[attr="class","sunshine"]Plank's lips press together and she winces again. For fuck's sake, she forgot how many things you can't do with a busted face.

"Listen, if I'm gonna be interrogated for the second --" she bites down on a flash of pain mid-sentence, takes a beat to find words that will hurt less coming out, "Just take me t' this quiet room or whatever first."

To be honest Plank doesn't want to talk about yesterday no matter what the setting. Not when she's still hurting and struggling to keep her thoughts properly sorted and so, so fucking tired; but if she's going to have to get into it she'd rather do it somewhere with less eyes and ears curiously aimed in her direction.

[attr="class","sunshine"]The woman interrogates her comment and Plank breathes hard through her nose. It's almost a laugh. A bitter one, but almost a laugh all the same.

"Figure if my comfort mattered," she starts, wincing through the words as if to prove a point (she's not, talking is just a fucking nightmare right now), "I'd be able t' eat solid food without, without chewin' like a Mudsdale."

If Plank notices the woman's building frustration she doesn't let it show. Shoves her hands in her pockets and sucks at the bloody spit pooled in her mouth. She probably shouldn't be so animated when her mouth is full of half-healed cuts. This realization doesn't stop her from dismissing the woman's reasonable comment out of hand.

"Pushin' it's never stopped me from healin' before," she says, shrugging, "not when I was a kid 'n' I'd bet not this time neither."

[attr="class","sunshine"]"Amazin' how quick that can change," Plank spits, almost literally. Her bottom lip is swollen where it split and it doesn't do her any favors in conversation.

The woman's words (meant to comfort, to soothe) do nothing for her. She's sick of taking people at their word when they say they don't want to hurt her. The promise of a quiet place to talk hits her frayed nerves like a trap. A tactic to get her defenses down. Plank's first instinct is to tell the woman this place would be plenty quieter without her pestering.

But then again, what the hell. This place is too loud and she's too fucking tired to fight with people right now.

"What the fuck does my comfort matter," she mumbles and tosses her tray onto a counter. What food was left on it shifts and splatters about. Despite the petulant comment, she crinkles her nose at the mention of soup -- and then screws up her eyes and lets out an irritated groan when it sends shocks through her face and up to her brain.

She eats enough soup at home. The only plus to being on this shitty sub is that she can get some real food.

"Eatin' anythin' hurts," she says, "I might as well like what I'm eatin'."

[attr="class","sunshine"]Gavin's "concern" (is that what the order to go to the med bay is? Concern? Is she giving him too much credit again?) is met with a dry, humorless laugh. The laugh is quickly followed by a groan as her headache worsens and her cheeks burn.

"Do I? I hadn't noticed," she says, a low chuckle running between her words and trailing off once they're done, "I'll look after m'self, thanks."

She pushes off the chair to give herself the last bit of lift she needs to get upright. Immediately her body tips. Her head is heavy and aching and she nearly falls back on her ass, but she manages to stay upright just barely. Out of the corner of her blurring vision she sees the Lucario approach.

A spike of anger runs through her. It brings up its hands to use HEAL PULSE and she lashes out. She throws a sloppy kick with the leg closest to the pokemon to stop it. She can't tell if she hits anything, and immediately after she almost tumbles back to the hard floor.

"I'll look after m'self, thanks." she repeats. There's no laughter this time as she bares her teeth and tries really hard to focus in on Gavin's face.

"'fraid you'll have t', keep lookin' at your lackey's, handiwork," she starts to take stumbling steps in the direction she thinks the door is in.

[attr="class","sunshine"]

Plank's arrival to the gym is announced to anyone within several feet of her by the cacophony it brings. Chains jingle against each other, her clunky boots thump thump against the ground, and if all of that wasn't enough she loudly whistles -- a sign of appreciation for the aesthetic of the place.

She's all smiles as she climbs the short set of stairs to the center ring. Plank feels good. This disguise is fun and she's never been so confident walking into a job. Plank can't believe she's going to get paid for doing this kiddy bullshit.

Wait, no, not Plank. She's not Plank today, she has to remind herself. Or Peggie Vela. She's Bonnie. Bonnie Taylor.

"Hey, we gonna do this or what!?" she calls across the ring as she picks a corner to call home. She's bouncing, "I'm your five o'clock."

[attr="class","sunshine"]"Essentially, yes," she mumbles, an amused and mocking parrot of the man's response. Plank can't quite pin down why she finds the phrasing funny; but she does.

As the man dips into nuance she didn't really ask for (but she guesses is interesting enough all the same) Plank wanders over to the edge of the room. To the weapons there. Thoughtlessly she pulls out a sword with her left hand. Holds it up to the light.

"I dunno, my experience with battlin' is that it pretty much is just buttin' pokemon against each other. I mean, in a roundabout way or whatever," she turns around and swings the sword clumsily with one hand. Pop gave her some knife training (she had to have one for ropes anyway, and with the creeps he hung around sometimes he thought it was for the best) but the balance on a whole sword is way different.

It feels kinda cool.

The sound of her name pulls her out of her musings. She looks up with suddenly sharp eyes.

"What's it to ya?"

[attr="class","sunshine"]The cafeteria lights are too bright. The people here are too loud. It's making Plank's skin crawl, it's making her angry. Every time someone floats too close, every time someone bumps into her in line, every "oop" and "watch it" and "excuse me" it's making her sick she wants to -- no. She stops whatever train of thought she was hurtling down.

It's not their fault that she didn't get any sleep last night. Not their fault she couldn't sleep last night. That she had to spend all night washing out her mouth and icing her face and fucking pressing at bruises because if she falls asleep she might . . .

She breathes hard through her nose. Every thought keeps getting away from her she needs to . . . needs to focus on one thing at a time. Her chicken fingers. She needs to eat those, she needs to find a table, she needs to --

"Vela."

The clicking of heels is lost to the sound of an opening door and Plank almost jumps out of her skin. Her tray jumps with her. She loses a couple of chicken fingers to the floor.

Great, just fucking great!

All that self-control she'd been trying to exercise melts away in seconds.

"Yeah, and who the fuck are you?" she growls and whips around to see who's calling her name today, eyes (bruised from abuse and sorely missed sleep) narrowed and teeth bared.

[attr="class","sunshine"]"Don't see the difference," she mumbles, absentmindedly trailing a hand over her face. Fuck she's going to be up all night trying to fix this. Probably for the best. The way her vision swims every time she turns her head too fast . . . not exactly the best sign. Probably best she not sleep tonight.

What are they talking about?

Right.

"Yeah, whatever," she responds, words mushy, "Nothin' but narcin' from here on out."

With that she tries to stand up. Puts a hand on the chair still close at hand and pushes to support her weak legs. She gets about halfway up before stopping and staring at the floor. Swallowing bile. God she wishes everything would stop spinning like that.

[attr="class","sunshine"]Gavin's question has never had a clear answer. Plank's not sure why she let Ozaki take the Porygon, why she didn't report it, why she continued to cover for her in the head scientist's office.

"I dunno," she says. Shrugs. Winces.

"It was, she was, stupid," she pauses to suck back spit and whatever else that's settled in her swollen mouth, "but . . . I dunno. Wasn't my job t' teach her a lesson."

[attr="class","sunshine"]She sniffs, trails her eyes from one man to the other and then back again, and drops her hands over her sprawled out legs. God she's so tired suddenly.

"The Porygon they," Plank waves about a limp hand while she talks, "They were, they were makin' noise or somethin'. Doin' somethin' pathetic that she couldn't ignore."

"I told her t' get the fuck over it but she wouldn't let it go," she continues, and although the words could be delivered desperately -- a way to deflect blame from herself -- they're not. They're said in the same exhausted, mangled voice that the rest are. She sniffs again as she pauses.

[attr="class","sunshine"]Gavin storms across the room and Plank isn't sure how she's meant to feel about it. When what she thought was certain, imminent death is suddenly pushed off the table she feels a moment of sheer, blissful relief; but in the moments that follow? Feelings are lost to action.

Plank's bleeding wrists and bruised ankles are freed by Gavin's knife and she pushes herself across the floor away from Gavin at the same time he backs up. She runs tingling, slightly off-color hands across her face in hurried strokes that smear tears and blood and snot; and make her hiss for the way pressing the pads of her palms to it makes her cheeks scream.

She realizes by the time Gavin commands her to speak, to tell the truth, that she can't sort her feelings because she's not feeling them. They're far away. She's far away. Like someone's taken her spirit and pulled it just barely out of alignment with her self. Like she's a ghost sitting atop her body instead of in it.

At least it means she doesn't feel guilt for what she says next.

"Ozaki," she leads, the name navigating the damaged interior of her mouth poorly, "she felt bad for the Porygon, or somethin'."

[attr="class","sunshine"]There's no time to appreciate the hand no longer in her hair. The moment she's let go the few feet between her and the room's metal floor vanish. Plank's too restrained and off balance to try and divert course, she meets the ground with her forehead with an audible smack.

"Fuck," the word is a choked back sob as pain flashes through her head and down her spine. She tries to force herself onto her side. The sound of wood on steel echoes around the room for a moment when she succeeds.

Once again tears fall unbidden from her eyes, she screws up her face as she swallows another sob before it can surface.

Watery eyes find Gavin. Again her gut ties itself in knots and again her breath catches in her chest, but the dam she's been tending is cracking and those feelings once the tie to her anger are now too close to something else for her to ground herself in them. She has to resort to biting down on her lip until it tears to hold back the third sob.

The words of the man towering over her aren't lost to her. Dammit. She's gonna die here and Gavin's not going to so much as lift a finger. Fuck him.