Tears were welling at the corners of her eyes as she tried and failed to get her laughter under control. Her chest started to hurt. This was an amazing feeling but also a portent of doom. She was, unfortunately, attracted most to people who could make her laugh-- so this spelled out nothing good.

Don’t think about it. Try not to think about it.

“Oh, my god,” she wheezed, pressing the heels of her hands into her eyes, “I haven’t laughed that hard in a long time.” And it just kept happening. How wonderful. How terrible.

And then “Oh, god,” again, a bit more dire that time, and she laid her forehead to rest across the span of her hand, looking across the restaurant floor, focusing somewhere on the middle distance. “It’s all uphill from here. Isn’t that the truth.” It was kind of sad. She didn’t have any terrible, forbidden secrets, but her own life had been so mediocre that it really was all uphill from here.

“Why did you join?” she asked, after taking another deep pull of her beer. “Did I ask that already? I laughed so hard I’ve forgotten.”

⚰︎ beer run

Isaac Merlo

“Mmh, okay,” she allowed, “you have a point. Watching you fall on your face and then take a Hydro Pump at point blank range was pretty friggin’ funny.” It would be one of her favorite memories for the rest of her life. And, as the official start of their friendship, it would be something she could bring up until they were both old and gray, provided they lived that long.

She listened to him talk and was surprised by how much they had in common. She’d joined Rocket for much the same thing-- she wasn’t anyone to the League, would never have a chance to be-- and Rocket gave her, not only the groundwork, but a frame to climb. She was a mechanic. She liked framework.

Yeah, the story of how he’d ended up here checked out. She’d only known him for a little bit, but it seemed very in line with What She Knew Of Isaac Thus Far.

“I took an aptitude test,” she said, a bit quiet. It sounded lame compared to his adventure. She had been told by THEO BECKETT that she scored high enough on it to warrant Rocket’s attention.

⚰︎ beer run

Isaac Merlo

“Yeah. An aptitude test.” Cyg said it like a confession like it was something heavy to get off her chest. "It was at, like, a little booth in a park. You took the test and got entered into a drawing for a gift card. It was only subtly hinted to be Rocket related.” But even then, she’d been more than okay with it.

She’d done it as a joke. Then a few weeks later, THEO BECKETT’d shown up at her job, wanting to talk to her.

“It was supposed to be secret, I think,” she said, turning her beer glass on the table, watching the concentric rings of condensation blur each other, “or at the very least not obvious. It was a lot of… interpersonal stuff. You are a leader; you enjoy working in a team; are you happy with the state-of-things-slash-the-government, et cetera. You circle 1-5 on the spectrum.” She shrugged. “Then it had some random skill questions on the bottom. I must’ve scored high enough to garner attention.”

⚰︎ beer run

Isaac Merlo

“I think Rocket is trying something new,” Cyg confessed, looking at her rapidly emptying beer glass. “I think they’re trying to be more of a… political movement. Like, rebranding. But it’s hard, obviously, when you’re an organization famous for cruelty and war crimes.” At least, that was the impression Cyg got, when she talked to people like Martín del Mar and Elisabeth Fiorelli.

In Isaac’s defense. Cyg wasn’t a master engineer or a ghost thief before she joined Rocket. She was just a journeyman Electrician.

She met his eye across the table. “Yeah, it was decidedly… undramatic.” She shrugged. “But your way sounds fun, too.”

⚰︎ beer run

Isaac Merlo

They were both dancing around the subject and the moral of the story was that Rocket probably wasn’t good, full stop end sentence no buts allowed. But… in a lot of ways, it was better (at least for Cyg) than the alternative. She was already significantly happier than she had been at GMH as a civvy.

Maybe that was the problem-- the selfish outlook. Maybe being happier being selfish than a rank-and-file worker bee operating for the Good of the Order meant she was a bad person. Maybe she should care about that.

“That’s what I’m worried about,” Cyg confessed. She flagged down the waitress and ordered another beer, then turned back to Isaac. “My hope is that I have more good in the next few months than drama. Maybe rob a few more jewelry stores. That was fun.” She shrugged. “What about you?”

⚰︎ beer run

Isaac Merlo

Isaac had a look on his face like he was trying to say something heavy but couldn’t get the words to come out right. Cygne was very familiar with the expression-- she’d had it a lot in the last few months, up until her departure from GMH, mostly in conversations with the mirror about her future and, you know, life in general.

But he didn’t, and, instead, he went with the classic I want to treat my team thing that every good guy in a regional radius says on first dates in order to sound cool. She didn’t want to call his bluff, so she gave him a knowing smile and a nod, accepted her next beer.

“You guys are like a big family, huh?”

⚰︎ beer run

Isaac Merlo

Isaac’s tone went just north of mushy-gushy when he talked about his team. Cyg smiled, feeling her own heart warm at his sentiments. “Yeah, I remember those days,” she confessed, having herself spent time in her Mudkip PJs dreaming about challenging the Pokemon League.

But her parents couldn’t afford a Pokemon, let alone to send their kid on a Journey of the region. It was all a pipe dream. Plus, Cyg wasn’t one for strategy-- her best technique was hitting things really hard and, sure, she had a team that worked well for it, but brute force only got you so far in the real world.

“Absolutely,” she confirmed, remembering quite vividly the image of Isaac taking a Hydro Pump point blank from his Totodile, “can confirm.”

She listened as he extolled the virtues of his Aggron and her smile couldn’t help but grow.

“It’s amazing, sometimes, how they know what we need,” she said. “I didn’t have my first Pokemon till I graduated trade school, but he’s my best friend.”

Ah, Feldspar. How the time flew. Once a teeny Grookey, now a gigantic Rillaboom, and still just content to sleep the day away.

⚰︎ i cant believe youre killing kiryu

Isaac Merlo