it’s totally still late august when a nondescript young man reaches the beach.[break][break]

unacclimated to hoenn's humidity, the walk has still left him bedraggled — white shirt sticking to his tacky skin, the inflamed red stripe of a sunburn peeling off the bridge of his nose. he has abandoned the glamour of sunglasses in favour of being able to actually see where he’s going, but has to squint past the glare of the surf and the sweat fogging up his prescription lenses anyway.[break][break]

andrea, thankfully, is easy enough to spot in the crowd. [break][break]

he picks his way around beach towels and ducks stray volleyballs, past a band of gawking men, rounding by the back of her towering exeggutor to step up behind her.[break][break]

“hey,” nagi says, raising his hand in a wave. "nice glasses."

[break][break]

[attr="class","ooc"] Andrea Vaneau [break]


[attr="class","pkspr pkmn-litwick"]

Andrea waited and waited for a long time, but she never lost her optimistic spirit. She knew that her friend would show up eventually. Lo and behold, a rather sunburnt Nagi arrived, his glasses gleaming under the sunlight and becoming a pair of white rectangles.

"Nagi! Long time no see!" The swimsuit-clad girl immediately pounced on the unsuspecting youth, wrapping her arms around him, her big and squishy chest touching his in a wholesome hug of friendliness. Granted, that's not how the beach's resident peeping toms saw it, who fancied Nagi to be the young woman's boyfriend and glared at him with envy.

"Wait, what happened to your nose?" Andrea asked in a concerned tone, lightly touching the tip of the boy's sunburnt nose with her index finger. "Are you only gonna comment on my glasses? Haven't you noticed anything else new?" The girl added with a wide smile, obviously referring to her swimsuit, but she bounced up and down just to clue him in further.

Boing. Boing.

The men watching practically passed out, blood oozing from their nostrils.

nagi miwa //outfit reference

☉

disentangling himself from andrea's hold with a rapid backstep, nagi draws away far enough that he can study his not-girlfriend, erstwhile tearoom-mate in full again.[break][break]

why, andrea, what big plots you have there. [break][break]

bystanders fall into paroxyms behind him. eyes drawn by instinct towards movement, nagi's gaze follows the rhythmic bob of the patterned fabric and other attached, extraneous portions with blank incomprehension. he doesn't see the fuss: unlike symon blessing 's rippling pectorals, which had been a source of prickling envy and inadequancy in those days ago on the deserted island, andrea's assets are a fact of anatomy. even if they do move a lot.[break][break]

(this is a thought that does not require further scrutiny, nagi decides.)[break][break]

with the fine-tuned fashion sense of someone whose beachwear consists of an ancient, well-worn t-shirt and bargain bin shorts, nagi narrows his eyes, looks andrea up and down, and says: "... nice twintails?"

[break][break]

[attr="class","ooc"] Andrea Vaneau [break]


[attr="class","pkspr pkmn-litwick"]

One would expect the young woman to get mildly upset when Nagi took a long, respectful look at her and elected to compliment her hair rather than her voluptuous body, but in lieu of that, Andrea beamed with joy. "They are pretty nice, aren't they?" She remarked, laughing softly. She hadn't met symon blessing IC-ly, but his pectorals were indeed impressive. Her meaty balloons were no match for him.

The swimsuit-clad girl sat down on her beach blanket, underneath the ample shade provided by her Alolan Exeggutor. "Come here." She invited the red-nosed youth, patting the spot on the sand next to her. "Tell me how you've been. We had quite the crazy adventure recently, hadn't we?" She mustered an uneasy smirk. Calling the whole conundrum on The Cloud a 'crazy adventure' was kinda downplaying its levity, but she needed some way to break the proverbial ice.

nagi miwa //outfit reference

☉

and like the proverbial ice, he freezes over.[break][break]

it’s just like andrea, to steer without preamble into the advancing prow of a conversational dreadnaught. headstrong, charging-ever-forwards in single-minded pursuit — a dreadnaught of a girl. all while nagi stands paralyzed, boxed in against the polished wall of the tea atelier’s toilet and clutching desperately at his belt loops, his synapses disconnected from the situation at hand.[break][break]

but he is better prepared for handling this topic than for being pantsed in a public toilet — though he’s not sure which between the two is the more savoury prospect. [break][break]

“crazy.” he matches her forced levity with a brittle flash of his own grin. “i’m…” [break][break]

cross-legged in the sand, he picks at the edge of his sunburn, a blunt fingernail scratching at the periphery of his inflamed skin. his thoughts coagulate; he doesn’t need a hole in his throat to be speechless.[break][break]

“it’s been a lot to unpack.” [break][break]

he jerks his shoulders in a quick shrug.[break][break]

“you?”

[break][break]

[attr="class","ooc"] Andrea Vaneau [break]


[attr="class","pkspr pkmn-litwick"]

"Same here." The young woman admitted, hugging her long, bare legs, and gazing pensively at the horizon. "The world is so big, and I've barely ever been outside Hoenn. Now I've found out there's multiple worlds, and that the League is trying to kill one of them, while the DRK Triad is trying to kill the world we're on right now. It's definitely a lot to take in..."

Brody the Slowbro let out a lazy Yawn, and began walking towards the shoreline, slowly. Very slowly.

Andrea sighed. "Why are humans always trying to destroy instead of peacefully working things out? It makes me unhappy..." She mused, her eyes going downcast. So much for lightening the mood...

nagi miwa //outfit reference

☉

a single toneless hum of assent is the only solace nagi can offer. cold settles, despite the summer heat. [break][break]

absently, he wonders if this could be a source of andrea's longing. becoming a pokèmon doesn't sound so bad: away from the human propensity for conflict, warmongering, vice and malice. an uncomplicated life of self-preservation and survival; blue skies above and green grass below, and no multiversal threats to worry about. being able to hyper beam is a sweet bonus. [break][break]

or maybe he's just projecting.[break][break]

except — [break][break]

the words rise to his tongue slowly, as he dredges the memory of that day out to the fore: the crackling, towering xurkitree; dialga and palkia, writhing under mysterious bindings; the psychedelic assault of the unown. [break][break]

“... was it just humans?”

[break][break]

[attr="class","ooc"] Andrea Vaneau [break]


[attr="class","pkspr pkmn-litwick"]

After a painstakingly long amount of time, Brody had finally made it past the shore, wading in the water with that blank expression perpetually stuck on his face. Then, the chillest Slowbro in the world caught a big wave and Surfed on it in a surprising display for athleticism. Look at him go!

Andrea couldn't help but crack a smile at the display... a smile that faded as soon as she heard what Nagi said. The inner workings of the bespectacled youth's mind were an enigma, but the implication was obvious enough. "What do you mean? Are you talking about... the Pokémon?" The girl muttered.

nagi miwa //outfit reference

☉

despite his appearance of erudition, the inner machinations of nagi’s mind are an enigma even to himself. leaping from impression to impression, dotted curves drawn between inputs, there’s no systematic chain between the rube goldberg machine of spilled idea milk, chugging gears and whatever he ends up blathering from his mouth. it’s how his novel came into being — how he’d managed to churn out as many chapters as he did, in the few years he had: no thoughts. only write. [break][break]

he draws a line between two points in the air, as if trying to physically click-n-drag his own thoughts together. “they were hostile,” he says. “we hadn’t done anything yet.” [break][break]

his hand drops into the sand. his pupils follow the slowbro out in the surf, but his gaze is blank. “we had to fight, in there.”

[break][break]

[attr="class","ooc"] Andrea Vaneau [break]


[attr="class","pkspr pkmn-litwick"]

Nagi's words made her think back to the army of Porygon under Maldacena's command, the Unown with their ever mysterious motives, and the giant Xurkitree. Had those brutal battles even been real, or had they been naught but a simulation?

"Pokémon aren't evil. They only get hostile if they feel threatened, or if somebody invades their home, and we did invade The Cloud. It's no different than having to fight Pokémon out in the wild." Andrea reasoned, though part of her knew that it was only half true. For one, those Pokémon had clearly intended to kill them. Had they acted on instinct or under someone else's orders?

Like Nagi, the young woman focused her distracted gaze on the Surfing Slowbro, her arms wrapping more tightly around her legs. "What did you think of what Maldacena said about the meteorite?" She asked her fellow shell-shocked megane.

nagi miwa //outfit reference

☉

"which part?" he runs his nails across a scab on the back of his knuckle, feels it catch against the crackling, raised edge of the protrusion. "the one where we're the inevitable heat death of all universes and the meteorite is our guillotine?"[break][break]

blood smears, a wisp of thin pink where he's tugged the scab loose. his voice falls to low whisper.[break][break]

"i don't know. it's... mad. but everything about that day was."[break][break]

which makes what maldacena said, in all its far-flung madness, sound plausible. it's a harrowing thought. [break][break]

"you?"
[break][break]

[attr="class","ooc"] Andrea Vaneau [break]


[attr="class","pkspr pkmn-litwick"]

The young PokéManiac frowned. "I think that he was lying... or chose to say things in a particular way to make us believe what he wanted." What she described was known as gaslighting, but Andrea wasn't quite familiar with the term. She mindlessly wiggled her toes, sand caught between them. "Sure there are bad people out there, but to blame anyone of killing all universes just by existing... It's not fair!"

Frustrated as she was, Andrea caught a glimpse of Nagi toying with a scab on his skin, which was something people were specifically taught not to do since childhood. She grasped the boy's wrist, leaning close enough that some onlookers might get the wrong idea. "Nagi, are you OK?" She asked in a worried tone, staring pleadingly into his eyes. "I can't always tell if people are not OK. You'd tell me if you were not OK, right?"

nagi miwa //outfit reference

☉

andrea’s mistrust is echoed by nagi’s own; a suspicion slow to rise, but hard to shake. whatever their mystery saviour’s motivations for keeping them alive had been, altruism seems an unlikely component. even that final sacrifice they had been forced into at the very end of the trials had felt like a farce. a tragicomedy, some kind of bizarre snuff film. a puppet play, reenacted for someone’s amusement. [break][break]

his thoughts tumble. accelerate. a downward spiral at terminal velocity.[break][break]

something closes around his wrist. he doesn't realise it's andrea until he's a full foot away, arm tugged into the protective curl of his torso, sand dusted over his knees and legs from where he'd kicked at the ground in his mindless backwards lurch. [break][break]

“sorry.” the word bursts out of him in a single, sharp exhale. he repeats it for good measure. “sorry. i’m—”[break][break]

fine? nah, bro. for all his powers of self-persuasion, he can’t even fool himself.[break][break]

but, even so — it’s not andrea’s burden to carry. [break][break]

“i’ll be alright.” he waves his arm outward in a lackadaisical sweep — see, no problem! — before dropping it. his knuckles curl into his pants, pressing the raw, peeled edge of the scab into the fabric. it's said for his own benefit, as much as andrea's; if he says it enough, it has to true. “promise.”

[break][break]

[attr="class","ooc"] Andrea Vaneau [break]


[attr="class","pkspr pkmn-litwick"]