"Rory! Rory Faust"



A bright crooked smile lit the young woman's face. Admiration poured from her eyes; it was clear, more than anything else, this was the place she wanted to be. This was the woman she wanted to be with.



An abrupt extension of her hand punctuates the formal greeting.



"Nice to meet you. I actually have a few questions if you, um, have the time!"

"Got it!"

She didn't wait for another second to join JAMES BAKER in repairing the circuitry. And, together, they brought life back to the facility.

"Nice! We did it."

Piece by piece, the hallway regained its vibrancy, illuminating its path forward. Excitement zapped her lips into a crooked smile and with a twist of her hips, she offered a quick high-five in wake of their discovery. A high-five that would've been quickly forgotten by the series of quick back-in-forths between Katherine Fairburne and FERNANDO SILPH .

Wherever they wanted to go, she'd follow.

The world of electricity greeted her yet again.

It was fierce, it was pulsating to life, it was everything.

"Oh shit, my bad."

Without realizing it, she bumped into JAMES BAKER 's back while distracted by a nearby pole of disconnected wiring. It had looked too much like an ultra beast in the dark and caused her nerves to shoot up tenfolds.

"um where are we going again?"

"Oh!"

With the exuberance of a child, at the mention of a secret, Rory's face lit up. Leaning forward, she pushed back a piece of hair behind her ear to listen closer.

"Silph co."

The name rung more than a few bells. Namely, when she was much younger and much more naive, it was the company to where she dreamt of. Strived for.

If only she didn't wind up under rocket's thumb.

"Mm. Do you mean like avatarship and mega evolution?"

Rory wasn't the most well versed in the topic, but she recalled reading of it once before. Deviation from the norm.

As the duo spoke, a small scamp of a dog shuffled over. Electricity enunciated it's happy pounce. Rory reached down to scoop the young pup.

East Mauville.

A familiar piece of the city Rory loved to visit whenever she held the time and availability to do so. Walking along the pavement of the glass city's streets, an alolan sandshrew peeking out from her backpack, Rory made headway toward the objective of her little visit today.

maiyra nori 's workshop.

Ponytail bouncing with each step, the young woman approached the door with a wide, crooked grin and gave it's wood panels and heavy, spaced out knock.

"Hello!"

She tried peering through any available window to no avail.

"I'm here to see maiyra nori !"

When they all flitered into the room, Rory took her time gazing the abandoned tech and dust-covered electronics. Some were dated pieces of material she'd only read about in textbooks, while others were completely unheard of.

"Huh."

She was going to show some pieces to JAMES BAKER, but he looked busy...deciphering something? It was hard to tell under the dingy yellow light. As she looked, the others' voices fell into he static, only emerging once a sense of urgency settled between their words.

"Oh!" Her voice squeaked from the shock. "Ok!"

Rushed, she gathered a few trinkets here and there. Mostly junk fo reexamine later or keep for the memory of transversing this plane of existence.


Oblivious to their worries, she kept a bright smile as she returned to their sides, her bag filled to the brim with an assortment of random trinkets.

"Ready!"

If JAMES BAKER didn't look too overtly concerned, she'd peel open her bag to reveal a peek of it's inners to him. It was an open invitation to say, 'we should look into this shit together'.

A job?

Sparks of interest splattered her bright eyes, only to fizzle out as realization donned on her. She couldn't forget her obligations tied to rocket. That came first, unfortunately.

"Depends. What kind of job?"

After duraludon had secured itself to her party, another pokemon scampered out from the woodwork. It looked to be shy, but after seeing the duo treat the last pokemon, its curiousity naturally overtook it's fear. Slowly, it hobbled to them.

"Ah, another cutie!"

Kneeling down beside it, Rory reached out her hand, letting the small pokemon to get a whiff of her before encroaching closer to it.

As James would go onto describing the job, Rory would keep her gaze set into the eeveelution, eventually moving to ask it the same question she asked the duraludon.

With one solid click, Rory could feel the wires finally settling in place, each end connected to one of the corresponding nodes. Whenever the power fully return to the dried out system, the door would finally be able to seek movement once more as well.

"Okay, doors ready," she called over her shoulder, confirming her situation before lunging over where James stood. The wiring of the generator was already exposed, and after the redirected impact of the THUNDER strike, it looked to have been puffing back to life.

"You got it. Sweet!"

Still, she ran her gaze over it's inners, taking the chance to ensure it's maintenance was to par. It looked alright for the most part. There were only two or so wires that required tweaking, and after their fixing, what was once a hum of a heart beat had become roar of life.

"OPEN IT." Over the screech of thunder and overwhelming electricity, the engineer's voice carried to her Mawile, who'd kept stationed next to the door. The pokemon blinked then slammed it's hand onto the trigger to force the metal door wide open.

"WE'RE GOOD TO GO!"

🗺️ RORY FAUST's expertise as a mechanical/electrical engineer must be pivotal in some way.

Rory's eyes widened. 

All at once, a bundle of trust had been pushed onto her. Trust in their lives, in the mission, in the future of their discoveries. Palms sweating, her breathing became shallow. There was no room for failure here. 

"Okay...!"

Balancing off the balls of her heels, she spun back around to where the entrance of the power station laid, linking cables in hand, and immediately went to work at it. Piece by piece, her nimble fingers connected one cord to another, repairing what was lost to time and decay. 

(No title)
"Ah."

So, there were multiple stations around here. Not just the one. And they were all abandoned? Rory couldn't wrap her head around it. But she didn't need to -- that wasn't her job today.

The mention of Xurkitree forced down a heavy gulp.

"Um," she stammered, hands fidgeting along her tool kit. The cool metal was the only things grounding her here, in the world of electricity and beasts. "It could work, yes. But..."

Her hesitancy was almost immediately addressed by the elite four woman, Katherine Fairburne , but then quickly dismissed after.

"If the generator is down, then I guess we could essentially use a high-voltage, indirect attack to power up the transmission lines."

A pause. A breath. A push forward.

"But that'll be the trick. It'll have to be high-voltage AND indirect. By skipping the transformer, there's no way to mitigate losses of voltage, so we'll need enough to overcome that."

From there, she could manage any difficulties due to miswiring or the like. It wouldn't be an easy task, especially with thunder spearing the ground the way it has been since their arrival, but as with the other crazy idea they were propagating, it was still feasible.

"Cables?"

The mention piqued her interest. Squeezing through JAMES BAKER and Katherine Fairburne , the young engineer craned her head up to meet the man's gaze, blinked, then offered a crooked smile.

"May I?"

When the cool rubber wires graced her skin, recognition was almost immediate. She gave them one long look just to confirm her thoughts, though.

"Oh, oh, oh! This is a linking cord. They're pretty universal, but this one looks similar to what you'd see with those automatic doors. You know, like the ones that just open and close on its own. If we could link it to one of these deactivated doors," she gestured to the closest one within their vicinity, "maybe we can force them back open."

"Hey!"

With the radiance of the sun, the engineer's gloomy expression lit right back up when the other finally arrived. She hadn't thought he had forgotten about their meeting, but deep down, there was a tiny fear echoing out the possibility of him rescheduling. Which meant she pushed herself out of the house for nothing.

"You too! It's been a while. How's school going for you?"

If she remembered correctly, he was still in grad school completing something medical-related. The details were still fuzzy, but it didn't matter much in the end anyways.

Taking the first step of their walk through the lower district, Rory almost instantly noticed a familiar looking skyscraper poke his head out from one of the nearby alley ways.

"Ooo look!"

She gestured over to the pokemon excitedly. Not only was it one of her favorite steel types, she had yet to pocket one for herself! Her Mawile knew this all too well, because without hesitation the fairy type made her way over, waving over the stray mon with her giant mouth. The pokemon followed, frightened, and moved up to approach both Rory and James.

"Hey buddy. Want to maybe join my party? "

She offered him a pokeball to solidfy their pact.

God, this was a bad idea.

When JAMES BAKER first mentioned trudging out into a foreign, undocumented realm with a gaggle of important people to boot, Rory had thought hell no. No fucking way. But then she looked back up at him and recalled her friend of a friend of a friend who'd originally introduced them, and how if she ever wanted to put her degree to use outside of rocket, it'd be through meaningful connections like this.

With her Mawile stationed right beside her, the budding engineer kept to the rear of the group, head buried behind the staggeringly tall bodies of her group mates.

Whenever lightning struck, she'd make a small hop. Again and again, until one hop, in particular, forced her chin to jut upright at just the right moment, where when she looked up, the world around them sparked to life.

"Wow." She found herself in awe. The thunder hadn't been what she expected -- it was raw power, fueled by a keg of foreign electricity, maybe siphoned out from the dangling beast trampling near the world's horizon. "You said you all were here before, right?" Glancing over at JAMES BAKER , the woman's voice attempted to carry itself through the arcs of electricity. A difficult feat to accomplish. "What did you see? Beyond this?"

Rory and James were friends...in a way. She had met him once or twice before, usually through a friend, or through a friend of a friend, or particularly the last time they spoke, through a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend's cousin.

But those were just details.

Small, minute imperfections of the overall big picture that they did know each other, and in just a few day's time, she'd be attending an expedition with him. Well, James and a few other 'important people', as per his words.

Hair tied together pulled two messy, low-hanging buns, the young engineer was waiting beside the rickety sign they'd agreed to meet at. Beside her, a spunky mawile stood guard, arms pointedly crossed over her chest.

Anxious, Rory fished out her phone from her back pocket and sent out a quickie text.

'hey! I'm at the spot. Are you close?'