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“This is your fault.”[break][break]

Bailey Cooper wrongly placed blame on the League Head Scientist, staring at her poor berry farm and state it found itself in. Durants. Durants were fucking everywhere. They were trying to tunnel into the farmhouse and claim it as their own, and she could only watch as they tried to ruin what she had so cheaply bought.[break][break]

“Last time you were here, I told you that you left crumbs in my kitchen,” but her kitchen had been a disaster from the day she occupied it. Keeping her house neat and tidy was not her strong suit, and there were many things in her house that she kept, even if they did not spark joy.[break][break]

“You're gonna help me fix this.”

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“I think you'll be alright. You wheeled up here just fine, right?”[break][break]

There were worse things than being wheelchair bound, and Bailey Cooper had seen it with her own eyes. “Wait, shoot. What was that filter? I liked that one—” and for the briefest moment, she tried to adjust her grasp on her phone.[break][break]

It slid right between her fingers.[break][break]

The smart phone landed right on its corner, and the both of them would have a perfect view as it cartwheeled itself straight of the edge of the cliff, flipping and twisting into the foggy depths.[break][break]

There was a moment of silence.[break][break]

“Are you fucking kidding me.”[break][break]

/end

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Chocolate bubbled, threatening to burst as Bailey pulled the metal bowl away from the heat, off from the boiling pot of water that was ready to spill over.[break][break]

Her kitchen station was a disaster. The sink was filled with dirtied bowls, showing that this had not been her first attempt. In a community kitchen in the League Headquarters, there were trays lined with perfectly shaped confections, and she struggled to replicate what everyone had already created.[break][break]

She chose to work when the kitchen was empty, just so she could learn without prying eyes. How the hell did she manage to do this last year? She cannot recall.[break][break]

They were making chocolates for Valentine's Day, to donate to the construction workers at the Night Market as they worked to revert the damage done from the New Years' Bombing.[break][break]

“Motherfu—” and she would have finished her curse, if not for the sound of the door opening.

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Finally, a fresh face.[break][break]

“Bailey Cooper. It's a pleasure,” and she wondered if the newcomer's face would spark with recognition. Without her iconic jacket and sunglasses, she could blend into the public without being harassed—not that she really was. As an Elite Four member, she had been told that she was the least approachable.[break][break]

Whatever the fuck that meant.[break][break]

“What's a Wooloo? One of those galar pokemon?” She took a long sip from her glass of water, hearing the clicking of the ice cubes. “I haven't kept up with the new influx.”

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She gets ready for the selfie—camera raised and ready to snap the photo as she stands by the head scientist.[break][break]

“Heard some pokemon crying and walked too deep into the fog, and straight off the side.”[break][break]

Was this a good filter? She swapped through their options, trying to find something that could enhance the polished shine of his wheelchair. She was still giggling at every odd interval, trying to get the mental image out of her mind.[break][break]

But damn, it was just too hard. “I don't remember most of it—happened really fast.”

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[break]

The elite four would stay together, even if the very fabric of reality would try and tear them apart.[break][break]

Bailey Cooper was with persephone amavi when Kyle's text message reached their phones—both members of the Elite Four standing outside Olivia Abbiati 's office in preparation for the post-New Year's Meeting. “Going on an adventure...?” and she would squint at the message, before turning her dubious expression towards her fellow elite four member.[break][break]

“What the fuck?” She may not have seen the aftermath of the event, but it had been relayed to her—and while she did not know Kyle or Mateo as well as she knew Perse, she knew that they had been close.[break][break]

And that Kyle had been ready to give up everything to go after him.[break][break]

“He's up to something.” It was so obvious. “Dude...” and her eyes would look at League meeting room, knowing that nothing good would come from a meeting with the council—even if some of the members were already seated inside, waiting on their arrival. “Fuck these people.”[break][break]

She had dealt with enough clowns today. she turned and power walked away from the door. she was out.[break][break]

“You got a pokemon with teleport?” A fast series of warps would take them to his home—his parents had been listed as an emergency contact, and after failing to get ahold of them, appeared at their front door.[break][break]

What was inside was the biggest surprise of the night, besides the fact that nobody had locked the front door.[break][break]

The wormhole was still open.[break][break]

Bailey turned to Persephone, feeling that she knew exactly where Kyle's adventure had taken him. “Do you think this could give someone cancer? It looks like it could give someone cancer.”[break][break]

She would send a text message to counter his own: we're crashing your party. Her mind was already made up.[break][break]

“I'm going. I got an entire arsenal. For once, I wanna be the one dropping in on these... ultra beasts?” The name was stupid. She hated it. Space pokemon still sounded cooler in her head.[break][break]

But she wasn't allowed to make those decisions.[break][break]

She dove in, without a second of doubt or worry—it was only when her head cleared through the hole that she realized all of the possible ways this could go wrong.[break][break]

And the strange tunnel would be consumed by the sound of her scream as her body plummeted.

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Bailey Cooper does not see elegance in violence.[break][break]

She sought what was natural—the ingrained strengths of her pokemon that had been bestowed upon them. Some trainers enforced their own style, their own strategies, into the minds of their pokemon—treating them like molds that had to be fit into a bigger piece. Bailey never bought into that kind of enforcement. Like a whetstone, her words aimed to refine what they already possessed, and to teach them a truth that so many trainers tried to shelter their pokemon from.[break][break]

Pokemon were monsters, and they had to fight like monsters. If they chose to battle for her, then they would be hurt. She could not promise to keep them safe from all harm, and they accepted that there was always a danger when they stepped into these arenas.[break][break]

She does not force her pokemon to fight—they have a choice, and those that accepted were taught that nature was the truth that she pursued.[break][break]

Because, oddly enough, there was an elegance in letting them grow into their own strengths. There was an elegance in the stalking, pack tactics of the pyroar, in the lunging strike of the luxray, and in the skull-breaking punch of the kommo-o. It was not the violence that was elegant, but how natural it could come to them, and the ease behind its execution once it had been refined.[break][break]

But it was also messy. There was nothing pretty in the bruises, the cuts, or the scars. No pretty songs to be found in the wails and the battle cries. Those things cannot be glorified, because it was overlooking the truth—they were animals fighting in a ring to prove who was superior, and no amount of elegance in the tools they used could bring them further from the barbarism.[break][break]

What was natural was also what was cruel, and in that indifference, Bailey Cooper found her strength. Do not celebrate the violence, but what was efficient, and know that those that fail will fall because strength was forever shifting. That was what it meant to be a pokemon trainer.[break][break]

She just wished she knew how to put that into her own words, instead of latching onto its feeling.[break][break]

The newly dubbed pokeball-man shifted her gaze at the laughter as a new challenger made his approach—and she wondered why the strange sway of his hips made it seem like he was a runway model. The urge to chuckle was almost irresistible, so she had to bite her lip and try to hold her composure.[break][break]

All that gold made it even harder.[break][break]

Instead of replying to the man's challenge, she flipped him the bird.[break][break]

The next moment, the materialized sandstorm would obscure the battlefield and her crude gesture. She can hear the booing of the crowd—they wanted full visibility.[break][break]

Bailey would stare into the surging sand with familiarity, and knew that no orders would be exchanged as her Krookodile was swallowed by its expansion. She lost sight of his distorted red figure.[break][break]

But she saw the way his claws flexed, eager for what would come next.[break][break]

A lone call would resonate from within the storm—a howling, cackling laughter as the Krookodile gnashed its maw in amusement at the tiny dragon and its efforts to hide; taunt.

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bailey cursed.[break][break]

losing the trail was not a huge blow to her pride—pursuits had never been her specialty, and atop the roof, she reached for her comm device. “We had an incident,” and she as she relayed the ongoing situation, she continued to curse her luck, knowing that a pokemon with mean look or arena trap would have been perfect for this situation.[break][break]

but she couldn't always be prepared, and she accepted her failing with grace.[break][break]

Next time would be different.[break][break]

“Huh? What was that?” she glanced away from the comm device, just in time to hear the panic and the screaming of the surrounding citizens. From this high peak, they looked like scattering durants. “Fuuuck, what now?”[break][break]

A bomb threat?[break][break]

“Hey, Officer Cooper calling in—we got some bullshit,” and even if that assailant were to reappear, bailey would be too occupied to handle it.[break][break]

There was never a boring day in hoenn. “And bring some antidotes. I think I'm poisoned? Can I die from this?”[break][break]

notes: end <3

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