Zia made a long, slow loop above Mt. Pyre, taking in the damages from the unexpected landslide that happened earlier in the year. It was a cool early-summer day and the clouds were a refreshing mist around them; Onyx pressed a hand between her shoulderblades and leaned forward, directing her down.

Onyx hates cemeteries. For someone who had no qualms about putting people in the ground he certainly didn’t care to see it actually happen. He’d been to a single funeral in his life and most of his memories of it were repressed, and for good reason.

Zia lands well wide of the gravesites, and Onyx hops off; his raven rises again, to keep an eye out for wild Pokemon.

After a short meander, he stumbles upon another individual; he doesn’t seem morose enough to be a mourner.

“Find anything good yet?” he asks, more to fill the silence-- he hates cemeteries-- stopping a short distance away. Ziadem’s shadow, ever watchful, crosses over them both.

Adrian Malcolm

☉

Well, that was to be expected. It was’t exactly like Mt. Pyre was a teeming wilderness of Pokemon-- though it had its fair share of cultivated greenspaces, ornamental shrubbery, and thick, ominous weeping willows towering along the far treeline. There were plenty to be found, of course, but it all depending on where you looked.

Onyx decides he likes this guy. Something in the mistrustful stare that reminds him a bit of himself. Like looking into a mirror that makes your reflection slightly better groomed.

“No,” he echoes, honest in turn. His face is a wry smile. “Just… out and about on what promises to be a beautiful night.” His gaze shifted briefly to the headstone the stranger leaned against-- just for the briefest of seconds. He caught the scent of wet dirt and salty tears. Then it was gone again, like the ozone left behind by lightning.

There was a wet tearing sound as Ziadem landed between them, gripping a Malamar in her talons. She had one tentacle pinched close to the body-- the strange, opaque, gray flesh was turning blue with blood there-- while the other lashed at her, trying to get a grip around her shoulders or head. She was too fast, using drill peck to sink her beak into its weakly pulsating yellow spots, marring their hypnotic powers with the squid’s own haemocyanin.

Eventually, the beast stopped flopping, and Zia quorked happily, stepping off her prize and over to a nearby headstone, where she went to sharpening and cleaning her beak. Onyx caught the weakened Malamar in a Pokeball, swiping a foot through the blue traces of ichor left behind.

“Might have been a tad overkill, Zia,” he said, though his voice was all pride.

The raven burbled her displeasure, fluffing her feathers.

im a dumb binch that likes fight scenes. catch attempt malamar
Adrian Malcolm

☉

Onyx wasn’t the type to take happiness from the mauling of Pokemon, either. In all honesty he preferred to settle matters with his own two fists, and he liked to think he was wise enough to not pick fights with creatures that warped or broke the laws of physics and reason.

Humans, however, he had no mercy for.

Unfortunately, Zia was much the same when it came to her own kind.

“Yeah,” he agreed, watching the orb shrink in his hand as he slid it into his belt. “She, uh, does tend to put the ‘kill’ in overkill.” Which came in handy in Onyx’s line of work. But, somewhere along the line, she’d lost her off-switch.

Zia preened at the praise, strutting over to stand by her trainer.

“Onyx,” he said, returning the greeting. “And this is Ziadem.”

The raven in question saw something that caught her eye and hop-flapped away.

At the mention of Unown, Onyx’s head tilted. “You’re the second guy I’ve run into who’s only been out for Unown,” he said, thinking of the deep, waterfall filled caverns. He knew of the Unown Report, even if he didn’t know about it.

He shrugged. “You’re welcome to them.” It was above his paygrade, he expected. He was just the muscle, after all.

There’s a slicing sound, like a knife on a sharpener, and Onyx turns to watch Zia bisect a Gastly with Steel Wing; the purple cloud flows back together like thick, viscous liquid-- disrupted, but physically uninjured. Zia pivots and does it again, preventing the creature from repairing itself entirely, allowing Onyx to catch it in a Pokeball without too much resistance.

catch attempt gastly
Adrian Malcolm

☉

Onyx wasn’t the type to go slinging names and personal information around. If these wackos wanted to hunt down Unown, that was their business. When they wanted someone punched out without bruising their own knuckles, that’s when he would come in. Not that they were pansies, of course. But every now and then, people with something to lose had to keep their hands clean; it was just a fact of life.

People like Onyx didn’t have anything to lose.

So he shrugged, hands in his pockets. “Didn’t catch his name. Tall, dark, mysterious.”

He turns to let Adrian walk past him, following a half-step behind and to the side with steady footsteps. It’s a Gallade and a Dottler, the former’s physical blows beings reflected off the latter’s hard shell; though the Dottler’s pulsing lights were getting dimmer with each strike.

Onyx whistled, shrill and sharp, and Ziadem shot past them, blindsiding the Gallade and allowing the Dottler to make a hasty retreat. She caught one of the Gallade’s arms in her talons and bore it to the ground, savaging it with a flurry of drill pecks.

Onyx bounced a Pokeball off the Gallade’s lower half.

Zia retrieved the Pokeball, dropping it in Onyx’s outstretched hand.

“What’s all the hubbub with Unown?” he asked, making casual conversation, trying to convince himself he wasn’t at all curious.

catch attempt gallade
Adrian Malcolm

☉

He regards Adrian with a slightly raised eyebrow. “Are they? Hm.” Part of him feels like he should know more. Obviously, the impending end of the world is forefront on everyone’s mind.

But, truth be told, Onyx didn’t really give a rats ass about the world. He barely cared about himself. He could die tomorrow and it would be a nonevent. The sort of detachment he had to cultivate for survival spread to all facets of his life like gangrene through a limb.

He turns fully to face Adrian as the other man displays the Unown Report for him to see. And he does, in fact, pick up on the name. It’s either the same person or a coincidence, and Onyx doesn’t believe in coincidences.

“So you hunt down the Unown and… what? Scan ‘em? And then you get a bunch of codewords spit out?” Onyx asked, frowning. “That’s a bitch of a word search for the end of the world.”

Zia angrily pursued a Rotom, the static of its body causing her feathers to lift and stand on end. A sheen came over her wings and she crashed a steel wing into the mote of light, causing it to jar between the metal and less conductive stone of a nearby grave. Shaken, the Rotom spun off, wobbly in the air, and Onyx nailed it with a Pokeball.

”So there’s a bit of friendly competition between the Unown hunters, I’d wager?”

catch attempt rotom
adrian boutta make a friend
Adrian Malcolm

☉