few weeks, huh?

should be enough time to put in some pto.

rainy hums in reply, searching through his built-in access points. "logistics and intel ain't my thing." it'd been a difficult enough task trying to search undetected. reading through other crap and finding papers was another thing altogether. what they asked for, he replicated. what they needed, he dug out. whatever else they wanted out of him was beyond his pay grade.

espionage and all of that shit? all things he neither had the skill nor patience for. especially with mouthy field agents that thought they knew better.

he glances up for a second at the other man, pausing as he not so discretely stares at things he shouldn't before turning away. rainy pushes the screen of his laptop farther back, then digs out a few snacks from his bag as he balances the device on his leg.

"they 'lready didn't notice. made off with a paper for someone to do something with."

hands press on either sides of a plastic bag, air releasing with a pop before he shakes the bag of chips in zev's direction. then, as clarification, he adds: "this shit's more boring than in the movies."

all that hacker shit was only cool if they pretended like anything about fast typing and clicking was cool. "what're you guys plannin' on doing with the center?" rainy slowly shoves a chip through the seemingly open abyss of his mask. "biggest freakin' target there is on that island otherwise it'd probably be a waste of time to conquer or whatever the fuck."

Zev Harcourt

it wasn't a fuckin' invitation.

but, figures. everyone that knows their way around a little bit of code always thinks they know what's up. like, congratulations? you know how to run a bot? sure, most people who were desperate enough to buy concert tickets for some so-and-so pop star could with enough determination. it's just how they can get their kicks.

can't get enough attention in real life, so the next best thing is to pretend that you're an actual flight risk by playing around in someone's stuff. their operating system too if you were really so tempted.

everyone's a badass until you talk about their internet search history, tbh.

rainy rolls his eyes when his chat window becomes inundated with "friendly" advice on the other player's part and watches idly as enemies are decimated one after another while this player's character doesn't move from his line of sight. must've been the guy nosing then around through his. had to be. wasn't like most other players had the sense they were born with. for a second, his character idles on the screen as he taps his fingers on the keys. either he had things set up already, which.

would've been insane.

or.

pokemon, maybe? could've been one of those porygons or a rotom. those moved through that space pretty easily. he rattles off another message, though it gets pushed up pretty quickly in the game client. "trying to prove something, handsome?"

"embarrassing for you tbh lmao ur gonna get reported immediatelyyyyy"

Mark Cunningham

"like a fish tank?"

huh, alright. so, she fixed it once, and that led to some voice coming out of the machine. she'd also apparently attempted to tear it down once. so, tackling the walls also wasn't the solution even if it seemed like the most obvious option. what was the likelihood that the floors would be the same? "well, if someone's watchin' me, i'm not gonna let 'em make me look like a fuckin' idiot."

rainy mumbles to himself as his brain clicks ahead, running through if-else statements ( despite knowing no such logic applies here ) as he makes for the door of the workshop and slides his fingers against old wood only to grasp at a handle that never releases.

a firm push to the door yield no more answers either and his head tips back in the head scientist's direction when she calls his attention to the device. taking it in hand, rainy runs his thumbs across the symbol. "yeah, they really like hexagons." the device is tossed back onto the work desk without care as he crosses his arms over his chest. "don't recognize it, but." he taps his arm.

busies himself by searching the desk, rifling through what looks like spare parts and tools. shuts the drawer. "you ever hear of sacred geometry?" what's the other choice? were there any other choices? rainy draws a hexagon in the air without looking at her.

"read it somewhere once. harmony, transformation—some shit like that. s'a pokegear right? got any of its regular functions? map? radio? anything?"

Lulu Flint

"you're real fuckin' boring for a friggin' boss, you know?"

criticism comes out without his thinking, but rainy watches the man cleave off a tail without the slowpoke so much as flinching. in another world, he thinks that the man would've fit right in with the butcher: two big lookin' guys doing dirty work. but, knowing what he does makes cillian come off less impressive than he ought to. he'd been through the thing a handful of times, hadn't he?

at least once or twice, even if he hadn't found this specific pathway until—now.

playin' nice with the program was why they had fuck all on the rks other than it was in a submarine, was powered by some big rock and sent them into alternate realities that didn't really mean anything. irritated, rainy takes another passing glance around the butchery. "s'just these slowpoke and this guy. nothin' but that, so this must not be one of those—" fighting ones, unless he provoked the npc into battle. but, there was no promising that battle would have been with pokemon instead of fists or the knife he was holding.

"safer isn't always the more interesting option."

he mumbles to himself something about the door, about shapes that might've yielded anything.

"what kinda knife's that, you know?" he tries the door. no good here either. rainy mimes holding one, then taps an invisible handle. "recognize any symbols?"

Cillian Quinn

eh?

"you mean you guys don't just give 'em out?" sounded pretty lazy to him. didn't seem like rocket were really the types to care what regular grunts like him would want to be called, but rainy hasn't yet parsed out whether or not this was a trait that was exclusive to the guy looming behind him or if the other higher ups were equally as cordial. he had said hi instead of kicking his face in.

"i kinda expected you to call me cupcake."

or maybe somethin' meaner than his high school gym teacher, but it's hard to imagine a buttoned-up criminal like that cursing much. maybe if he put on some shorts and a real tight t-shirt or somethin'.

clipping a zip tie and unwinding a few cables, rainy offers a passive wave in the direction of the rotom and privately reminds himself to go get one for his own purposes. had enough encounters lately with other losers on the internet these past few weeks.

all of 'em with their friggin' electrical pokemon when his particular band of idiots couldn't figure out a door if he held it open for 'em.

"shouldn't be a problem so long as the infrastructure here doesn't get damaged or transmission towers don't get their shit wrecked in the—" a vague gesture, "whatever you're planning on doing." the details hadn't really trickled down that far. not to him, at least, but the blood was in the water. he'd have to be an idiot to not have noticed how the news was girdin' up to be more league propaganda than anything else.

he'd heard somethin' about more combat training here and there, but. not much reason to teach him how to take a punch. didn't even make sense to really even refine what little ability he had to battle. he planned on staying as far away from everything as possible. wouldn't even let himself think about the possibilities or ask beyond what'd been given for plausible deniability.

"'m out in mossdeep anyway." rainy digs out his laptop, then hooks up a few cords to the physical servers before tipping his head in the rocket beast's direction.

"unless you're tryin' to tell me i shouldn't be in a few. days?" another hesitant pause, "weeks?"

Zev Harcourt

alright, one of two things needed to happen. either they needed to stop callin' him out to assignments, or they needed to stop putting shit in places that were near impossible to find through a gps.

like, alright: he got why. but, what's he supposed to do when he's not even half-way through writing down the directions to eat later or something when he only gets to hear it maybe once before the channel got disrupted? luck had everything to do with how he'd even made it down to the power plant's basement without setting anything off while still being well within the window of time he'd been told to show up.

rainy barely makes it so much as in the door before he hears part of his name and small shoulders pinch together with unmasked irritation where his obscured face failed. duffel bag is promptly tossed into one of the far corners of the server room, programmer doubling past their would-be supervisor. "not so freakin' loud." he grumbles, voice robotic and shrill. "you want everyone to know? don't you guys have codenames or something?"

a pause, and then a tacked on: "er, sir."

rainy even salutes, then starts to dig through the bag's contents. he scratches his chin absentmindedly ( or, well, tries ) as he just barely registers the sound of nails on plastic. "you told me to come, didn't you?"

imagine saying no.

he'd sooner be sleeping with the fishes. or, you know, be the subject of one of those organized crime documentaries. he'd make for great online discourse.

this guy had biceps bigger than his head. probably. "if i wanna keep my beautiful little body in one piece, s'not like i can tell you to fuck off. sir."

Zev Harcourt

some people just make it too easy.

it's like he wasn't even trying with that level of security. using the same password? for everything? he didn't even try to make it difficult with figuring out the casing. all lower-case, zero digits—his poochyena's name? that was the first question on most password reset verifications: what is your mother's maiden name? where was your hometown? what's your favorite color?

all things that are easy to answer if you had eyeballs. any social media presence was an invitation to pry, and being stood up on a date because you were "busy" when it took nearly two weeks to plan it in the first place?

yeah, sure.

busy.

he'd be busy as shit trying to figure out how to get all those fun videos off of his tablets and laptops. rainy'd even considered tapping into the guy's smart watch—a lame flex by the way—but the security on that was a little more complicated than he was willing to put in the effort for. a breezy thousand to compensate for his time wasted was more than enough. rainy whistles, tote bags swinging in arms as he thinks to the lovely dinner that he'd be enjoying tonight as thanks—his door is open.

he definitely locked it earlier.

the krabby's pincers reach up higher as he ties the straps of his bag together, swinging it around as the crustaceans yell in able protest as he steps through the threshold and sees nothing broken or turned over or absent. bag whirls around until it stops and he hears a weary krabbbyyyy from inside the plastic. no one's here.

did he forget?

"what the fuck?"

mint frost

taking with mint frost!

it smells like blood in here.

iron permeates the simulated air and rainy can taste it on his tongue despite the affixed mask. a passing glance at one of the slowpokes lying on the counter, still and as dazed as they ever are, makes his stomach turn.

for a second, he thinks that those vegans might've been onto something. in another, he remembers that everything around them is as unreal as the last five iterations he'd seen before this: flashes of people that he doesn't recognize, ruins he'll never see, timelines and timelines of things he recalls and doesn't.

the fall of an executioner's ax brings him to attention.

his throat tightens. ( not real, but some things feel more real than others. ) rainy swallows, watching as the severed tail wriggles until the belated realization that it isn't attached anymore comes. "uegh," is all he manages, his disgust as clear as day where his modulator has failed for the second time that he ventures into the machine with company. "well, we're in the right place. gross, and sweaty, but the right place."

this time, someone to make sure that he stops filing expenditures for mental distress every time that he meets some grisly end because he'd been too slow to make the call to get the rest of the way through.

"last test run of the day, an' if it doesn't work, then." they're back to stage one.

trying and testing out all the others, again. and again. "you've done this one, yeah? just kill him or something." pause. "don't—like, actually kill him. but, like, if you do tell me when to close my eyes and cover my ears."

Cillian Quinn

there's no after-image.

fingertips wiggle as he curls his fingers one knuckle after another until his hand flutters.

a wave of a hand through the air shows no split second delay of the movement as his mind dictates it and his thoughts wander to every game he's ever played in his life and thinks of what servers a system of this scale would've haunted and if the environmentalists that knew would've been shitting themselves thinking about the energy cost. he flexes his hands. looks again to the space around him. he touches the walls and feels the worn wooden support beams. he touches the floorboards that don't creak but feel weak.

his body. the mask fitted over his face, then coughs and hears himself. that achingly sweet, irritating voice.

"fuck, this is what a seal stone can do?"

what comes out is decidedly less.

the workshop is as small as he expects it to be on the basis of what'd been told to him before they'd entered. it's as real as he lets himself think it is. boring. unassuming. but, in turn, that meant it lent itself as a good place to start and test out a few possibilities that wouldn't have been options in other realities that've already been tested a thousand and one times by people more competent than him. here, neither of them face the reality of being significantly injured.

but, what lays ahead after they made a decision:

he doesn't know.

neither of them did, really.

them, being himself and one lulu flint, the scientist that brought him here and asked him to run this test. he wasn't exactly thrilled about it. but, you don't exactly get away with saying no thanks; i'm good to people who had the power to turn you into a human piñata ( if not by herself then through others ).

he turns, hands in his pockets, to face her. "w'dy'a remember doing before?" he asks, voice soft and lilting as he confirms that his modulator failed.

another alternative, he notes quietly. one, where he sounds as he does and not as he wishes.

Lulu Flint

he’s gonna be honest.

rainy didn’t actually think he’d get an answer. part of him had been hoping, if it was an actual player, to hear something reportable. the other part had just been hoping he wouldn’t have said anything at all so that he could just call the whole game a wash and say no one on his team was actually real players so the loss wouldn’t count against him. the back of his neck warms with an unspoken irritation then as rainy leans in close to his screen, fingers flying across the keys as he answers back: “ADCS NEED TO BE BABYSAT”

“OURS IS AN IDIOT.”

“ILL GET OFF UR DICK ABOUT IT WHEN” something pings in the side of their headset and rainy gives a passing glance at the side of their screen, message stalling as they watch the tiniest animation of a voltorb plays out on their overlay. a quick parse of his messages doesn’t suggest that he has any new assignments. but, it also doesn’t say where—

distantly, a magnezone blares sirens as it blinks red and blue beneath the game window.

fuck, he'd have to take this.

“someone’s getting noooosy, hm hm!” now, where was his—a few hasty clicks and rainy changes hands for his vpn, watching cautiously to make sure that the game didn’t outright end as he did. another quick fixes and a handful of scripts run and the alert abates, allowing rainy to return to berating in text. a cheerful HELLO WORLD animation, shoddily rendered in office software, plays on-loop in his backend. “YOU CLEAR YOUR LANE :)”

Mark Cunningham