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

☉

Onyx could listen no more in silence.

For several long minutes, he’d listened to a player at a nearby table berate their poor waitress for everything, from the strength of his drink, to the luck of his rolls.

Little did he know, the game was rigged. There was no winning-- not for him.

In order for the plan to work, though, he didn’t get to know that.

So the waitress bore the brunt of his aggressions, repeatedly. Over and over. And Onyx would be the first to say he wasn’t a decent guy-- he treated people like shit more often than not. But there was only so much he could listen to the grating, half-slurred voice of a drunk, angry, soon-to-be-broke dickbag, before his very thin film of patience ripped like a virginal hymen when met with a lusty and careless lover.

He was there, of course, to keep the peace. That was what he was paid to do. So when he reached out and grabbed a half-empty glass-- not his own, but not one currently being used-- stood and chucked it at the guy before sitting back down again, he figured that was exactly what he was doing: keeping the peace.

The glass hit the angry man in the back of the head and shattered, sending a spray of glass splattered with little droplets of blood scattering to the ground. Luckily, most of the people nearby had the same idea Onyx did, and had moved for their own peace of mind long before.

Unfortunately, the glass wasn’t nearly heavy enough to do any real damage. The blustering man stood up, even more red faced, bellowing “WHO DID THAT?!”

There was a shocked silence that followed before Onyx stuck up one pale arm and pointed to some poor schmuck sitting at the bar next to him, without turning to look.

“They did.”

open
mission

☉

Onyx, unfortunately, had a tendency to pick up the lost and unwanted Pokemon in the world. It was apparent in almost every single member of his motley crew. If he’d been the type to stop and think about things, maybe he would’ve taken it as a sign… but he wasn’t a thinking man. He was a doing man. Preferably, a punching man.

So it was even more strange that Andres made him want to do things other than punch. It was a virile reaction bordering on cute aggression but just this side of the line of wanting to squeeze him till his eyeballs popped out.

Onyx watched Andres disentangle himself from the situation, his own fight or flight response ticking down. After Andres checked to make sure the coast was clear, Onyx strode confidently forward. One weirdo acting suspiciously was one weirdo acting suspiciously. Two was a trend. Before he could get too far he felt Andres’ hand on his arm. He opened his mouth to protest but before anything could come out he was being pulled forward by a strong grip.

He finds, suspiciously, that he is happy to be led. Well, maybe ‘happy’ isn’t the right word. Content. Unwilling to protest. It’s sickening.

He’s quiet as Andres leads them home-- leads them to his home-- and Onyx realizes it’s because he’s still relishing the feeling of Andres’ grip on his arm, the strange sort of chill that’s crawling through his skin. Andres is talking to fill up the space caused by the silence and he’s sort of half-listening. It isn’t awkward-- not to Onyx.

He’s not entirely sure what he’s feeling. He lets the chatterbox talk. Because there’s this sort of foreign sensation in his bones and it’s deliriously closed to relaxation. Part of it is he doesn’t feel threatened by Andres. Part of it, unconsciously, is noticing that Andres has done nothing but try to placate and please them since their reintroduction. It’s deceptive. It’s dangerous. Onyx isn’t the type of person that can relax, not all the way. He doesn’t get that luxury.

But you can dip your feet, every once in a little while?

Juliette makes a little aborted noise of protest when Pepino leaps from her arms and then they’re at Andres’ apartment and they’re in the elevator, together, alone, but not really alone.

Onyx stands helpfully (read: useless as a wet blanket) in the doorway, sizing Chuchi up with a raised eyebrow of expectation. He is, at all times, ready to throw down with the obese, rabid rat. But Andres puts a stop to it before anything can happen and he’s coming out of his own bedroom and--

Onyx narrows his eyes.

“Parfait?” he parrots back, stepping in and pulling the door closed behind him. Out of instinct, he locks it. A habit. A survival technique.

He sort of just… stands near the doorway. Waiting to see what happens. Ready to run at a moment's notice, taking everything in with an eye for detail. Escape routes. Windows. Objects to hide behind. A survival tactic, all wrapped up in the guise of a judgemental look.

This is fine. He doesn’t like this. He doesn’t know why he doesn’t like this. It’s too familial. It’s too comfortable. It’s too safe.

He notes something wedged between the cushions on the back of the couch and, without thinking, reaches out to grab it. It’s fabric, an article of clothing-- a lace-embellished bralet in a rosy shade of pink.

He holds the offending thing between two fingertips, dropping it on the floor.

“Yours?” he asks, unable to bite back the snark that rises from somewhere twisting inside of him, unbidden.

andres buenaventura
local jackass processes the first positive emotion he's felt in sixteen years

☉

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

☉

Onyx’s gaze was pure poison, acidic and corrosive-- but for once, it wasn’t aimed at Andres. He was shooting it at Romeo, who Juliette was still clinging to by the tufts of hair on his head. “No,” he spat, repulsion evident in his tone, “he came that way. I found him trying to climb up skirts at an Oldale Farmer’s Market and someone didn’t want to leave him behind or kill him.” His eyes shot up to Juliette, who, at least, had the grace to look sheepish. “Though it would’ve been doing the world a favor.”

Juliette turned her head, preening under Andres’ praise.

Onyx was about to insist they split up-- like hell he was going back to Andres’ place-- but he had to admit, the asshole had a point. The part of Onyx that had been integrated, trained, broken down and beaten into, reshaped for this life, this job, couldn’t argue with the promise of another bolthole-- especially one as inconspicuous as the house of someone he blatantly hates.

“Sure,” he says, pushing up off the SUV and cracking his neck. He shoots Andres a withering glare when he holds up his pilfered trophies, and was about to say something about good for you, a participation award when Andres has to bring up his fucking tits. Having spent a decent portion of the last ten minutes imagining Andres on his knees and begging for-- for something, Onyx really did not need the man pointing out that, for all his faults, physically he was an amazing specimen of a human being.

With amazing tits.

He honestly would've been totally fine to never think of them as 'tits', either, but the rush of heat running to his groin showed that it was apparently, cranking his gears, and he hated it.

He had already turned away, luckily, so Andres didn’t see the red blaze that exploded across his face.

“No,” he grit out through clenched teeth, willing himself back under control. He shoved a hand in his jacket pocket and found Romeo’s Pokeball before zapping the little perv back where he belonged. “And stay in there,” he said, holding the Pokeball up to his face, “or else next time I’l let Ziadem have you.”

Juliette shifted Pepino to both her arms, holding him like an actual puppy, before looking at Andres and asking tuff-Wigglytuff?

Where to?

andres buenaventura

☉