Third.

[azumods]

ENCOUNTER 3. Snowpoint City is small, cold, and definitely not covered in waist-high snowdrifts. The traveling becomes far easier as soon as you enter the city limits, and the bright orange roof of the Pokémon Center is easy to spot among the white blanketing of snow dusting the ground and the local buildings; it's warm in there, and the attendants inside seem used to this sort of thing - people wandering in bedraggled and cold, unprepared for the weather and the routes leading up to this place - and they'll give you warm, fresh blankets and mugs of warm drinks that steam in your hands. The taste is difficult to place - it's definitely made of berries of some sort, though it doesn't seem to be proper tea or coffee; the point, however, is that it's good at warming you from the inside, and while it doesn't have proper medicinal properties, it'll at least perk you up a bit and make it seem like facing the rest of the day might not be so terrible. Which is fortunate, really, given what's to come. Come mid-afternoon, there's a loud, sharp whistle from the doorway of the Center - it's high and shrill, the sort of thing that's designed to get as much attention as possible, in as little time as possible. It'll stop before it goes on too long, but it's definitely enough to be heard, and the source isn't exactly hard to spot. She's another one that isn't dressed like the other members of Team Galactic, her hair and outfit far different from the usual grunt attire; she seems a bit older than Saturn, her expression harder and more experienced. She's smiling a bit now that she's holding the room, but the expression is strange in that it doesn't reach her eyes, even though those are just as bright and alert as her fellow Commander's were. It's cold. Unwelcoming. And deeply, deeply wrong in a way that's both vaguely similar and completely different to the way the emotionless people here tend to present - it's unfeeling, but in a way that's natural rather than enforced. Dangerous. "So you're the group that left us before I could get to know you properly," she says, and her voice is as cold as the rest of her; it's cordial, perhaps overly so, but there's a firmness to it that heavily implies that she's only being nice because she's expected to be nice. Because maybe if she's nice, this will go nice and easy and nothing will happen. "I'm Commander Jupiter, serving Team Galactic under the orders of Master Cyrus. Sorry I couldn't meet you all properly before; things got a bit hectic. But we can change that now." Her tone implies that that isn't a request.

Comments

[azumods]

My main's pretty common, actually, but I've made sure she's powerful enough to be deserving. Did you want to see her?

[omissions]

[oh, that's certainly a curious statement]

I would like to, yes.

[azumods]

[She reaches for one of her Pokéballs, then, releasing the catch on it easily and letting out...

...Well, that sure as hell is a massive goddamn catfaced skunk. She looks just as dead behind the eyes as a lot of the other Pokémon around here, but she's...well, she's definitely something.]

That's her.

[omissions]

[Wow, that sure is something...]

What's her name?

[azumods]

Skuntank. I don't do the whole nicknames thing.

[omissions]

[He nods--hes not great at nickname ideas here so he has no right to judge.]

I see... Marlene's the only one of mine that easily came to mind when coming up with nicknames.

[Indicating the Glaceon by his feet here as the "Marlene" he speaks of.]

[azumods]

Oh, she evolved on the way here, I guess.

[...Glaceon, so.]

[omissions]

Yeah... there was a rock we found on our way here, and touching it caused her to change.

[azumods]

Congratulations.

[omissions]

Thank you.

[Ari bows his head a little at hearing that... so does Glaceon too, for that matter, after a moment.]

[azumods]

So do you consider her your little friend, or what...?

[She's kind of curious.]

[omissions]

I do. [...] I've never had a friend like her before.

[One might even say it's rather charitable to suggest he's ever had friends before. His old traveling group was an eclectic bunch of weirdos that didn't really seem like friends with each other until Marlene's namesake here disappeared and things got more serious.]

[semistableman]

[What kind of person doesn't name their pets??]

[azumods]

[look we can't all have puns at the ready

fuck does she look like, jessie and james?]

[semistableman]

[You could at least improve upon "Skunktank." What the fuck is that, anyway?

That is a terrible thing to call a terrifying cat creature.]

[azumods]

[she didn't name the species, bro, and skuntank does her best]

[hyruglyphics]

-Ah, is she a poison type?!

[ MUCH BETTER TOPIC THAN LYING LIKE A LIAR ]

[azumods]

She is.

[...god, were you one of saturn's, you were probably one of saturn's.]

[hyruglyphics]

I do not believe I've seen the species personally... Ah! Wait, though it bares a resemblance to another smaller species I've seen around. This must be an evolution of it, correct?

[azumods]

Right. They're in the woods a lot, and in some of the caverns.

[hyruglyphics]

[ A nod! ...

... Both her and the Metang are coming in closer... ]

What abilities are they good with?

[azumods]

I'm not going to hand you my strategy or anything.

[hyruglyphics]

[ Blink.

... Blink they actually blink in unison insofar as a Metang can blink. ]

Oh-! ... Oh, that wasn't my intent at all, actually!

[azumods]

Then what was?

[hyruglyphics]

I was simply curious.

[ She

yes

is one of

Saturn's ]