Cyg didn’t say anything, not wanting to add insult to injury to Mars’ Dragapult. Not that Xanthos realized he was a bit of the butt of the joke. Cyg’s own Pokemon were slow growers, and that was partially on her, but also because she didn’t necessarily believe on evolution stage equaling strength; it was fine to have all super rapidly evolved Pokemon, but they missed out on a lot of the development in between-- like Xanthos here.

Sure, she was mostly just saying that to avoid feeling like a bad Pokemon trainer, but everyone had to have their defenses, right?

“That would be nice,” Cyg said, crossing her fingers. “I’m hoping for your Unown.”

Almost on cue, a Mismagius materialized out of the darkness behind him; and Cyg’s face fell as Atticus dispatched the looming creature with another Night Slash.

“Sorry. Maybe I’m just bad luck,” she said, collecting the ghost in a Pokeball.

“Uh, a Totodile. His name is Gremlin and I love him immensely but he is… he’s a monster.”

At hearing the name, Atticus began making a throttling gesture, a la Homer Simpson.

“Yeah. He’s like that,” Cyg said, motioning to her Zoroark.

---

notes catch attempt mismagius ghost/psychic babie <3

Martín del Mar

☉

His frustration is brief but she can still sense it-- it’s in the way his skin taxes around his cheekbones, the shift of his glasses on the wrinkled bridge of his nose. Cyg feels bad. She feels it’s her fault they haven’t attracted any Unown, which is a ridiculous thing to feel, given that it’s one species out of nine-hundred-and-something. But still. She can’t help the hunch that she’s like an old, bad penny-- she just keeps coming back.

It’s gone in an instant and he’s proclaiming he doesn’t believe in luck. She smiles at him. It doesn’t reach her eyes.

“Guess all we can really do is… be out here,” she says, turning to look as they pass a deceptively empty field. As a horror buff, Cyg’s done lots of research, and so she knows this is a potter’s field, a single monument in the center marking it thus. Buried beneath the soil are the remains of countless unidentified people and Pokemon. Mt. Pyre is a large place, and it has a number of these scattered throughout the more well-tended and well-marked areas.

“Before modern technology and identification,” Cyg said, a streak of passion slithering into her voice, “when people would go traveling, sometimes they’d end up whole Regions away from home, with no ID, no money, no phone. They’d die and no one would have any idea who they were, no way to contact next of kin. They became the property-- and problem-- of where they died. So they buried them here, in fields like this.”

He may have already known. But it was still something important to her, however macabre. Poor sods off to seek their fortunes, dying of dysentery or mauled by Pokemon, left to rot in an unmarked grave.

Something tickled across her neck and for a second Cyg thought it was just the goosebumps of a scary thought. But the Frillish dangled next to her and, at this point in the night, she was so tired of jump scares that she just waved it away. Atticus dealt with it accordingly, and Cyg collected it in a Pokeball as it floated, feather-soft, to the ground.

---

notes catch attempt frillish ghost/psychic babie <3

Martín del Mar

☉

Cyg shrugged, feeling a bit sheepish and slightly creepy. “I-- like scary stories,” she said, wondering just how deep into this hole she wanted to get. Did she really want to come out as the world’s foremost amateur graveyard expert? God, she needed more socially appropriate hobbies.

Still, it helped when he put the words macabrely poetic on it because she’d have said the same thing, just maybe less fancy. “Yeah,” she agreed, thankful he hadn’t played the get a load of this weirdo card. But that’s what was nice about Mars-- he was always surprising her in the littlest ways. Or the biggest ways. Or just the ways that made her feel like he teetered right on the edge of feeling sorry for her but not actually crossing that line.

There was the sound like metal clashing off of metal and Cyg turned in the Illumina light to see Atticus’ shadow at the edge of her vision where he was facing off against a Gallade. Claw on blade, they clashed and came a part. “Ooh, ooh, I need that,” Cyg said, hopping off the path and doing her best high-step to tip-toe across a series of final resting places. “I need it and it needs to be better than Felix Gallagher ’s. Eat my ass, Gallagher.”

Atticus got in a lucky night slash that brought the Gallade down to one knee. Before he could get back up and re-enter the fray, Cygne baseball pitched a Pokeball at his head. It hit with enough force to tilt it, before absorbing the Gallade in a blur of light.

“Yes!” Cyg said, double-fist pumping the air. Her foot scraped against a horizontal gravemarker, mostly buried in the dirt. “Oops. Sorry.”

---

notes catch attempt gallade ghost/psychic babie <3

Martín del Mar

☉

Cyg holds the newly-captured Gallade’s Pokeball in her hands, staring at it like it’s a priceless gem that’s just dropped out of the sky. “Ah, Perseus. The slayer of Medusa and up there next to Jason on the list of Greek heroes who were actually sort of terrible.” She makes her way back to Mars, being extra careful to avoid the gravemarkers, this time. “I think I’ll name mine Excalibur.” Because of course she will.

She doesn’t know if Felix’s Gallade has a name and she figures he probably doesn’t because Felix would have to have a personality to name his Pokemon. And she smiles at her secret little joke.

“Here’s a question for you that’s totally arbitrary and has absolutely no bearing on real life at all,” she said, suddenly surprising herself. She gestured over at the gravesites with a wave of her hand. “So when I was a teenager I did a bit of amateur ghost hunting and as you’d imagine it came up bunk. But there was one girl in my psychology class that said that traipsing around graveyards in the dark with cameras hoping to catch lost spirits was ‘super disrespectful’. But I don’t think the dead really care that much on account of them being, you know, dead.”

She looked at Mars. “What do you think?”

---

notes passing! ghost/psychic babie <3

Martín del Mar

☉