[attr="class","spiral"]Crying with an audience isn't something Plank allows herself. Not something she's often been allowed. It's a thing she snuck off to do in gas station bathrooms or the alleyway outside. Something she stole for herself between midnight and sunrise, or in the moments between offloading and setting sail.

So it's awkward, to break down so openly here in this musty apartment building. With the recruiter looming only a couple feet away. Awkward already in the silence that allows her to at least pretend she's alone. Much worse when he speaks.

It flips something in Plank's chest. Nerves. Shame. Fear. Something.

She stops crying.

The recruiter's attempts at comforting her are weak and ineffectual, but noted as she shifts her head where it rests on her knees. Rubs at her eyes without looking up.

"Yeah, sure," she croaks before finally lifting her head. Her nose is red, as is the skin around her eyes where the salt and her rubbing have irritated it, "I'll take that."

She lets out a shaking sigh before lifting herself to her feet. Wincing again when her shirt and sweatshirt brush over her scraped up lower back on their way back into place.

"Figure it was inevitable," Plank continues, phrasing vague on whether it's addressing her new knowledge of the 'ugly truth' or her fresh part in it, "Best t' get it outta the way early."

Her wording is intentionally flippant. An attempt at affecting strength she doesn't have, undermined by the way she still sways in place. Crying always makes her so fucking lightheaded.

[attr="class","spiral"]The silence between the two of them holds, and then stretches. As unsure as the recruiter is on how to comfort Plank, she's lost as to how to proceed. There was a certain distance she was clinging to. She realizes that as she sits there. Slowly wraps her arms around her knees.

There's always a distance she can cling to. She didn't put the pokemon in cages. She didn't make the order to buy them. She's only joining Rocket for her father. Orders are orders.

There was no choice but to kill him.

But there was a choice. There was a choice and she ignored it and now there's no going back. She's a murderer of her own making.

The silence is eventually broken by short, quiet gasps. Crying silently is a skill Plank thought she'd mastered years ago but she can't quite manage it this time. Her fingers wrap themselves up in the sleeves of her sweatshirt. Use their leverage there to pull her knees tight to her chest.

Crushingly tight. Until her gasps quiet simply by merit of her not being able to draw in ample air to produce them. Then tighter still.

She wishes she could vanish like that. Curl up so tight into herself she'd simply pop out of existence.

[attr="class","spiral"]It's like everything catches up with her all at once. The anxiety, the fear, the disgust, the guilt. It hits her right in the gut and her stomach recoils. Bile splashes its way up her throat and the breath she tries to take in through her nose only makes her gag.

The moment the recruiter takes a step back Plank rips her hand from her mouth and ruins the spot he was standing on.

The back of her hand rises to wipe at her mouth as she lets herself lean harder into the wall behind her. She slides down it, feels her sweater and shirt catch on the wall and winces only slightly when the skin of her back is pricked and scraped by the splintery wood of the bare planks.

She keeps sliding until she's sat down. Able to drop her sweaty forehead onto her trembling knees.

She doesn't respond to what the recruiter has to say. Is barely listening.

[attr="class","spiral"]Things feel like they might be on track to be something for the first time since they dropped in the room. For all her shit talk, following Choi's latest plan seems to have gone alright. The place is webbed up to shit, electrified where it's not, and they're sitting pretty. Not much more of an advantage you can have against some rampaging vent monster.

Of course, Plank cannot think good things about her strange companion for the evening without being immediately punished.

The news from Choi goes in quick enough. All the words individually make sense. But they have to rattle around a little bit in her head before their full meaning is derived. Maybe it's the shock. Maybe it's that she's dumb. Maybe it's the sheer absurdity of the situation.

Regardless, when it hits it hits.

"We're fuckin' what now?" She jumps from the desk she was sitting on, fresh adrenaline keeping her legs from aching when they slam into the ground, "How the fuck is, what kind of shit gang, fuck! Whatever! Hull! Door!"

Her Golisopod leaps into action, running up to the door as Choi's Primarina starts freezing it with an ICY WIND. The moment it's covered in ice, one of his claws comes down -- curled into a fist. ROCK SMASH shatters the ice where it hits and dents the steel. An awful screech sounds out as the rust holding it shut struggles to keep it from grinding open.

It is fighting a losing battle.

The Golisopod swings again, and then again. The door dents further and further, the corners holding steady but its center tenting out like a freshman's pants on prom night. Anger grips Hull at the slab of steel's persistence and he begins to whale on it. It crunch, crunch, crunches and then bursts off its hinges and flies into the hallway.

In the meantime Plank returns Mama and Jack before running up to stand behind Hull.

[attr="class","sunshine"]The chaos subsides and somehow Plank and Baby are able to leave their little corner without a scratch.

Maybe "somehow" is a bit melodramatic. All the big threats were shooting at each other. So long as they're not in the path of all the trouble why bother with a grunt and her fish?

The anointing and conversation that follow have little and less to do with her. Her eyes watch the interaction between Gavin and the head scientist dispassionately. It's weird to see him so openly supportive, so genuinely pleased, but beyond that it's hard to pull anything worth noting out of the sight.

Discussion of gangs and public image, paired with big words like psychological warfare, go in one ear and out the other. Plank's just a grunt, and a relatively fresh one at that. If she had any input to offer it wouldn't matter. Which of course she doesn't.

She moves things and hits things, topics like strategy and psyops are too big for her to get her head around.

So instead she stands around and pets Baby's fins, occasionally splitting her fingertips on her ROUGH SKIN when they skate too close. She can't wait to leave. Hopefully they'll be dismissed before some more horror movie shit can happen.

[attr="class","sunshine"]The visit today is twofold. An assignment and a check-up. It would be nice if Plank could say one was more interesting than the other, or better, or anything. But in truth? They both kind of suck.

One is playing with rocks, the other is checking on seeds. Hooray.

Oh, actually that's not all.

"Are ya comin'?" she shouts over her shoulder to her partner. Not the Barbaracle directly behind her, but her Rocket assigned charge for the evening. Charge being used quite literally here. Maybe "ward" would be better.

Plank rarely likes new people. Even more rarely likes the new people she meets through Rocket. That being said this is a special kind of loathing today.

Because today, she is babysitting.

Or at least that's what it feels like. Going on a job with a grade schooler at her heels. Or-not-so-much on her heels -- which is of course worse. Somehow.

[attr="class","sunshine"]It's amazing how different one cave can be than another. How one can feel so comforting, so comfortable, and another can be so . . . not. Though maybe that's not as insightful a thought as Plank hopes it is.

She is, after all, quite literally living out of the other cave here. And this one is cold as tits in winter.

How it's this cold she doesn't know. The outside is tropical bliss like most of Hoenn, but through the ground there's just this open door on the fridge kind of chill creeping up. It settles in her bare legs and makes her fingertips tingle. It sucks. Whatever, she's not here for a pleasure tour.

"Take these, plant them somewhere, doesn't matter where," Plank speaks in an intentionally grating, wheedling voice. Some kind of experimental crop and for whatever reason someone thought she'd be a good pick to try it. Sure she has a garden, but Wright does all the work there. Maybe she should have planted them there?

Whatever, too late now. She's not going to come here for fucking nothing.

"Cirri, can ya put those hands to some use and dig up a patch for me here?" she asks her Barbaracle a little behind her. The pokemon quickly plods up next to her before following her pointing finger with her eyes.

[attr="class","spiral"]This is stupid. Plank feels stupid. What he's saying is simple, but she can't . . . it doesn't compute. It's like all the words on their own make perfect sense but when they're run together like this she can't get them to register.

Then they just do.

So she didn't have to do any of this? This wasn't some kind of test? He wasn't playing games, there wasn't some hidden agenda here? He was just asking if she was okay? And she . . . Fuck! God she just.

Her stomach flips in place. She feels like she's going to be sick.

"Shit . . . shit, shit, shit," the hand bunched in her shirt rises to cover her mouth, "Then I for no reason, there wasn't, I didn't have t'. . ."

[attr="class","sunshine"]peggie vela's GACHA GOLURK to Remiel Calcifet

[attr="class","spiral"]mantine/golurk/dedenne/budew

[attr="class","sunshine"]GACHA GOODRA to peggie vela
GACHA BRONZONG to amalia samson

[attr="class","sunshine"]peggie vela's GACHA BUDEW going to @chloe
@chloe's GACHA OMASTAR going to peggie vela