[PRP] Bugged by Bugs

[lZAYA ORlHARA]

"Difficult in any way you can conceive," Izaya answered Aulus with a sigh. "My pokemon aren't fond of me as it is; well, most aren't. But the one that does likes me too much. But besides being liked or disliked, I have other problems." He flourished his hand in an impatient gesture. "Like one of them being crippled by his OCD about symmetry and another not being able to do anything without her twin. Still another won't seem to resort to violence no matter the situation and then Riviere still acts like a child. Honestly, it's like dealing with a classroom full of - "

He stopped himself, eyes wide. Had he really just been about to compare pokemon - those beasts, those monsters - to his beloved humans? "...it's like dealing with a pack of wild, untamed animals," he finished wearily, irritated with himself. "I don't even know where to start with training them since they can't be reasoned with like humans can. The way Faleen worked with them made it seem like they existed to be living tools made to do her bidding. She made it look so much easier to train and use them than it actually is."

The ex-Rocket listened patiently and curiously to Aulus' experiences regarding his own pokemon. So, it wasn't only him who had these sorts of problems. But the way the scarred man talked about some of them, like they were sentient beings capable of intelligent thought, only served to annoy Izaya even more. "'Ones that think they know better than you'...?" he repeated under his breath, incredulous, but fell silent again in favor to listening more.

A Sylveon...that funny fairy-type Eveeloution with the bows and ribbons...trying to strangle Aulus? Now that mental image brought a humored smile to the informant's face and even elicited a brief chuckle. And that Serperior...with a name like 'Discord', one could only imagine the trouble it must have caused its trainer. The mention of the Absol quickly snatched away his smile, though. "That one...I think I remember her. 'Tortie', was it?"

Speaking about her as if she could think like a person...but that one wasn't even a psychic-type like Namie! How could he project such deep and complex thoughts onto her? How did he figure that she thought herself to know better than him? Was it just some fantasy in his head; some anthropomorphic delusion?

He almost wanted to jokingly ask if Aulus thought he could talk to her but abruptly scrapped that idea. If he really claimed he could, Izaya wasn't sure he'd have been able to take his karate teacher seriously anymore. It was time to explore a different avenue of the conversation topic.

"Yes, that's the problem I have with my Spiritomb, Celty," he complained. "She doesn't like fighting either. It's a shame because I hear her type of pokemon are supposed to be pretty strong. I've just never been able to get her to show me since she seems to be such a pacifist!"

Trying to think, he murmured, "Isn't Paul that little bug-type you keep around? The one with the missing leg? No wonder it doesn't want to fight; it's already at a disadvantage. Why do you still keep it around? Did you find some other use for it?"

Izaya looked to Tambrey for her own input. "Neph...if I recall correctly, that's another of those bug-types. Same species as Paul, too, ne? Though I think last I saw her, she had gotten much bigger. How did you manage to evolve her when she wouldn't listen to you? That was her problem, right? Aggressive thing; nothing like Aulus' frightened, skittish spider. Who are Millicent and Franklin, though? Don't know if I'm familiar with those ones."  

[TawnyAngel]

"Neph's definitely an interesting one," Aulus agreed with what sounded rather like affection; it was, he'd always been fond of the killer bug.

Izaya... apparently had a lot of problems though. Aulus frowned as the trainee/traitor spoke, nodding occasionally as he drank in the facts. When Izaya got to the part about Paul he frowned deeper. "It's true Paul's not much for fighting but he has some useful utility moves; Disable, Dig, and Spider Web. As well as that it can be handy to have a pocket sized bug that can make you an instant rope with a sticky end, or bandages, or a trip wire.... The list goes on so yes, there's plenty of uses for a pokemon that doesn't like to fight. If you really can't get your Spiritomb to use offensive moves there are other ways she could be useful, their defensive capabilities are slightly better than offensive anyway so it's not a total loss."

It was interesting how Izaya had stopped himself just after saying a 'classroom' and switched to the wild and untamed angle, what was that about? Maybe he'd ask in a bit, or store the information up for later or... something; he wanted to play Izaya at his own game but that was dumb, there was no way he'd win.

"I don't know what to tell you about the one with OCD," Aulus continued with a slight shake of his head coupled with a shrug. "I've never run across a problem like that.... Exposure training? Getting them used to having to put up with it might help, the same with the twins. Confidence building.... Riviere acts like a child how? Not paying attention, messing around and such? Mmh. Much as some people might wish it otherwise pokemon aren't machines.... I can't speak for what Faleen thinks about pokemon on that level but I don't think she thinks that, from what I've seen she treats them as individuals." It was surreal to talk about her, he almost felt like he ought to use the past tense. "You can reason with pokemon just not always in the same way as humans, some pokemon have more human thought patterns than others and their motivations vary a lot. Some are pretty much just interested in feeding, fighting and ******** but there are some that get themselves deeply invested in the plot of trashy tv shows." Aulus shook his head slightly, keeping the remote away from Thanatos was difficult sometimes.

"Oh," Aulus nodded, "yes though, Tortie is my Absol."  

[Gwennythe]

As Izaya described his pokémon, Tambrey listened with interest and actually smiled quite fondly at the descriptions, especially Celty's, though it certainly faltered around the mention of Faleen. That was still something that was somewhat hard to process; a very worrisome series of events... She nodded though, focusing on what Izaya said about how Faleen used her pokémon.

"Well. Untamed and wild animals. That, um, is kind of what they are. They're just a little more capable than non-pokémon and, uh, well. Self-aware. But they're still individuals with personalities. I think Faleen took the time to know them and what they could do." She then nodded with Aulus's assessment, which seemed to follow the same line that she had.
More nodding as Aulus spoke about Paul and had suggestions regarding Celty.

"Neph is the same species as Paul, yes, and, heh, interesting is one word for her. Um. Well. Sort of. She wouldn't listen to me at first but then she started to learn she got stronger, and better at fighting, when she did listen to me..." She decided to leave out the bit about Neph seeming to realize what she was missing after Tambrey had been in the group that had been captured by Galactic "Of course, um, she still had some issues where she'd break out of her ball, or get too into a battle to be useful, but my flying types and an upgrade to the security on her ball lock helped there. Basically it was, uh, showing her there were consequences to not listening..." Of course, she'd actually evolved after getting excited about finding a 'giant' (Poor Lu) to fight, but Tambrey decided to leave that out too.
"Oh, um, Millicent is my Cranidos, and Franklin's my Jirachi." She explained, ready to provide more detail if it was asked for.

"Maybe it would help," she carefully suggested, with a glance at Aulus- she wondered if he'd mind this "if we had a training session with you? To, um, see your problem pokémon in action and we could show you how ours behave?"  

[lZAYA ORlHARA]

At the affection in Aulus' mention of Neph, Izaya cast the other man an incredulous look. Hopefully whatever infatuation he had with the spider pokemon's owner wasn't just spilling over onto her pokemon because he couldn't see why else the scarred man might have been found of Neph.

"Hmm...I guess at least it sounds like he's useful for other things," Izaya commented upon hearing about Paul's abilities. "But aren't they all 'pocket-sized'? That's why they're called 'pocket monsters', isn't it? I'd rather keep mine in a ball than outside a ball inside my pocket..." It was easier to control them when you could release and call them back at will rather than just keeping them out and hoping they did as they were told. Maybe that was only for really experienced trainers with very well-trained pokemon.

"Celty has been useful putting others to sleep with her Hypnosis in the past," he conceded. "I even got her to use another attack - Ominous Wind? - once when we were under attack on some mission. Not that such techniques always work, but I suppose they're not totally useless. Perhaps more training will improve their odds along with their stats."

He gave Aulus a lop-sided grin. "I see. Well when I used to room with Jerry-kun, I could hardly let him out at all since Jerry-kun's whole team - including Jerry-kun himself - would set Kid off due to their asymmetry. The only one he seemed to like was Hriss, that mutated, drooling eye-sore of a Feraligator. But perhaps since you're asymmetrical yourself, Aulus-senpai, perhaps I should start getting him used to things by exposing him to you. Having trained your own Absol, I'm sure you could handle whatever my own decided to throw at you. Even if he tried to match up the scars on both sides of your body or to give you reason for a second mechanical arm."

When the male agent asked about Riviere, though, Izaya immediately felt ashamed of himself. Aulus genuinely seemed to want to help or offer advice and here he was indirectly taunting him in return. The annoyance at Aulus' talk of pokemon with human-like personalities, his irritation at himself for nearly comparing them to humans, not being able to understand why Tambrey seemed to actually care about his well-being, jealousy of Aulus and Tambrey and their relationship as partners...or whatever else they had...it was all too much.

All these stupid emotions were getting to him and he hated it. He didn't know how he wanted to feel or appear to feel and he was getting confused trying to keep track of who he was trying to fool about those feelings - the others, himself, or both. Even just feeling ashamed for having made a verbal jab at Aulus for his asymmetry was unlike him and he knew it. He just wished he could sort out why. What was the ultimate catalyst for this change in him?

"He's...Riviere is very insecure," Izaya answered with a sigh, visibly deflating as he turned his head to stare off into the space on the other side of the room. "He used to take on Ali - his previous trainer's form a lot, especially after her death, so I lost my temper on him back when he was a Zorua. I never really reconciled with him about that incident, so he...seems to be cautious around me, I guess. He tries to please, but he gets very nervous if he knows I'm watching or if something's important to me." The man shrugged. "Until now, I didn't really ever think about why he might have acted so anxious and messed things up. Must be one of the few pokemon of mine who actually tries to do as I ask. Heh...maybe he just doesn't want to end up being passed on to yet another new owner."

Pokemon weren't machines, huh? That was interesting to think about. Izaya knew Faleen liked her robotics and her pokemon if not people. Would she have ever lost her composure in the way she had after Umbreon's death over the loss of a mere machine, though? Even if some piece of technology was her pet project, he couldn't have imagined her going nuts like she had due to losing her main pokemon partner. And now...now she didn't even have a human partner.

"You're probably right," he murmured in response to Aulus' words regarding Faleen's treatment of her pocket monsters. "I probably just didn't notice." ...More like I just chose to ignore it, he corrected mentally. Why would I have valued a woman's opinion of her pokemon when said women couldn't understand a love for human beings? After she had nearly died to keep herself from saying the word to kill him, though...could he really say she had no such love? No. Stop thinking about that. Faleen's not here; Aulus and Tambrey are. Focus.

"Reason with them? Please. Maybe on the level of a creature learning that doing a few tricks on command will earn them some food. But thinking they know better than you? Getting invested in tv shows? With all due respect, perhaps you should get your head examined, Senpai." He leaned his head back against the wall to stare at the ceiling. "Maybe you've had pokemon like your Tortie so long that you start to imagine and make up your own wild ideas about what she thinks."

"There, see? Tam-chii agrees with me," he began, sitting upright at the talk of pokemon being 'untamed and wild animals'. His face fell as she continued, however. "But - but Tam-chii, how can you say that?" Izaya whined. "'Self-aware'? 'Individuals with personalities'? Those are things that should only be applicable to humans! Isn't that why Team Rocket steals pokemon and uses them as tools and for profit? It's not as though we see them like one might see humans since we engineer, steal, capture, buy, and sell them, ne?"

He listened to Tambrey discuss Neph, trying hard to understand while at the same time attempting to overcome his resistance to do so. Izaya just wasn't willing to entertain the possibility that pokemon could be so human-like. Neph sounded normal enough to Izaya, like what a pokemon should have been in terms of a wild creature that couldn't ever be fully trusted or reasoned with. There were still ways to tame and train wild animals, though, which is what it sounded like Elite Agent Tambrey had done with Neph.

"Is she fully trained, now, then?" the informant asked, curious as to how things had ended up with the spider since he'd had a few pokemon who had acted as wayward as her. Thank Arceus none of his pokemon had seemed determined enough to break out of their balls, though. That sounded like a nightmare. He hadn't even been aware it was possible for pokemon to do that once they had been capture.

And then he heard Tambrey mention that she had a Jirachi. "Ahhh...that explains it," he sighed, putting a hand to his temples to rub them. "You have one of those little headache-inducing steel-psychic telepaths. But I mean, come on...even in that case, can they truly be said to have personalities when their mental state will likely never develop beyond that of a human toddler?"

Izaya dropped his hand from his head and looked up to blink in bewilderment at the pair of Rockets before him. "Here? Now?" He looked from one to the other and back again. "Ehh, but we just finished a very...awe-inspiring class. I'm not sure I have the...uh...mental strength required to facilitate such a thing. Um...perhaps another time?" he suggested in a meek voice. "Or...to avoid destroying Aulus-senpai's nice little makeshift dojo space here, perhaps you could simply show me one or two of your pokemon and perhaps the progress you've made with them."

The black-haired man stroked his chin. "Your Neph, for example. I'm curious as to how far you've gotten with her." He looked at Aulus. "And 'Disable'! I haven't heard of that move. Would you possibly be able to get Paul to demonstrate how it's done? I'm very interested to see how he performs such a feat, especially missing a leg." He chuckled. "If they can really reason like you say, perhaps he might even be inspired by being able to successfully use such a technique on a pokemon of his evolutionary form."  

[TawnyAngel]

Aulus gave a brief snort of amusement and shook his head. "I didn't mean I keep Paul in my pocket it's just handy that he can fit through small gaps and that. You can try to launch your loopy Absol at me if you want, I'm sure I've dealt with worse." Plus of course he'd have a couple of pokemon on hand with Protect so he wouldn't actually be in any danger, not that he needed to highlight that to Izaya....

"Hu." Aulus scowled slightly as Izaya described his issues with Riviere, well no bloody wonder he was insecure! "Could well be that," he replied curtly, though he voice didn't have quite the same edge as it had earlier. "Trust and confidence are what you need to work on with him then. You could start by talking to him about that incident, you may not think pokemon think like humans but you're obviously aware that it had an effect on him. I'm not sure why you're so fixated on the idea that pokemon are," he made a slightly impatient gesture with his metal hand, "just doing tricks but that attitude isn't going to help you either. Like I say not all pokemon are smart but plenty of them are, and they won't thank you for treating them like idiots." Seriously, what was with that? "And it's not like TR cares about harming humans," Aulus shrugged, "so that argument of yours falls down. Fact is that if you could stuff humans into pokeballs we'd be the first to take advantage of it, and with great glee I have no doubt and we're certainly not averse to experimenting on humans. Remember what they did to Lance?"

Hummm.... Aulus looked thoughtfully over at Tambery for a moment before shrugging again and nodding. "I've got time." Then turning back to Izaya he added; "I can have him demonstrate that, it never hurts to put him up against Neph even if just for a demo."

With this decided Aulus took Paul's pokeball from amongst his things on the bench and released the small purple pokemon onto the floor; Paul blinked around at his surroundings and then, having decided he was safe, gave all the present humans a friendly wave with one foreleg.  

[Gwennythe]

"Well... I mean, you must be aware of the, uh, position we occupy inside the team? We're hardly allowed to, um, leave the team after all? We lack pokéballs is all, but we serve Team Rocket with our skills as our pokémon serve us?" Tambrey tried, choosing the words for the example carefully, but still remaining very aware of who she was telling them too, and what he'd been through so far. She somehow doubted he'd find the example insulting though, and she certainly hadn't meant it in such a way... But she nodded as Aulus went further, even finding an example in Lance... and then she tried very hard not to muse on just whether it was possible to pokéball people or not. She shook her head to clear the notion; theoretical or not, that wasn't something worth musing on...

She smiled and shrugged a little at his musing on Jirachis.
"Franklin behaves quite differently to Alphard, or any other Jirachi I've met, though I'll admit that her behaviour is, um, somewhat 'childish' but I'd agree they really can be extremely intelligent. The League defines them, um, I believe as sentient and that might be one of the few things both sides could agree upon." But, sentient or not, Rocket would always see them as 'tools' of course, she was sure; like an advanced AI, a smarter tool was just a smarter tool...

Tambrey smiled and waved back as Paul emerged, nodding as well.
"Neph knows well enough to behave here, and around Paul. She enjoys scaring others, but she knows not to go too far anymore." She plucked the spider's ball up and turned it in her hand for a moment, before letting the Ariados out.

The larger spider turned her head to carefully look at each human, and then the smaller spider.
<him?>>  

[lZAYA ORlHARA]

"I didn't mean - well it's easy to anthropomorphize them, especially Zorua and Zoroark since they can look like humans, but obviously pokemon are not people. I was just applying human reasoning to guess at why Rivere might act the way he does because that's the only sort of reasoning I'm familiar with. That doesn't mean it's true," Izaya countered Aulus. "In fact, that's probably why I didn't consider applying that sort of reasoning to his actions before. That would suggest he thinks like a human and he's not even a psychic type so there's no way he could even come close." There was a line in his head between his beloved humans and these barbaric monsters and he wasn't about to let it be blurred.

He frowned at the male agent's argument that Team Rocket didn't care about humans. That much was true, he knew, and Tambrey's further points only served to reinforce it. Even its own members didn't seem considered to be worth much to the organization unless they were of a very high rank. At the mention of Lance, though, his gaze dropped to the ground. Of course he remembered Lance. He would never be able to forget Lance as long as he lived.

He'd interacted with the guy; even watched him die the exchange had gone on and he'd been shot. That hadn't even really been a human being anymore after all they'd stripped him of. And who had stripped him of his humanity? Izaya wouldn't be able to forget her either. He would rather not have allowed his thoughts to drift in that direction for the time being, though.

"Ah...I'd appreciate it," Izaya acknowledged weakly when Aulus said he could have Paul go up against Neph to demonstrate Disable. He watched the little purple bug appear and give a small wave, surprised at the friendliness and, disturbed as he was to note, humanity of the action. "Uh...did you teach him that?" he asked Paul's trainer.

Maybe it had been a little thing the agent had taught the spider to put people at ease or just as a trick to show off like how Growlithe were taught to 'shake hands'. Or perhaps the pokemon had picked it up from watching other humans and had recognized it as a sort of greeting. Either way, there had to be some sort of reasonable explanation for a non-human to do such a human thing.

The ex-Rocket winced involuntarily at Tambrey's topic of Jirachi. He really, really despised those little pest. Steel types annoyed him enough, but ones that could get into his head unbidden with no way to keep them out? They were nightmares. Luciole's French lullabies still sometimes got stuck in his brain from forever ago; even if he couldn't remember the words, the melodies haunted him. Sentient...he didn't know if he agreed with that, but he wasn't about to classify them on the same level as people.

Izaya idly watched as Tambrey brought out Neph, trusting enough of the elite agent's abilities as a trainer to not worry about violently-inclined pokemon. When he heard a voice, speaking, though - not a telepathic one like those of Jirachi, but an actual, verbal voice, his head snapped up from staring at the floor where the bug types were. "Sorry, what?" he asked, looking blankly from Aulus to Tambrey. It hadn't sounded like either one of them, but who else could it have possibly been? Maybe another Rocket nearby, passing by the dojo or something, but it had sounded too close in proximity for that to have been a possibility.  

[TawnyAngel]

Aulus rolled his eyes and made a blah-blah gesture with one hand. "Yes yes we know, you're more set in your opinions than a racist grandma, shall we move on? No I didn't teach him, he learned all by himself right Paul?"

Paul nodded cheerfully. <> he waved again. Oh, and Neph was here... were they going to battle? He wasn't thrilled by that idea at all but he knew that neither Aulus nor Tambery would let him get hurt. Clearing his throat a little nervously he turned to the larger bug and then glanced up at Aulus for instructions.

Aulus however had been distracted by Izaya's question; he frowned in confusion. "What do you mean 'sorry what'?"  

[Gwennythe]

Tambrey smiled as Izaya had to ask after Paul's waving; she supposed it was a reasonable thing to be surprised by given Izaya's views on what pokémon were and were like, but she still felt mildly amused by the question.

As Neph appeared, and then Izaya seemed to be asking or responding to something, her amusement let itself give way to puzzlement. There was, of course, the automatic tickle in the back of her brain of 'what it might be', but that was always there now, and not every noise heard by someone and not by another was to do with the phenomenon after all...
"Um. I didn't say anything. I was about to," She glanced at the larger spider "tell Neph that this wasn't a serious battle though. Demonstrative only."

<her when I'm going to get a real battle again will you? One longsss for the feeling of fangsss sinking into flesh, of real blood and bruisesss from a worthy opponent! Instead,>> She turned her attention on Paul << of the likesss of you. Ssso small...>> She sighed.  

[lZAYA ORlHARA]

With an irritated scowl, Izaya rolled his eyes at Aulus' comparison of him to a 'racist grandma'. But before he could respond, he started at the new voice that met his ears, gaze darting to locate the source of the words. "Ha ha. Okay, yes, very funny. You can stop using those weird voices, now. It's actually really starting to creep me out."

He stared hard at the scarred agent. He couldn't imagine why the man would possibly choose to mock him in such a way, especially because doing funny voices didn't seem Aulus' style, but he couldn't think of what other explanation there could have been.

And yet...could he have done both voices? The first had sounded distinctly female. Perhaps Tambrey might have thought to play along, but that seemed even less characteristic of her than it would have been of her former partner. Before he could contemplate this too deeply, though, his thoughts were interrupted by another stream of words from the first voice.

"What? Human?" Generally people didn't refer to each other as 'human' unless the themselves didn't include themselves as a member of the species. Izaya used the term simply because he liked to consider himself above human kind, perhaps indicative of a god-complex after all, but this was different. A growing horror began to eat at Izaya's insides from the pit of his stomach. His eyes widened in dawning terror as they fell upon the Ariados before him.

"A...a-another?" he repeated, his own voice barely audible. His hands began to shake and he grabbed his knees to conceal their tremors. Neph's continued dialogue made that action pointless, though, as the tremors spread up his arms, though his legs, and throughout his entire body. By the end of the spider's comments, he was no longer able to suppress the urge to get up and stand on the bench he'd been seated on, pressing himself back against the wall. His mouth opened and closed, gaping like a Magikarp, but with no audible sound.  

[TawnyAngel]

What the actual ******** was he doing now? Aulus scowled at Izaya. "Alright, that's this?"

Wait.

Izaya had asked who'd spoken - not in so many words but he had - and now he was standing on a bench staring at Neph in horror.

Aulus started to laugh.

"Well, welcome to the club! Is it bug or poison I wonder?" he managed between guffaws, his sympathy for Izaya's shock and apparent horror not detectable even with the world's most powerful electron holography microscope.

Paul shifted a little uncomfortably and peered up at Izaya with some concern. <>  

[Gwennythe]

<< Yesss, another! Oh puh-lease, you don't imagine you are the first do you?>> Neph chittered with what was almost an 'airy' tone. <> She also stood a little taller, or seemed to, as Paul called her 'scary' but gave a weary sigh as he mentioned her being 'not allowed to bite'. Her eyes fixed on the smaller spider-mon in a cold stare.

"Oh! Oh good!" Tambrey seemed delighted by the revelation that Izaya could 'hear' the spiders, and nodded enthusiastically as Aulus wondered aloud. "Oh, but we could test that! Oh but," She smiled sympathetically at Izaya, and then seemed to miss entirely why he might be feeling what he was feeling "I know it's so overwhelming when you, um, first hear them! But you really get used to it before you know it! I've found, for myself at least, it gave me a lot more of an interest in the psychic type than I had before; that's the type I can hear. Congratulations though! We really should test it and see which type it is you're hearing!"  

[lZAYA ORlHARA]

The informant gaped at Aulus when the agent begun to laugh. He extended a hand to point at the spider pokemon before finally finding the voice to speak once more. "You...you think this is funny?!" he snapped, though his tone still sounded more shocked than angry. "This is the worst joke I've ever had played on me in my entire life!"

His head jerked back to the purple Spinarak with the missing leg when Paul seemed to address him and Izaya's eye twitched. "Oh no. No, no, nonono. You can't talk. You're a pokemon," he informed the creature as if it didn't realize it was breaking the laws of reality. Izaya's reality, anyway, which was shattering further by the second despite his efforts to keep it together through his denial.

"NO!" the black-haired man shouted at Neph, reaching up as if to tear at his hair. "Pokemon don't judge people's reactions. That's a human thing to do." By the way he spoke, it sounded like he was on the verge of losing it. He was trying to tell pokemon they weren't allowed to talk or do human things by talking back to them as if they were human. He was attempting to reason with that which was unreasonable by its mere occurrence. None of it made sense and he knew it. His own flawed reasoning was crumbling in upon itself and he didn't know what else to do. He wasn't even able to process Tambrey's words as she took the discovery with an entirely different perspective.

"Call them back," he told the Rockets, unable to help the panic that was audible in his words, nor seemingly mindful of how he, a labeled traitor, was giving orders to his superiors. Instead, he slid his back down the wall and curled up against it on the bench with his knees to his chest, still tugging at his hair with both hands in anguish. Those words were coming from those monsters before him? Impossible. "Call them back now."  

[TawnyAngel]

"I think it's ******** hilarious!" Aulus managed to reply between gasped breaths. This was perfect, priceless, brilliant!...

And then it wasn't.

When Izaya sounded like he was going to lose it it was funny but when the little p***k slipped over into panic the laughter soured in Aulus' chest and died on his lips. He wanted it to be funny, sort of, but it wasn't and so he called Paul back into his pokeball before the little bug could say anything else. Pokeball still in hand he turned to Tambery with a slightly uncertain expression pulling his hard features into unfamiliar lines.

Now what?

He really didn't like Izaya, though he despised him less than he once had, but... well this wasn't right and he didn't know what to do next.