The news of rogue and rampant Absols was on every station, every bottom line marquee, every front page at this point. Civilians were being warned to stay close to home and not go adventuring, especially after dusk; the Rangers were out on numerous emergency calls, and grainy, cryptid-like sightings of Absol in people’s neighborhoods, roads, and yards were popping up on every social media page.

Something was coming, something bad.

And yet, the world, for the moment, continued to spin. People managed to ignore the signs, such as they were, that badness was about to happen.

Cyg hummed a thoughtful note, fingertips trailing over the scarred trunk of a tree. The mark, a ragged slice through the rough, brown bark betraying the delicate white of the tree, was perfect Absol height and leaking a reddish sap that looked surprisingly like blood.

“Nice touch,” Cyg thought, filing that away in her horror movie idea rolodex.

Most of the trees had been marked up as such. Honestly, all that was missing was the degloved animal, strung up and hanging by its own entrails. She added that to her cognitive idea book, too, and pressed on, Mairen’s heavy footfalls a comforting thump, thump, thump in her wake.

She pushed through a collection of willow saplings into a narrow, but well worn, path, just in time to see some kid eat absolute shit in the dirt.

“Holy shit,” Cyg said, in that wavery tone that suggested she was holding back laughter, “are you okay?” She approached the poor guy, fighting down a grin, but that was just a response to the awkwardness of the situation, promise.

Isaac Merlo

☉

Luckily, the guy jumped up as if nothing had happened, which was great because Cyg was not in any mood to be doing field medical care. Her joy was short lived because he asked his Totodile for help and the little crocodile absolutely wrecked him in the face with a Hydro Pump.

The laugh she’d been holding back burst forward even as she clapped her hands over her mouth. Wow, was this what it was like meeting her? Where everything seemed to go wrong and she just looked like an idiot? Oh, god, her heart went out to this dude. No wonder Felix Gallagher thought she was a nightmare.

“I’ll bet,” she said, wiping a stray tear out of the corner of her eye. “Thank you, that was entertaining. Ah, shit.”

She cleared her throat as the guy asked if he knew her from somewhere; she took a better look at his face, his skin reddened from being blasted with water. He was kind of cute, but he also looked like he could be her little brother, in a way. She didn’t know if that was a good or bad thing.

“Work?” she finally volunteered, as it dawned on her that she must’ve seen him around the Rocket sub. It was a vague stab, at best. “I’m Cygne.”

Isaac Merlo

☉

The subway, he says, and she can’t help but bark another laugh, because, “I was going to say that exact same thing,” and oh, god, they had the same brain, that was terrifying. “Yes, the subway. Good lord.” She hadn’t laughed this hard in a while.

“Hi, Isaac. Hi, Watson. This is Mairwen.” She gestured with an open palm to the Venusaur that lumbered up beside her, then. “And, yeah, we’re Absol hunting. Though I’m not entirely sure what we’re hoping to find.” Crazed Absols? The secret to success? Portal to another world?

It was Hoenn, so, anything was possible.

She laughed again when he called himself a disaster. “God, same. I got stuck to a tree last week. I feel it.”

Isaac Merlo

☉

She could kind of see where his brain was going with this and she wanted to shut it down-- if he was going to get the correct impression of her, he needed to have the full story.

She held up a hand. “Not stuck up a tree. Stuck to a tree. With honey. Sticky, sticky honey.” And then Felix had come to rescue her and it had been one of the most embarrassing things that had ever happened in her life. Which was already a pretty long list.

Getting blasted in the face by your own Totodile would probably be up there as well.

“Yeah, it was easier than you might imagine,” she said, watching Watson clamber up his trainer like he was a tree of his own. “I just leaned back against it and bam, stuck.” And the more she talked the more she realized that Isaac was kind of right and the two of them were Absol magnets.

Oh, the horror.

“Let’s walk and talk,” she said, stepping up to join him and Watson, “if you can manage without falling on your face, that is. I wanna hear about the bees.”

Mairwen lowed to let them know to go on without her, she’d catch up.

Isaac Merlo

☉

Listen, she knew what she was about. She didn’t want anyone to be getting the wrong impression and thinking of her as-- as intelligent, or anything. She liked to surprise people with her dexterity and ability to not get stuck to trees on a regular basis. Also, he had tripped and fallen on his face and then invited his own Totodile to blast him with Hydro Pump. He had little room to gloat, here.

“Yep, just tip back, and boom. Tree ornament, and not the holiday kind,” she said, shrugging. “And I like to think that trouble doesn’t find me, but I find trouble.” Yeah, that sounded cool. She was really good at this socialization thing.

The sap-honey thing still made her laugh, even if it was at her own expense. It did draw her attention back to the mutilated trees that were surrounding them, evidence of why they were out there in the first place.

“I haven’t met her,” Cyg said, “but I know of her.”

She listened as he recounted the tale, giggling where it was appropriate.

“Oh, that’s actually kind of scary,” she said, still mid-snicker, “you could’ve gotten really hurt.”

For science, though. She mock-shuddered.

“That’s why I’m a mechanic. It’s like science but less guesswork.” Gear meets rod meets force means engine. It was simple, easy, clean. She could do chemistry, as was evidenced by her work with Elisabeth Fiorelli , but it wasn't her favorite of the applied sciences.

Isaac Merlo

☉

You get your hands dirty sometimes. Cyg shrugged, eyes casting down to the crunching dirt beneath her boots; working with Elisa didn’t feel like getting her hands dirty, but she was sure there were a number of… ahem, deliveries, that didn’t go towards the best of reasons. She wondered when she’d stopped caring. She wondered if that bothered her.

But that was a heavy thought for a light moment.

“I… guess,” Cyg allowed, struggling with the idea of trusting another human being enough to let them cover her with bees. She’d let Elisabeth Fiorelli do it. “But that’s-- that’s a hell of a risk for a favor.”

Isaac, she decided, was entirely too trusting and needed to be protected.

Oh, no.

“Yep, went to school for it, and everything,” she said, shoving that weird thought to the back of her head and smiling again. “Well, electrician’s school, but, I’ve always been pretty good at both.” It’s the only thing she’s ever been good at, actually. “I used to work for Mauville. Fixing the city, you know-- junction boxes, splicing wires, basic maintenance. Like a little hive of bees.” Her voice became a little strained, before flattening out. “Now I just… tinker on anything I can get my hands on.”

Motorcycle. If she’d had animal ears, they’d have perked up.

“What kind of motorcycle?”

Isaac Merlo

☉

“Yeah, you’re waaaaaay braver than I am,” Cyg confesses, giving a fake shudder at the mention of babysitting. “Urgh, children.” She’s thankful Elisabeth has never roped her into anything like that. Maybe she just… picked better friends than Isaac.

The deflection worked, and maybe because she used humor to de-escalate tense situations all the time (it was, like, her only coping mechanism) she didn’t even recognize it. “No, completely intentional,” she said, laying the sarcasm on thick. “But also, very apt. Mauville is just… one big illusion. Greater Mauville Holdings is the queen. The rest of us? Rank and file worker bees. Brainless drones.” She rolled her eyes, because here she was droning on. “It was just the sort of job that sucked the life out of you day by day and that’s why I started working at Subway.” She snickered.

She can’t quite stop herself when he tells her what kind of motorcycle he has, though. “Oh my god noooooooooooo,” she gasps, covering her mouth but not in time, “those are so ugly. Isaac, no.” He looks so proud, too.

She reaches out and puts a gentle hand on his shoulder.

“You are so, so brave,” she says, voice a reverent whisper, but the smile sneaking its way onto her lips reveals the mockery beneath it.

Isaac Merlo

☉