[attr="class","aurelie"]

[attr="class","aurelie_body"]Leave it to Isaac Merlo to find a place as wholesome and charming as an ice cream parlor that just happened to have a surprising, shady aspect—in this case, an underground fight club in the basement. A perfect blend of sweet and spicy (or possibly punchy). It tickled Aurelie's fancy, and Arceus knows they could all use a laugh, or at least a smile, after that dramatic and unbelievable summit in Sootopolis. She was perfectly happy to meander into the ice cream parlor, study the menu, and mosey up to the counter to place her order.

"Brownie sundae, please, with two scoops of vanilla ice cream, fudge sauce, and chocolate sprinkles," she told the large, intimidating man at the counter. It was a bit much, but dammit, she needed the treat.

She flashed a brilliant, thankful smile at the man when he brought over her indulgent concoction and, remembering Isaac's description of the place, dropped a generous tip into the jar after paying for the sundae. Glancing around the shop, she spotted Isaac standing off to one side with his own ice cream. Aurelie nodded her head in greeting and walked over, carefully balancing her sundae dish and spoon in both hands, not wanting to waste even a single sprinkle.

"A very cute place for a meet-up. I must compliment your taste," she said as soon as she was within conversational range. "Nothing like a sweet treat after some very..." The red-haired smith's mouth twisted in a one-sided grimace. "...bitter and awkward recent events, after all."

Perhaps "bitter" wasn't quite the right word as much as "bewildering". To be fair, Aurelie hadn't been part of Rocket for very long, nor had she gotten deeply involved in its machinations and manipulations. But judging from the other high-ranking Rockets' reactions to Declan Walsh's plans—the ones that he'd deigned to reveal to the peons like them, at any rate—Rocket really wasn't usually so reckless, so self-absorbed, and so wantonly destructive in its dealings. Ruthlessness and violence were all very well, but Aurelie figured there had to be better ways—and better timing—to gain power than launching all-out assaults during a literally world-shattering cataclysm.

It all felt so stupid. And that pretense of democracy that he set up, asking everyone to vote on targets to strike or merely feint at, when clearly he was withholding valuable information from them the whole time and wasn't offering them a fair or informed choice... Aurelie shook her head at the memory, infuriated all over again. None of it made sense to her, and she didn't like being part of things that didn't make sense.

Sensible, right?

She cleared her throat and looked back at Isaac, wrenching her attention away from the angry morass that the Rocket summit had made of her thoughts and emotions. Tugging her lips back into a smile, she tasted a dainty spoonful of ice cream and fudge sauce before tilting her head inquiringly at him. "Oh, how's the new accessory treating you, by the way? I hope it's worked out okay in comparison to that ancient bracelet."

Raising her eyebrow, she added, "Also, hmmm, is someone else joining us here for a little ice cream and venting? You look like you're still waiting for someone else to arrive."

[attr="class","cred"]VEL OF PIXEL PERFECT

[attr="class","rubyw"]

If Ruby had a nickel for every time a fellow Rocket had invited her out for ice cream, she'd have two nickels. Which wasn't a lot, but it was weird that it'd happened twice. Rocket seemed to have a knack for using innocent-looking businesses as fronts for shady dealings, but hey, that was probably the best way to do things. Couldn't exactly run Illegal Fighting Ring Co. and not expect the cops to knock the door down. Not like in Orre, where most of the cops had either been bought off or were in on the seedy crap that went down.

[break][break]That had been something that was supposed to make Hoenn better. What a joke.

[break][break]She had other crap to rant about today, though. Like how Zubatshit insane Walsh's plan was. Using the chaos of the impending meteor to sow chaos and gain some territory when the dust settled? Fine, sure, whatever. Actively sabotaging the League's plan to teleport said meteor so it didn't demolish the region, all so they could mine the damn thing for Arceus knew what? Allying with Megalopolans for some unknown energy source that may very well bite them in the ass? Concerningly insane.

[break][break]It was times like this she wished she still drank. For now, she'd have to sate herself with the more innocent vice of a sugar-laden treat and maybe grab a cigarette afterwards. As much as she also wanted to check out the less innocent vice of an underground fight club, Jade had made her promise to be back home that night. She wondered why her younger sister had been so insistent...

[break][break]The cliché little bell jingled when she pushed open the door. She quickly found Isaac, and—oh, Aurelie was here, too. Well, that was an instant mood booster. She went to the front counter and ordered butter pecan—two scoops because screw it—then dropped a tip in the jar before joining the other two.

[break][break]"Nice place," Ruby said, and it was only a little sarcastic. She flashed Aurelie a confident smile before taking a bite of her own ice cream. "Your girlfriend coming, too?" she asked Isaac, trying to sound casual even though she still couldn't believe he was dating someone.

[attr="class","skullhover"]

[attr="class","aurelie"]

[attr="class","aurelie_body"]Aurelie broke into a pleased grin when Isaac showed off the Mega Bracelet on his arm and lavished praise on her handiwork. Then her eyebrow rose and her eye widened at the sight of Ruby Garcia entering the ice cream shop. When the other woman approached with her own order of ice cream, Aurelie returned Ruby's confident grin with a delighted laugh and a welcoming wave of her spoon.

"Why does it both surprise and not surprise me that you two know each other too? Maybe the only really surprising thing is that I'm surprised at all," she remarked rhetorically. Tilting her head in Ruby's direction, she added with a chuckle, "Always good to see you, Snake Slayer Girl."

At least, it saved time having to introduce anyone to anyone else. Someday, they'd have to share the stories of how they'd each met each other the first time. Aurelie was definitely interested to know if Ruby and Isaac's first encounter had been as haphazard and colorful as her initial meetings with either of them.

When Ruby asked if Isaac's girlfriend was coming, Aurelie was momentarily thrown for a moment. What girlfriend? Then the red-haired smith recalled glimpsing Cygne in another dramatic red outfit, huddled close to Isaac at the Sootopolis summit as he made his speeches and asked his questions. Eyeing Ruby sidelong, she wondered if Ruby was jealous—and if so, of whom. It didn't seem like Ruby was envious, though, but maybe she'd been taken aback at seeing her friend coupled up with someone. Things like that were bound to change your perception of people a little.

In response to Isaac's question about how they were all doing, Aurelie simply plopped herself onto a swivel seat and gave a resigned sigh. "I suppose I'm still just coming to terms with everything that happened at the summit," she responded candidly. "I'm not sure what I expected from such a huge, momentous gathering for Roc—for our organization. But that certainly wasn't it."

Isaac had said this place was fairly indifferent to people's allegiances, which made sense given its own shady activities, but Aurelie couldn't help instinctively swapping out the word "Rocket" for something more innocuous, all the same. She went on, "I thought maybe we'd be coming up with our own top-secret backup plan in case the League's whole multi-dimensional meteoroid transfer plan didn't work out. I never thought we'd be scheming to interfere with their plan instead, especially when their plan doesn't exactly seem rock-solid to begin with."

Shaking her head, she meditatively ate another spoonful of ice cream drenched in fudge sauce, savoring the sweet vanilla and rich chocolate flavors. "And I definitely didn't expect us to be starting wars with them over space minerals and mystery magic energy," Aurelie concluded, licking her spoon clean. She took a deep breath and glanced at the others questioningly.

"What about you two? How are you both feeling about, well, everything?"

[attr="class","cred"]VEL OF PIXEL PERFECT

[attr="class","rubyw"]

Was it possible to be nostalgic for something you'd never experienced before? Because something about this place made Ruby feel that. Or maybe she just wanted to live in a supposedly simpler time where her organization wasn't going to disrupt a plan to save the region from getting squashed by a meteor while employing and threatening literal children. Was this why old farts always went on about "the good old days" even though those days were very much not good for all but a select group of people?

[break][break]"Mm," was Ruby's response to Isaac's explanation of why Cygne wasn't here. She was absolutely not jealous, just confused about why someone would want to date a clown like Isaac. Who cared that he'd sparked that old fire in her heart for service Pokémon? Who cared that his one meeting with Jade had gone way better than it'd had any right to? Who cared that he was surprisingly reliable and way kinder than a Rocket should be? Ruby took a bite of her ice cream to freeze any theoretical bitterness in its tracks. If Cygne wanted to date him, she could go nuts.

[break][break]"Isaac knows everyone," Ruby said dismissively. "Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if he told us he's had drinks with the Boss himself." Damn, that was way less funny given current events... "You, too, Knife Girl." That, at least, coaxed out the beginnings of a genuine smile.

[break][break]Isaac's question about whether they were holding up okay, on the other hand, got a scoff. "Hell of a question after everything that happened. What do you think?"

[break][break]Aurelie, on the other hand, was more forthright with her thoughts and emotions. "Same," Ruby said to Aurelie's expectations for the meeting. "I mean, what the hell is he thinking with that? Space metals and whatever energy isn't gonna mean shit if we're all dead. And..." She frowned, wondering if she really wanted to bring this up. Fuck it; she was pretty sure Isaac and Aurelie at least wouldn't think of her as a wimp for voicing this: "Who the hell's letting kids onto the team? That girl they kicked out couldn't have been any older than 12."

[attr="class","skullhover"]

[attr="class","aurelie"]

[attr="class","aurelie_body"]"Thank. You!" Aurelie exclaimed fervently, gesticulating with her spoon for emphasis as she listened appreciatively to Isaac and Ruby's points. "Thank you both for saying things that make sense and don't sound insanely reckless! This is like music to my ears after listening to—oh, I don't know—fingernails on a chalkboard or metal pinging inside a quench tank or something equally awful."

It was a relief to hear her friends openly expressing doubts about Rocket's plans, especially after seeing even the most reluctant admins and underbosses at the summit frowning, hemming and hawing about how reckless Declan Walsh was being, and then casting their vote and going along with the 'reckless' plan anyway. Were even they too afraid to argue against the boss, despite their high stature and great importance to the organization? Or did they really think Declan Walsh's plans were a good idea after all, despite its recklessness?

As for the gung-ho ones, like the Rocket Beast who had threatened to fight that young girl, Aurelie had no words at all.

Either way, listening to Isaac and Ruby and being in their company was like a breath of fresh air. The red-haired smith felt some of the tension leave her body just from hearing their words and sensing the passion and feeling—similar to her own in many ways—coming from them.

"I couldn't agree more with the sentiment of 'space rocks and unknown energy is worth less than nothing if we all die,'" Aurelie continued, nodding to Ruby. "That's exactly what I was thinking when they were asking people to volunteer for mining the meteoroid or diverting the League's attention. That's why I couldn't bring myself to vote, because planning for the meteoroid's aftermath seems like a waste if there is no aftermath."

Her brow furrowed when she thought about the two votes and how they'd affected the direction that Rocket would take for the future. "But somehow, Walsh seemed so confident in the League's plan working that he's willing to plan after it. I just wish he'd share with the rest of the class how he could be so sure. And Isaac, you have a good point about alerting the League to all these resources too and accidentally giving them the upper hand. It makes you wonder if all-out open warfare really is the best way to secure all this power for ourselves even at the best of times, let alone under the threat of widespread meteoric destruction."

Then when Ruby and Isaac discussed the showdown between the Rocket Beast and the young girl who'd vehemently spoken up about the atrocities in Kanto, Aurelie could only shake her head in dismay. "I was surprised to see a kid that young attending the summit too," she admitted. "I guess in this crazy world, even a thirteen-year-old can become powerful enough to defeat Gym leaders and catch rare Pokemon, but still... And what does it say about the Rocket leadership when a kid that young makes really good points about the horrors of war—from personal experience, no less—and they respond by threatening to fight her and kicking her out of the summit?"

She fell silent and scooped up another spoonful of ice cream from her sundae. It had certainly been a disquieting scene. Not an inspiring example of Rocket diplomacy and leadership in the slightest.

Looking from Isaac to Ruby and back again, Aurelie asked quietly, "Are either of you planning to enlist for one of the diversionary missions? Or for the Littleroot attack? Or do you think either of you might be asked to go?"

[attr="class","cred"]VEL OF PIXEL PERFECT

[attr="class","rubyw"]

"Hm. Not bad," Ruby mumbled when Isaac said he'd hung out with one of the Underbosses. Who would have thought this goofball would have connections like that?

[break][break]"Ugh. I dunno if I want this energy and meteor crap and whatever else there is to be worth it or not. 'Cause if it's not, then the League can't get anything out of it, but then we did all this shit for nothing."

[break][break]She had nothing to add to Isaac's idea of making Sootopolis a bunker. After all, that sort of planning wasn't in her wheelhouse. What was in her wheelhouse, though, was getting equally pissed about how Eris had been treated. "Fucking right?! I used to respect that asshole, but who the hell threatens a little kid like that and thinks it makes him look good?!"

[break][break]"What Ranger meeting?" She'd had yet to hear about that fiasco.

[break][break]Ruby couldn't stop the brief, almost self-derisive chuckle at Aurelie's words. The fact that she was being considered not reckless would have been hilarious if her competition hadn't been... well, all of this.

[break][break]"Yeah, I voted Petalburg to get people to stop being fucking stupid and assaulting a graveyard, but we all saw how that turned out. Not like there was a 'none of the above' to choose from. But the other vote? All the options sucked. We either bring the Meg... assholes right to what they want, storm a town that's already starting to like us, or attack my own damn city. Fuck that." She wished she'd gotten a bowl so she could stab her spoon into it, but for now, she'd just have to take an angry bite of her ice cream. It didn't have the same effect, but at least it was tasty, and the sudden cold on her teeth was... grounding, she guessed?

[break][break]Ruby didn't answer Aurelie's question about how the whole Eris fiasco made Rocket look. Oh, she had an opinion, all right: that it made Rocket look like nothing but a bunch of power-hungry warmongers, exactly what they claimed they were trying not to be anymore. And it made them look pathetic and... evil, Ruby realized with a grimace, which she tried to hide with another bite of her rapidly-dwindling cone. She knew well that Rocket's reputation was never going to be a good one, that they were always going to be the bad guys. But thinking of it like this made her realize just how bad it really was. But she couldn't say that. Hell, she couldn't even stand to think about it for long. Because if she did, she'd be admitting that she was perpetuating that same evil by enforcing Rocket's will and doing their bidding. She was fine with being a bad guy. She was fine with going against the League, stealing from them, pummeling their own enforcers into the ground, things like that.

[break][break]"I don't think they were threatening to fight her," Ruby said, voice low and surprisingly somber. "They were threatening to punish her."

[break][break]But torturing a literal child? That was something that Ruby realized she could never do.

[break][break]Ruby sighed. "I dunno. Might volunteer for Littleroot. I figure if our 'friend' tries anything, at least I can be there to knock out what's left of his teeth."

[attr="class","skullhover"]

[attr="class","aurelie"]

[attr="class","aurelie_body"]Digging into her fudge sundae, Aurelie listened raptly to Ruby's thoughts and Isaac's revelations, letting the ice cream cool her thoughts amidst the fiery emotions and rhetoric being released in this relatively safe space for the three friends. She was glad that Isaac had invited them here to talk like this, candidly and directly as peers—well, relatively so, anyway. The red-haired smith had no illusions about most of Rocket knowing or caring about her own existence, and she had no idea about Ruby's standing, but Isaac really did seem to know and talk to everyone. Still, she was glad they didn't have to stand on ceremony with each other while venting their doubts and frustrations.

She nodded in agreement with Ruby's frank assessment of the voting options that Walsh had presented to them at the summit. She could only shudder at the thought of physically punishing a young girl with a Beast's power and remembered gratefully that said girl had been safely, and even courteously, escorted out of the meeting by one of the underbosses. Then she bared her teeth in a grin when Isaac speculated about what could possibly be going on inside Declan Walsh's head and why the Rocket leadership in attendance had fallen in with him, despite some of them expressing misgivings of their own.

"Well, if even our august Rocket leadership is scared of Walsh and in the dark about his intentions," Aurelie remarked wryly, "then I guess that tells you that power really isn't all it's cracked up to be. There's always someone else with even more power than you, even when you're an avatar of some Legendary Pokemon and you hold a hundred grunts' lives in your fist."

She smirked a little and rolled her eyes. "So, I guess they all fell in line with him because they've worked hard for their position and they want to keep their power, no matter what. Even if it means getting plunged into a war you didn't expect to be initiating."

Then, Isaac described what he knew about the League meeting, and Aurelie had to wonder how he knew so much about that. Was he doing something crazy like posing as a Ranger trainee? Had he managed to become best friends with a Ranger? Isaac certainly didn't give off Rocket vibes, Aurelie supposed, but the Rangers must be awfully naïve and trusting to spread embarrassing stories about their own failings to outsiders.

"Ha! No way!" she chortled, shaking her head incredulously. "A food fight? Really? They threw pies at each other? I can't believe it. I'm sure the Rangers aren't as strict as Rocket, but still, that's just too ridiculous."

Still, even in her disbelief, the story reinforced the feeling that she'd had ever since leaving Kalos—that being part of Rocket was ultimately better than complacently remaining in the League. Rocket certainly looked like the bad guys, and sometimes they did very bad things, but everyone looked like the bad guy when working to upend an oppressive but long-standing status quo and institute something better. And Aurelie, after her personal upheavals in the past few years, was staunchly on the side of overthrowing the status quo in favor of something better and fairer.

Aurelie couldn't help stating as much aloud now. "I guess that just goes to show you that everything and everyone everywhere is a mess right now, and the League is hardly a safe haven of sanity. They're still worse off than we are.

"But," she added, "I must admit, this meeting did shatter some illusions I had about Rocket too. Especially our seeming willingness to launch ourselves into open warfare over potential energy and meteoroid metals. I'm not sure that, if I'd had a pie during the meeting, I wouldn't have been tempted to throw it at Walsh's face at one point or another!" Aurelie mimed flipping a spoonful of ice cream at an imaginary Rocket Boss in front of her, chuckling a little at the mental image.

Then she snorted and shook her head at herself. "As if I could ever be that brave! I think I'll leave the fighting and being heroic on behalf of Rocket to both of you, with your plans to be on the front lines in these upcoming clashes." She flashed a pert smile at both Ruby and Isaac in turn.

"If you guys really do end up at one of the Primal Points or wherever, please take care of yourselves, okay? I'd offer to make you both suits of armor if I could, but I don't have the material, the time, or the practice, and besides, I don't know how much it'd help or just get in your way."

[attr="class","cred"]VEL OF PIXEL PERFECT

[attr="class","rubyw"]

Ruby scoffed at Isaac's deduction of Walsh's motives. "Still not gonna do him any good when we're all dead. Unless he's hiding something from us. Like some secret bunker or something." Yeah, okay, if that turned out to be the case, Ruby was haunting the shit out of him when she died.

[break][break]Aurelie may have been grinning wryly at the leaderships' fealty to Walsh, but the thought just made Ruby's face twist in disgust. "It's bullshit. What's the point of clawing your way to the top if you're just gonna roll over for someone else, anyway?"

[break][break]What was the point? When she'd joined Rocket, she'd immediately set her sights on a Beast position. Maybe something even higher, if the actual administrative side of the whole thing didn't look like it'd drive her insane. But what did it even mean to hold such a position? For nearly her whole life, Ruby had been taught, one way or another, that all you needed was power. If you had enough of that, you could take anything you wanted... or protect the people you care about. So of course she'd aimed high. But did it even matter when that totem pole climbed infinitely higher and someone else was always crushing you underfoot? When someone else could just knock the whole damn thing over and you couldn't do shit about it? Big whoop, you got to boss some poor schmucks around. That didn't make you immune to being someone else's chew toy.

[break][break]Arcrus, this little ice cream date was making Ruby have some painful revelations.

[break][break]Somehow, despite the Rocket meeting feeling like an absolute disaster to Ruby, the Rangers meeting was apparently even worse. Sure, they had a plan to be at the Primal Points, which would be more opposition for Rocket to face, but getting there had involved insults and... thrown pies? Ruby rose a skeptical brow.

[break][break]"You can't be serious." She didn't even question how Isaac knew about this, too focused on trying to envision a literal food fight at a Rangers meeting. But once she got the image in her head, she snickered. "They really are a bunch of clowns, huh?"

[break][break]Sheesh. For all of her doubts and misgivings about Rocket, if these were the people who were supposed to protect Hoenn and its people, then she was glad she wasn't relying on the League. Though with the way things were going, maybe she was better off just relying on herself.

[break][break]She chuckled at Aurelie's pie-slinging demonstration. "Heh, maybe if I ever get sick of living, I'll throw one." A morbid joke, to be sure, and one that Ruby didn't plan on making reality anytime soon—not when Jade still needed her—but what about all this wasn't morbid?

[break][break]Another raises brow at Isaac. "Why would you want to be on the death rock? That sounds like a suicide mission. I can't believe some people were actually excited about it." He did have a point about laying siege to Littleroot and its innocent people, the exact thing Ruby had been trying to avoid by not voting for Mossdeep, but... "Like you said, it's not like we can stop it from happening. Might as well try to get things from getting too fucked."

[break][break]Shit, even after all that thinking about getting screwed over by people with power, Ruby still wanted to try to make things slightly less awful. That feeling would never go away, would it? No matter how much Ruby tried to play the bad guy, that desire would always find a way to worm itself back in.

[break][break]She chewed awkwardly on the remainder of her cone as Aurelie wished her and Isaac well on their own missions. "I don't think the 'knight in shining armor' image fits me, anyway. What are you gonna be doing?" She really wasn't used to people caring about her, was she?

[attr="class","skullhover"]

[attr="class","aurelie"]

[attr="class","aurelie_body"]"I just can't help thinking that power is a funny thing, is all," Aurelie remarked, slicing carefully into the brownie at the base of her sundae with the edge of her spoon. "No matter how high you climb, there's still always someone with even more power who can order you around, so you're really never done trying to claw your way up to the top, wherever that is. Even Walsh is probably under someone else's thumb or has to answer to someone higher up."

Taking a bite of the brownie, she went on, "And even if he isn't, there's always something like the legendaries like Necrozma, or inexplicable things like the dome around Hoenn, or whatever comes out of Sea Hoenn. But," she added candidly, with a humorless chuckle, "I'm probably just rationalizing it to avoid thinking about Walsh being able to be a petty tyrant over the likes of little old me. It's one of those things where you have to laugh about it, or else you'd cry. And tears and ice cream are not flavors that go well together."

Isaac seemed to be taking everything from the Sootopolis summit far harder and more seriously than Aurelie was, but then he was certainly far more involved in Rocket's power politics and inner workings than she was. He also seemed more ambitious as well, which admittedly wasn't hard, given that Aurelie possessed all the political ambition of moss growing on a log in the woods. So, it made sense that he felt more strongly about the situation and its myriad possible terrible consequences.

For her part, Aurelie naturally hated the unprovoked war into which Declan Walsh had plunged Rocket, as she'd expressed before. But so far, she was glad enough to be allowed to sit out conflict. Perhaps sometime in the future, Rocket would start doing a military draft-like conscription process for grunts, and someone like her would have no choice but to take orders and join in the war. Perhaps one day, Walsh would smash his iron fist not only at the League, but also at his own side, and rain chaos down on everyone. Perhaps eventually, they would gun people down for failure. Perhaps someday, everyone would be an avatar of a legendary Pokemon and entire cities would go down in flames!

That was a lot of perhaps's and maybe's for Aurelie, though. The war was a symptom, certainly, of larger problems within Rocket, but Aurelie wasn't about to speculate about potential doom and gloom. The present was challenging enough without worrying intensely about the distant future.

"Me, I'm just staying on the sidelines for this conflict," she replied lightly to Ruby's question of what she and Isaac would be doing. "If this were a cause or a war that I believed in, I'd do more. But I just don't see anything about the meteoroid or the mystery energy in Littleroot worth fighting for. Besides, it's not like Rocket is desperately clamoring to have my nonexistent battle prowess on its side," she added with a self-deprecating little smile.

"I do think you'd both look fantastic in armor," Aurelie declared, tilting her head to one side as she considered the two of them. "But where you're going, Isaac, I think an astronaut suit would be much better protection! Or maybe some sort of Kevlar tactical body armor. I do love the mystery-knight look for you, though, Ruby. A wandering warrior who fights by his or her own code, obeying no master but themselves...I could see you pulling that off."

Given their surprisingly enthusiastic response, Aurelie quietly wondered if there might be a market out there at some point for Pokemon suits of armor, rather than—or perhaps in addition to—suits of armor for humans. That might at least be a reason to brush up a little more on armor-smithing. And to expand her business further into blacksmithing in general, not just bladesmithing. Hmmm.

[attr="class","cred"]VEL OF PIXEL PERFECT