her office overlooks the gardens. a back entrance affords her a shaded porch, covered with overgrown ivy. smoke still clings to her bodice from when she'd stepped out earlier. an oversized purple cat lays on a velvet bed, tail twitching at the footsteps down the hall. 

she is still settling in. small projects give her little enthusiasm at the moment and when she attempts to lose herself in her work, her mind wanders to her child. 

the sharp rap on the door and the entrance of one of rocket's beasts draws her attentions back to the physical world. she regards him plainly; cold blue eyes do not bother to give him a once-over. they just hold his gaze until he greets her and then she goes back to peering over her paperwork. 

"to what do i owe the pleasure of a visit from a beast?" she asks. 

Zev Harcourt

☉

she cannot direct him to her files. those had been obliterated when FERNANDO SILPH burned what little of her reputation she had let slip through the cracks. even now, she's yet to digitize the hard copies she's managed to scrounge up. 

old habits die hard. 

silence lapses after his reason for being here and after a bit, she sets her pen down and drops a hand, back arcing as she lounges back into her chair. the liepard's bright green eyes crack open to slits as her mistress beckons her with a rubbing of her fingers. 

she yawns as she stands, stretching out hind legs with her first languid steps from the bed. one ear is on the swivel, listening intently to the man in their office. 

the cat purrs loudly as she nears anya and rubs the top of her head against anya's knuckles. 

"and if they're proper questions, i may just have proper answers for you. go on then."

Zev Harcourt

☉

there is a perfect replica of a kandinsky on her wall and she turns her gaze towards it while he asks his question. the words roll lazily through her and she picks apart his cadence, the breath he takes between each word. by the time he's finished, he can see the half-smile from his 3/4 view. 

"tolerance," she says with a shrug.

"have you known addicts, mr. harcourt?" pink mist fantasies dance behind her eyelids when she blinks. "do you know why so many of our grunts knock down doors shaking those poor schmucks for money? and i'm talking in the proverbial sense - not to keep the machine going, as it were.

"heroin is not so expensive, in the grand scheme of things. not until the third, fourth, fifth time and you realize that paltry amount you bought isn't getting you anywhere."

she relents. "or perhaps they were part of a larger scheme conducted by our adversaries and shadow pokemon no longer have a role to play."

she turns to face him again, elbows on the table. her fingers lace together, chin propped on top. envy yawns widely and sits at her side, licking her claws. 

"do you have one of your own?"

Zev Harcourt

☉

"a refreshing take," she says, albeit dryly. "the rest of our colleagues still seem rather infatuated with them." but everyone wants a piece of something they can't have. they don't yet know how fruitless that endeavor is, how unrewarding it is to twist life when you've molded it from nothing with your own two hands. 

"i've still yet to reacquaint myself with all of the resources our database has to offer." not for lack of trying. nothing about anya shows exhaustion, but she is only human.

sleep and other basic necessities are tiresome, but they are unavoidable.

casually, albeit abruptly, she asks, "you own a bar, correct?"

Zev Harcourt

☉

"i prefer a battlefield of tact," she purrs, "but i suppose that's why we have people like you." beasts. monsters. anya certainly isn't afraid to get her hands dirty, but she lacks the coordination and the physical prowess to bring about demise. her method is more surgical in nature. 

her own shadow pokemon didn't last long. it ended up a torn open carcass in its crate, its gore lapped up by the ultra beast in her desk drawer. 

"i have not," she says truthfully. "but i've been looking for a haunt. is it nice?"

Zev Harcourt

☉

hmm, decidedly not her tastes then. she laments the loss of her jazz bar. with her newest play in the game, she's little time to take a charter boat all the way out to lilycove. flying, she can admit, is not a favorite past-time of hers. 

"sounds like i wouldn't." like it, that is. all the more befuddling for him if she were to show.

now that she has commandeered the conversation, she does not give up the control so easily. her work is forgotten now, but that doesn't stop her from rifling through papers, organizing and folding some of her notes in her desk drawer. 

"your file says you're from kanto." she smiles, showing teeth. "did you travel much to unova?"

Zev Harcourt

☉

she can't tell if she gets under his skin and that only makes him all the more intriguing. curiosity killed the cat, they say. but she's too clever for death, and she's not a cat at all. her voice, though, is a husky purr as she says, "no."

to follow up, she feeds him a bit of truth before her inquiry: "i've never been to kanto though. did you like it? i hear the climate is lovely. less...wet."

Zev Harcourt

☉