After the flashbang and the snowstorm, Yujin eventually reappears from the commotion—a shimmering shield of ice reflecting around her, sunglasses mysteriously in place, and frowning every so slightly.[break][break]

Needless to say, she didn’t so openly goad the suspicious individual without some sort of plan in place. And being shielded from the onslaught meant observing a few interesting details that the intruder tried very hard to obscure, including the leaping shadow.[break][break]

“Zorua! Lock-on to it.”[break][break]

The porygon’s head swivels from across the room.[break][break]

Hail begins to fall, neutering the control room’s cohesion. Yujin didn't need to say anything for Niola to understand this reality.[break][break]

"If you left me be, I would've been content to leave you all to your own devices."[break][break]

Yujin raises an eyebrow. Her only response is to level her gun and fire it point-blank into Makoto’s chest, because she is still standing right next to them. Fire multiple times, even, because the second rule of the apocalypse is the double-tap.

[attr="class","bottom"]Niola Winchester Makoto Kurumi [break]
[break][break]
tl;dr glalie protect, porygon lock-on, yujin fires gun[break]

SPOILER: Click to show

40 MP Post x4[break]
50 MP Recall Past Thread[break]
50 MP confidence grows[break]
50 MP strength

“Ara? You know the Master of Faster?”[break][break]

Not particularly surprising—he had a way of getting around. From one end of the continent to the next, as it were.[break][break]

Yujin wades up close to the water’s edge and casts an eye over the gaggle of pokemon. The wild ones were foolish, but the two that appeared this time were harmless enough.[break][break]

“Josh Devlin was quite good at Step Step Revolution. I would have beat him… if I were ten years younger.” She sniffed. All these bodily aches and pains definitely came out of nowhere.[break][break]

skip

[attr="class","bottom"]zachary stellar [break]

“Yes Rudolph, leave that poor beldum alone.”[break][break]

These things were normally segregated, but there existed a suspiciously fist-sized hole in the nearby wooden fence. On the other side was the promised land, or at least, the marginally less occupied ladies section.[break][break]

Half of Yujin’s face appears in the hole. [break][break]

“Number 376, are you harassing random naked men?”[break][break]

The ‘beldum’ rises by the water’s edge, revealing it to be an appendage of a metagross.[break][break]

It rolls its eyes at all involved.

[attr="class","bottom"]Samuel Boothe [break]

“I do,” she says, barrelling through the barricade of common sense. “But only if they get in my way.” Which, for wild pokemon at least, wasn’t that often.[break][break]

Petra’s comment about the bag gaining character piques her interest. Yujin raises the metal briefcase, running her finger along the still-salivary indentation of jaws punctured across the black surface.[break][break]

“Ara… you make a fine point...”[break][break]

As her glalie returns to her side and the skies clear of the sand-soot-storm, it seems a day’s work was done in only three rounds of posts.
She could get used to that, and so puts on her ‘sunglasses’ and offers the ranger a handshake.[break][break]

“Ha. Yujin Ha. Interpol.”[break][break]

[attr="class","bottom"]PETRA MONROE [break]
[attr="class","pkspr pkmn-ditto"]

“I’ll allow it,” she says, every bit the mischievous cat tickling your legs with her tail.[break][break]

As they both rise to her feet, she throws back a grin. “Flying with you? Maybe I should be afraid.”[break][break]

---

[break]
Yujin hunches by the window, watching the world through the round pane of plexiglass.[break][break]

Once she accrues enough existential nihilism, she saunters over to the cockpit.[break][break]

“A lot of trainers would just fly on their mounts.”[break][break]

She raps the frame with a knuckle. “I like the metal, though. Feels safer.”[break][break]

And that’s how she slides into the co-pilot seat next to him, entirely unbidden, though at the very least careful not to accidentally hit a switch with her derriere.[break][break]

“So why be a pilot, Detroit?”

"Fine, I read you. Keep the kzzt-afe and away from R0--zzt. Do not zzzt-space center. Do not head west, avoid avat-zzzt-le."[break][break]

Like a phone dangling from its receiver, Elaine’s rather professionally closed loop is not confirmed.[break][break]

Yujin whips around at Niola’s announcement. Her first thought—hands inching upwards—is what, me too? When she’s asked for help instead, she finds herself flooded with mixed sentiment.[break][break]

Somewhere along the jagged road through life, Yujin Ha had become someone trustworthy to the ‘good guys’.[break][break]

That feels good. That also feels like a mistake.[break][break]

The click of a gun’s safety switch rings ominously in the quiet. Next a pokeball is released, and the room seems to grow a few degrees colder with the glalie’s presence.[break][break]

Her porygon-z, after all, was still focused on the ignition sequence for the coastal artillery.[break][break]

It doesn’t take long at all for Yujin to hone in on Makoto—as an investigator, she knows a little about guilty body language. Not to mention the very obviously unusual behavior of the frigibax.[break][break]

She stands behind them, leaning down to chuckle in their ear.[break][break]

“My, my…[break][break]
“Do your clothes always flicker like that?”

[attr="class","bottom"]Niola Winchester Makoto Kurumi [break]
[break][break]
tl;dr releases glalie[break]
is a creep to makoto[break][break]

SPOILER: Click to show

30 MP Post x3[break]
50 MP Recall Past Thread[break]
50 MP confidence grows

In small miracles do the best memories lie. For most of the League preparing for the oncoming conflict, the simple joy of playing games in the arcade will be a luxury. But the structure still stands amidst the rubble like a solemn promise that such days will come again.[break][break]

“Is the League failing you, Navy?” She tents her fingers and looks straight at him, genuinely curious. As an ‘outsider’—a member of said organization not in technicality but only in the cooperation of their agencies—she finds this public perception fascinating.[break][break]

“With a conquered Sootopolis and terrorists active at nearly every level and angle across the continent, I’d say the League is making the best of its resources.[break][break]

"When you operate at a large scale, it all becomes statistics. You know that. You may look rugged now, but you’re still as soft as I remember.”[break][break]

She glances at that covered sword again.[break][break]

“Don’t dwell on the past. Don’t daydream of the future. This is the present now. There’s no agonizing over what will replace Rocket if they succeed anyway.”

She couldn’t live the way he wanted to live. Hometown hero, friend of the smallfolk; the safe harbor, the anchor, the ship, the horizon it ever sails towards only to never meet.[break][break]

Much better to be a force of nature, she thinks. The hurricane that sweeps through when the time is good or bad to make things right or wrong.[break][break]

“What makes you different, darling?[break][break]

You’ve accrued quite a bit of power, no? And you think you’re the only thing standing between these people and an unkind world. You may be right, but what’s next? When gods and ice giants walk the whole region, will it be up to you then? While your peers row with Rocket, will you go, there’s a bigger problem at stake, and if you don’t see, I’ll just do it myself?”[break][break]

She’s then distracted by the ambling words of some pimply faced teenagers that look vaguely familiar. It’s only when she hears the ’Woah, is that Agent MILF again?' that she smiles in pleasant surprise. It’s always nice when the young survive—as they should.[break][break]

“Speaking of day jobs, how’s that arcade doing?”

She cocks her head. He’s like an old, loyal hound that’s been kicked to the side—not too dissimilar from his pokemon of choice.[break][break]

But Yujin’s not good with navigating the feelings that take flight in the dead of night.[break][break]

“It’s easy to protect yourself when you’ve no expectations, hm?”[break][break]

The faint tail of tobacco seems to be from a bygone time.[break][break]

“Aw, don’t be like that. Everything is pointless until we attach meaning to it.” Like delicious, life-changing money. As for effort: “That’s what they say, but I’m always trying to find shortcuts. Work smarter, not harder, you know.”[break][break]

With a wistful sigh, she follows after Nikita as they exit the room and make their way to a staircase. Cold walls are occasionally breached by the glow of light and warmth from certain floors.[break][break]

Having lone foregone the bronzong, she opted to continue with the much smaller, more mischievous klefki.

[attr="class","bottom"]Nikita Sokolov [break]

As she flees, the phantoms in the fire give chase.[break][break]

The world is lit by antipathic flame; all that sits between her and endless black is the red-shedded past. It nips at her heels, suffocates her with smoke, and claws ever closer to the present.[break][break]

“-sioner.”[break][break]

Fingertips seem to brush against Dahlia’s hair, her back, her regrets.[break][break]

How heavy is that halo on your head?[break][break]

And then something heavier, more tangible slams down on her shoulder. [break][break]

A glove.[break][break]

“Dahlia!”

“Agent Shylock, technically.” Though hardly anyone called her that.[break][break]

It was surely the personal touch.[break][break]

“Take me through a training mission for A.Q.U.A.’s avatars. Then I can write up my report, send it off, and be out of your well-shampooed hair.”