nagi turns when he hears the grass behind him rustling. a spoink emerges from the bushes, bouncing warily at the perimeter of the clearing where nagi is standing.

he nudges at watson — still flopped over the ground and batting at a blade of grass — with the side of his foot. when the shinx blinks up at him inquisitively, he points with his chin at the spoink with a questioning hum.

watson rolls onto his back, and from upside-down, looks up at the spoink. they watch each other for a moment, before watson lets out a cheery chirp, and the spoink bounces its merry way back into the grass.

"no new friends, then." nagi squats on the ground beside watson, scratching lightly at the shinx's belly.

skipping spoink~

☉

nagi hasn't actually done this before.

neither sherlock nor watson had been traditional, wild-caught pokemon in the typical, intrepid pokemon trainer-sense, as much as — well, sherlock had taken pity on him, and watson was a hand-me-down. it followed, then, that he couldn't help but be a little bit nervous about this excursion.

though, watson is as unaffected as always. as soon as he had been let out of his out of his ball, he'd flopped over on his side, and begun gnawing lazily at nagi's ankle.

with a fond sigh, nagi jostles watson lightly as he shakes his foot free. "ten hut," he says, not expecting to be listened to at all.

baby's first solo wild!

☉

nagi gets through a whole sentence and a half on the page he's reading before he realises that someone is speaking to him. and even then, it takes him another beat more to put it all together. yunoshin? what's a— oh. oooh.

"oooh," nagi breathes aloud — until his cerebrum finally catches up with him, and clamps his mouth shut before he can go on blurting out anything else.

he rests a finger in the book to mark where he stopped, and glances up at where the voice came from. just a short distance down the shelf, a young man — well-built, nagi notes, despite his stature and choice of sugary snack. an athlete, maybe? — glowers in a way that gives nagi the unmistakable impression that he's offended him somehow, in their scant few seconds of interaction. that couldn't be the case, unless... over shinn? no way.

"you're going to get sugar all over those pages." — is all that nagi offers in response to the question.

@frey

☉

the shine of glasses, as the man turns, and behind him, the glint of a raised weapon as it catches the sunlight. nagi flinches.

even as the man waves the weapon down, nagi's heart races. it picks up speed as the man approaches him, step by deliberate step — a jackhammer beat that seems to drain his extremities of blood, rather than circulate blood through them. he folds his arms in front of himself, tucking his clammy, shaking fingers close to his sides, rooted in place by his traitorous feet.

"nathan maxwell," nagi answers after a short pause, in a careful monotone. “...and you are?” he adds, not able, this time, to force the tremor out of voice as it rises on the final are. his eyes dart between the man, and others behind him, cataloguing as quickly and surreptitiously as he can manage. how many people are there? what do they look like? where are their weapons?

THEO BECKETT

☉

since time immemorial, man has loved cardcaptor sakura. one man. ...nagi.

he had been a fan from the moment he first laid starry eyes on it on a saturday morning cartoon rerun — and then he had saved every cent he should have spent on lunch, purchasing each volume of the manga he could find in his neighbourhood bookstore. of the scant few boxes of belongings nagi took with him to hoenn from kalos, one was commandeered by his almost complete collection. the first edition, untranslated print. the kalosian translation. the complete bluray set.

he had only one left to add to his collection.

he checked out every store he could on his way down to slateport from lilycove, and none of them had it in stock. he’s only inches from giving up the search, resigned to skipping a couple more lunches to buy an overpriced copy from some dubious reseller online — when he finally sees it. the last remaining copy emerging into view, resting on an empty display shelf as if enshrined: the collector’s edition box set. mine, he thinks, brisk-walking the last few triumphant steps towards it.

visioned tunnelled solely onto the box, nagi fails to notice another hand reaching out, at that same instance, towards the same target.

andres buenaventura

☉

“clockwork apocalypse” is a tour-de-force novel debut, with all it needed to propel itself into popularity: a prophesied apocalypse; an intriguing central mystery; a zero-to-hero protagonist overcoming impossible odds, and a marketing budget large enough for an advertising spread for it to completely dominate the wall beside the bookstore entrance.

the large IN BOOKSTORES TODAY poster had been impossible to miss on his way in, but even before he saw it, rumors surrounding it had drifted down the grapevine into the comments of nagi’s own webnovel. a time-loop as the driving source of intrigue — an erroneous prophecy — a character struggling through hidden self-doubt and denial; all had also been components of the second arc of the tales of the hidden continent.

slouched against the bookshelf, he thumbs through the opening chapters of the novel. he could to see where the commenters were coming from: the plot elements, though not a beat-for-beat copy, ring familiar to him even two-and-a-half years after he first wrote them; the demeanour of the protagonist is uncannily similar to one of the side characters he had introduced in the arc — shinn, he remembers. a character he had developed as a foil for the protagonist, before leaping off to the next cool thing to write.

he had no leg to stand on, really — the first hundred chapters of tales were also intensely derivative. and, even if the author of clockwork apocalypse had taken elements from tales, they’d certainly taken the pains to improve it, digging deep into a character he hadn’t had the maturity to explore back then. not to mention a better naming sense for titles

tales, nagi thinks, did shinn dirty. — not realising he’s murmuring his thoughts aloud.

@frey

☉

'for the glory of team rocket!'

half-drunk from sleep deprivation and only partway cognizant of his surroundings, nagi's first hazy thought is: "should i give the knight order a new catchphrase?" — and then, oh. maybe not this catchphrase.

jolted to wakefulness, he stops in his tracks. where had the call come from? just up ahead, as far as he could tell, maybe from the alleyway to his left — but the echo made it hard to be certain.

he should leave. leave, and get help. find an officer. but where? he didn't know the area enough — and by the time he picked his way to the pokemon center and back, they'd have gone. end of story, no reprints. but, he couldn't confront them. he had no misapprehensions about his battling ability. it would be a cakewalk: him, a unidentifiable smear on the pavement.

he should leave. leave and find someone else. call for help. leave.

nagi stands still where he stopped. the setting sun at his back casts a long, long shadow over the mouth of the alleyway, clear as day.

THEO BECKETT

☉