and unfinished she had left it. without her, the project had crumbled beneath itself. her very name has been scored from rocket's history books - corrupted data files of her own making and senseless destruction have obscured her. but, evidently, not enough to keep her hidden. 

there will be a reckoning when the creature is freed, left to scuttle back to its master. but his frustrations will burgeon among silk sheets and he'll breathe unto her more control, and she will be free of that harrowing laughter in the back of her mind. 

"we would have done wonderful work together, i think. i'm almost sorry we were passing ships." she means it, truly. back when everything had gone to shit, she'd have killed for someone to rely on.

silly girl - you can't rely on other people.

"ecstasy," she says and then tilts her head at the woman.

"i'm no mouse caught in a cage of claws, darling, as well as it may seem. he may think otherwise, and perhaps you do too, but i'm the cat." 

she still has her edge. still has her self-preservation. yes, his mist pervades her mind, but she's always been a bit off, a bit lesser/more than the sheep she walks among.

Lulu Flint

☉

"the results ought to speak for themselves," she says with a raise of her brow. there aren't very many shadow pokemon that came about from their experiments, but there were enough to draw the conclusion that this was just a mere stepping stone for the evolution of pokemon. and man. 

"my goals were..." she starts and then hums as she thinks, "aimless. when i worked for your people, i studied several areas, some pertaining to special pokemon that i believe are still in your custody. the project you're speaking of was a personal one, an idea i'd fostered since my thesis. i just hadn't the means to explore it in its entirety before aligning myself with the proper people."

a lack of red tape and questionable ethics paves the way for progress.

"but as for a conclusion? the subjects that successfully underwent transformation - they became too...volatile. too unreliable."

she flashes a haunting smile. "so i thought, 'why not start from scratch?'"

Lulu Flint

☉

"yes. yes, it is," she says. a poetic title to such a delicate, bloodthirsty creature. as she nears its glass walls, the eyeball dissolves. a gaping hole takes its place; flint-like teeth stick through the flesh and it rams against the side of its confinement, scratching and teething to try to get at her. she trails a single hand over the wall. tenderly. lovingly. 

she crosses to her desk and readies her screens. the lab comes to life just a bit more. lights flicker and the videography is given a green light. she tests her voice commands and then grabs her surgical kit. 

while she disinfects and organizes her space, she has a sheet printed out. a lovely little list of all the things she wants to do to fernando silph. 

"read over this," she says, handing it to him before snapping on gloves. "and if you disagree with any of it, tell me and i'll take it from the list. but nothing there will harm you. or our experiments."

FERNANDO SILPH

☉

she thinks fondly of her creature's babbling. though she hadn't forged it from nothing, she very well may have. prime is by all means something different. something else. studies of its cells have only confirmed her suspicions. the ditto it was born from has been rewritten, warped, and all of her analytics inform her that the very ditto it was is nothing but a distant ancestor. eons of evolution brought upon in a single moment. 

and now it can speak to her. now it can want. now it can desire. now it can crave. and its soliloquies don't go unheard. she sings lullabies to it, and reads it stories, and confides in it all the secrets she keeps from FERNANDO SILPH. 

"because it's boring to be right." because the human imagination is a limiting thing. because this world, and the next, are so full of surprises. 

"but let me tell you this, darling. the work i did then? the project you're asking me of? the stone age, compared to what we're doing now."

Lulu Flint

☉

then we wait. such is the hubris of a man with too much at stake. this behavior is what cost him his peace of mind these last few months. if she'd extracted all of it, as she'd suggested, and not gone soft, he'd have lost his arm and... they may have lost their creation. and besides, she's a futurist. there's no sense dallying on the past, even as he comes back to haunt them. 

"if all goes according to plan, we won't need to wait much longer," she says with a sniff. 

she gathers her robe around her, still feeling a bit spurned, and flips his laptop closed. her mind is still categorizing all of the accounts she'd skimmed; she'd taken more stock into the information than she'd let on. 

and it's shortly thereafter that they're walking into her lab together. her lions rear their heads from their plush pillows, but yawn and nuzzle back to sleep when they see their master and her plaything. 

machines whirr to life. she fusses with her computer screen. 

the amorphous blob rolls to the edge of its glass cage and presses against it, forming a single blue eye to watch anya and fernando. 

"charming, isn't it?" she says.

FERNANDO SILPH

☉

"i wouldn't call it abandon," she says. she sips her tea. lulu's reaction is a curious one, but she doesn't give away much about her thoughts with her facial expression or her words. 

when she'd fled the region, it had felt like abandoning a child. her life's work. everything she stood for. everything she'd clawed and killed and sacrificed for. but now, with her purpose rewritten, with her path now straightened, with life created under her fingertips, why, there's nothing more satisfying than that. 

she smiles salaciously from behind the teacup. "ah, but that's a secret i cannot share, my dear. but this work will be the most important i ever do.

"are you familiar with my history? my studies prior to my involvement with your party?" evolution. "i thought the shadow project was the next step, a means of elevation, but it wasn't." 

her eyes glimmer. "oh, how sweet it was to be proven wrong."

Lulu Flint

☉

she combs through the notes while they continue their discussion. as much as it is a madman's project, she knows better than anyone that any information, no matter how inconsequential it may seem, can prove itself key to scientific discovery. 

the computer screen loses her interest after she's combed through the lengthy document twice. she'll read over it again before she makes any decisions about grafting whatever remains in fernando's arm into their creature. 

their creature, of which she's taken to calling prime, first of its kind and the name of a god, has enough documents and notes surrounding it now that anya could publish several books if she so desired. and yet its desires remain a mystery to her. 

it hungers, yes. there are times where her nature gets the better of her and she nears its cage. its shape is still amorphous, but has shifted upon her approach, has formed mouth and tongue and throat enough to cry for her, enough to screech at her. 

it wants. 

"whatever grows in your arm is not the same as the tag. it is more you. extracting it now, after all this time, may result in more damages than before. you may very well lose the arm." 

she tilts her head. "take us to the lab. i'll run the tests i've been planning and if all goes according to plan, we can perform extraction in the next couple of days."

FERNANDO SILPH

☉

there's a crudeness, a callousness to this woman, that anya herself lacks. while her companion seeks to judge her, anya only studies her back. while her tea steps, a pot brought over, anya lays a hand upon their server's own and murmurs a few choice words. 

moments later, lulu is brought a black coffee rather than a pot of tea. anya doesn't comment, only leans forward and draws the lid off the teapot, inhaling deeply. the flowers within have bloomed. it will steep for a minute more before it's ready.

she spoons honey into her cup while she waits. "well, you said you were in my old studio. that work is of little consequence to me, though i'm interested to see what you'd do with it."

she snakes a smile as she pours her tea and brings her cup to her lips. "people like us, we're always in danger. i've hedged my bets, made my bed." and after her first sip, almost as an afterthought, she adds softly, "and i'm fond of him."

Lulu Flint

☉

her eyes flash. she'd known that fernando had his hand in many pies, but rocket? she can see the merit of having someone on the inside, but just how many someones are there? she takes another drag, not nearly as long as lulu's own, and exhales contemplatively. 

"we're all in danger," she says. a car zips across the road, spraying water on the sidewalk. she looks at the direction it had come from, sees no traffic, and then shoulders forward. 

the tea shop is a quaint place. once the door opens, warm air and soft, reddish-hued lights greet them. there are mats and pillows scattered about the floor; daises contain a few nooks with larger tables and the place just screams cozy. 

anya orders her usual with a wave of her hand and then sits, gesturing for lulu to follow suit.

"we may not have time for both. so tell me, does your interest lie in the shadow project or your concern for a stranger's well-being?"

Lulu Flint

☉

something to keep in mind going forward. his hubris is nothing short of frustrating. she wants her demands met. she wants answers. she wants the confident man who strode into that bar, who was just out of step in body, but waltzing in mind. 

however, her annoyances fall to the wayside as he brings up their creation. her mind's eye still doesn't go so far as to call it her child, but the sentiment is there. she looks down at his arm, thinks of the turmoil this thing has caused him. 

but it will be uncontested by the avatar. it will become its own and i shall care for it, far more than i do him. 

the thought causes a headache to gather at her temples. she craves a cigarette fernando. her fingers twitch. 

"how soon? it's stable, yes, but i fear its current form may be unable to house the tag for much longer." she wrings her hands. "i've been studying its cells. while evolution is unprecedented for ditto, i believe we can continue the grafting process. expand it, so to speak." she licks her lips. "with others of its kind."

her eyes shine with a thirst not unknown to fernando. 

FERNANDO SILPH

☉

smart girl. though what would it take to bring her back to rocket? last she heard, they don't take to defects very kindly. it's a percentage of the reason she'd sought out her current benefactor in the first place - her security first, her cause second. sometimes the lines blur between the two, but she's sane enough to fear death. 

regardless, there's no place for her there. rewritten synapses remind her of her loyalties. there's a pit in her stomach, a burning ache across her skin, growing hotter with every moment she spends beside this woman. 

don't tell her, something whispers. and yet as she blinks, she catches a glimpse of rounded lips, bouncing red curls, saying something different. 

"FERNANDO SILPH , but surely you could have put that together." she takes another drag and grimaces at the headache gathering behind her temples. 

Lulu Flint

☉

anya fowl is not a scientist that seeks to undo the ties she's stitched together. the shadow project, the parasite, all her extensive work regarding evolution - all of it has a line that, once crossed, cannot be passed again. but fernando seeks to trespass this hallowed principle. like a child, upset with his outcome, with the consequences of his actions, he seeks to do the impossible and rectify them. 

the paper is a work of blaspheme. it's a madman's notes, lacking in the succinct language of a practiced researcher. she peruses and the more she reads, the more she recognizes the extent of his desperation. 

i offered you a choice. your faculties remain, nerves intact, but your arm would have been such a small price to pay to save you from this. 

perhaps i shouldn't have given you the option. 

but this is far more interesting. for a brief second, she sees him behind the glass cages alongside the rest of her menagerie, poipole looming above him, guarding him for her. 

"you said in the baths, after i mentioned the strength your mists have gained, that so too has your connection to tapu fini." she crosses her arms, chilly in his sleek apartment. "i've little doubt the wish tag grows to contest this."

she frowns. "these hypotheses from your peers are all fine and dandy," she says with a wave towards the screen, "but i'm a scientist. not a philosopher. i need to see what's inside."

she steps back, gives him room, as she says, "allow me to take you to our lab and run some tests."

FERNANDO SILPH

☉