[PRP] Limitations; Forget Them

[JellyFaun]

"Oh dear...that is rather embarassing!" She put a hand to her mouth, trying not to giggle out loud. "I can't believe it was a ditto all along. Those naughty little shapeshifters!"

She sighed and looked to the spinerak, now standing over his plate of food. "Well, he's just a little guy right now. I don't think he's really very old yet. Probably no more than a few levels, either. But I have faith. He did what he did today when I first met him. He hid under a couch and refused to come out until I fed him." She tickled the bug behind the poison point on his head.

"I know he can't be depended on in a crisis just yet, but he'll get the hang of it. We both will, I'm sure of that! I've never trained a pokemon before, either. Like I told you, I had a pretty cushy life. But my mother was very upperclass and social and my father was always very busy. So they never had time for me. Then I lost interest in school. Who'd be around to stop me, right? After that i started petty theft. You know, the mall, the convenience store, stuff like that." She sighed and looked up. "My parents eventually found out and told me that i'd thrown my life away...to get out of their house. But they were wrong! There was no life for me there. And to be honest, I signed up with Team Rocket because of that. To spite them! And you guys are more close than any of my family ever was. I didn't exactly fit in anywhere else."

She realized she'd been rambling and ate another bite of meat, tugging at it until it tore.  

[Gwennythe]

It was funny, really. She remembered a couple of the others on the mission laughing when they'd found out; though she knew that was more relief than anything... She smiled a little but still, her leg was broken and she was feeling worried toward Lazuli.

"Well then. If you haven't known him very long then I guess you have made quite a lot of progress really... He seems very comfortable with you." Tambrey complimented. She seemed about to interject at first, but then listened as the girl talked about her family and life beyond that.
She felt like frowning a couple of times, and there was almost a hint of disapproval for the turn to theft, but it soon vanished and softened. Thievery, she'd discovered often now, became necessary to those out of any home. The turn to Team Rocket made perfect sense from there, and the last line was quite strikingly familiar to her. She realised it was extremely similar to things that had often rooted in her own head.
"I see. That... That is an understandable reason to sign up. There is something here; you do end up feeling like you 'belong' here." She agreed, before sipping at her tea. "It is a life, a permanent one- a death sentence- but there is that important thing about it. So," Tambrey smiled again, a little more openly than she had been "I believe we had a deal regarding stories, if you're still comfortable with it?"  

[JellyFaun]

"Its a start. He just needs to get used to new things. If this afternoon doesn't work out we'll do some private work together. Targets and he can use me as a punching bag. We're probably not doing our first mission for a while yet, but I don't want to be a freeloader either." She rubbed under his chin. "We can do it, right, Plank?"

Plank lifted his head and pumped his forelegs, nodding.
"That's the spirit."

She finished her food, then patted her belly. "The people here are more friendly than any I've ever met. I am happy I signed up, even if its not morally correct."

Changing the subject, she smirked and gave a nod. "I did promise." She pulled back some of her blonde hair and showed off her eye. It was splotched in white and had a glaze over it, the pupil dead and unmoving. "If you look really close, you'll see a faint scar. When I was little, my dad always felt bad about business trips, so he bought me anything I wanted. We had a sizeable home. Chestnut wood, 15 acres, pool, that sort of thing. Nothing like a mansion, but it was nice enough. Anyway, he went out on business one year and missed my birthday, but he brought me a ponyta home. It was my dream come true! We didn't have any ponyta around our area. Quite a rarity."

She sighed, almost lost in thought. "Her name was Peaches. I thought I'd run right up and pet her, even though daddy warned me. I burned my hand on her mane and I guess my screaming startled her. She reared up and her hoof caught me in the eye." She felt tears fill her eye. "When I got back from the hospital, Daddy said she'd been taken away by a pokemon trainer, that he'd get me a snubull instead. But I saw that his shotgun was missing off the wall when I went inside. And I never saw that Ponyta again." She hadn't meant to go into so much detail and wiped her eye rapidly.

"I think that's why I try to have patience when my pokemon aren't perfect."  

[Gwennythe]

"Targets sound like a good idea; I've tried using them to teach one of my birds about battling while using 'Fly' and having me as a rider..." Of course, with her current injury, any progress there had been impossible.
Tambrey smiled at the attitude of the pair, and the Spinarak's little nod.
"Well, if you think like that, I'm sure you'll both be fine here... A lot of people do tend to be friendly here," She agreed "though not everyone, obviously, but it is a team after all. I kind of think that attitude makes what we do easier to survive; if people are a friend, you look out for them and such." The grunt didn't touch on the 'morals' of the life.

Tambrey then listened as Lazuli told her story; she found herself leaning in slightly to look when Lazuli mentioned there being a scar.
She nodded as she pictured the house and fought back the urge to look impressed at the description; it was fairly different to imagine than her and her mother's small house in Jinko.
The revelation of the Ponyta got a soft, but suspicious, smile; on some level she found she knew where this story was going.
She winced at the thought of the spooked Ponyta catching the girl in the eye and, though she felt quite saddened by the end of the story, found that she was a lot more interested by the last statement.
"That... That is a sad story but the outlook you have on pokémon is a good one." She knew the attitude from such an experience could have gone either way.
"I have to confess... I don't think that this 's a good life but I think, if you keep that attitude, which... might get hard, I don't know, and train well, you'll have a better chance here than some have." Tambrey offered a sad, but, she hoped, reassuring smile.  

[JellyFaun]

"I think life here won't be as bad as coming home from the hospital, ready to forgive the poor thing and finding out your father destroyed it." She leaned back in her chair and smiled as Plank clambered onto her chest and settled there.

"I just...don't want that to ever happen again because of me." She looked into Plank's eyes and was more speaking to him.

Trying to be cheerful again, she looked to her friend and spoke in a more uppity voice. "So, what other pokemon do you have? I saw your aron and pidgeotto."  

[Gwennythe]

Tambrey grimaced slightly at the thought; put like that, in plainest detail, revealed the trauma and guilt of the event rather more effectively than she supposed it should.
At least, she thought, the pair of them, Lazuli and Plank, seemed very comfortable with eachother. She had long found that she didn't entirely agree with the Team Rocket motto of pokémon being simply tools, and she wasn't sure that such a view lent itself to making survival any easier.

The question caught her slightly off guard, but she supposed she was happy enough to answer.
"Um. Apart from those two... Palu has a daughter- she's a Pidgeot, I have a Golbat, a Spinarak, um... a Bayleef," She dropped the next into it carefully, especially aware of her, given the topic they'd just discussed "a Ponyta, and, uh," She shuddered a little "a Rotom."
The last was said with a touch of, perhaps, fright.  

[JellyFaun]

"A full team!" She smiled to herself. "That must be so much fun." She rocked her chair, seemingly unphased by the mention of a ponyta. "Maybe our spinerak can play together sometime. Your's could teach plank how to be a spinerak!" She giggled and finally righted herself.

"My dream team is an ariados, a flygon, an arcanine, an aggron, a lapras and maybe a raichu?" She looked to the serving table where dessert was being served. She got up, leaving Plank on the table, and got three helpings of pudding.

As she sat back down, she put her tongue in her cheek again. "For you. And...what's a rotom? Never heard of that pokemon, to be honest." She noticed the rather discomforted look on the other's face and put her tongue in her cheek. "Are you alright? You look a bit pale. Are Rotoms that bad? What do they do?"  

[Gwennythe]

"Um. I guess so, yes." She agreed at the idea of it being fun. She was, mostly, grateful for all of them.
Her blood ran cold at the idea of letting Neph out to 'play together' with Plank... And anything Neph had to teach others was so not something other pokémon should learn about, she was sure.
"Eheh... Uh. Maybe. I'm not so sure they'd... uh... get along."

Tambrey nodded at some of the choices, though winced slightly at the mention of a Raichu.
"Flygon's are pretty interesting..." She mused, then blinked surprised as Lazuli went and got pudding. That was nice; she hadn't fancied getting up and limping around to get some.
"Oh, um, thank you." She smiled... and then pulled a face.
"They are an electric type... Well, an electric and a ghost type and they... I'm fine, but electricity is... not my favourite thing. A ghost with mastery of it is somewhat of a nightmare but... I was assigned one, so..." She shuddered and then shrugged. "I'm trying to get a better handle on that."  

[JellyFaun]

"Well, just because they're the same species doesn't mean they'll automatically be friends, right?" She gave a little grin, glad that they were at least becoming cohorts. "But we'll see."

"I think flygon are beautiful. I've heard one sing before...its wings, anyway!" She closed her eyes, imagining the melodic swish of the pokemon's call through the desert skies.

She snapped out of it and looked at her new friend. "Not a fan of electric types? Well, they are pretty dangerous. I'm afraid of a lot of fire types, but arcanine are pretty loyal if they're trained properly. But I hope you and your rotom are good friends one day. It sounds like it'd be very helpful!"

She paused. "So...this is going to be a dumb question but where do we get our assignments around here?"  

[Gwennythe]

"Right... And Neph is... Well, I don't actually think Neph even understands the idea of 'friend'." Opponent, meal, slave... maybe ally, though she doubted that last one... were the words that Tambrey was sure Neph would understand as relationships.

"Oh, yes. Wow. That must have been impressive... I've never seen one in real life, nor heard one, actually. I like the pictures I see of them in books and such though."

Tambrey tried not to squirm as the conversation changed again. She nodded, understanding how useful a Rotom could be, but still... "You're afraid of fire types? Hm. I... I just have not had good experiences with electrical attacks in recent years." She explained, a little vaguely then, seemed a little more relieved as there was a technical question that she could answer.
"Oh! Uh. You would've gotten your Rocket Dex when you joined, right? Well, you can get messages- audio or text- from there... Y'know, kind of like a cell phone, just... only connected to Team Rocket. I also sometimes get paperwork show up in the lab where I work, or I check the computer system and find an assignment there... Mostly it's the 'dex though. That's the quickest way."