Cyg snaps her fingers. “Yes, that’s a great idea.”

She turns to his Metagross when he lets it free. “Do you know what frequency your Beldum speak on?” she asks it, head cocked in question. “If not, could you run through them real quick so we can find one?”

She steps back so the Metagross can get to work. “Once we have the signal, it’ll be easy. The Beldum just… watch, and they ping their optic feed along this signal back to the Metagross, who then stores it for when you want to see.”

She considered, again, the possibility that she was helping him infringe on multiple privacy violations.

DEREK HOFFMAN [break]wearing | hair

Cyg’s unique approach to battling was to hit everything really hard. Sorry, Adrian Malcolm . Sorry to disappoint.

“Yeah, of course,” she said, flashing him a finger-gun and shrugging like she could be anything but candid, anything but 100% herself. “So you ready to beat the crap out of my kids, or what?”

The more he talked, the more her heart sank, the more oh, nos piled up in her brain. Diverse battle strategy? “You mean there’s other strategies besides hit it really hard?” she asked, throwing in a laugh to diffuse tension. “Kidding, kidding.”

Wow, Adrian had a whole ass collection of badges. Cyg just had the one, and she didn’t even keep that thang on her.

He explains that he does, indeed, like to hit things really hard, and she nods along with him. He releases his Pokemon and Cyg realizes she should do that, too. But she doesn’t have a strategy, as has been previously mentioned. Her brain falls into the same, well-worn treads: play to the type matchup. But that’s just what Adrian told her not to do, kind of?

“Uhhh, okay. Give me a second to… use my brain. Get the little hamster running.” She goes to the kiosk and scrolls through her PC, thinking. So many ideas, so little time. She takes a couple options (three different combos, to see if any of them have any success) and returns to her place.

She releases first her Venusaur, Mairwen, and her Spiritomb, Sinistree.

Adrian lays his caltrops down and-- tells his Oranguru to use instruct. Which should fail, if no moves have been used before it. Right?

“Mairwen, use poison powder on the Oranguru. Sin, follow it up with hex.”

Because she knows that hex is extra powerful against Pokemon with status conditions. See? Strategy.

SPIRITOMB is exerting her PRESSURE!
SPIRITOMB is poisoned by TOXIC SPIKES!
VENUSAUR uses POISON POWDER on ORANGURU!
SPIRITOMB uses HEX on ORANGURU!

Adrian Malcolm

☉

Not having intricate knowledge of Zev’s schedule meant there was always a chance she’d show up on a night when he was elsewhere.

So if this wasn’t providence, Cyg didn’t know what else could be, because then he was in front of her, people-pleasing grin and all. She returned it, her own smile easy, one elbow on the bar.

“Yeah,” she confirmed, smelling the sweet taste of clear, berry-flavored rum on the air for the briefest of seconds, followed by the nose-closing sting of acrid vanilla-hinted rubbing alcohol she’d been chasing with on that summer night. “You got stuff to get you drunk or you got stuff to enjoy, y’know?”

Of course, he knew. He was a bartender.

“Cygne,” she said, offering a hand, “I can’t remember if we were formally introduced.”

Zev Harcourt
wearing
:wave:

☉