Post by Bianca Moreno on Jan 17, 2014 19:52:12 GMT -6
January, First Week
This is not how Bianca had expected to spend her afternoon and evening. Then again, who could possibly predict the inhabitants of the ocean going and making a raid on Port City? Feral pokemon could be aggressive and territorial, but rarely did they ever make such a bold move, especially when it involved pulling themselves out of their usual habitat. Something that risky was not generally something you did unless you had an ace in the hole.
And boy did they. Bianca had not seen it for herself, thank Arceus, but she'd heard the talk by now about the mutant armaldo. A valuable prize to whoever caught it--and she was sure someone would try--but not something her own team would be able to face without being smeared across the coast. She was sure Bela would want to try, though, that crazy sneasel.
Of course, Bianca called Bela a crazy sneasel with sincere affection, since that craziness came with a fighter's spirit that Bianca deeply admired, but the fact remained that, between her own attempts at first aid and the stop at an Inn for medical attention on the way home, wading through anorith, Bela was covered in bandages, and smelled of ointment and alcohol. The slash across her face that one anorith had given her was particularly impressive.
Her family had spent a great deal of their time ensuring there were no spots where anorith could squeeze their way inside the house to terrorize the family or get into their food and, now, well into the night--the early morning, actually, but she'd had yet to check any kind of timepiece in order to know that--Bianca was sitting on her bed, in that unenviable state of being horribly exhausted but, somehow, completely and utterly awake.
Bianca, being the oldest, had one of the upstairs rooms, as her family was lucky enough to have a two-story house. She had her own room, a privilege she'd learned to treasure, since Katarina, the second-oldest, still had to share her space with Jaime, the third-oldest, and Isabela, the youngest, had to share her space with Katarina's daughter, Lily. Bianca particularly treasured it now, since it would have been entirely justified for one of her siblings to take over this room once she'd become a mercenary. After all, she'd get just as much privacy in a room at a Trainers' Inn. Moreso, really, since her parents were right across the hall and she could hear her father's snoring from here.
However, the snoring was partly drowned out by a cheerful splash splash splash of Rosa playing in her teeny tiny bathtub, which was actually one of their family's large serving bowls. The spritzee gleefully submerged her feathers in the warm, soapy water it'd been filled with, eager to remove any of all traces of cat slobber from her near-eating experience.
Bela, in all her bandaged glory, was curled up a short distance out of splashing range, using one of Bianca's shirts as a nest. Her feathered ear gave the occasional twitch that made it clear she was still at least half-awake, even if the rest of her was so still that, without that sign, someone would be excused in thinking she was a very lifelike stuffed toy rather than a real sneasel.
Bianca sat quietly, rolling a minimized pokeball between her hands. She was dressed in her usual sleeping clothes--which, for her, was little more than an oversized shirt and some undergarments--and her bandana was sitting, carefully folded, on her bedside table, which meant her hair was free to veil her face, and she kept pausing to push it away before going back to rolling the pokeball. Finally, as Rosa seemed to think she was clean enough and hopped into the other, less full, bowl that had the water for rinsing off in, Bianca held up the capsule with her left hand and asked the question that was on her mind. "Do you think I should let him sleep outside of the pokeball?"
Bela slowly raised her head, her blood red eyes blinking groggily, and Rosa paused to glance up and twitter inquiringly. Bianca elaborated, "The shellder. He seems pretty harmless for a feral, and I doubt he'd try to run away, given the circumstances." It was doubtful he could even get the door open if he wanted to. Bela and Rose looked at one another, back at Bianca, and then simultaneously gave their best imitations of shrugs.
Bianca nodded back. "All right. Come on out, sweetie," she said softly as she activated the pokeball. The flash of red light left behind a small, shelled pokemon whose eyes darted around the room before resting on Bianca and staring in that wide-as-dinner-plates way she had come to associate with him. She got off the bed and carefully knelt down. "Hola, mi amigo," she said gently, hoping that her tone of voice would convey the lack of danger in their surroundings, and hoping the lack of danger they themselves posed had already been made clear to him by their frequent butt-kicking of predators.
Bianca moved from kneeling to sitting as she reached out to lightly stroke the top of his shell with her hand. "You're safe," she promised, even though she knew she may as well have been reciting old poetry for all the difference it made. Her current two pokemon couldn't even translate, being too different in species from him to communicate properly.
When she withdrew her hand, the shellder turned himself to look at the water Rosa was currently splish-splashing in. "Shell?" he squeaked, almost sounding a little curious.
Rosa gave a twitter in return despite the language barrier and hopped out of the bowl to dry her feathers on the towel that he been laid out for her. Bianca chuckled. "Oh, you don't want to sit in there. It's soapy." She got up and grab the bowls, and headed for the door. "I'll dump these out and get you some fresh water to sleep in, if you want..."
Bianca slipped out the door to do just that and, when she returned, she found the most adorable thing in the world. Somehow, either on his own or through encouragement, her new shellder had moved across the floor to sit on the shirt Bela had been using as a nest, and the injured sneasel was now curled half around him. Rosa was perched on top of his shell, and bird looked like a tiny, fluffy ball as she seemed to bury herself in her own pink feathers.
A giggle and a quiet, "Awww," escaped her, earning two sets of eyes glancing in her direction and one flicked ear. Bianca carefully set the newly-filled bowl of fresh water on the floor. "Just in case you want it," she said, though it was no surprise that not one of the three pokemon moved toward it as she climbed back into her bed.
This didn't mean she had any better chance of sleeping than she had a few minutes ago, but she'd have to try, since she knew this invasion wasn't going to be gone in the morning.
---
Nope, definitely not gone on the morning. Just like it hadn't been gone the three or four times she'd woken up in the middle of the night, her usually-heavy sleep trading itself for the 'snap awake at the slightest noise' variety that Katarina said she'd developed once she'd had a child. Frankly, if this was what being a mother was like, Bianca was going to swear off men for the rest of her life.
The fact that she woke up to a room with no pokemon in it was somewhat alarming, and not at all encouraging of a good mood, though the scent of cokra was slightly beneficial in that regard. She dressed quickly and then lurched down the steps to find Katarina grilling enough of said cokra to feed a small army. Her sister was a little shorter than Bianca was, wore her dark auburn hair cropped to her chin, and even motherhood hadn't done much to change how rail thin she was. Honey brown eyes, which would have been called 'puppy like' were it not for her tendency to wear a very no-nonsense expression, flicked in Bianca's direction, and Katarina gave a small smile.
"Well, good morning," she said, "Sleep well?"
Bianca tried to rub the fatigue from one of her eyes. "Not in the slightest," she responded with a grin and a forced sing-song tone. She then glanced around the strangely-empty kitchen. The little table in the centre of it always barely had enough room for everyone in their family to sit around it; they'd been batting around the idea of getting a larger one for years. "Where is everyone?"
Katarina turned her attention back to her cooking, flipping bits of cokra on their little grill with practiced ease. "Mamá and Izzy are checking on our neighbours, Dad and Jaime are checking to see if there's been any damage done to our boats, Lily's playing in her room since they obviously aren't having lessons today..."
"And my pokemon? Where are they?" she asked, her thoughts split between her worry-borne irritation, both for her family and her pokemon, and the growling in her stomach.
Katarina gave an annoyed sigh. "I was getting to that. They volunteered to help. Your spritzee went with Mamá and your sneasel and shellder went with Dad." She turned her full attention back on Bianca again. "I wasn't aware you'd caught a shellder."
Bianca rubbed the back of her neck and gave a small chuckle. "Yeah...Saved him a couple of times from pokemon who wanted to eat him. I'm really hoping I don't end up feeling guilty about eating cooked shellder now..." She glanced at the door. "And I'm surprised Cuddles wanted to go anywhere. He's a nervous wreck of a shellfish."
"...'Cuddles?'" Bianca looked back at her sister to see her staring at with a raised eyebrow.
Bianca held up her hands mock-defensively. "Hey, you try coming up with pokemon names on the spot." While sleep-deprived. When the last time you saw them, they were cuddling with your other pokemon.
Katarina just smirked and went back to her cooking. "Well, at least you didn't name him Sheldon."
Bianca blinked, and she snapped her fingers. "Darnit! Should've thought of that one." Katarina just rolled her eyes at her, and when no comeback seemed forthcoming, Bianca smiled and walked over to the impressive spread of cokra. "Now, come on, let me help."
---
Bianca was rolling a pokeball between her hands again as she sat in her room but, this time, the situation was quite different from last night. For one, Bela, Rosa, and Cuddles were downstairs with her family, who had all returned unscathed, thank Arceus. For another, the pokemon in this capsule was much more dangerous than a jittery shellder.
Bianca kind of wanted to hate him, the glameow in this pokeball. He'd tried to choke Bela and tried to eat Rosa. He'd spit her out so fast the true terror of the moment hadn't registered fully, but the more Bianca reflected on that moment when he'd closed his jaws around the tiny bird with the intention of swallowing her whole, the more furious she found herself over it. Her little birdie...
However, this mean old cat was hers now. Whether he liked it or not. She was responsible for him, which had meant making sure his wounds were tended to before and, now, meant feeding him. Just keeping him locked up in the capsule until the end of time would do nothing good for anybody.
Bianca looked at the door, shut tight, then the pokeball, then the chunk of grilled cokra she'd saved. She activated the pokeball, sending red light spilling over the floor.
The first thing the feral glameow did was shake his head, trying to deal with the unfamiliar disorientation of coming in and out of stasis. Then he noticed the fact that there were walls around him. Then he noticed Bianca right there.
And then he hissed. Like an entire pit of snakes. The hair raised along his back and the black and gold tail she'd admired when she first laid eyes on him sat bolt upright.
Then a piece of cokra hit him in the face. He instinctively lashed out with a paw, his claws sinking into the offending object, and then seemed to register what exactly he had here. Mostly that it smelled delicious. Suddenly remembering that he was absolutely ravenous, he devoured the offering so quickly it almost seemed to vanish into the air, then sat there licking his paws, clearly quite satisfied. Then he looked back at Bianca.
Bianca offered a sheepish look from where she was sitting, having tucked her legs up onto the bed just in case he decided that attacking her ankles was a good course of action. Maybe she shouldn't have thrown it that hard, but while she was not exactly afraid of the glameow, that noise had triggered the instinct of make it stop a little too strongly for her to do anything less. "Hola," she said, trying to sound friendly.
"Meow." That wasn't a happy-sounding 'meow,' and he was giving her a stare that seemed to say that he wanted to set her on fire, but at least he wasn't hissing anymore.
Now the hard part. Bianca actually had a pokemon suitable for translating for him, but the problem was that they would be very likely to attempt to rip one another's faces off if given half a chance, so there was no way Bela was coming up here. She could assume he had a basic idea of what was going on, since his reaction to seeing her and her starters the previous day implied he at least knew what a trainer was. That was one part taken care of. The rest, however, would be difficult.
"Bianca," she said, sitting up and prodding her own collarbone with her fingertip a few times. "Bi-an-ca," she repeated. He kept watching her, showing neither understanding nor confusion. She pointed in his direction next. "Rey," she said. "Rey," she repeated, stressing the single syllable.
He perked up a little at that, tilting his head to one side slightly, seeming to be thinking that over. Bianca, considering that a good sign regarding her chances of not being attacked, slid off the bed to kneel down on the floor instead. She didn't dare try to touch him, but more talking couldn't hurt. It also gave her a better view of him; she noticed the healed-over slash on his side from Bela's claws, his fur having not grown over it yet. Then, her eyes moved to the long, mutated tail he now had curled next to his hip. "Su cola es muy guapo," she said, with what she hoped came across as an admiring smile.
He followed her gaze, then raised his tail and waved it in the snake-like way he had when they met. "Mreow?"
Bianca nodded, smiling brightly. "Sí. Muy guapo." She clasped her hands together and tilted her head to one side for emphasis, hoping that gesture actually meant something to him.
That got the cat smirking, and he sat up a little higher. "Mreow."
Well, this was a good sign. He clearly, despite the language barrier, was good at figuring things out based on context--either that, or he had a tendency to assume everything was a compliment--and now seemed to at least hate her less. That didn't necessarily mean he wouldn't immediately bolt out of the room if she opened the door, or that he wouldn't immediately try to brutalize any of her other pokemon were they to come in here...but it was a start, right?
+ 1 TP for Cuddles the Shellder (8)
+ 1 TP for Rey the Glameow (1)
Fed one Grilled Cokra to Rey - TP?
And extra TP for either of them for interactions?
