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“Bumbo. Get your ass back home. It's past your bed time.” Her pokemon froze, situated on the roof of a nearby house.[break][break]

The Darmanitan looked as if it was ready to protest, but relented when the Sergeant fixed him with a glare that sent him scampering back up the road, back to where Bailey's childhood home could be found. “He thought he was so slick,” Bailey murmured and shook her head, wondering if any more strange distractions would come her way.

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Stabilize the generator?[break][break]

“I got this!” Instead of doing anything that would have made even the slightest hint of rational sense, Bailey Cooper followed the frantic scientist and Arian into the room with the malfunctioning generator, ran to the closest panel, and started to mash her hand against every available button and pulling down the closest switches.[break][break]

DY|1rUu0[break][break]

She did not have this. She did not fucking have this.

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A Simsear?[break][break]

“Oy. Fuck off,” and Bailey shooed the flaming monkey away from a knocked over trashcan. “That ain't yours! Get outta here!” And the troublesome pokemon scampered away, not wanting to test a trainer that had a full row of pokeballs on their belt.[break][break]

The Sergeant could only sigh, knowing that the wild pokemon would easily slip back into the wilds—Lavaridge always had a problem with scavengers. Some pokemon were too lazy to work for their food. They'd rather try their luck in town, sorting through people's garbage. “Need to get kid's locks on all the dumpsters.”[break][break]

After taking a moment to fix the mess the fire-type had made, Bailey resumed her patrol.

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The WIDE GUARD had defied Bailey's expectations. “Tch. Thought it'd be another teleport,” and her eyes were cast to her Togekiss as she picked herself up from the ground, trying to shake off the damage from the PSYCO CUT and the crash landing—the Sergeant could see the cut and how it oozed.[break][break]

The fairy could not be allowed to accumulate any more damage—not when the fight was so young. If she wanted Tink to outlast her opponent, there would have to be a change in strategy. It would be difficult against an opponent with high utility and high combat potential... but the fairy-type pokemon had a few tricks up her sleeves.[break][break]

“Let's cut to the chase,” and she had seen the Gallade dive back into the sanctuary of the hedges. It was time to take the gloves off. It was time to show why fighting against a Togekiss could be a complete nightmare. “Use Air Slash.”[break][break]



She swept with her wings, sending forth the attack with trained precision. The thin, wisk-like blades would manifest with each wing beat, stretching out from Tink like a cone. The sharpened air would easily decapitate the hedges, decimating a large portion of the maze as the wing blades stretched—and something about this attack would seem sharper than the average Air Slash, as if something had influenced its potential.[break][break]



A pause.[break][break]

“Again,” and the attack was executed twice, further damaging the maze as hedges slacked and slumped to the ground after being cleaved—it would be too much damage for a gardener to ever hope to repair. The hedges would just have to be regrown.[break][break]

It was time to apply pressure.[break][break]

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“Yep. Sure am,” and that was Bailey Cooper's introduction as she took her stand at the opposite end of the pool.[break][break]

Pokemon battles had always been an outlet for the young Sergeant. She was unable to explain the itch that refused to be scratched—the urge that brought her to these arenas, staring down gym leaders as she let her pokemon reign bedlam. Slateport. An untimely death. These things kept stacking against her, driving her to the bottle or to places like this, where anger could be fuel for her pokemon to utilize.[break][break]

"I flagged down one of your Gym Trainers when I walked in. I got lost in a gym before--never again."[break][break]

There was never enough. Maybe some days were better than others, but as Bailey felt her expression pull into a hard line, she knew this was not one of them. “I'm not holding back.”[break][break]

The first challenger tucked her hands into her pockets, offering only the faintest smile as Vicky the Vikavolt joined her side—the electric-type was still abuzz with an energy that was almost infectious. “Let's see what you got.”[break][break]

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...Wasn't she banned from Rascal's?[break][break]

Bailey kept that tidbit of information to herself as Fernando charted their course. His amusement had not been lost on her. Scared? Of a pokemon driving a car? Who wouldn't be? “Oh, fuck off with that,” and she waved off his comment, refusing to admit her trepidation. She'd die before she let anyone have that satisfaction. “I'm juuuuust fine,” and her hand was only removed from the danger handle when he placed both hands on the wheel.[break][break]

He drove the speed limit. It was slow as fuck. When the porygon said nine minutes, it actually meant nine minutes.[break][break]

Her head slacked, lightly pressed against the window. A street light went yellow. He slowed down and caught the red light, like a good driver. Bailey could only internally scream as the backseat driver threatened to come to life. Bourbon made her impatience all the worse. [break][break]

“No rush, right?” A hint of a slur hung to her voice as she pulled out a tin of mints from her pocket—a bite as her jaws chewed through a chalky altoid to remove the taste of liquor from her mouth.[break][break]

She broke speed limits—she was a cop. What was she supposed to do? Arrest herself?[break][break]

At least his car smelled nice. It had that fresh, new car smell. A smell that she never enjoyed, since she opted for her motorcycle. At one point, the League would have offered her a police cruiser, but budgets were getting tight.

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Bailey Cooper had to bide her time. “Alto...something. I dunno what they called it,” and the Officer spoke to her Vikavolt as the electric bug buzzed in the air next to her, suspended by the rapid beating of her wings—they had been told to wait for the Gym Leader to formally accept the challenge.[break][break]

One of the gym trainers had told her to grab a book and relax, but she couldn't see the point. It was hard to relax when her mind had already transitioned into a battle mindset.[break][break]

“Never been there. Never heard of it,” and Vicky the Vikavolt bobbed, as if to nod with her trainer's statement. “You should get yourself warmed up—not sure if we'll have to do a challenge before an actual battle,” and the electric-type was eager to buzz away before those words could be fully spoken--flying through the long aisles of the library without a single care. The aisles were like a race track and it was eager to follow its lanes. It was a miracle that the spazzy pokemon had bothered to listen to what Bailey had to say in the first place.[break][break]

Her eyes turned away from her companion, turning back to the towering bookshelves and the towering white walls—this was the nicest building in Petalburg. It felt strange finally stepping through its doors.[break][break]

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Wait, a pokemon was driving the car?[break][break]

“Does that thing even have a license,” and Bailey Cooper latched her hand to the danger handle as she settled into the passenger seat—her seat belt pulled just a little too tight after it was latched. If the cute Porygon was supposed to ease her doubts, it only amplified them. Would she trust her pokemon behind the wheel of a car? Hell the fuck no.[break][break]

“No, really. Does it?” Her eyes would snap from the dashboard to the “driver,” who was just... sitting there. No hands on the wheel.[break][break]

It did not look right.[break][break]

“Uh. Something close by. You pick. I, uh, don't really care,” and the Sergeant leaned herself against the door, blaming her unease on the alcohol that continued to ease into her system. “No frufru bullshit, deal?”

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It was a long ride down.[break][break]

“I never did get the whole astronaut thing,” and Bailey tucked her hands into her pockets, eager to latch onto the conversation to starve the clock. “I like keeping my feet on solid ground, you know? I already get sea sick—I don't wanna get space sick.” Was that even a thing? Who cared? [break][break]

Her foot drummed against the tile floor. Unlike Arian, who was overcoming travel fatigue, Bailey felt restless. The mission seemed simple. The pay was good. She was eager to guide it to its conclusion... and have a look around the Space Center in the depths that normal people were not allowed to see.[break][break]

“You think there's actual pokemon from space?” She almost seemed embarrassed to say that question aloud. “You know... like those stories of people getting abducted and all that shit. I've seen some weird pictures on the Internet, man—”[break][break]

The elevator door opened. Bailey snapped her mouth shut. “Never mind.”

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