Halloween was, ironically, a custom that she’d had to get used to. Ostensibly it was because she was upper-class from Sinnoh, for whom going trick or treating was not exactly a big thing. But for once, that wasn’t exactly much of a lie to begin with. She had grown up somewhat detached from these matters. Living up in the mountains with only her family, all the hijinks people got up to never reached them. And since there had only been a TV in the living room and her parents had no interest in these matters, the most she ever saw regarding Halloween were ads related to it.
[break][break]
Hence, these sorts of things were decidedly new to her when she came to be Violet, proper. By now though, she had very much accustomed to it. Dressing up and randomly going out was not for her, no. But when she was asked to accompany another? That was right up her alley. After all, she kind of liked Cyg, so spending more time with the other was always good.[break][break]
However, that did not mean she would half-butt this. In fact, she gave it her all, with a white dress and make-up that made her seem even more pale than usual, as she went for a ghostly image of her own. The light wind helped, too, letting her hair billow properly as she let it run free. Maybe it was not the most complex costume, but she put all her skills to use to make the simple look like high quality, at the very least. “Yeeees…..I ammmmm…..” she replied, trying to get into the role a bit.
[break][break]

+ ana fell

[attr="class","pokeclass"]

Trick-or-Treating in Fortree, growing up, had been a different kind of fun. Walking across creaky, wavering bridges in the dark October night was not something that was touted as the ideal choice for children.

Vio had chosen to go as a ghost, or, like a Noonwraith (Cyg couldn’t remember what the Noonwraith’s midnight comparison had been… it wasn’t a Plague Maiden, it was… something else, she was sure). Her pale complexion was made all the more so with assistance from powder and she all but glowed in the moonlight (Moonmaiden? No… no. C’mon, Cyg, you’ve got, like, 500 hours in The Witcher 3, why can’t you remember this?)

Cyg grinned at her costumed compatriot. This was going to be fun. She spun a Pokeball in her hand and released Eulalia, her Hisuian Zoroark, who took one look at the job at hand and frowned. She was tired of being on lockpicking duty.

“C’mon, we ain’t got all night,” Cyg urged, voice slightly muffled from behind her mask, blonde hair slicked back to her scalp with hairspray and tied in a bun at the base of her neck.

Eulalia rolled her eyes and phased through the front door. There came the faint slicing sound of wires, and a few seconds later, the door lock clicked, and it swung open.

“Can’t be certain there are no silent alarms,” Cyg said, ushering Vio into the mall proper, “so let’s make this quick. Candy store should be just across the hall.” She pointed towards the ornate sign across the way.

Violet Fairbanks

☉

That was a nice little Zoroark. She should get herself one, too. At least that was what she thought of while watching the other’s antics. Not one to be left out though, she called forth her Dreepy, which casually joined the other. “With infiltrator we should be able to find silent alarms, at least,” she mused, watching the Pokemon go about their work. This was the kind of work that lil dreep was most accustomed to, so she had full confidence that he would find anything they might trip over. Which would probably buy them a little time at least. Not infinite though, since even as they closed the doors behind them, someone was bound to notice eventually. Heck, on a night like this they probably were not the only ones who had the idea to sneak in here and the Pokemeans to do so.
[break][break]
Kind of irresponsible of the owners not to anticipate. Then again, Rocket probably could only be as powerful as it was because so many people just operated on the honour system for the whole of society. Weird, really weird. Or maybe there would be opposition. “You sure there are no security guards afoot tonight of all nights?” Violet did follow in and walked towards the place, sure, but she was trying to be careful and quiet, only whispering this. To hopefully ensure only Cyg would hear. But who knew? Those halls seemed quite conductive to sound.
[break][break]

+ ana fell

[attr="class","pokeclass"]

Violet added her Dreepy to the mix to help take care of any silent alarms. Incredibly useful. “Why can’t you be handy like that?” she asked Eulalia, who turned to give her a deathglare. Cyg snickered, holding up her hands in surrender. “I’m just kidding, I’m just kidding.”

“I’m sure they’re around here somewhere,” she said, crouching low as Eulalia phased through the gaps in the security fence and fiddled with the door latch. It slid upwards with a hiss of hydraulics, opening the candy store for the taking. She was becoming an old pro at this. Two break-ins under her belt and she was already not worried about security.

Cyg had sprung for a small, insulated lunch pail, with some small ice packs to ensure the chocolate didn’t melt before it made it to its destination-- her and Isaac Merlo’s mouth, on her couch, watching scary movies. She headed right to the expensive section and grabbed the display box, dumped the fake display candies out, and began shoveling pricey milk chocolates into the cardboard.

“Help yourself,” she quietly called over her shoulder, gesturing around at the wide selection. “This isn’t a real job so no quotas to meet. I suppose you could check the cash register, too, if you wanted.” Not that Vio needed money, but, hey.

Violet Fairbanks

☉

Vio briefly smiled at the other’s interaction with her Pokemon. Cyg certainly was kind of an extroverted person, really. Sometimes, she wondered if the girl staged acts like this to appear cute, or if it just naturally developed. She would like it either way, just one was cuter, the other more respectable. In the sense that it was something to be respected. As much as that girl seemed to portray herself as the brawn sometimes, she was quite smart. The street-smart kind of thing, which had come across quite a bit back when they went to that cage match.
[break][break]
Then again, breaking into a mall with the express purpose of stealing candy, not money, electronics or jewellery was something else still. But she did not mind. Vio could easily stomach something like this, too. “Dreepy, you go and float about in a wide circle around us. If you see a guard, scare em good, then get outside and wait for us.” A good enough little plan, as far as she was concerned. On a night like this, running into a ghost type would not seem too out of place, in her opinion. And unless they threw a ball at it, they probably would chalk it up to a wild encounter, but they would still get an early warning.
[break][break]
Vio, in the meantime, followed along. She was in no hurry, more sauntering about and looking through things than rushing to find something specific. “Oh, I am sure there is something for my tastes too. You go ahead and stuff your bags with what you were looking for, though.” In fact, the cash register was tempting – but she kind of did not want to come across as if she needed the money. Hence, she instead started inspecting the fanciest chocolates they had to offer, trying to find something that would meet her most exquisite fake tastes. Maybe something with an infusion of cherry…
[break][break]

+ ana fell

[attr="class","pokeclass"]

Yeah, Cyg was good at a lot of things, but faking her personality was not one of them. With her, what you saw was what you got.

Vio continued to give orders to her Dreepy which continued to come in extremely handy. Man, I have got to get me one of those, Cyg thought, dumping a tray of fancy caramels into her bag; she was mentally scanning through her wide array of Pokemon and trying to remember if she, in fact, actually had ‘one of those’.

“I think they have chocolate bars made with real gold,” Cyg said, selecting the assortment of mint-flavored things next.

She hadn’t actually asked Isaac what his favorite candy was before she’d planned this little heist… so she had to be sure to grab a bunch of everything, just to be safe.

“Yuck, chocolate covered apples… no thank you.”

Violet Fairbanks

☉

“Why would anyone do that?” While Vio did act the part of a rich lady whenever she felt like it, at the end of the day she was not completely snobbish or anything like that. She knew a few things here and there about being practical. And using actual gold to make food just didn’t make much sense to her. That was just a waste one way or another. “They should rather focus on making the richest flavour, not use the most expensive ingredients.”
[break][break]
She just shook her head in pittance. Though one thing the other said did get her to perk up. “Do you not like apples in particular or chocolate-covered fruits in general? I personally am partial towards banana. That works reasonably well with the taste, at least in my opinion.” Violet continued to hold her conversation while picking up expensive looking things, ironically. Sure, she still held the opinion given, but since she had not actually tried those, she just assumed that price and taste were correlated.
[break][break]

+ ana fell

[attr="class","pokeclass"]

“To feel fancy, I guess,” Cyg said with a shrug as she gathered up said golden chocolate bars and stashed them away. “I feel like it would give you indigestion, though?” She had a brief flashback to polishing off a handle of Goldschlager in college and shuddered violently.

“I don’t… like fruit,” she admitted after a moment of thinking, trying to come up with a variance of the food group she enjoyed and only summarily succeeding in replacing the taste of Goldschlager at the back of her tongue with the taste of banana. She couldn’t decide which was worse.

“What about you? What’s your favorite kind of candy?” she moved onto a collection of sour sweets, taffies and drops, and Starburst knock-offs made with expensive-sounding things like yuzu.

Violet Fairbanks

☉

“Definitely. But I guess that is the price of pomp sometimes.” She shrugged, for she certainly knew what she was talking about there. Sometimes, the most difficult part of pretending to already be rich was stomaching that which the elite considered delicacies. Sure, she was not quite on the level of Cyg to mostly just want to scarf down junk food, but especially when it came to seafood, she just could not keep up with the taste of her perceived peers sometimes. Just couldn’t be helped, really.
[break][break]
But it was easy enough to fake it, anyway. “Though not liking fruit must be rough. There is so much good stuff, like strawberry. Especially on cakes. Really, rough.” Vio shook her head, stashing a few more bars that looked at least somewhat interesting. “As for myself, I guess my favourite is winegum, though that is not really chocolate at all, so I haven’t seen any here yet.”
[break][break]

+ ana fell

[attr="class","pokeclass"]

Cyg snorted, turning to grin at Vio as her Pokemon continued loading up on sugary sweets. “You sound like my grandpa. Look, I’ve always gotten most of my Vitamin C from Mountain Dew and I don’t think that’s ever going to change.”

Eulalia turned to her with an armload of plastic totes and storage boxes, apparently raided from the back of the store.

“Yeah, I think that’s enough diabetes for a lifetime. We better get going before the police show up. Or the tooth fairy.”

Violet Fairbanks

☉

Well, that certainly was a way to look at it. Maybe it was just due to her upbringing in a very outdoorsy ranger family, but even after leaving that life behind, Vio had never been able to completely let herself go. For one because her body was one of her more effective weapons, of course. But that was a secondary concern. She just did not feel ‘well’ if she went too overboard with matters like that.
[break][break]
She shrugged. Not like that was a bad thing. “Don’t worry, I am not some kind of vitamin crusader. At the end of the day, you seem to be doing fine the way you do things so I wouldn’t even want to criticize, not really.” Another shrug as she selected another item for her bag. Honestly, she had enough for weeks by then, which felt like it was, well, enough. No point in being overburdened by loot that one could not sell. Though she was keeping some extra to share with superiors. Could only help, really.
[break][break]
“I would be fine for making a getaway, too. You got everything you wanted or can carry?”
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+ ana fell

[attr="class","pokeclass"]

“More than my little heart could dream of,” Cyg said, flashing Vio a thumbs up.

In the distance, a siren sounded.

“And just in time. Let’s boogie, babes.”

Violet Fairbanks

☉