Her Fearow casts shadow on the beach's sands as Callie walks them.

The promise of a certain pokemon had caught her eye when she had learned of the Hoenn Safari.

So here she was, letting her footprints fade into the surf.

Callie allows his touch. It was familiar.

Sebastian Pryde, too, would feel that the burned skin was surprisingly smooth and firm underhand.

"What happened.... after?"

After she was taken. After they lost. Despite being in Kanto these last few years she knows nothing.

It kills her.

I need to bolster my team. Is what she thinks as the wind whips her hair back.

Out here, in nature, is where she feels most comfortable.

If she closes her eyes and breathes deep she could almost pretend she was home again.

Her Bulbasaur and Charmander play in the sand, young and carefree.

She wonders what she will find.

1 regular safari ticket, please

-50 pd

She gives an assenting hum, single eye moving slowly over the battlefield.

Experience allows her to see the ebbs and flows of battle, how this may shape up.

Sadly, at this point, her pokemon are not the trained team she once had.

"Growl."

The Charmander lets a rough noise erupt from her throat even in the thick smoke, a threat to the Rilou not to come closer.

---

charmander - female - blaze - smokescreen, ember, growl, dragon breath, fire fang, scratch

- Cillian Quinn
- finally got my moves lol
- Charmander used Growl!

"You're still just as handsome with it, Seb."

It was easy, almost, to go back to how it had been before.

"Spies found out I was still alive and broke me out." She lifts her drink to her lips, needing a buffer.

"They killed Maggie instead of me, Seb."

Her sister. The woman whose head was chopped off for the world to see- and it hadn't even been the Champion herself.

Her fingers tightened around the glass.

Whatever face Rowan Wrynn might or might not have made, she was used to it by now. Her disfiguration didn't bother her as much as one might think, anymore. She nodded at the greeting, cool but friendly, for the moment.

"Thank you for the battle.... Rowan?" She thought that was the name, anyway.

A pokeball was taken from her side, an Ekans released, who curled up on himself in a heap of coils.

"I'll be using my Ekans." She hadn't nicknamed her pokemon. Callie had learned it made it hurt worse when you lost them.

---

ekans - male - intimidate - mud bomb, screech, glare, acid spray, haze, wrap

Many people tend to stare or not look at all now.

But really looking at her was a rarity.

Callie does not enjoy bars or drinks all that often, never had, but the promise of something sharp on her tongue had been too tempting to pass up tonight. Alone in her corner, she sips on her rum and charja-cola. Simple.

It takes a moment to realize she's being spoken to, lost in her own thoughts, but slowly realization lights in her own eye.

"Sebby?"

Sebastian Pryde

Something almost like a smile tries to form on her face, lost and sad.

Timid, like a deer, she takes a step forward.

"I'm glad you're both okay." Is all she can say, for a time, as something like relief fills her chest. She can't bring herself closer, as if the two of them will vanish. Doug, for the moment, is forgotten as fond memories play behind her eye.

Her eye waters, too, but she reaches up to catch the tear on the back of her finger before it can fall.

A more dramatic person might make some allegory to pheonixes. Calliope, before the war, had never liked dramatics. She was pragmatic and practical.

When she had caught wind of a memorial to the fallen in Likycove, she had politely asked if John Sullivan wanted to accompany her. She had never been allowed her own time to grieve and now seemed as good as any.

Yet, there are ghosts waiting in the wings in her mind- though to many she is the spectre of something lost.

"Eva?" A pause, steps faltering. "Matias?"

Ah. It hit her now, she didn't know who had lived.

The click has her making fists at her sides, subconscious. Only after she feels her knuckles pop does she think to relax, to force them open and ease a tension from her shoulders.

The Charmander is young and she hasn't had her long. The metal claw comes fast and she can't dodge, a pained cry leaving her.

"It's okay." Is said, soothing, to her pokemon. "Smokescreen." The Charmander backs away from the Rilou, opens her mouth and sprays an acidic, black smoke to obscure the battlefield.

Her good hand reaches down to scratch the Charmander on the top of the head. She beams, leans into the touch; both trainer and pokemon are ignorant of the animosity from Cillian Quinn.

"Thank you for the battle." Her voice is gentle and low but has a strength to it one might not anticipate if they knew who she was.

"You can have first move."

It's pleasant.

People stare or avoid looking entirely. It's okay. She's used to that.

Calliope stops at the plot her match was to place on. A pokeball removed, Charmander released, before she raises her eye to try and find who might be her opponent.

It'll be nice to battle for fun again.

Cillian Quinn