morning,” the reporter said. “According to the reports we have so far, roughly fifteen hundred kilograms of the drug were found at the Pangoro Packing Storage Facility on Crabhammer Road. Police Chief Bernard Cinq-Mars led the raid, and reported that no suspects were located at the facility.”
Odette’s head snapped up at the sound of her grandfather’s name.
Sure enough, his familiar face popped into view: short, well-kept salt-and-pepper hair and a neatly trimmed matching beard framed a pair of tired-looking brown eyes. Nonetheless, he held himself confidently, and spoke with an air of determination that could only be found in somebody as passionate in their job as he was.
“We’re still in the process of investigating,” he said.
“Can you confirm that this stash belongs to a Team Enigma?” asked the reporter behind the camera.
Bernard’s face fell ever so slightly as he contemplated the question, and finally he shrugged. “We’re unsure,” he replied.
There was a cut back to the reporter, who continued rambling through her report. However, Odette heard none of it, and her head had begun to buzz: first, with relief that her grandpa hadn’t been hurt, and still seemed in good spirits. And then, with some concern: she’d scrolled through her news app for fifteen minutes yesterday on her lunch break, and only found the one repetitive OD story. Now, there was a new discovery. Fifteen hundred kilos worth of a discovery.
She began to scratch her cheek thoughtfully. “I should probably call--”
The words had barely left her before her phone began to ring from the coffee table. It morphed into its Rotom Mode, and floated up to her face.
"Bzzzzzzzt, incoming call from Marieanne Cinq-Mars! Bzzzzt!” it said.
She grabbed it hastily. “Thanks,” she said, then answered as she wriggled out of her straddle.
“Are you watching the news?” Marieanne gasped on the other end.
Odette blinked rapidly, but couldn’t help the slight smile that began to form. “Good morning to you too, Nana,” she greeted hesitantly.
Marieanne laughed. “Oh silly me. Good morning, little Swanna,” she said.
A cacophony of squeals and chirps filled the space as her team engaged in a rather disorganized greeting.
“Team says good morning too,” Odette said.
“Goodness, I’m dropping the ball on this morning greeting thing today.” Marieanne sighed. “Send my regards to your darling team. Now all that aside, are you watching the news?”
“I was. I was getting ready to call you myself,” Odette said. She stood up and wandered over to the couch, sitting down next to Enora. The Sylveon rolled over to rest her head in her lap, purring in the process.
“It’s that nana-granddaughter telepathy I guess,” Marieanne said in a sing-song voice.
“Have you spoken to grandpa yet?”
“I did, I did,” she said. “I didn’t sleep a wink last night. He didn’t come home! They were following this tip all night!” she exclaimed. “I said ‘Bernard, honey, you have to get some sleep,’ but you know him.” She paused, and Odette heard what sounded like glass clinking on the other end. “What would this city do without me?” she said, deepening her voice as if to mimic Bernard’s.
Odette chuckled lightly at the imitation. “Did he tell you anything?”
Marieanne clicked her tongue, thinking. “Hm, there wasn’t much to tell, honestly. They got a tip, followed it, found a bunch of Sacrilege, and they’re no closer to finding these Team Enigma people,” she explained. “It was like whoever was there doused the place in cleaners. No fingerprints, no footprints, not even a hair. Just stacks and stacks of this crazy drug. Typical.”
“I just don’t understand how a drug gang could be so perfect,” she said. “They had to leave something behind.”
“That’s what the detectives are saying too. They’re stumped,” Marieanne said solemnly. “They want to call it drug-induced hysteria, but at the same time, how is every sacrilege user calling out the same group name?”
Odette shrugged to herself. “It’s like a ****ing farfetched novel plot.”
Marieanne clicked her tongue again. “It might as well be. I swear, it’s going to be the end of your grandpa. Too much stress for a sixty-two year old.”
“He should retire, and you guys should move to Alola with us,” Odette said.
Marieanne laughed. “Saying that like Vienna hasn’t suggested it a million times already. He won’t hear it. Speaking of your mother, have you heard from her this week?”
Odette laid back on the couch. More sizzling sounded from the kitchen, and she turned her head just in time to watch Loïc spring up and run toward it.
“No, she told me she was going to be out of commission until Saturday, and flying back to Kalos on Sunday. She and some other professors are up on Coronet as far as I know, so I can’t imagine the signal’s very good.”
Marieanne muttered something incoherently. “This is news to me. She knows I hate her climbing mountains,” she eventually said, more clearly.
“That’s probably why she didn’t tell you she was climbing a mountain.”
“What are you doing today? It’s trainer school day right?” Marieanne inquired, deciding to initiate a subject change.
“Look at you, paying attention to my schedule,” Odette teased.
“Hey, I’m keeping up!” Marieanne sputtered. “Well if you’re out and about, see if you can drop by the police station and pay your grandpa a visit if he’s not swamped,” she said. “I’m sure it’d do him some good to see you!”
It sounded like a good idea. She hadn’t seen him in a few days; a visit was indeed overdue, especially given the new circumstances.
“Sure, I’ll swing by when I get out of my last class,” she said.
“Thank you, little Swanna,” Marieanne said. Odette could hear the smile in her voice.
“Gothiiiii!” Solene said happily. Odette sat up to see the Gothitelle prancing out of the kitchen with a plate of steaming omelets in one hand, and a stack of smaller plates and silverware in another. Isaur nudged Ange, and they both made for the table. Enora picked her head up, then followed behind them.
“Oh, Solene just finished cooking,” Odette said into the phone. “I should get going.”
“I find it so funny that your Gothitelle can cook so well, but you have trouble just boiling water,” Marieanne chuckled.
Odette’s expression fell into a scowl. “We’re not doing this now.”
“I’m just saying, it could really do you some good if you learned to--”
“Goodbye, Nana!” Odette said hastily. She hung up and shoved the phone back in her pocket, then made her way over to the dining table. She approached just in time to watch Loïc try to steal an extra omelet before Solene smacked him away.
“Looks good, Sol,” she commented, pulling up a seat. She served herself, as did the rest of her team. Enora took up one of the other two chairs, while Ange and Isaur took their plates back to the couch. Loïc, on the other hand, sat entirely on the table.
“Telle!” Solene said in thanks as she sat down in the last chair.
They all ate in ravenous silence for a while, which gave Odette a chance to think about the day to come. Trainer school, going by the police station. Maybe she’d stop by the supermarket on her way home.
Had new information surfaced while she’d been talking with Marieanne? Out of habit, she retrieved her phone from her pocket and clicked into the Noble Roar, and scrolled through the home page. She eventually came upon a story covering the bust, but after a quick skim, she came to the conclusion it was more or less exactly what the news anchor had said before. Nothing new to add on to that, ot what her grandma had said.
“Fifteen hundred kilograms, and nothing…” she repeated. “Noel’s going to have a field day with this.”
“Sylv?” Enora questioned, taking her nose out of her half-eaten omelet.
Odette shook her head and shrugged her shoulders. “I said what I said: there’s no way a group is that perfect.”
“Lasss,” Isaur said.
“Grandpa’s probably just super frustrated. Though I guess it’s relieving that there wasn’t anybody dead there, either...”
She thought back to what Marieanne had said before their conversation ended, and she frowned mid-chew, before gulping down the bite.
“How would you guys feel if I tried to cook dinner tonight?”
Her entire team looked up at her, expressions ranging from surprised to downright exasperated. Her eyes cut between them as she waited for some sort of answer, and they eventually settled on Solene.
“Telllllee…” Solene cooed with a level of faux-politeness that caused Odette to narrow her eyes.
“Don’t talk down to me. I could do it.”
“Chande, luuureee,” Ange said teasingly. Eating had apparently woken him up a little more, just enough for him to make jokes. Odette glared over at him, watching as he and Isaur began to giggle among themselves; she knew what they were making fun of her for. She looked warily over at the kitchen, briefly remembering a time not too long ago when she tried to cook pasta for her mom. Apparently she’d done everything wrong. Didn’t put enough water in the pot, set the stove temperature too high, put too many noodles in...and sure enough, all the water evaporated, and the noodles dried out and caught fire. She had yet to live it down.
It wasn’t her damn fault she’d never properly learned how to cook. With school, dance, and singing lessons taking up her days as she grew up, the last thing she was doing in her spare time was standing in the kitchen watching Marieanne mince garlic.
Solene sure had, though. The omelets were exquisite.
She took another bite, resting her head in her hand pensively. “You know what, you don’t deserve my cooking anyway,” she groused.
The room erupted into laughter.
***
It was colder today. It didn’t help that another round of thunderheads had come out to play. Odette had barely made it inside the building of the Santalune Pokemon Academy before the downpour started. Now, sitting in the lecture hall for Mr. Songmin’s Battle Tactics class, she could hear the rain pounding on the building outside. Thunderclaps would shake the classroom every now and then.
On most days, she was a very attentive student, especially in this class. Mr. Songmin was one of those young teachers who prided themselves on being on good terms with their students. He always put effort into making sure his lectures--no matter how boring the subject matter-- were at least moderately entertaining, so the moldable minds in his presence would be more adept to listening. Odette particularly enjoyed his enthusiasm. She also loved how his Kantonian accent shone through his Kalosian words once in a while. She found it charming.
However, today her mind buzzed with thoughts of the morning news. No matter how much she tried to shake it off, it was like her brain had magnetized to thinking about it. She had to resist the urge to pull her phone out and see if there were any updates. But she doubted it would be that simple, and that was what made her so eager to delve more into it.
It doesn’t make sense, she kept telling herself. From talking to Bernard about all the cases he’d worked on, she knew that most criminals always left something behind, no matter how thorough they were. Yeah, there were a couple of outliers, of course, but those were individual delinquents. Team Enigma was a whole group of people. Surely somebody would have a mishap--shed some hair, accidentally grab something without gloves, leave behind a footprint. Hell, even one of their Pokemon could have left a trace of something behind. Perhaps “Team Enigma” was only one person, then? But how could one person be creating so much of this drug alone? There had to be accomplices; it just didn’t make any--
“Cinq-Mars, I didn’t know the lecture was on the ceiling.”
She hadn’t realized that she had leaned back against her chair, and was staring off into space. She slowly sat up.
“I don’t have to be looking at you to be listening, Songmin,” she replied easily, hoping to play off her inattentiveness.
Mr. Songmin smiled broadly as the class collectively chuckled. He sauntered over to his desk, which was stationed right in the middle of the lecture hall. He then sat down on it, crossing his legs and folding his hands politely in his lap. “Mm, then tell me,” he said. “You have a Froslass, correct? What are Froslass known for in competitive battling?”
“Their speed,” Odette answered.
“So how would you tactfully use your Froslass’s speed in a battle scenario? Say, you’re up one, but the ‘mon you currently have out is struggling.”
She folded her hands on her desk in a somewhat mocking fashion. She started to tap her fingers on her knuckles as her mind began to run with adequate answers.
“I’d switch into her in a case of out-speeding. I’d swap her in while the opposing Pokemon was distracted, on account of whoever was in before, or charging up.”
Mr. Songmin nodded along slowly. He didn’t say anything for a short moment. “Fair, but what if the opposing Pokemon again out-speeds her? Froslass most certainly aren’t the fastest competitive Pokemon, and surely there are ways for your foe to knock her out in one hit?”
Odette pushed her glasses up on her nose. “Isaur’s been training with a Focus Sash since she was a Snorunt. She can take a powerful hit,” she said. “In which case, she uses Destiny Bond. Now my foe is stuck between switching out themselves or losing another Pokemon and being down two.”
He pursed his lips and nodded slowly. “Good answer. I’ll pretend I didn’t catch you daydreaming, then,” he said playfully before standing up again. He returned to the whiteboard and launched into something else about using Pokemon stats to one’s advantage. Odette exhaled quietly. She could shake off zoning out in lecture like this, but in battle class, she’d have to be on her A-game.
That class came to an end without much other incident. Odette could, at the very least, say she now knew that a Pachirisu could be a good staller. On the off chance she ever decided she wanted to deal with the pain of Electric types, she’d have to remember that.
The giant class filed out into the hall, where some other older students were loitering. As Odette exited, she was cut off by two youngsters, their Raticates in tow, as they bolted back to their classroom from gods know where. She sometimes forgot that kids as young as five were also attending the academy. The advanced classes were normally held in a building separate from the young kids, and Odette’s classes had primarily older students. But, it wasn’t uncommon for some Pokemon prodigies to end up in them. Hell, she had two eleven year-olds in her Advanced Monotype class. It was quite jarring to feel like she was back on a university campus, only to occasionally find herself sitting next to a middle school aged kid.
She scoffed at the thought, then withdrew her phone to check the time. 12:34, eleven minutes to Battle Class. She might have had time to get something to eat from the cafeteria, but her will to eat had faded when she remembered today was an exhibition day.
Every Friday, her battle teacher would randomly select two students to go head-to-head for an exhibition 3v3 match while the other students took notes on what they did right and wrong. Winner would receive extra credit. They were a month into the semester, and she hadn’t been called on yet. Each Friday that passed, she was sure she was getting closer and closer to having to pit her skills against one of her talented classmates, while the others looked on.
It caused a hole to open in her stomach every time she thought about it.
It was so invigorating to witness other people go at it, taking in their expressions as they struggled side by side with their Pokemon, hoping to come out victorious. She was usually okay battling it out in her smaller classes, but...in Mrs. Chuquet’s class of twenty-five students, that was quite the crowd to be performing in front of.
She rolled her shoulders. She wasn’t sure what was making her stomach hurt the most. The thought of losing or the thought of battling in front of such a large group.
“RotomPhone, any updates on the latest Sacrilege bust?” she asked her phone as she turned and started walking for the battle gym. Her screen displayed a loading screen before Rotom’s frowning face popped up again.
“Bzzzzzt! Nope, nothing! Bzzzzt!” it said. Her frown deepened, and she shoved the phone in her pocket.
“So much for that.”
Suddenly, her shoulder made contact with somebody’s arm. Somebody’s very buff arm. The person she’d bumped into was at least a foot taller than her, and was moving quite fast, so they sent her stumbling back. She would have very much fallen on her butt, had they not reeled around and caught her by her arm.
“Whoa!” he yelped as he grabbed her. He pulled her up to stand, lacing an arm around her back in a protective manner. “I am so sorry,” he sputtered once Odette was still.
She stood stiff, staring straight ahead and blinking as she tried to swallow the bout of rage that had shot up through her back. “Why don’t you watch where you’re--” she began as she tilted her head up to peer at the guy. Her gaze caught on a set of handsome green eyes, downturned with concern. A pair of expensive looking Praltz sunglasses sat on his head; the same ones this guy used to wear to school everyday.
The familiarity of his face caused her rage to subside tremendously.
“Dorien? Dorien Bonhomme?” she asked, cocking her head to the side.
His smile grew more excited with each passing second. “Oh my god, no way!” he gasped.
He released his grip on her and took a step back. “Odette Cinq-Mars!” he exclaimed. “Damn, I knew I recognized those braids. I haven’t seen you since graduation!”
Odette adjusted her glasses, taking a beat to look him over. Everything about him looked expensive. She was so used to seeing him in their assigned high school uniform, that she forgot he had the money to spend on such high end clothes. The prestigious logos embedded into his clothes seemed to shine like the diamonds they were probably worth. Praltz, Louis Vibrava, Roll-X...
“I…” she stammered. “Yeah,” she finished. “Big throwback to Rodin’s chemistry class,” she said, flashing something of a grin.
Dorien began to laugh, and he clapped his hands together. “Oh god, yeah! Best lab partner duo in that class.”
She nodded along. That was certainly true; the two of them never got anything less than A’s on their projects together. Where she sucked at math, she made up for with her fantastic presentation and powerpoint making skills. His strong suit was the numbers, and wooing the teachers with his gene-instilled charm.
Another thing she remembered vividly about him--he was easily the best looking straight guy in their grade. She had been sure the fact he came from such a wealthy family had something to do with why every girl--herself included--at Lansat Preparatory High School had a thing for him, but he had the looks to pair with the money.
She remembered how stoked she was to have him as a lab partner. But, she also remembered how her crush had tapered off at some point during the year. She couldn’t quite remember why. But it didn’t seem to matter now, because she felt some heat starting to travel to her face. It startled her, but she figured that not acknowledging it would be the best bet.
She scratched her cheek, deciding to ask the age old question. “What are you doing here?”
Dorien raised his shoulder gleefully, then flashed a piece of paper that depicted a class schedule. “Late enrollment! I start today. I kind of hit a rough spot in my training and decided I was in need of divine intervention,” he added dramatically. “I’ll admit, I was kinda worried at first, but I’m so glad to have a familiar face here.”
A smile began to curl her own lips. “I guess you were jogging because you’re late?”
He exhaled sharply and peered at the slip of paper. “No, actually. Well, not yet. If I can’t find the room, I will be,” he said. He handed the paper to her. “Can you direct me, oh wise one?”
She leaned over to examine it, roving her finger over the 12:30 time slot.
Battle Performance - Building A Gym - Tania Chuquete
She blinked in surprise. “Oh, lucky you,” she said. “We’re in the same class.”
Dorien’s face lit up, brighter than it already was. “Lucky me for sure,” he said eagerly. Almost too eagerly. He was always easily excitable, but she didn’t remember it being this excessive. She raised her brow dubiously.
He must have seen her arched brow, because he rubbed the side of his neck bashfully. “Sorry, like I said. Excited that I know somebody.”
Odette shook her head, deciding to brush it off. “No, don’t worry about it. I am too,” she said. “I’m headed there anyway, so you can just follow me.”
“Lead the way, then.”
She walked ahead, and decided to keep up with the small talk. Asking how he’d been, how he was faring the weather, small stuff. He had no issue talking her ear off, and frankly, she didn’t mind. She’d rather ask him about himself than vice versa, lest she ended up in that bad place again.
“What kind of team do you have together?” she inquired as they rounded a corner, maneuvering through a crowd of loitering teenagers.
“Well, I have a thing for Steel and Fighting types, surely,” he said. “But, I’m trying to keep my group well rounded, you know? Counters for all the types.”
She pursed her lips. “That’s always smart,” she said. And so baseline, she thought.
“That being said, I’ve got my Ferrothorn, my Togedemaru, my Corviknight, my Pangoro, my Toxicroak, and my Bewear,” he listed, raising a finger with each passing name. “I tend to swap between them though, because I also have an Excadrill, Poliwrath, and Conkeldurr I like to use.”
Odette nodded. All primary and secondary Fighting and Steel types; an interesting combination. If and when she ended up in a battle with him, she’d have to watch out. Those Steel moves would send Enora, Loïc, and Isaur to the emergency room at a Pokecenter if she wasn’t careful. But, she could solidly counter those Fighting types...
“What about you? I know you always had a Gothorita and that shiny Eeevee, right?”
“Oh,” she said. “I still have them. Well, they’ve evolved since then. Gothitelle and Sylveon. I also have a Chandelure, Froslass, and Mimikyu.”
Dorien nodded in approval, then began to scratch his chin as a thought seemingly occurred to him. “No sixth?”
“I’m having a hard time finding someone who’d fit into my team dynamic,” she said quietly, like she was embarrassed about it. “Loïc...” she paused. “I mean my Mimikyu,” she corrected. “Was a fluke as it is. My mom kind of saddled him on me, but he’s made himself useful. Even though half my team wants to kill him sometimes.”
“Well, I was going to say,” he chuckled. “A shiny Sylveon would bring in enough money to last you a lifetime if you sold it at an auction. But, maybe not the best idea if you’re only running five.”
Odette’s eyes went wide. What an absolutely audacious thing to say.
“Excuse me?” she said. A mix of intense anger and an undying urge to laugh stirred in her chest. She started to let some of those laughs go, but she stopped herself upon remembering just how the Bonhomme family got their fortune.
Dorien came from a family of shiny hunters, and they were active members in the shiny trade--reminiscent of the stock market, but highly centered around the buying and selling of shiny Pokemon. Hunters searched day in and day out for the coveted shiny Pokemon, and would sell them to willing buyers for ridiculous amounts of money.
Now she remembered why she stopped having a crush on him. She decided somebody so involved in the trade wasn’t somebody she should be kissing on.
How the **** had she forgotten that so easily?
“It’s not the best idea, period,” she said. “I’m not a proponent of the trade. It should have been abolished years ago.”
She watched as Dorien rolled his eyes. “Come on, you sound like the rest of the world.”
This time, she let her laughs out with no stops. “It’s almost like the rest of the world is right.”
The shiny trade was rumored to send Pokemon off to people who were, in polite terms, not fit to own them. Big names in the trade always made huge efforts to debunk the rumors, but Odette wouldn’t trust it. Money made people greedy, and greed could make people do some terrible things, to both humans and Pokemon.
Dorien’s brows furrowed momentarily, but he smiled through it. “Ah, I guess we come from different worlds. Somebody in my family comes across a shiny, it’s on the market within a day,” he explained.
“Do you want my honest thoughts, or my sugarcoated thoughts?” Odette said harshly.
“Sugarcoated, please.” He added a smile that she assumed was supposed to be charming, but something about it rubbed her entirely the wrong way. She was getting ready to chew him out for his involvement in such a deplorable establishment, and he was grinning at her like she was flirting with him. Not that she could pull off flirting even if she wanted to, but that wasn’t the point.
“That’s a dickbag move.”
He held his hand over his heart, turning his head away dramatically as if he were offended. “Goodness, I’d hate to know what your honest thoughts are, then.”
She slowly sucked her teeth. The pleasantries of reconnecting with an old flame were fading very quickly. All she wanted to do now was beam her water bottle at him. Perhaps she should have let her anger roll, and decked him when he ran into her.
She had a much more nasty remark lined up, but they arrived at the gym before she could let it loose. She quickly decided that that was for the best. She certainly wasn’t one to shy away from confrontation, but she was focused on keeping herself in check for this class. She didn’t need to get so riled up over Dorien’s absolutely ****ed views of the trade. At least, not now.
She pushed the heavy double doors open, and was met with the sight of some of her classmates sitting on the bleachers. The gym itself wasn’t what a standard school gym would look like. No basketball hoops, no volleyball nets--just a practice battle arena. The walls and ceiling were even padded with protection for stray projectiles. The bleachers themselves also had a protective barrier that could be activated whenever a showdown was going to occur. Truly, no expense was spared by the academy.
“Huh. Seems standard,” Dorien commented. There was an air of poshness in his voice, and it made Odette’s nerves prickle in disdain. Maybe getting a little riled up wouldn’t hurt.
“Must be nice to be so rich that ‘state of the art’ is just ‘standard’ to you,” she cracked, her tone wavering on the line between reserved and downright biting. He appeared oblivious to her less-than-friendly demeanor, because he let out a small chuckle.
“I guess it just comes with the territory.”
“Are you sure you’re not just a spoiled brat?” she queried as they walked across the vast space. This prompted another chuckle, this one a little louder.
“Maybe?” he offered. That same attempt-at-charming smile made a comeback, and she began to wonder if he actually was in the mindset that this was flirting. That didn’t make any goddamn sense to her. Not that she was the flirting expert; quite the opposite actually. But she wasn’t so emotionally unintelligent that she’d take rude banter as something in the same vein as courting. She somehow didn’t remember Dorien being so oblivious, but what did she know? She’d forgotten why she stopped liking him in the first place, so forgetting how he was as a person wasn’t entirely farfetched in comparison.
A couple of the students already sitting there sent friendly waves and soft “Hey’s” toward her as she trekked up the bleacher stairs to her usual bench. Dorien sat next to her and leaned back against the seats behind him, folding his arms behind his head.
“So give me the rundown. How does it work here?” he asked.
Odette took to diverting her attention toward digging through her bag for her pokeballs, which she began to shove into the pockets of her joggers.“It’s a battle class,” she said. “You battle. I would think it’s pretty self explanatory.”
He scoffed. “Yes, but what, no gimmick?” he said. She could hear the grin in his voice.
She inhaled deeply and slowly turned her head to face him. As expected, he was flashing his teeth at her. She couldn’t help but notice how perfectly straight they were.
“Every Friday the professor picks two students to showcase a 3v3 battle,” she explained. “In case your servants didn’t remind you when you woke up this morning, today is Friday.”
The intended insult flew right over his head. He seemed to show more interest in the idea of the showcase battle, judging by the way his eyes brightened. He turned onto his side, fully facing her, and rested his cheek on his palm. “Oh, that sounds fun,” he said slyly. “What are the chances I’ll get grabbed today?”
“I haven’t even been called. So I highly doubt it.” With that, she turned her head back toward her bag.
“Oh, so maybe you’ll go? And I get to watch you battle it out with your fairies and ghosts?”
She flinched. His voice had suddenly grown louder and...closer. As if it were right next to her ear.
With her brows furrowed and a deep frown on her face, she turned toward him again, only to find that he’d leaned in close to her. Too close to her. Her cheek was mere centimeters from brushing his nose as she turned her head. Green eyes were narrowed in an all-too sultry fashion, and his toothy smile had shrunk down to a smirk.
Instinctively, she raised her hand and pressed her palm to his nose, forcing him backwards and out of her personal space.
“You can watch me from back there,” she said, emphasizing her last word as she pulled her hand away. “I’m not a fan of people getting so close to me, thank you.”
She watched him cock his head to the side, his expression growing sad. But, it wasn’t any sort of sincere sadness. It was a mocking sadness. Like one somebody might give a Farfetch’d for throwing a tantrum over their leek losing a leaf. A fire lit in her veins, and she grasped the strap of her backpack to refrain from backhanding him outright.
“What?” he said, feigning a pout. “You’ve never had a guy get close to you before? I’m surprised.” He exhaled deeply and leaned back into the bench behind him again. “Every guy I knew in high school wanted to get in your bed, myself included. So that’s kind of baffling.”
Surely, he meant that as a compliment. But the words hit like a Froslass’ ice beam.
Everything about the statement through her for a loop. People wanted to sleep with her in high school? Including Dorien? Why was he making it sound like she had a pack of suitors following her around school? Did he think she would be flattered by learning that information? She was the exact opposite of flattered--she was ****ing mortified. Though, she could thank the gods that she didn’t know of Dorien’s feelings before her crush tapered off.
Her grip on her backpack tightened. She was sure the skin on her knuckles was going to tear open, but she didn’t care. If she let go, his pretty little nose was going to break.
Maliciously crafted words threatened to spew out, but the double doors opened again, and the remaining students filed in with Mrs. Chuquete in tow. She held her usual clipboard under her arm, and a baseball cap sat on her head of fluffy red hair.
Odette exhaled the shallow breath she was holding, almost feeling relieved that the start of class would save her from this absolute trainwreck of a conversation. It would also save her from the probable expulsion that would come with absolutely pummeling a new student half to death.
“Huh, class starting?” Dorien commented, like he was trying to fill the tense silence that had swelled between them.
Yeah, no ****, she wanted to yell. She bit her tongue instead.
Breathe...keep it together.
“Alright, settle down, trainers,” Mrs. Chuquete called, silencing the low chatter. “I’d like to get this started quick, so we have plenty of time to discuss and practice ourselves. I know we also have a new student in here today, so this’ll be a good chance for him to see how we do things in here.”
Dorien clicked his tongue in response to his acknowledgement. It took everything in Odette to not growl at him.
Mrs. Chuquete lifted the front page on her clipboard to look at whatever was under it, before dropping it again. “So I’ll keep this quick. First up on the chopping block, Odette Cinq-Mars.”
Odette’s heartbeat, which had already started to ring in her ears, picked up. She suddenly felt very glad she didn’t eat, because she surely would have lost it at that point. Her skittish appetite did come in handy sometimes.
If she weren’t so angry, she probably would have had a harder time getting up and walking to the front of the bleachers. But, she happily took it as a chance to get away from Dorien, and bounded up out of her seat.
Mrs. Chuquete scanned her board for a moment, before speaking again. “The slated opponent today was Muraoka Knowles, but she’s called in sick today. So I will give somebody a chance to volunteer, before I just move down the list.”
Odette’s foot had just hit the floor of the arena when Mrs. Chuquete spoke. She stopped dead in her tracks, taking the moment to inhale a deep breath. Her eyes slipped shut as a grimace took hold of her features.
For the love of ****ing gods, she thought bitterly.
“I’ll go!” she heard Dorien’s voice say.
Odette had half a mind to grab somebody’s backpack and throw it clear across the room. She was trying so goddamn hard to not explode, and she couldn’t remember the last time it had been this difficult. Singing ‘Jellicle Songs’ wouldn’t solve this dilemma.
“Oh, the new student is eager, huh?” Mrs. Chuquete queried, raising her brow. Odette didn’t move from her spot, as she was too busy trying, and failing, to blink the red out of her eyes. She only came back to her senses when she felt a hand fall on her right shoulder.
“Odette’s a friend of mine, so I’d never pass up a chance to battle her!” he said.
She jerked her shoulder away from his grasp and craned her neck to glare at him. The cocky smile he returned put her on the verge of an anger induced heart attack, if she wasn’t at that point already. She stomped forward, out to the middle of the arena, to configure which of her Pokemon she was going to send out for the battle. Something to keep her hands and brain busy for the time being.
“Fat chance,” she muttered to herself, shoving her hands into her pockets.
“Oh, friendly rivalry? I like that,” Mrs. Chuquete said. “Dorien, was it?”
“Yes ma’am,” he said. “I’m really looking forward to this class, even if I did show up a little late in the quarter. Hopefully you’ll be the divine intervention I’m looking for in my training journey.” The way his voice inflected upward in such a playful fashion made Odette roll her eyes. That’s how he used to talk to their chemistry teacher too. Did she find it as annoying back then as she did now? Probably not, because that suave-speak had a huge hand in their straight A’s. But now? It sounded like Mawile teeth on a chalkboard.
She heard Mrs. Chuquete chuckle. “Flattery will get you nowhere, but I like your enthusiasm.” Despite the words she spoke, she sounded bashful. There was an almost unnoticeable waver in her voice, but Odette picked up easily. That seemed to be the same response he got every time.
She shook her head to herself as she stopped within the left side of the battle field. She withdrew the three balls from her left pocket; Loïc, Isaur, and Ange. Enora and Solene were in her right pocket. She really had to think this over, because she was realizing, in the haze of her rage, that she was in a precarious situation.
One of the pluses of fighting a classmate was that she’d had the chance to observe them in previous classes. She could confidently say that she’d started to pick up on at least half the class's mannerisms whenever they battled, just from standing by and watching them work. She’d figured that by the time she was called for this exhibition, she’d be lucky enough to get paired with somebody she’d watched. But no, there had to be a fluke, where she ended up battling the guy she’d never seen go at it once. It was such a travesty too, because she could read Muraoka like a book. It would have been such a smooth victory.
The thing that amplified this problem was Dorien’s preference for steel types. He also had fighting types, which would prove to be a better matchup. But, she was hung up on the fact that steel wiped half her team if she didn’t play her cards exactly right. This was a 3v3, and she wasn’t sure if that would work for or against her. She had to clear her head and really think.
An obvious choice would be to pick Solene as a lead, as she usually did. Psychic didn’t do much to Steel, but Steel wasn’t that much of a threat to Psychic either. Plus, Solene could whip a Fighting-type easily.
She began to calm down a little, knowing that at least that part of her usual strategy wasn’t contested.
Another no-brainer pick was Ange. Fire being one of the only weaknesses to steel-types, she’d be stupid to not send him in. He packed enough punch to take on whatever Dorien might throw at them, unless he decided to send out a Poliwhirl...that would be an issue. She’d have to hold her breath and hope he left that particular Pokemon at home today.
That left slot three, which is where she found herself stumped. Should she risk Enora or Loïc for the fairy advantage against fighting? If Dorien decided to go primarily steel, though, it would be a terrible time for both of them. Isaur also saw the same problem, but didn’t have the same advantage with fighting. Perhaps that just eliminated her from the running? Dammit, what a pain in the ass...
She’d been lucky enough thus far to have only run into the steel-types among rounded teams, but an almost-specialized steel trainer was rough terrain she actively tried to avoid, at least until she could find a counter that would fit her team. She’d done her best to steer clear of the two that were in her Monotype class, but there was no backing out of this unless she wanted to see a hit to her grade. She definitely didn’t want to give Dorien that satisfaction, either. If she couldn’t backhand him herself, she’d do it through battle.
“Trainers! Ready yourselves!” Mrs. Chuquete called excitedly. “The first three pokemon you send out will be the only ones you can battle with. Choose wisely!”
She hadn’t noticed that Dorien had trekked to his side of the arena. He was spinning three pokeballs in his left palm, tapping his foot as if he were waiting on her. When she finally caught sight of him, his smile widened.
“Much luck to you, Odette,” he said mockingly. Her jaw clenched, and she pocketed the balls she was holding, and grabbed hold of Solene’s.
“Don’t need it,” she replied.
“You know what to do! Battle to your best abilities!”
Odette exhaled.
“Begin!”
“Come out to play, Excadrill. Swords Dance!” Dorien declared as he threw his ball forward. With a flash of light and a roar, his Excadrill appeared.
“Cadriiiill!” it yelled. It crossed it’s arms over it’s chest and began to spin around. A soft glow took hold of it’s claws as it did so.
“Solene, reflect for incoming attacks,” she said simply as she tossed her ball out. Solene emerged in a beam of pink light.
“Gothi,” Solene said, sounding serious. She clasped her hands together, as if in a prayer, and held them to her lips. “Gothitelle.” A shroud of more pink light fell over her.
“Now, Iron Head!” Dorien said.
Odette watched as the ground-steel type lowered into a crouch, before propelling itself forward. In a split second, it’s head made contact with
Solene’s stomach. The Gothitelle stumbled backwards, grimacing, but she wasn’t fazed otherwise.
“It’s close enough to Charm, go!” Odette said.
In a swift motion, Solene unclasped her hands and used them to blow a kiss. This sent a stream of pink mist into the Excadrill’s face, causing it to stumble too. It shook its head violently, trying to ward off the fumes. But the damage had been done. It reopened its eyes with dilated pupils, and stared in awe at the Gothitelle before it.
Dorien gasped deeply. “Snap out of it, Excadrill! Iron Head again!”
“Hold,” Odette instructed quickly.
With slight hesitation, the Excadrill crouched backward again, before launching into Solene’s stomach again. She trembled with the force of the attack, but exhaled slowly before lifting her head.
“Itelle,” she said.
“Good stuff, Sol,” Odette praised. She cut her gaze from the Excadrill back to Dorien. He had that nasty little smirk on his face, but his brows had lowered in concentration.
“Wear off that Reflect, don’t stop hitting.”
Excadrill cooed in protest, but quickly shook its head. The Charm had definitely done its job; as long as Solene kept her Reflect going, and Excadrill remained charmed, the attack powers would be cut almost in half.
Just a bit longer, Odette thought.
Excadrill flew forward again, and went to town. Butting it’s head into Solene, slicing away at her skin with some heft uses of X-Scissor. Solene took each hit like an attack dummy; progressively getting weaker, but nowhere close to falling. She made no moves to attack back, allowing
Excadrill to land hit after hit after hit. Odette made no move to instruct her otherwise either. She kept her eyes on the opposing Pokemon, watching its every move.
With a final punch, the Reflect barrier shattered, its glassy pieces of it falling to the ground before dissolving into a translucent dust and fading away. That was the punch that sent Solene sliding back into Odette. Odette caught her with ease, and exchanged a look with her.
“Telle,” Solene said, sounding tired. There was still an air of determination in her voice.
“You’re doing great,” Odette told her. “I think we’ve backed them into a corner.”
She shot a look back at Excadrill. It retreated back to Dorien’s side of the arena, panting heavily. She noticed that one of Dorien’s brows began to twitch, and this time, she let her own smirk take over her face. Was he frustrated already? Good.
Solene nodded. “Gothi-telle,” she agreed breathlessly.
“Hold out for one more,” Odette said, patting Solene on the shoulder. Solene nodded, then stomped forward again. She puffed her chest out, and clasped her hands together once more.
“Teeeeeeeeeeeellllleeeee!” Solene yelled.
Dorien lightly shook his head, exhaling with a sharp edge. “She’s weak. You can knock her down. Final Iron Head!” he hollered.
Odette slowly dove her hand back into her pocket, thumbing over Ange’s ball. She’d need to time this just right.
Excadrill let out a roar. It crouched, before running forward.
“Solene, return!” Odette said suddenly.
Solene was absorbed back into her Pokeball, only to quickly be replaced by the Chandelure.
“No mercy, Ange!”
Ange manifested just before Excadrill's head made contact. It cried out in pain, before scrambling backwards. A blue flame took hold of its head, and no matter how much it tried to fan it out, it was no use.
“Chandeeeeeeeeeeeeeelure!” Ange cried. He puffed out his cheeks, engulfing himself in a periwinkle flame that built and built and built, until it shot forward and made direct contact with Excadrill’s face. It flew backwards, and hit the ground with a loud thud.
Odette could hear the deep breath Dorien sucked in, as gasps echoed from her onlooking classmates. The Tension filled the arena as Metagross stumbled back to its feet, blue fire spreading up its arm.
“Can you still battle?” Dorien questioned evenly.
“Ex...ca,” Excadrill replied, resting it’s hand on the burn. It glared intently at Ange, who chirped politely. It waved at the Excadrill, before turning to look at Odette.
“Deluuure?” he asked.
“It’s already burned, so it won’t hesitate to headbutt you again. But it might have an ace up its sleeve. Smoke it out before we can see it,” she said.
Ange nodded, then suddenly flew toward the mole pokemon. Excadrill appeared to be caught off-guard by the sudden movement, and dodged the oncoming blast of fire. They were soon trapped in a dance, Ange shooting flames left and right, while the Excadrill did what it could to avoid another burn. It was already struggling from the first one, and Odette knew it was only a matter of time before it couldn’t go on. Even if Ange couldn’t get another hit off, Excadrill was as good as out.
She watched as Excadrill ceased in its dodging to stare Ange down. Ange held its gaze, rocking slightly from side to side, waiting for a retaliation. It crouched before running.
“That’s iron head!” Odette yelled. It seemed that her observation phase had paid off.
Ange puffed his cheeks out, and a beam of fire shot from his mouth, aimed straight at the fist. Excadrill roared again, powering through the heat to land it’s head on Ange. He was sent flying backwards, hitting the ground head first. Excadrill, on the other hand, entirely collapsed, and remained unmoving for several seconds. It showed no signs it was planning to get back up.
“Excadrill is down and unable to fight!” Mrs. Chuqete declared. The students on the bleachers began to applaud. Dorien’s smirk was gone now.
He was quick to whip out his next ball.
“Conkeldurr, I have a battle snack for you,” he said darkly as the large Pokemon manifested from its ball. It looked to have the same exact smirk
Dorien was wearing just moments before. But that’s not what Odette was hung on at this moment.
What? she thought frantically.
Something about the way he said it sent a chill up her back. Did nobody catch that? Did nobody find that concerning? She thought back to the
case she’d read about the drugged out Coalossal eating a Vaporeon mid-battle.
Was he joking?
...or was there a chance he was being serious?
Ange floated back up in front of Odette. He was hurt, but still up for battle. But she didn’t care.
“Return, Ange,” she said. Ange dissolved back into his ball, and Odette threw Solene back out.
“Telle!”
“Attack,” she commanded. Solene’s eyes widened briefly. Odette understood why, as this was wildly out of typical strategy for them.
“Gothi...telle?”
“Knock it the **** out, Solene,” Odette said, the concern in her voice becoming more evident. “Psychic, Psybeam. Stay away from it, though.”
She cut her gaze back to Dorien, who was now watching her intently. When their eyes locked, something in his gaze struck her as threatening. Like he was begging her to come at him herself.
She didn’t like it one bit. In fact, every single part of her brain was screaming at her to run.
She narrowed her eyes. The chill in her back was replaced by the familiar hotness of her typical rage.
Nobody ****ing threatens her, non-verbally and not.
“Full out.”
Solene turned toward the Conkeldurr. She held out one of her hands, and a rainbow beam shot from it, striking the fighting-type Pokemon head on. It stumbled, groaning, before shaking off the hit and running at Solene. Solene stuck to her trainer’s words, keeping herself out of grabbing range of her foe, as she continued to shoot beam after beam.
It didn’t make any sense to her. Why would he send a pure fighting type out against a pure psychic type? It wasn’t like he didn’t know she was using Solene at all, that’s who she led with! That had to have meant he had something else in mind, that perhaps his words weren’t a joke. Or, maybe he was just stupid, and figured she wouldn’t bring Solene back out? She’d battled some trainers who were that brainless in the past. It was a relatively common thing.
But, why say something like that? Why was he looking at her so menacingly? Why was she so ready to turn heel and bolt?
A loud thump brought her back to reality. Dorien’s Conkeldurr hit the ground, a panting Solene standing several feet away.
“Conkeldurr is down and unable to fight!” Mrs. Chuquete yelled.
Relief blanketed the knot that had taken hold in Odette’s chest. The battle wasn’t over, but the imminent threat seemed to be gone for the time being.
Dorien was silent for a moment. He sighed deeply, before sending the fainted Conkeldurr back to its ball. He lazily threw out the last one, and with a loud squeal, a large black bird emerged from the pokeball’s beam of light.
“Rise, Corviknight,” he said. “You’re the last hope.”
Odette could hear her heart pounding in her ears again, and she wasn’t sure what was causing it. Anger? Concern? Fear? Why was she scared all of a sudden? Moments ago, she wanted to punch this guy, and now, all she wanted to do was run from him.
Solene wobbled up to her, still breathless.
“Thiii?” she queried.
Odette placed a hand on her head. “You did so well,” she praised. “You can relax now.” She pulled Solene back into her ball, deciding she didn’t need to worry her anymore than she already was. They could talk later, when she had time to collect her thoughts. Because boy, were they running amok.
So much for the third slot, she decided. The fact she managed to power through without sacrificing Solene and having Ange only somewhat hurt was a position she didn’t think she’d find herself in. Ange could burn the Corviknight, and the win was theirs. She sent the Chandelure back out.
“Chaaaaaan!” he cried. He didn’t seem to pick up on her current state of mental turmoil, as he was more concerned with finishing off the battle.
She was okay with that. The sooner this finished, the better.
“Same as before, Ange. No mercy.”
He sure as hell kept to those words. Flamethrower, fire blast, even a shadowball...the Corviknight put up a solid, clean fight. But Ange was a powerful little pokemon. The bird soon fell, leaving it’s trainer standing, defeated.
“Battle over! The winner, by three Pokemon, is Odette!” Mrs. Chuquete said. Applause from the class followed immediately after.
Odette pulled Ange back into his ball at the same time Dorien returned his Corviknight. She hesitantly moved her eyes back to his, expecting to see him giving her that same malicious look. But no. He was back to being all smiles.
He approached her, that same teeth-showing smile reemerging. “Great battle Odette!” he said. “I thought I’d had it in the bag given my typings, but I guess you’re just a stronger trainer overall.”
He held his hand out to shake, but she didn’t accept it. Instead, she stared him in the face. Scanning, hunting for remnants of that hostility. But it was gone. He was back to cocky, spoiled smiles. Acting like everything was okay. Back to thinking they were probably still flirting.
Odette turned, leaving him with his hand outstretched, and speed walked back toward the bleachers.
“Excellent work, you two,” Mrs. Chuquete said as Odette approached. “I saw some interesting things.”
Odette brushed past her, clamoring up the steps, to where she’d been sitting. She quickly shouldered her bag, then rushed back down, skipping steps as she went, before beelining for the doors. She avoided making eye contact with Dorien again as she passed him.
“Odette! Where are you going?” Mrs. Chuquete yelled after her.
“Bathroom. I’ll be back,” she replied, the words coming out in a rapid-fire slur. She was out in the hall after that.
That wasn’t necessarily a lie. She was headed to the bathroom. But, the latter part was still up in the air. She wasn’t sure if she could sit through the rest of the class with Dorien in there.
She was thankful to find that all the stalls were empty upon kicking open the door to the girls bathroom. She rushed to one of the sinks, where she threw her bag down on the counter top. She then leaned the sink, allowing her head to dangle and giving herself a chance to come down from wherever the hell her head was.
She couldn’t even bring herself to bask in her victory. She was far too worked up about everything else that had happened. From the conversation beforehand, to the battle itself, to the way he was just...perfectly fine afterward. Well, as perfectly fine as he could be. There was clearly something very wrong with him.
She couldn’t get over that cold feeling that came over her when they locked eyes in that moment. Every hair on her body stood up, like she was looking at some horrific horror movie character. She hadn’t felt a sense of fight or flight like that since...Fleurrh. But she didn’t need to go there.
She brought her head up to stare at her reflection, watching herself take deep, steady breaths. Slowly, but surely, her heart slowed, and her brain stopped spinning.
Maybe she wouldn’t go back to class. It was her last one for the day, anyway. She could tell Chuquete she had a bout of sickness and had to go home. She had a soft spot for the illness stories, and Odette knew she could pull it off well.
Right now, she didn’t want to be in there. She didn’t want to be in the building.
So, she supposed it would be a good time for her to go pay a visit to her grandfather instead.
Heya, I'd written up a review for your story offsite thanks to a review exchange and didn't realize that you had a version here. Now, I don't know if you have any plans of supporting your Serebii version further, but hey. I like this site and figured I'd give it the old-fashioned college try since cross-posting a review wasn't too hard. So I'll be uploading a pair of reviews, one for the Prologue and Chapter 1, and one for Chapter 2.
The emergency breach sirens wailed through the halls of the S.S. Mystic Milotic.
Team Enigma usually functioned like a well-oiled machine, but the sirens prompted chaos. Grunts ran around trying to gain information from one another, but every grunt was just as clueless as the next. Some just stood by and waited for further instructions from their feared leader, but nothing came.
Yup. That certainly sounds very par for the course for an evil team. To the point where it makes you wonder why they don’t just replace the faceless grunts with robots or holograms or something like that.
Florent Lambourne threw open the doors to the highly secure keep, located in the bowels of the ship, with his 11-year-old son Armel at his heels. Florent's hardened features were twisted into a look of pure rage, one that appeared to make his maroon eyes glow. He pushed on the sleeves of his navy business suit, trying to keep his hands busy. Armel’s face was a little more blank, but there was an obvious glint of childish apprehension in his gaze. He clutched a thick journal tightly to his chest.
Ah yes, bringing your underage child along to your dodgy and totally not evil experiment or whatever-the-hell-this-is. Totally going to result in a totally well-adjusted kid there. Totally.
The alarm sound was at its loudest in this room, bouncing off the server-lined walls and metal floors. There were no windows for the noise to escape out of, allowing it to swell and rattle through the high-tech research equipment that had been placed throughout the space. All the light fixtures on the ceiling flared red.
The four grunts on guard in the keep whirled around at the loud bang of the doors. Although their faces were entirely covered by their uniform gas masks, Florent could still see their fear, plain as day. Their stiff straight postures, the jumpy ways their shoulders rose and fell in time with their panicked breathing. They were absolutely terrified.
Florent: “Consider the next words that come out of your mouth very carefully.” >:|
He pushed past the line of terrified grunts and quickly approached the center of the keep. It was a large space, having been built to take up the entire bottom portion of the ship. Florent had to widen his stride to cover the distance quickly. A raised pedestal stood in the center, with a Pokeball holder perched atop it. His heart dropped when he saw that the glass that normally protected the balls inside was completely shattered.
“No, no, no, no…” he muttered to himself as he leaned over the contents. The holder had five pockets, each occupied with its own neatly situated Pokeball, closed and undisturbed. Or, at least, that was how it was supposed to be.
The fifth and final Pokeball was open and broken, as if the Pokemon it housed had blown it out from the inside.
Well that totally isn’t ominous considering how whatever was in that thing had security that would be par for the course for whatever Fort Knox is in this story.
Florent’s eyes went wide, much more so when he read the label that marked the pocket.
Venira.
“How is that even possible…”
“Your majesty,” one of the grunts said again. “We are terribly sorry. But we don’t know--”
Don’t think that’s gonna help your case there, buddy. Though ‘Venira’ huh? That sure sounds like an unexpected name for something that was being treated as obviously dangerous-as-hell.
“Did one of you take it?” Florent cut him off.
The underlings quickly fell into a collective fit of denial.
“No, your majesty."
“We would never."
“They’re your relics, your majesty."
Florent took a deep breath and straightened his back. He calmly turned to face them as he folded his hands behind him. His expression wasn’t angry anymore. His features had relaxed, now showing something a little more stoic.
Not sure that’s a good omen there really, given that this guy is essentially a Team Evil leader here. ^^;
“You say that, and yet…why is it that my most powerful Blood Legendary has gone missing while you were the ones on duty?” he asked sternly. Like a teacher questioning misbehaving students.
“We didn’t know what to do, your majesty,” one said as evenly as he could manage. His voice wavered nonetheless. “It had a meltdown. It just busted out and we couldn’t catch it.”
“Isn’t the whole point of guards in the keep to ensure none of my relics go missing?” Florent inquired. He lightly cocked his head to the side for good measure. “So you’re either going to tell me that one of you has taken it, or you failed to do your job. Both are equally as bad.”
… Have you considered investing in better CCTV or failsafes or the like? Since just saying, the average Team Evil mook isn’t exactly the sharpest tool in the shed.
The panic wafting off of the grunts thickened the air and caused a smirk to tilt Florent’s lips. He stepped down off the pedestal.
Somehow, this guy doesn’t really seem like the type to forgive things easily. Especially not things like this.
The four grunts exchanged looks. After a beat, they dropped to their knees, and fell over into a bowing position. They then began to run through their memorized code of apology.
"Forgive us, King Florent, for we have wronged you..."
Florent let it go on for several seconds. He didn’t bother to interrupt; he didn’t bother to terrorize them further. It was in the middle of all of it that he felt an all-too-familiar tickle in his ear. His eyes narrowed, and soon, the voice followed.
“What is it you’re going to do?” it asked tenderly.
Florent pursed his lips, then turned his head slightly to grab a look at Armel, who had kept quiet through the whole altercation. He had moved off to the side, away from the door, to stand near a table of empty beakers and test tubes. He stood stiff and straight, still clutching that little book of his. That same glint of trepidation still lingered in his eyes.
Florent: “Wait, why is he even here for this anyways when I’m pretty sure that I’m about to… retire these four with particular gusto in about five seconds?”
He felt that perhaps, this would be a good learning experience for his one and only heir. Even if he would probably forget it.
His smirk broadened as he looked back at the grunts and their lowered heads. “Your words have moved me,” he began. “So much so that I am willing to forgive your transgression against Team Enigma and I.”
There were evident sighs of relief from the grunts. They held themselves quite stiffly, as they were trained, but Florent could still see the tension beginning to leave them.
“However,” he continued. He pulled his left hand from behind his back, revealing the single Pokeball he’d had on him. “You’ve outlived your usefulness to me. Your time for purification has come, my good men.”
I like how this guy is just doing this in the same room as his 11-year old son right now.
He pushed the button on the Pokeball, and it popped open with the familiar flash. The inhabitant began to manifest in front of the once-again frightened group.
“Gulattive, it is dinner time,” Florent said calmly. He brought his free hand to his lips and bit down on his thumb until it drew blood.
Florent: “Actually, on second thought, perhaps I should send Armel out for this and just make a recording that I can edit later-”
The bead of red that formed on his thumb began to glow, and a stream of light shot out from it and joined the beams emanating from the Pokeball. It met with the manifestation, causing it to begin to grow in size. It grew, and grew, and grew. It didn’t appear it would stop growing, until the glowing form had nearly hit the ceiling. However, it stopped just short of it, and faded from the beams of the Pokeball and Florent’s blood into reality.
It was a towering, lanky form, with arms were as long as its seemingly legless body. This left the being floating, like a ghost. A cloak appeared to cover it, with a hood up over what should have been its head. However, there looked to be no head to speak of. Only a single, bloodshot red eye sat in place. Once formed, it loomed ominously over the four grunts.
They didn't attempt to run, knowing damn well it would be futile. Their fates were sealed. They accepted it.
"Mom, I'm coming home, pure and true," one muttered as his tears began to soak the inside of his mask. He shut his eyes and prepared for the inevitable.
Florent: “Oh well, too late to change it now. Kids are resilient these days. I’m sure Armel will be fine.”
“Feast,” Florent said simply.
A slit tore open in the Pokemon’s stomach, revealing rows upon rows of serrated and saliva-coated pincers. A pointed tongue, one that looked to be far too long to fit in its body, licked the pincers before curling outward into the open. The Pokemon emitted a threatening growl before lunging at the grunts. All that could be heard was a set of high pitched squeals, followed by the sickening sound of their bones crunching, and the squelch of their flesh being bitten into. It took Gulattive no time at all to swallow down all of them.
Florent chuckled to himself as he watched the Pokemon finish off its meal, before turning back to the puzzling sight that was the broken Pokeball and holder. He huffed again and crossed his arms.
Well that certainly got really messed-up really fast. Though I’m pretty sure this is why Team Evil mooks tend to self-select for incompetence, since… uh… yeah, not too many people would knowingly sign onto a job with this as standard procedure for termination of employment.
- Florent stares at the puddle of viscera where his underlings were about ten seconds ago -
Florent: “... Perfectly fine.” ^^;
Gulattive: -burp- “*Delicious. Your underlings should cock things up more often, Florent.*”
“Tell me. Were any of them lying?” he asked.
Gulattive slurped to itself, before turning to face its host.
“No, master,” it said slyly, speaking out loud this time. “They tasted pure. No trace of Venira.”
… Wait, is that telepathy in action there? Or do Pokémon in this setting have mutual intelligibility with humans in general? The text doesn’t really give any indication one way or another here as to whether this is weird or normal.
Gulattive: “... Though are you sure it was a good idea to have Armel out for-”
Florent: “Gulattive, he’ll be fine. Trust me, I’m a father. I know these things. Just focus on what happened to my Blood Legendary.” >_>;
“Then where could it have gone? How did it break open its ball?”
“It seems,” Gulattive began, “Venira has selected a host. It willed an escape, enough to break any bindings."
Oh, so “Blood Legendaries” can possess other beings. That’s… wonderful.
Florent’s brows furrowed deeply, and he whipped around to face the towering Pokemon.
“What do you mean selected a host?” he growled. “You told me that I selected the hosts for the rest.”
Gulattive hummed to himself with sinister glee. “You do. But in the event your bloodline expands, one shall inhabit the offspring, as Avareed did with the boy."
Oh, so Armel himself is possessed right now. I suppose that explains the complete lack of concern over whether or not he’s going to be traumatized by all of this.
Florent moved his gaze over to Armel, who was frozen in his spot. Sheer terror had grabbed hold of his body, and had no plans to let go any time soon. His eyes were locked on the place where the grunts had been standing. All there was left of them now was a puddle of blood.
Gulattive: “Master, I’d just like to point out that all of this was completely predictable-”
Florent: “Shut up, Gulattive, I’m the father here and I think I know what’s best for my boy, okay?” >_>;
Florent scoffed to himself. “Wipe the look off your face, boy. That’s how things are handled around here."
He turned on his heel and approached the wall just off to his left, where a giant red button was affixed. With his face now out of Armel's sight, he took that small second to cringe to himself as wash of minute regret came over him. While those bumbling morons had failed to keep Venira secure, they were still valuable numbers among Team Enigma. It had been difficult to come across new recruits lately, and now that he was thinking clearly, he realized he couldn't afford the loss that had just occurred.
Quality leadership too. It sure would’ve been good to realize this before you reduced four apparently non-disposable grunts into a pool of bloody slush.
Gulattive: “I’d just like to say that traumatizing your son aside, I had no objections to-”
Florent: “Gulattive. Stop. Talking.” >.<
Florent wasn't quite sure how he was able to keep telling himself he could keep his destructive impulses under control. After a whole lifetime being the Pokemon of Gluttony's vessel, he should have known by now that there was no wrangling those side effects, no matter how much he tried.
… Oh so Florent himself is possessed, huh? Not sure what a ‘Pokémon of Gluttony’ is, but I get the suspicion that these ‘Blood Legendaries’ are meant to represent different Deadly Sins. Since gluttony is very much one of them.
Gulattive: “... Master are you sure that you’re not the vessel of the Pokémon of Wrath? Since you were a bit quick to break out the punishment-”
Florent: “Shut. Up. Gulattive.” >_>;
With a single, very aggressive shake of his head, he pulled a key card from his pocket and swiped it into the reader strip that was placed just next to the button. It released, and he shot a look back over at Armel, who was still quivering like a pathetic Magikarp out of water in his spot.
"You'll forget it by tomorrow anyway, my dear boy."
I mean, yeah, this is horrifyingly abusive and messed up as a fatherhood decision, but how high on your own supply do you have to be to believe that?
He slammed his fist down on the button, halting the alarm and flashing red lights. All returned to normal, as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred.
Florent turned back to Gulattive. “And you couldn’t have told me that me expanding my bloodline, even unwillingly, would cause me to lose these Pokemon of mine?” he queried.
Wait, so Gulattive is a legendary? When I was initially reading this up to this point, I had thought he was a Dusknoir, but now I can’t tell what he is.
Florent paced back to the front of the pedestal, his eyes downcast in thought. He raised his wrist to his face, seeking the date off his watch.
December 14th, 1997. 8:16pm. The alarm had begun to go off a mere five minutes ago.
… Oh, so we’re in a “late 90s” story, huh? Wonder what the significance of the choice of date is, since it feels like it ought to be important if it’s not in the present time and present day.
“How could I have another child born at this point?” he asked himself. He racked his brain for possible answers. Several mistresses of his were aboard the ship, but none he’d had long enough to carry a baby to a full, healthy term.
Oh, okay so Gulattive is the Pokémon of Gluttony that Florent is host to. I suppose I should’ve seen that coming from the name. Though I suppose this confirms that these Blood Legendaries have a tie to the Seven Deadly Sins after all.
As his father conversed with Gulattive, Armel was wracking his brain for ideas on what he should do. If he were to avoid the same fate as those grunts, he had to be of some use.
Florent: “Wait, you were still here all this time? I thought you went off to play video games or something.”
He slowly brought his journal to his face and pulled it open, shaky hands flipping frantically through the pages, trying to find something he might have written down that could assist his father in the current predicament. He hoped, somewhere in his previous lives, he’d written some useful information down.
>previous lives
>implying he’s died before
>while he’s worrying about remaining ‘useful’ to his father
Florent’s killed his kid and brought him back from the dead or some messed-up thing like that on multiple occasions, hasn’t he?
He turned page upon page, his eyes scanning them for any trigger words that might prove worth mentioning. In the several seconds he was turning, he found himself slightly tripped up by the recounts of preceding days, as he always was when he reread everything. Instances that he had no recollection of, rewritten clear as day in his own handwriting, and dated for convenience. He blew backwards through November, October, September, August...all the way back to April, where he finally found something.
Uh… yeah, sounds like this kid’s bit it a few times already considering that description.
April 4th, 1997.
Galar.
Father’s woman left today. He didn’t know she was leaving, so he’s really angry. Don’t mention her to him tomorrow. We will most likely be leaving Galar tonight because of it too, so don’t be alarmed if we’re elsewhere.
Exactly none of that journal entry there suggested a remotely healthy family environment. Not that I should’ve expected better from Florent after he thought it was a good idea to feed four people to his Pokémon right in front of his schoolaged son.
“The Galarian woman…?” Armel stammered quietly. He gulped, and took a deep breath, trying to compose himself. Trying to get the image of Gulattive eating four people whole out of his head. If there was any moment for him to be thankful that his brain was fried, it was this one. He’d have no recollection of it tomorrow morning, and it wouldn’t be something he planned to jot down.
Wait, brain was fried meaning what, exactly? Does this kid have Dory’s short-term memory loss from Finding Nemo or something like that.
“Speak up, Armel,” Florent shouted sharply. Armel flinched at the way his father’s voice bounced off the walls, and his shoulders tensed.
“The Galarian woman,” he repeated, louder this time. There was no need, though, as Florent had strode over to him, and now stood over him.
“The one you met back in Spring. While we were in Galar,” he clarified. He tentatively closed the journal and held it down at his side, hoping desperately that he’d said enough.
Oh yeah, this isn’t about to go to ultra-creepy and unsettling places with a tone like that.
She’d left him without a trace. High, dry, and heartbroken. He remembered going to pick her up from her dorm at her college, only to find she’d left the region entirely. No goodbye, no note, not even a phone call.
He remembered how badly he wanted to wring her neck for it.
Yuuuuuup, this guy is quite something for a thought process. I see that ‘Gluttony’ here is being parsed along the lines of desire to sate urges. Or at least I think that’s supposed to be Florent’s shtick at the moment.
He began to caress his chin, allowing his eyes to slip shut in contemplation. Their last time together had been April--eight months ago. It wasn't necessarily farfetched to assume she could have been with child in the weeks before. Still, he thought he'd been careful…
Good thing that this guy isn’t host to Lust considering how much of a womanizer he already is with just Gluttony. :V
Recalling the timeline of his brief relationship with her caused him to wonder: did she leave him behind because she’d gotten pregnant? He had to wonder if she even knew at that point. If she did, it only gave him one more reason to want to feed her to Gulattive too. Keeping one of his heirs from him was a crime he wouldn’t allow himself to forgive.
Especially not when said heir had stolen his strongest relic from him.
… Lovely thought process there! Though I’m surprised that he’s just not knocking off his mistresses whenever he’s done with them in order to avoid situations like these.
“You told me Venira was comatose. How is it that it broke free to find my child?”
So ‘Venira’ is a Pokémon like Gulattive, huh? Can’t think of a Deadly Sin that tracks with that in terms of sound, unless she’s supposed to be ‘Vainglory/Vanagloria’ from before it was merged into ‘Pride/Superbia’.
“I can’t say,” Gulattive mused. “Venira has always been an odd one out. It seems they have been reawakened by whatever presence has been introduced. It must be a strong one!”
… Maybe she really is ‘Vainglory’. Since it would explain why she was lying dormant originally.
Florent didn’t like that prospect. While the idea of having another heir was one he enjoyed, having said heir attract the attention of the otherwise dormant Pokemon of Wrath…
… Never mind then. Should’ve paid more attention to the ‘Ira’ in her name. Though I wonder how on earth that works for the other Blood Legendaries, since their respective Deadly Sins aren’t quite as compact as ‘Gula’ and ‘Ira’ are for forming names for them.
“How could I get Venira to return?”
“The child would have to willingly give it to you, or perish.”
I like how this guy is just saying all of this right in front of his 11-year old son right now. Though I kinda wonder if there ought to have been more showing of how Armel is processing all of this happening here.
He placed a light hand on Armel’s head, causing the boy to flinch at the touch. Florent didn’t appear to notice it.
“Good on you for remembering, my boy. That journal was a good investment.”
Whelp, this guy certainly isn’t of the HGSS school of thought with regard to Pokémon training. Though from what was described of Gulattive, I’d presume that would bring on a lot of unwanted questions.
“Your services shouldn’t be needed until I locate my newborn. It should be a solid meal for you.”
His left ear began to tickle again, and Gulattive spoke in his head once more.
Well that’s one way to set the mood and initial conflict of a story. Creepy, but effective there given that this guy’s out on a grand quest to commit ritual murder of an infant for the sake of collecting unholy power.
And since Serebii's a bit dumb about character limits, I'll put up the review of Chapter 1 in a follow-up post.
Odette Cinq-Mars’ maroon hued eyes were locked on her news app. She leaned against the backstage wall, tapping her clipboard lightly against it, keeping with the tempo of the orchestra. She was humming along to the singing of the actors onstage while her eyes roved hungrily over the words on her phone screen.
The victim, 25-year-old Gervais Morel, was found unconscious in his car. His Pokemon, a Simisear, attempted to take a firearm from one of the first responders, and was subsequently gunned down. The Simisear was later found to have lethal amounts of sacrilege in his system. The Lumiose City PD declined to--
Oh, so just jumping ahead by at least 15 years to when smartphones are a thing, huh? Also, it’s your own story and setting, so I won’t harp too much about it, but if you want to crank up the French-ness of your setting, you probably want to consider rolling something like 'Lumiose (City) Police Prefecture' as the name of your local law enforcement agency there.
Though I’m surprised the Simisear attempted to snatch a weapon instead of just going full feral Detective Pikachu!Aipom and attempting to attack the police like a hopped-up simian little gremlin there. And you just know that whoever coined the name of this designer drug deliberately did so to have giggles at headlines along the lines of “Man found dead in apartment from sacrilege overdose”, it just feels like it’d be ripe for black comedy for a suitably warped and twisted perspective.
She began to shake her head, when a tap on her shoulder caused her to jump. She pressed her phone to her chest and cut her gaze over, meeting a set of slyly narrowed hazel eyes.
“Shouldn’t you be paying attention, Miss Stage Manager?” Noel whispered.
She scoffed. “Shouldn’t you be listening for your cue, Mister Mistoffelees?”
Noel returned the scoff and crossed his arms. “To think, after years of acting classes, you don’t have that faith in me? Purrloins is my favorite musical of all time, you think I don’t know it like the back of my hand?”
… Oh, so Team Evil that dabbles with the creepy-as-hell Pokémon just casually named after the Seven Deadly Sins is into drug trafficking. Lovely.
Odette impatiently scrolled through the rest of the article, before clicking the phone off and shoving it into her pocket. “Just the recent OD case. Nothing new.”
He sighed, then removed his chin. “Oh, that? Lame. I’ve been waiting for a new break.”
A ‘new break’, huh? For a sec, I thought that these two were in theater, though I’m not so sure anymore after that comment about waiting for a new break right after the mention of a ‘Team Enigma’.
He leaned against the bunched up curtain, crossing his arms over his chest. “Anything else to report on? Can you at least tell me what the weather’s like today?”
As if the universe sought to answer for him, a groan of thunder rocked the building. It was quite loud, but it didn’t stop the rehearsal on the stage.
… Wait a minute, so these two do work in theater, then? I’m genuinely tripping a bit here given that the narration hasn’t come down firm one way or the other and the dialogue has kinda been going back-and-forth.
“Castform mating season,” Odette chided. “So why don’t you ask one of them?”
To that, Noel chuckled. “Rainy one day, sunny the next, snowy the third.”
Ah yes, a cursed year for the backdrop of what’s shaping up to be a cursed story. Totally a good omen there.
They were silent for a moment, and Odette heard the sound of something being rolled behind her. She turned her head, just in time to catch two of the stagehand Machamps, dressed arms to to toes in black, moving one of the light props to set on this side of the stage. She snapped twice, drawing their attention.
“Hey!” she whispered. “Stage right, not left. Other side.”
Okay, so normal Pokémon have anime-speak in this story. I presume that means that Gulattive and his ilk are special cases given that they’re possessing others? Or is that something more general like telepathy?
With that, they took to rolling it off to where it was actually supposed to go. Odette sighed deeply to herself. She brought her clipboard back to her face, flipping up the first page to double check her prop placement notes. “I swear, they don’t listen.”
“You know, I found something interesting regarding this sacrilege stuff, I figured you’d be interested to know,” Noel said wryly, disregarding her annoyance.
Translation: “It was as good a time as any to troll you.”
The actor playing Macavity the purrloin began to deliver his ending scene lines. Noel mouthed along to them, mimicking the actor’s conviction in a mocking fashion. Odette joined in, though she performed with a little less gusto. It was more like she was reciting them just because she knew them by heart. She knew the entire show by heart, actually.
The lights went out on the stage. Macavity’s actor disappeared through a trap door in the floor, as the actors left began to shout and squeal in their performance of confusion.
“I was doing some digging last night before bed, getting some dirt on all the released OD names so far,” Noel continued their conversation. He ran his thumbs under the shoulder straps of his bodysuit as he spoke.
Pretty sure that this is tempting fate for something going seriously sideways with your performance, but okay, Odette.
“As one does,” Odette snickered.
“Lissssssteeeeen,” Noel insisted, swatting at her. “I was putzing around, looking for some similarities. It’s not much, but so far, ninety percent of the cases have been among people in the wealthier demographic.”
So whoever’s pushing this drug is deliberately preying on hedonistic rich people. Filing that one away for later.
"What's new?" she said flatly. "The cops figured that one out ages ago."
Noel smirked. "Did I mention that the press is conveniently leaving out the fact that a decent majority of the Pokemon being affected by sacrilege are shiny?"
… Wait a minute, is sacrilege a drug for humans or Pokémon? Since I am kinda getting thrown here at the moment since we go from talking about wealthy people overdosing on it to talk of Pokémon being affected by it.
Like it might be a deliberate “gradual reveal” thing going on since this story in general has a sort of “mystery revealing itself” sort of vibe, but I wonder if more details regarding what sacrilege is could’ve been provided for the readers from something like Odette’s internal thought process.
Odette furrowed her brows at him. "Bouffalant ****ing ****," she said.
Odette: “You’re talking about like half a percent of all known Pokémon. How in the hell could they represent a majority of any sort of cases of Pokémon affected by them?” .-.
Noel: “In case if you hadn’t noticed, but we’re already dealing with a bit of a weird demographic here, so…”
Noel had his phone out before she'd even finished talking, growing more smug by the minute. "No, seriously," he said, swiping his finger across his screen. "Most of these case files are there for public viewing, but my in down at the LCPD managed to send me her admin password for their whole case-file system."
Unless this was literally the day before the passwords were set to be changed, that sounds like a fantastic way to get inadvertently burned by your contact at some point and lose your job, just saying. It would’ve been a lot safer from the perspective of this guy’s LCPD contact to just make a copy of said case-file system and pass it along on a flash drive than to provide a password that could potentially result in “Hey, Ms. Contact, why do our system logs show you signing onto our case-file system remotely from a flat on the other side of town while you were stuck in the middle of rush-hour traffic?”
"Who's your in at the LCPD?" Odette asked incredulously. "And why don't I know about it?"
"I've got gals in different locales, baby, don't you worry," Noel snickered, heightening his voice for dramatic effect. "Good friend from coding class. We cheated off each other all the time."
I believe it given that she didn’t opt to do something saner like upload an encrypted archive with a timer to delete itself in a day and then meet this guy in a cafe to tell him “The password to unrar it is ‘mort_aux_vaches’, go nuts.” Like that’s not foolproof either, but I’m pretty sure that that’s still safer than giving a journalistic contact admin access to police databases with a password that personally belongs to you. ^^;
Like if you’re going to go that route, nick the password from a colleague you don’t like so that way they cop the brunt of the suspicion if something goes south from your buddy poking around police databases.
Odette narrowed her eyes. "I'm going to pretend you didn't tell me that so this in of your doesn't lose her job. Grandpa would have a coronary; he's well on his way there as it is."
Oh, so someone does realize how stupid and irresponsible Noel’s method of getting his dirt was for his source. ^^;
Noel finally stopped scrolling and held his phone to his chest. "So, as I said," he started, ignoring the comment. "I was putzing around, examining some case files and whatever, and boom. She texts me the login; asked her for it a couple days ago, she said she'd get back to me, whatever," he explained. "I kind of went a little nuts in there; went ahead and pulled up something on that most recent OD case, and sure enough...didn't match with the public record. Specifically denotes a shiny Simisear, while the public record denotes an ordinary."
… I’m calling it now, this in is totally getting caught and fired at some point in the future. Since this feels like an incredibly ballsy and reckless way of leaking something that could very easily cost you your job if it was traced back to you, make you unemployable at every law enforcement agency in Kalos, and potentially result in criminal prosecution.
He handed his phone to her. "Scroll left."
She shot him a wary glance as she took it. She squinted at the screen, which showed a close up photo of his computer monitor, displaying a website with a bunch of case information. She didn't bother reading all of it, because her eyes immediately fell to the part that had been highlighted for her convenience.
Odette: “... Noel, you realize that you can just printscreen this stuff, right? Literally every computer has that as a standard keyboard command executable by at most three button presses.”
Noel: “... I have a flair for the dramatic, sue me.”
She did as instructed and swiped left. It was another photo of his screen, displaying an interface she recognized: the LCPD's online case filing system. She'd caught sight of it multiple times, just glancing at it over her grandpa's shoulder while he worked. This time, the same information cell had been highlighted again.
… Wait, is this Noel’s computer that’s being photographed? Or did Noel’s in let him use a computer at a LCPD station and he’s taking photographs of that?
Since if this is his own personal computer he’s taking photos of or else a laptop that’s remoting in that he can plug a flash drive in or hit up a file uploading site without instantly tripping a flag of some sort… yeah, he really should’ve just printscreened things there.
She blinked in surprise and cut her gaze back to Noel, who was already nodding toward her with a jokingly pensive expression. "What'd I ****ing tell you? That's suspicious as hell." He crossed his arms. "Granted, not all of them were like that, because some cases actually did just involve ordinary 'mon. But the ones that had shinies? All had discrepancies like that. And I'd say, of maybe the..." he trailed off to count his fingers. "Twelve I looked through last night, nine of them were about shinies. I'd guarantee it's a majority. Can't say for sure, but I'm willing to bet."
… I take it that this drug epidemic must be knocking off a lot of rich/high-visibility people, since I’m otherwise not sure how it’d rack up a high enough body count for Kalosian law enforcement to care since… yeah, law enforcement agencies tend to be fairly indifferent to drug epidemics that are out of sight and out of mind.
"You got me," she scoffed after a moment of stunned silence, returning the device to him. Her mind had become so aflutter with this new revelation, she'd almost completely lost track of where they were in the song. She didn't care, though. She had to dwell on this.
… Has Odette lost a loved one or something to sacrilege? Since that feels like an awful lot of concern for someone in theater to be having for a drug problem that’s primarily affecting a very tiny portion of the population at large.
"The wealthy, plus shinies..." she muttered. "Sounds like some shiny trade bullshit."
The trade--very loosely reminiscent of the stock market--was centered around the buying and selling of shiny Pokemon. Hunters searched day in and day out for the coveted shiny Pokemon, and would sell them to willing buyers for ridiculous amounts of money. When Odette had learned about it at face value, it didn't sound inherently awful. That is, until she looked deeper into it.
Reports of mistreatment, unethical catching practices, selling the Pokemon off without their consent, among other despicable rumors were constantly coming out. Last Odette had looked, there was overwhelming support for having it abolished altogether. Despite that, it still stood, loud and proud.
Let’s not even get into how if some version of the Masuda method holds in this story, that the most effective means of shiny hunting is basically to set up the Pokémon equivalent of industrial-scale puppy mills and then dispose of the “duds” you can’t find buyers for like unwanted poultry chicks IRL.
Though it sure is curious that someone is deliberately targeting people affiliated with a trade like this. Feels kinda like the work of someone affiliated with Greed, since… yeah, those are some greedy SOBs from a business like that that are getting knocked off.
Big names in the trade, of course, always made huge efforts to debunk the rumors, but she wouldn’t trust it. Money made people greedy, and greed could make people do some terrible things. Like, say, force-feeding a synthetic drug to a Pokemon.
Yuuuuuuup, I thought so. Just waiting on the formal confirmation.
"Fueling the crisis with their coveted money 'mons? I'd believe it," Noel sighed.
Ever since Kalos had been struck by the so-called “sacrilege crisis,” Odette had been glued to her news apps more than ever. It’d been quite a long time since the region had experienced a synthetic drug problem on such a large scale. It started as just a couple of unfortunate accidents, with hardcore party goers overdosing on some new fad. Within a few years, that substance exploded on the party and battle scene. Soon, more and more people, and even Pokemon, were overdosing, but not all of them perished. Those who lived exhibited some very strange behaviors, which is what really caught everybody’s attention.
… Wait, how many Pokémon have been affected by this drug in total if shinies represent a majority of affected Pokémon? Or else are shinies just more common than canon in this continuity?
I’m half-expecting there at some point to be a “crack” analogue to sacrilege that leaks out into broader circulation at some point called “blasphemy” or something like that, since I am fully convinced that the creator of this drug chose its name at least in part to have morbid giggles over stories about sacrilege usage and overdoses.
In one police report she had read, an young woman had to be checked into hospice, because she'd ingested so much sacrilege that she lost all of her memories, and her brain functions reverted to that of a newborn baby. Another case mentioned a trainer being arrested when they instructed their drugged-up Coalossal to eat the opposing trainer’s Vaporeon during a battle tournament.
All the users started to call the drug “sacrilege.” Soon, they were also starting to claim they were getting it from a group called Team Enigma. But, all attempts to uncover the group so far had been unsuccessful. So much so, that it was hard to believe Team Enigma was even real.
The whole ordeal was absolutely mind-boggling to her.
I mean, their name is literally ‘Team Mysterious/Inexplicable’ there. Are you really surprised that they’d be a PITA to find out information about?
Now, seeing this new take on the issue was sending her into a faster tailspin. What was the reason for keeping that information from the public? Hell, why werethe majority of affected Pokemon shiny?
Odette: “You’d think that they would literally run out of Pokémon to affect at the rate that these cases are popping up.”
She was starting to wonder if she should trust any of the reports she'd been reading at all. If they were willing to mess with that sort of observation, what other falsities could there be?
Oh so that’s why this gal cares so much about a drug epidemic. It directly impacts her family from a different vector.
“How has Chief Cinq-Mars been lately?” Noel inquired.
Odette sighed again. “Like I said, closer to a coronary every day.”
Noel clicked his tongue and began to shake his head. “Poor guy needs a break. Maybe next time he takes one, you can ask him why they're fudging info," he said jokingly.
A: This is happening behind his back.
B: Odette’s grandfather is in on this in some capacity for some reason.
Of course, being the chief of police at the Lumiose City PD would leave her grandfather exposed to all the terrible things the otherwise beautiful city had to offer. But she’d seen how much of a toll this was taking on him firsthand. Coming up on drug death after drug death would take a toll on anybody.
Yeah, I kinda figured. Guess that would explain about why she’s worried about gramps having a coronary.
She remembered how he’d responded to a call about five fatal OD cases in a residential flat. The bodies, three trainers and two Pokemon, sat there for about a week before the smell of their collective decomposition alerted the other residents. Of course, nothing on them indicated where they might have gotten the drug from. He had been so disturbed that he didn’t talk to anybody for almost a week following the incident.
She immediately regretted allowing her brain to travel there, and shook off the thought as quickly as she could. She knew damn well what it was like to bear witness to death like that.
It was there that the sound of scurrying paws approached behind her. Something began to tug at her leg, and she looked down to find her blue-hued Sylveon shooting a droopy-eyed stare at her. A folded piece of yellow legal pad paper dangled between her teeth.
… Oh, so Odette also trains a shinymon. So she has multiple reasons to care about this drug epidemic that is disproportionately knocking off shinymons and their trainers.
She supposed that was another reason this weird little discrepancy was starting to bother her so much. As a shiny owner herself, she didn't like to bear the thought of her own Pokemon falling victim to such a drug.
Odette frowned, both at the thought, and at the sight of the paper. Noel gasped and placed his hands over his lips.
Alright, so the Sylveon is ‘Enora’. Filing that one away.
Odette leaned down and took the note from Enora’s mouth, and the fairy type very quickly looped around her to affectionately rub herself against Noel’s leg. He leaned down to pet her, cooing softly as he did.
“Damn, Dee, I swear she likes me more than you sometimes.”
… Kinda wonder if Noel should’ve brought up ‘Dee’ a bit earlier than this given that it’s apparently an affectionate nickname.
“Why do you act like this is a shock to you every time?” Odette responded, opening the note. “She’s liked you since I caught her. She just has a thing for pretty gay men.”
“Sylve!” Enora purred quietly, sitting politely next to Noel’s feet.
Odette retrieved her phone from her pocket and flipped the screen back on, using it as a light to illuminate the note. She squinted through her thick rimmed glasses to get a better look at it.
If her frown could have gotten any deeper, it did. She shot her head up, her gaze zeroing in on the entrance to stage right, just across from her. She was entirely unsurprised to find Acadia, also decked out in her practice dance garb, standing in view with a stern glare plastered on her face.
Odette: “... Right, there’s a theater practice going on right now. Kinda forgot about that.” ^^;
Noel snatched the note, and Odette heard him laugh to himself.
“Gods, what a mum,” he said. “She’s just mad we’re more interested in Team Enigma than she is.” He tossed the note over his shoulder and proceeded to stretch his shoulders. Odette knew his cue was coming up shortly, so he needed to be ready. See, she was paying attention. Damn Acadia and her parental-grade micromanaging.
“I was thinking, Dee,” Noel said, stretching his left leg. “You and I should team up and try to uncover this bullshit together. We can give the PD a break, and it’ll be the last hurrah before you move to Alola.”
She rolled her eyes. “That’d be something wouldn’t it?”
This is tempting fate on so many levels right about now.
“I’m only half kidding. I don’t know what I’m going to do without you, so I need something to hold me over,” he whined. “Two clueless entertainment workers busting the case of the decade would do it.”
“You can always fly to Alola whenever, it’s only a ten hour flight,” Odette chided.
“Only a ten hour flight,” Noel repeated incredulously. “I can barely stomach flying to see my sister in Galar, and that’s four hours away.”
Oh, so regional arrangement is noticeably different from reality, huh? Since that would be “15+ hours” and “90 minutes” out of CDG in reality. Though it makes sense, since even if assuming similar relative arrangements, some parts of Pokéworld are just differently sized relative to their IRL counterparts.
“Sounds like a personal problem.”
Noel opened his mouth to retaliate, but the song began to pick up in tempo. He held up a finger.
“Hold that thought,” he said. He then strode out onto the stage, and began what Odette considered the best dance solo in the entire show. She might have been a little biased because it was Noel. He'd always been a talented performer. Back when they used to dance competitively, he was a force to be reckoned with. She kind of was too. Their duets were always flawless.
The memory made her frown. Her hold on her clipboard tightened.
So wait, what happened to Odette such to dash her dancing dreams anyways?
There wasn’t a world where she ever thought she’d be doing the crew work for a show. She’d grown up wanting to be the person in the spotlight. She sunk herself into her dancing and singing lessons, and even picked up acting in high school with high hopes of being the next Broadway performer. Another Diantha—no, the next Diantha; talented performer and Pokemon handler. That was all she had wanted for as long as she could remember.
Well, that one obviously didn’t work out. Wonder why, though.
The strings section of the orchestra began to grooveplay, as Noel took off into his thirty fouettes. Odette took that moment to lean out just slightly from behind the curtain, and she eyed the auditorium chairs. She could see the show’s director and his assistant watching the rehearsal, probably nitpicking every little thing as he tended to do. Other than that, the thousand other chairs stood empty.
This run of Purrloins! The Musical was sold out for the opening night. Odette began to imagine how the house would look that day, filled to the brim with those eager patrons of the arts, waiting to be entertained by some of the most talented performers in the region.
She started to imagine herself in, perhaps, Noel’s position. A big name part, with a big name solo. All eyes on her, as she did the thing she swore she knew best.
… Well, I’m starting to get an idea of why Odette drug her ambitions of being a performer around the back and put it down.
It’d been almost a year since she last stepped out on stage as a performer. She thought picking up a job as a crew worker would help her edge back into it; make her realize she missed it. But every time she thought about it, she thought about that thing that happened. She thought about those words, and where his hands went.
Okay, that really would explain why Odette drug her ambitions of being a performer around the back and put them down. Though considering how stories like these come out in reality with depressing regularity, I suppose I should be less surprised.
She told herself when she left her apartment that morning that she’d at least attempt to eat lunch today. But, as it seemed whenever she stepped foot into this building, the Lumiose Center for Performing Arts, something always happened that led her to losing her appetite. It’d become almost expected at this point. Probably not the healthiest thing in the world, but that was how exposure therapy worked, right?
Oh, so no performance at something like a bland-name ‘Théâtre de la Ville’ huh? Though meh, Lumiose is a bit more centralized relative to Paris anyways, so I won’t knock it.
Though I’m pretty sure that this is a sign that:
A: Odette really should see a counselor about her sexual assault.
B: Odette hasn’t seen a counselor about her sexual assault yet.
Odette opened her eyes from the half-nap she was taking. It was lunch hour, and she’d decided that if she wasn’t going to eat, she could at least try to nap. She was sprawled out on the stage, using her backpack as a pillow. Her fellow cast and crew, Pokemon and human alike, sat around her, talking amongst themselves about who knows what.
… That sounds like kinda a big antipattern for a play director to have. ^^;
Her eyes immediately landed on the untouched bowl containing her Nanab berry salad, sitting next to her legs. She stared at it for a long moment, before looking Acadia square in her face. She was quick to take in the peculiar way her eyebrows furrowed, and the way her top lip slightly pulled back to reveal her clenched teeth.
Wait, what is Acacia’s relationship with Odette such that she’s bossing her around like this?
“What? I’m not going to force myself to eat if I’m not hungry,” Odette said, knowing her words would be futile. Once Acadia made that look, there was no turning back.
Acadia crossed her arms over her chest. “Yeah, not hungry for the fourth time this week?”
I’m assuming that Odette hasn’t exactly told anyone about her little moment, since… uh… yeah, Acacia isn’t really giving off vibes that she knows about Odette’s incident here.
More thunder shook the building, and Odette secretly wished it would keep rolling in order to prevent her from having to answer.
“My stomach shrunk,” she muttered. She flung her arm over her eyes. “Lunch has never been my best meal anyway,” she added tentatively.
… That’s the sort of thing that makes others more concerned though, Odette. ^^;
“Come on, ‘Cadia, let her live her life,” Noel huffed. He was sitting next to her head, with Enora curled up in his lap. “She clearly stopped eating because she doesn’t want to grow anymore. She’s perfectly content being a cute little midget.” He reached over and grabbed the bowl and began to eat from it. “Which means, more for me.”
“Veeeeeeon?” Enora queried, perking her head up as Noel began to chew. He stared at her questioningly before his eyes widened in realization.
“Oh right, you like these things,” he said. He picked a berry up from the bed of lettuce, and fed it to the Sylveon, who purred in thanks. Noel started to pet her, but Odette smacked him on the shoulder. He flinched, thus causing Enora to flinch too.
“Owwwwwwwwww-uh,” he whined, rubbing the contact site.
A: That is indeed not how that works.
B: Odette is absolutely not healthy right now for other reasons.
“Well, not now. You woke me up.” She sat up and rolled her shoulders, and decided to zero in on the current conversation of the others, to hopefully deter her motherly friend from pestering her more.
“Psychic types are ideal,” said one of the dancers. “They can sense the feelings of the audience, and therefore know when to play up their performances.” For good measure, she stroked her Hatterene on her chin, causing her to coo in glee. “Calliope here has been in a bunch of performances with me; she’s a natural.”
… Somehow I should be less surprised at the idea of Pokémon performing onstage alongside their trainers in a Pokémon setting, though this still made me do a double-take.
“I get what you’re saying, but you can’t knock Ice types either,” responded one of the stagehands. His freshly hatched Swinub sat snugly in his lap, fast asleep. “They’re absolutely glorious to look at onstage.”
“Okay, but Electric types can literally bring a house down. My Luxray has a voice to end all other singers. He’s something,” another responded. Her Luxray was laid out next to her, enjoying his own lunch. He seemed bashful at the idea of his trainer boasting about him, so he hid his head behind a paw.
Ah yes, killing your audience with a building collapse. Just what every theater performance needs to send things off with a bang. :V
“What are we talking about?” Odette asked after a few timed blinks.
“Opinions on the best performance Pokemon,” Acadia said. She’d evidently been listening in.
“Depends on the performance,” Odette said simply after thinking for a beat. Her hand instinctively traveled to Enora’s head. “My Gothitelle, Solene, is the best dancer I know, but I’d never put Enora here in dance shoes,” she said.
Least of all because booties for quadrupeds usually look pretty silly visually.
“Syyyyyyyyyl…” Enora sighed in reluctant agreement. She indeed had four left feet.
“You wouldn’t need to, people would flock to see a shiny Pokemon do anything. People love the novelty,” another dancer said jokingly, prompting some agreeing chatter.
I’d object that there seem to be enough shiny Pokémon to get knocked off by a drug epidemic, though I suppose a large swath of them recently dying off would add to the novelty, yes.
And apparently people like giving them drugs too, she thought bitterly.
Odette: “Pretty sure that doesn’t make things better, Noel.”
The conversation continued on, merely consisting of more arguing. Odette found she couldn’t hold her focus on it for much longer.
“So what were you going to say before we were so rudely interrupted by your cue?” she asked Noel. She shot a playfully sassy look at Acadia. “That we were paying attention to, by the way.”
Since the entire mention of the practice basically just fell out from the story until Acacia came barging back in.
“It looked to me like you two were just running your mouths, so I couldn’t tell,” Acadia said with a shrug. “Be lucky I didn’t send my Vigoroth over instead.” She slyly patted her pocket, where the bulge of her trusty Pokemon’s ball was visible.
Odette pressed her lips together, deciding she had a point. Acadia had always been a stickler for the rules, even more so in a place of performance. She had an intense love for enforcing “theater etiquette,” and she did so with the use of her rather persuasive Vigoroth. Odette’s head began to ache, remembering the countless head smacks she’d endured for talking during an opposing team’s dance performance.
… How does a Vigoroth reach up high enough to dope slap a human? Aren’t they like 3 feet tall-?
>4’7”
Okay, never mind, I think I can see it.
“Instead you dragged my own Pokemon into it. Conniving,” Odette said dully.
“Oh I wasn’t going to say much,” Noel answered. “I was just going to ***** that all my friends are moving away.” He sniffled and ran his finger under his eye, as if wiping away tears. “First Claude, then Basile, then my sister, now you. Why'd your mom have to put in a transfer?"
… Because Odette has been grappling with a major traumatic event in the recent past? I would assume that affects her in more places than just the theater. ^^;
"She's been trying to move her base of operations to Alola or Sinnoh for years, and Professor's Org finally approved her for an Alola move," she explained with a shrug. "Now she won't be out of town as often."
Video calling for whatever reason just isn’t the same as a proper face to face. There’s something about the presence of another person that just doesn’t carry over in them.
Odette had to nod in agreement, it wouldn’t be the same. While she was somewhat looking forward to the hefty change, something about leaving behind the place she grew up was only adding to her daily anxiety load. She didn’t know what it would be like not being able to walk three floors down to Noel’s flat when she needed to get out of her head. Or, not being able to meet Acadia for lunch when she was bored and needed female interaction. Or, possibly worst of all, not being able to ride across the city to her grandparent’s townhouse just because.
It would be a new house, new town, new people. ****, even new Pokemon.
Potentially new language too depending upon the worldbuilding assumptions that this story makes. ^^;
She felt like she’d come to terms with it, but it was still ringing...odd.
Thinking of Pokemon caused her to remember the rest of her team, whom she’d left home to start packing. The move wasn’t for another two months, but her mother had insisted they get a move on now. She groaned quietly, hoping fruitlessly that she wasn’t going to go home to a mess.
Oh, so Odette’s from Alola, then? Didn’t see that one coming, though I suppose that regardless of how language works in this setting, it’d explain why she’s unfazed by the prospect.
“As sad as I am that you’re leaving,” Acadia spoke solemnly, snapping her out of her thought. “I do think that’s what you need. A change of scenery and a clean slate.”
There were implications to that sentence that made Odette feel both blessed to have a friend so concerned about her mental state, and disgusted that anything even needed to be hinted at in the first place.
Because humans need time to grapple with traumatic events and sometimes those wounds just don’t ever fully go away but are things you have to learn to live with?
“The Elite Family dance studio is in Alola! You could audition,” Noel suggested suddenly. “Alolans are known for being great singers too, you could also find another coach!”
“I heard they’re finally establishing a Pokemon League there, that would be great to get in on as well, since you’ve gone back to Pokemon training school,” Acadia added.
Enora appeared to like that idea, because her long ears stiffened at the sound of ‘Pokemon League.’
“Syyyylll?” she asked.
Odette couldn’t help the dubious tilt that took over her lips. The idea of a clean slate was great, she wasn’t denying that. But all of those suggestions made her stomach perform aerials. She thought back to how she’d imagined herself center stage on opening night, and...no. The fear began to gnaw at her again.
… Oh, so she associates Pokémon League stuff with theater huh? Is that because of the Diantha thing that she had going on? Since you’d think that wouldn’t be an intuitive map otherwise.
“Sounds like a good idea,” she said, making sure her voice didn’t waver. They didn’t need to really know how bad her head was spinning. “I’ll look into it.”
Not fully convinced that the plot’s going to let her leave Kalos so easily either.
Alright, onto the recap:
Well that was certainly a disquieting ride, though very atmospheric and suspenseful. I get the feeling that this story as a whole is meant to go places since it seems like it’s dealing very front and center with the unseemly underbelly side of a region and society that’s portrayed in very bright and colorful terms canonically. And that’s before getting into the creepy stuff going on with Blood Legendaries going on in the background. It might take me a while to get back to things, but the first two chapters did pique my interest about where this story is going, since Odette's inevitable collision with Florent’s world sounds like it’s going to be an… experience when it happens.
As for stuff I wasn’t so hot on, it’s mostly the described things I spotted in the line-by-line. Some of it is subjective nitpicking, some of its is small mechanical goofs here or there. If there was one thing in particular that stood out to me, it’s a few moments where I wasn’t really sure what was going on from lack of description or context to provide grounding. I’m not sure what I’d suggest there, since I think you’re going for some sort of ‘reveal of a mystery’ thing in WSBS based off the vibes I picked up, but I guess it might make sense to give some bits a once over to see if there’s anything you can share that doesn’t give the game away too fast? Like the particulars of Noel’s gambit to get to LCPD’s case file database in particular feel like it’s missing some deets that would contextualize why he did things the way he did. Since it feels like there was something about the circumstances about LCPD’s setup and his in that was meant to prevent “lol printscreen and flash drive” from being a workable solution, but it wasn’t really communicated in the text.
On the whole, I think that you did a pretty solid job at setting an initial impression and communicating what the overall tone of your story is going to be like. And it has a decent hook to make the reader want to know what on earth is going on with this Team Enigma and this sketch-as-hell designer drug that is dropping Kalos’ bourgeoisie like flies.
Congrats, and good luck with your writings @Sinderella .
Odette had never felt the urge to trade her motorcycle in for a flying-type pokemon. Noel, when he wasn’t going on and on about how his Braviary didn’t listen to him, always claimed flying was a truly exhilarating experience, but for Odette, nothing trumped a motorcycle. She was in full control, weaving in and out of traffic and between buildings at mach speed; she decided where to go, and how fast she went. Flyers didn’t know what they were missing.
And then the summer travel season rolls along in July and Lumiose becomes a parking lot if it’s anything like Paris. :V
Odette tightened her grip on the handlebars as a breeze stirred her bangs, cool against her uncovered head. She’d have to be extra careful tonight, what with the roads still being soaked from the downpour. The last thing she needed was to have Acadia screaming “I told you so!” at her hospital bedside.
Wew, no helmet, huh? Somebody’s a risk-taker, though that seems right up the wheelhouse of someone who’s going to be going toe-to-toe with an evil team rocking demonic entities.
The city storefronts flew by her in streaks of bright light, seemingly absorbed by the headlights of the other cars she was surrounded by. The brisk air nipped at her face, leaving her nose inflamed and beginning to run. She quickly reached up a hand and rubbed at it, as she switched into the middle lane of the road. Her eyes darted between the two cars that bordered her bike, and she instinctively slowed down when she saw the right car begin to swerve into her lane without the use of a blinker. It then sped up, as if trying to leave that little faux pas behind.
“Dumbass,” Odette said to herself, going back up to her normal speed. Her mind ran with observations as she maneuvered between cars.
Says the lady who’s a dooring away from a hospital trip. Don’t know if it was intentional or not, but it’s a revealing insight into how Odette’s mind ticks that she’s just completely unfazed by all of this at the moment. I suppose force of habit helps jade one to mortal hazards in everyday life.
Watch the van, they’re lane hopping...that hatchback’s driving under the speed limit, driver looks like they’re texting, steer clear…why is this stupid sedan on my ass? And there’s the stoplight. ****, it’s turning. Not going to even try to run it with Noel on here.
Wait, Noel is riding on Odette’s bike? I kinda wonder if that ought to have been mentioned in description earlier, since I didn’t pick up on that at all up until this one paragraph.
She slowed to a stop at the front of the pack of automobiles waiting for their chance to charge across the four way intersection. The downtime gave her the chance to rub her tingling nose again and untangle her bangs.
Noel seized the opportunity for a chat. He rested his chin lightly on her shoulder and loudly inhaled.
“Dee, I gotta ask. What shampoo do you use? The inside of your helmet smells so good.”
Whelp, somebody on this bike is cognizant of road safety, at least.
She looked over her shoulder, resisting the urge to laugh at the sight of Noel in her helmet. She'd felt it'd be safer for him to wear the helmet, considering she was the experienced motorcyclist between them, but the thing barely fit his head. Something was better than nothing, though.
Ah, so that’s Odette’s thought process for her helmetless ride. Kinda wonder if this “I know what I’m doing, I can handle a bit of danger” is also going to manifest in how she rolls as a protag or not.
“Bulba and Bulba curl moisturizing shampoo,” she answered. Her eyes remained deadlocked on the traffic running perpendicular to them. “It doesn’t have much of a smell, though. You’re probably noticing the heat protectant spray.”
“I still don’t understand why you straighten your hair,” he sighed. He grabbed one of her braids and began to tug on it playfully. “Your curls are amazing, and you would rock the Luxray mane look.”
That sounds like a fast way to get Odette to make angry Luxray noises at you, but okay, Noel.
Odette pressed her lips together. “Until you have thick curly hair to deal with every day, don’t yell at me about what I do to mine,” she said. “I like my braids, and my braids like me.”
A bit more gracious than what I was expecting, but I kinda figured she wouldn’t be amused there. :V
Noel kept up with his chatter, but Odette tuned him out as she watched the traffic. The hundreds of tires rolling over soaked asphalt blended with the sounds of rumbling engines around her, combining with the music from the storefronts on either side to create a full cacophony. Odette drew in a deep breath. Most people weren’t fans of traffic noise, but she had always found the sheer volume calming.
And then in about 20 years, Odette will wonder why she’s hard of hearing.
The sound of an engine revving echoed violently from over the building off to her right, and it caused her to jolt. Even from far off, it rattled in her eardrums above all the other sounds.
Odette jerked her head in the direction of the disturbance. On the street, a few people had halted, looking around.
“Street racers? Who the hell is street racing in Lumiose at this time of night?” Noel exclaimed, pulling his hand away from Odette’s hair. Before Odette could answer, that same revving noise exploded through the area again, louder than the first.
… Wait, what time of night is it anyways right now? Since street racing usually tends to be common in nighttime hours precisely because that’s when there’s less traffic for racers to contend with. Can’t tell if the implication is that it’s supposed to be evening rush hour, or else if it’s some ungodly hour in the early morning.
“Look!” Noel called, nudging her back. Three cars raced around the corner. They were sleek, shiny, and probably cost more than her entire apartment and everything in it.
Rich people out for a joyride.
“Red light’s gonna rain hard on their parade,” Noel laughed. Odette’s eyes flicked over to their light; sure enough, it had gone green. The cars around them started forward, but Odette didn’t move her foot from the brake. Her gaze was fixed on the three cars. Their speed wasn’t letting up in the slightest.
Unless if Odette lives in a studio apartment that’s like 10 square meters in area, I sure hope those drivers have a good insurance policy if Lumiose real estate prices are anything like Paris’.
The cars behind her began to honk, and she felt Noel jostle her again, lighter this time.
“Uh, Dee?”
It all happened in a blink. As the sports cars entered the intersection, the honking became frenzied. Cars screeched to a halt. The street racers tore past, sending up a spray of mist. They rounded the next corner, and they were gone as quickly as they’d appeared.
Could’ve been worse. From the way that the text was building up, I was expecting them to take out a minivan and some rusted-out Not!2CV and come to a stop in a mangled heap.
Odette blinked rapidly, trying to process what she’d just seen. The passersby erupted into conversation. Even though she couldn’t make out the words, she could hear their disdain and disbelief.
Those ****ers could have killed somebody, she thought numbly. Around her, the honking had died down. The light was still green, but the traffic remained halted, all sharing in the same shock.
I’d say that this sounds like a good time to just punch it and move along, but considering how story plots work, that’s probably a good recipe for getting run over by a straggling fourth car in the intersection.
Odette felt an all-too-familiar tingling sensation start to form in the small of her back. Her lips curled back over her teeth. The corners of her vision began to go red.
“Those ****ing lowlives,” she spat. She violently revved her bike. “I’m gonna--”
Noel flinched back. His hands came up defensively in front of his face. “I want you to drive before the guys behind us shove their fists down both our throats!” he yelled back.
She stared. The red began to clear, as the aggravated honks behind her began to register. She lowered her fist, turned around, and propelled the bike forward. Her heart was pounding as fast as her mind was moving.
Somehow, I don’t remember it being explicitly stated in the prologue and first chapter, but I’m getting really strong “Odette is Florent’s missing child he’s trying to kill” vibes right about now. Especially since the demon thingy that said child was sitting on was tied to the Deadly Sin of Wrath.
“God,” Noel breathed when they were well away from the intersection. “Leave it to you to go psycho over some stupid racers. Keep it together, Dee.”
Warm-up breaths, she thought. One second in, one second out. That was a start. Now two seconds in, two seconds out. She wasn’t feeling any different. The tingle in her back had yet to lessen, and her brain buzzed with threats and ferocious thoughts of payback. She wanted nothing more than to blacken the eyes of one of those drivers. Haul him out of his car, slam him against the wall and punch and kick, until they were a bloody pulp, until—
… Yup, she’s totally that kid from the prologue sitting on Venira. I knew something was up with that thought process, and something about that rage just feels unnatural.
The breathing wasn’t working. She felt like she wasn’t getting enough air. All of her brain power was going toward her rage. She had to concentrate on something else.
So, she began to recite the Purrloins! script instead, starting with the opening song.
Oh, so that’s Cats in this universe, huh? Filing that one away, since I can already tell you’re going to be having fun with homage / reference brand names.
“Are you blind when you’re born, can you see in the dark, can you look at a king, would you sit on his throne…” she sang to herself. She focused on remembering how the orchestra sounded when they played along with the singers in rehearsal. The harmonies, the rests, the subtle grooves, the way they were never quite together on the sudden rests, no matter how much the conductor scolded them.
Yup, I figured, Kinda wonder if the lyric text ought to have been differentiated from Odette’s normal dialogue somehow, but eh. It’s a minor stylistic nitpick.
She kept on driving toward her building. The more she focused on picturing the stage as she sang the lyrics, the less she focused on the idea of hunting the drivers down, and making them pay for their bullshit.
Surprised that thinking of theater would help with that considering her… -ahem- experience mentioned in passing while working on a theater troupe last chapter.
Another turn brought her onto Gigavolt Way. She slowed to a stop outside a low-rise apartment building. The familiar sight helped in cutting her anger for a moment. Arched doors stood behind wrought iron balcony fences, and flower boxes brimmed with blooming daisies and pansies. Some of Odette’s night owl neighbors were out on their balconies with their Pokemon, enjoying the cool post-rain air. They waved as Odette drove by and turned onto the downward incline leading into the garage.
Those cars must’ve been quite something, since that certainly doesn’t sound like a shoebox of a studio apartment.
“Flat sweet flat,” Noel hummed as Odette stopped at the security gate and entered her code. She easily maneuvered down the rows of parked cars through the parking lot until she found the spot labeled 310. She and her mother had certainly gotten lucky when they moved into the building, because the 310 spot happened to be stationed right next to the elevator and staircase leading up to the lobby.
Okay, yeah. She’s Vienna’s kid. I won’t be convinced otherwise until the story hard-deconfirms it.
Once the bike rumbled to a stop, Odette swung off and began to stomp toward the elevator doors. She’d forgotten about Noel. His voice caught her just as she reached out to jab the elevator button.
“Hey! Temper Tantrum!”
“That’s not my name,” Odette snapped back, not turning.
“It might as well be,” he said. “Quit stomping around and come back here.”
Noel… I really don’t think you want to be antagonizing your pal there.
Odette closed her eyes. She didn’t have the patience to deal with Noel being Noel right now. All the same, she pulled back her arm and turned to face him.
“What?” she said. The word came out more menacingly than she had intended.
Noel had taken off the helmet. He held it in front of him like a shield. “Pick one. We’re either gonna woosah, or we’re gonna sing another happy song.”
“Pick one,” Noel repeated as he stepped closer. He had a ridiculous grin on his face. The **** was he so happy about? “I would suggest singing, because the acoustics in here are great. Don’t think I didn’t hear you singing Jellicle Songs.”
His grin didn’t falter, despite the intensity of her glare. All she wanted to do now was get up to her apartment and stretch all the anger out of her system with her Pokemon team, provided nobody was up to anything foolish. But no, Noel had to be a good friend and make sure she calmed down before any of that happened. The babying lunatic.
Noel’s the sort of guy who’s got a death wish, isn’t he? Since even without the meta possibility that Odette is harboring a demonic being inside her, this… doesn’t exactly feel like a moment where one would want to push someone’s buttons.
She sucked in a deep breath.
“Jellicles do, and jellicles can,” she sang, her voice echoing through the brightly lit garage.
Somehow, Noel's smile widened even further. “Jellicle purrloins sing jellicle chants,” he belted.
Still of the opinion that the song text ought to be differentiated from the dialogue a bit more, but it’s a cute little back and forth here.
As they continued through the verse, Noel dropped his things and began to do his own choreography for the song, as if he were back on the stage at the center. Although she tried to keep herself from doing so, she was soon smiling at the ridiculousness of it. But, the subdued performer part of her was aching to dance along with him. She’d spent enough time on the stage’s wings, watching the dancers run through their steps again and again and again, that she felt as if she knew the choreography as well as she knew the timings of the scene changes.
As Noel danced, she began to move along with him. Not with the same pep, but with just enough gusto to show she had an idea of what she was doing. A couple of steps in, and the tingle in her back faded almost entirely, leaving behind a bout of exhaustion.
… Wait, is this all happening in the garage to her apartment complex? Sure hope there wasn’t anyone just chilling and watching all this. .-.
She stopped what she was doing, arching over and placing her hands on her knees. Her vision began to cloud with sleepiness, and her insides felt like they’d melted into jelly. It suddenly pained her to be standing upright.
God, I hate this part, she thought regretfully.
Nonetheless, she made herself breathe through it. She began to smack her lips together, now longing for a big sip of water. That usually ended the dizzy spell.
So these anger episodes take a lot out of Odette. Filing that one away, since I can already tell this will come back to bite her at points in the future.
She felt a hand begin to paw the back of her head as the elevator dinged, signaling it had been called.
“Maybe if you diverted more energy into smiling, you wouldn’t always get so winded every time you got pissed off,” Noel teased.
Odette opened her backpack and retrieved the water bottle she’d swiped from the backstage fridge just before leaving for the night. She chugged the water in greedy gulps.
“Smiling causes premature wrinkles,” she huffed when she finished. She blinked until her vision felt normal, then she rolled her shoulders, letting her body wake back up again.
Well that turned out better than I thought for Noel. ^^
“So does frowning all the time?” Noel said, his voice inflecting upwards as if he were asking a question. “I’m just saying, getting so mad that you’re tired afterward shouldn’t be the move.”
She pursed her lips as she wrestled the half-empty bottle back into her bag. “Clearly my anger issues know no bounds.”
The elevator dinged again, and the doors slid open. Noel sauntered in. Odette followed with considerably less spring in her step.
“They were just stupid rich kids racing their new toys. Why waste your energy on that?” he asked as they began to move up. "Based on my observations, they might die of a sacrilege overdose soon, so…"
Noel can tell that just by looking? Or is the idea that they fit the profile of people who wind up dying from ODing on sacrilege?
“Because,” Odette said strongly. “They could really hurt somebody. If I hadn’t been paying attention, there’s a chance they would have hit us. Then we’d be paralyzed or dead. And they don’t give a ****. The inconsideration just…”
Her jaw clenched, and she pushed back her rising anger. There was no need for a round two of that.
“It just pisses me off,” she finished flatly. She paused. "And that's not funny."
Yeesh, that anger inside of her really is bottomless.
Noel sucked his teeth again, then placed his free hand back on her head. “Sorry, sorry, my bad," he apologized. "But gods, you have so much rage in that tiny body. You must hide it all in your hair.”
… Now I am getting the mental image of Odette going full Bayonetta at some point in my mind from that “hide your (probably demonic) rage in your hair” comment.
The elevator soon stopped, and opened into the complex’s main floor. The interior wasn’t nearly as fancy as the exterior; just a wide open space with an empty front desk, a sitting area of mismatched chairs and loveseats, and a wall of mailboxes.
“Let’s see what BS junk we got today,” Noel said as he popped open his own mailbox. Odette’s was quite high up, so she had to stand on the tips of her toes to be able to get the key in the lock.
Oh, so these two live in their own units in the same building, huh? Maybe Odette really does have a glorified broom closet of a studio apartment.
She was surprised at how much mail she pulled out once it was open. A couple magazines, pamphlets, and some smaller envelopes.
Mum’s, mum’s, mum’s...she thought as she flipped through the magazine covers. Finally, she came upon a pamphlet addressed to her. She flipped it over to read the cover, and her chest seized at the words that blared in her face.
Fleurrh University of the Arts
You’re almost done!
Sign up for Summer Classes Today!
Somebody certainly isn’t attached to her mother with a thought process like that.
She dropped the rest of her mail and tore the pamphlet in half. The sudden movement made Noel flinch. When she returned from dumping the torn pamphlet in the trash, she found him watching her with knowing eyes.
His brows raised. “More **** from Fleurrh?” he asked.
Odette: “Seriously, Noel. Why is this even a question?” >_>;
Noel: “... I’m pretty sure that you haven’t canonically told anyone about what exactly went down with you and that theater course you were in, so…”
Noel shook his head incredulously while nudging his locker closed. He set his own mail pile down and knelt to help Odette collect the rest of hers.
“Oh yeah, because you’re totally going to step foot back on that campus. After everything they did to you.” He considered his words for a second. “Or wouldn’t do for you, more like.”
Her vision was swimming, but not with red this time. Her chest began to tighten, same as it had when she’d started thinking of him.
She hadn’t gotten anything from her former university for a while. She’d thought for sure they’d removed her from the mailing list. Her, her mother, her grandfather, and their lawyer had told the school’s higher ups where to shove it, and she figured that was that.
But life seemed determined to rub salt against her wounds. Odette began to massage her forehead.
Wait, shouldn’t that trigger alarm bells as to why the university would suddenly start sending mail again if you sued to get them to break contact in the past?
He forced himself on you, and you killed him for it…
That is certainly a lot darker than I was expecting. And I was already expecting something dark. Though I now wonder how on earth Odette got off the hook for that.
She didn’t realize she’d started staring at the floor until Noel snapped at her. She jerked her head up, catching his concerned gaze.
“Hey ma’am, up here,” he said. “You’re good.”
“Sorry,” she said, shuffling the rest of her mail pile together. “All good. I'm fine, just thinking.”
I was going to nitpick this, but no, “Roserade” is a pretty consistent name across Pokémon localizations. It does make me wonder if we’re going to see FR names brought up here and there in stuff like place or brand names in the story, since it would strike me as a nice touch.
Odette had to admit, the offer sounded tempting. A solid buzz would put her straight to bed, no wrestling with her brain needed. However, she also had to consider the possible hangover to follow.
… How poorly does Odette hold her liquor if she gets hung over from a glass of wine? .-.
She shook her head again, sighing. “It would, but I have trainer school tomorrow. I don’t want to be dealing with dry mouth and wrangling Loïc at the same time.”
At the mention of the name Loïc, Noel’s expression melted into one of slight fear. “Right, handling a rabid Mimikyu while hungover doesn’t sound like a smart thing to do.”
“You say that, and yet, he acts pretty damn rabid,” Noel said. “I’ve never met a Pokemon that wreaks havoc on his surroundings like he does.”
“Then clearly you’ve never set foot in a Pokemon research lab,” Odette said. “Have you ever met a Gengar that’s had too many bottles of protein? It put Loïc’s tantrums to shame.”
Oh, so it’s not just Odette who’s got anger issues. That… sounds totally wonderful and healthy right there.
Noel shook his head in disbelief, pushing the button on the wall. “I mean, still...he’s taking a long time to acclimate to ball life. How long has it been, six months?”
Uh… Odette? If you’re still having trouble with a caught Pokémon that long after getting it, it’s probably a sign to just go back to wherever you got it and let it go. .-.
Odette groaned quietly as she re-entered the elevator, supposing he had a point. She began to recall how her mother had brought Loïc back from Alola. She’d gone to scout their new bungalow in Iki Town, and ended up finding him hiding under the deck of the house, growling at anything that moved.
Well, never mind then. Or at least until it’s time for the plot to take you back to Alola anyways.
“I don’t want to bring him to the lab acting like this, so maybe you can try to acclimate him to your team?” she’d said upon returning, Pokeball in hand.
Since then, he’d gotten a little better, but not by much. He was still destructive, still rambunctious, still liked picking fights with other Pokemon for reasons not battle related.
Nowadays, it wasn’t uncommon for her to return home to some varying degree of chaos, typically centered around Loïc and one of her other Pokemon having a dispute. She’d left her team that afternoon with the instruction to start packing things into boxes, knowing damn well some sort of problem was going to arise. She’d had a little hope that at least something would get done; that Loïc would have an epiphany and stop acting like a wilding. But, she majorly knew it was wishful thinking.
“Can’t wait to see what other nonsense is in store for me today.”
That sounds like a fantastic argument to not leave Loïc alone with your stuff in the middle of packing, since from the way it sounds, I’m half-expecting a good chunk of the contents of Odette’s apartment to have been yeeted out the window.
Beepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeep.
Foolishness had indeed struck the Cinq-Mars apartment.
Standing in the doorway, the sound that hit Odette immediately was the ring of the smoke alarm. White smoke rose in three separate columns from behind the bartop that bordered the kitchen. The dinner table was in complete disarray, with all four chairs completely toppled over, and the tablecloth dangling off the edge in a bunched-up heap. A board game and its many colorful pieces were scattered all over the wood floors. The only one of her Pokemon in sight was her Froslass, who was face down on the living room sofa.
Though somehow that was even worse than what I was expecting. How on earth has Loïc not destroyed Odette’s apartment multiple times if this is the sort of stuff he gets up to unsupervised?
“I swear to gods...” Odette said as she began to fan smoke away from her face with her mail stack. “Isaur?” she said loudly. “What the hell?”
“Fross,” Isaur said, her voice muffled by the cushion. She sounded exasperated, and that seemed to be the only answer she was going to give.
Odette kicked the door shut behind her, then threw her helmet and mail down onto the coffee table. Her eyes began to water as she stomped across the small family room, to the dining area, passing the tipped chairs to get to her balcony doors. She threw them open and fanned the rising smoke outside. She tried to hold her breath for as long as she could, as to avoid breathing the smoke in, but found the task to be a little too difficult for her. She took to staggering her breathing instead.
Okay, Odette is confirmed for having means. Either on her own, or through her family, since that wouldn’t exactly be cheap for the Parisian real estate market. Not that the whole bit about siccing lawyers on her old college didn’t seem to point in that direction.
“What happened to packing?” she yelled through short huffs.
She moved into the kitchen, and quickly found the source of the fumes. Her Chandelure, Ange, was sitting on the floor, bright red in the face from pouting. His signature embers had flared up and were releasing them as a result.
IMO, Odette’s dialogue sounds better with everything an exclamation, since it makes her come off as more “agitated”. Your call for whether or not you’d like to go that route.
Odette began to cough, feeling that tickle starting to return to her back again, along with a new tightness in her lungs. She grabbed a plastic cup full of water from the sink, and dumped it on the Chandelure's fires. They fizzled out, and Ange slumped over, clearly winded from whatever energy he’d been exerting.
Oh, so Odette’s urge to kill is rising right about now, huh?
“You’re ridiculous,” she said in a huff, throwing the cup aside. She went back out to the living room, and returned to fanning the exhaust. It was there that her Gothitelle, Solene, came running out from the hallway leading to her bedroom, breathless.
Solene: “*You think that I didn’t have this same idea earlier?*” >_>;
Solene drew in some air and put her hands together. An orb of pink light formed between them, and suddenly, the smoke still left in the room began to ball together. The ball then hovered out the open balcony doors, and said doors slammed shut behind it. The beeping stopped, and Odette sighed in relief. She began to rub her back, as if trying to coax the tingling sensation out of it.
I’m honestly surprised that Solene didn’t think of attempting to do something like this on her own prior to this out of self-preservation given that the last bit established that she was having trouble breathing.
“Guys, I wanted to come home to a calm place tonight,” she said, irritated. “Of all the days to be up to some ****, today wasn’t it.”
Odette paused in her rubbing, a thought suddenly occurring to her. She looked around the room, almost frantically. Isaur was on the couch, Ange was collecting himself in the kitchen, Solene was in front of her, and Enora was still in her ball.
Solene pointed up at the ceiling, evidently annoyed. Odette looked up just in time for the sound of skittering feet to echo from down from it. Her gaze cut to the vent above her, and it popped open almost immediately. That familiar fake Pikachu head hung down from the darkness of the air duct.
Odette narrowed her eyes. “How many times do I have to tell you to stay out of the vents? What could you possibly need up there?”
“Kkkkkkkkkkkkyu,” he responded. His body weight shifted slightly, and a slew of other board game pieces and cards fell from the duct. Odette silently watched them all hit the floor before speaking again.
Because that’s just who he’s been for the past 6 months? Though I can tell that Loïc is a giant barrel of laughs. A pain in the ass to actually be around, but a barrel of laughs nonetheless.
“Kkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk.”
“Why are you being a dickhead?” she asked again, her anger rising. Loïc was silent after that.
Oh, so Odette’s power to meep others into submission with her anger works on Pokémon, too. Filing that one away for the future.
Odette pinched the bridge of her nose and took another deep, long breath. “I’m going to count to three,” she said evenly. “If you’re not out of the vent by three, I’m throwing every single chocolate covered pecha berry we have in the fridge in the garbage. Do you--”
She didn’t need to finish her sentence. Upon looking back up, she saw the rambunctious ghost type floating down to the floor, slowly. He landed at her feet.
“You’re so easy,” Odette huffed. She picked up the haphazardly thrown board game and unfolded it, seeing the familiar print of a Monopoly track. She frowned at it.
“Who was playing Monopoly?” she asked, peering up at Solene.
Wait, Odette’s Pokémon have enough of a grasp of human language and writing to figure out how to play Monopoly? What is the sapience level of Pokémon in this setting anyways?
“Gothitelle!” Solene snapped. She pointed down at the now-politely sitting Mimikyu, and toward the kitchen.
Odette nodded slowly. “I could have told you that the two of you playing Monopoly would be a horrible idea. What were you even thinking?”
There wasn’t a verbal response from Loïc this time. Instead, he scurried between Odette’s legs and dove under the living room coffee table. That was all the answer she needed.
“Boys, when I said ‘start some packing,’ I meant ‘start some packing without getting sidetracked by random ****,’” she sighed. She sat the board on the table, along with her backpack.
In their defense, I’m not sure how Ange was supposed to pack anything of note as a living candelabra. :V
“Go-thiii,” Solene spoke in agreement.
Odette eyed the Gothitelle dubiously. “Oh yeah, Miss? What’d you get done today?”
Solene wildly gestured back toward the kitchen, where there was a stack of four small boxes against the back wall, plain as day. Odette had been in such a hurry to do some damage control, she hadn’t noticed them.
You probably want to throw in a sentence that beats it over the heads of the reader harder that Odette is realizing that Isaur is lying on the couch from exhaustion, since I did a double-take at this at first from not picking up on it.
“Frosssss,” Isaur grumbled, rolling over onto her back. At that moment, Loïc stuck his head out from under the coffee table and attempted to jump up on the couch with her. She immediately sat up and swatted at him.
I can already tell the last 6 months were quite something in this apartment.
Odette pulled Enora’s Pokeball from the front pocket and pressed the front button. With a bright flash of blue, Enora herself appeared on the table. She stretched herself out, yawning as if just waking up from a nap.
“Loïc and Ange, clean up your mess. Solene, make sure Loïc and Ange clean up. Enora, make sure Isaur doesn’t kill Loïc. I’m going to take a shower,” Odette instructed flatly, grabbing her bag and making her way toward her bedroom. She’d typically be able to at least attempt to diffuse the situation, but her brain was fried at this point. She needed a breather, before she got upset again.
Cue the living room devolving into chaos again 5 seconds after Odette leaves the room.
Her bedroom was a bit messier than she normally tolerated. The contents of her closet spilled out all over the floor, reaching as far as her desk chair and bed. Most of the drawers on her dresser stood open, also threatening to dump its contents. With the preparations to move underway, she had a lot of organizing she needed to do. What could be packed away until the March move, and what she needed to keep out until then. A pile of flattened boxes were leaned up against her wire bed frame, ready for use. There was only one box in the room that had been packed and taped, but she’d had that box together for nearly a year--long before this move to Alola was even finalized.
Right, I forgot that this story was set in January 2020. Is Lumiose’s weather significantly different from reality or something? Since I’m shocked that there’s not more mention of the cold during the past two chapters.
Her eyes instinctively traveled to her wall of empty shelves, catching on the amount of dust that had started to accumulate on them. Despite the fact she’d shoved every last one of her trophies and photos from her performance days into that one box, she still found herself glancing at the shelves every time she entered her room. They used to fill her with joy and a sense of accomplishment and worth. But now, they just existed, hoping to maybe one day hold something else that filled her with those same feelings.
I mean, never say never, assuming that you survive the plot crashing into your life, anyways.
She threw herself onto her unmade bed after tossing her bag to the floor. Lying there, she allowed herself to really take a second to decompress. Forget the day, forget work, forget her team’s shenanigans. She just concentrated on relaxing.
She hoped, in some way, shape or form, tomorrow would steer clear of the weird brushes with the past. Just a day at Santalune Pokemon Academy, focused on nothing but training. That was all she was asking for.
A small crash sounded from the family room, followed by a cacophony of angry shouts from her Pokemon. She cringed to herself and took the deepest breath she could muster.
I thought the chapter was pretty decent. Not a whole lot happened plot-wise, or at least as far as I can tell, but I’m pretty sure that the point of this chapter was to get a better glimpse of Noel and especially Odette and their worlds, and to give glimpses that something is really, really not normal with Odette before their lives get upended by the plot in like a chapter or two. To that end, I think that it does its job pretty well, since I was honestly expecting Venira to just casually burst out onto the stage at a couple points in this chapter.
As for things that I was less fond of, there’s not a whole lot since I thought the chapter was pretty well written. There were a couple typos and missing words here or there that could’ve been found by yeeting the chapter text into Google Docs or a comparable program with a built-in grammar checker, but those were pretty infrequent. I think that the bigger issue was that there were some sections that were a little hard to follow or visualize from lack of description, but I’ll leave it to you to decide whether or not it’s worth your time and energy to tweak that.
Congratulations on the chapter @Sinderella . Not all of it is quite my cup of tea, but it’s certainly a solid piece, and I can definitely see how you built a following for your story. I’ll be looking forward to whenever I get a chance to see the plot really get rolling, since just from the buildup, I can already tell it’ll be quite something.
