[PRP] Let It Linger

[Suudonym]

It was somewhat of a wistful autumn for Arcadie. It had been almost exactly a year since her life had suddenly taken a turn for turmoil, since she had left behind her sister, her friends, and her Noe and relocated to Kodo - since she had surrendered her existence to Team Rocket and become their agent. She simply thought of it as an extended vacation on most days, if not one of those scam vacations where the accommodations aren't nearly as luxurious as the pamphlet described, but it was hard now not to look at a calendar and see its mocking smirk. It's been a year, and you've already gotten used to being a criminal.

She was more than capable of shrugging off her own pitiful thoughts, but as she recalled, there was some other anniversary associated with her own - or, more specifically, that her pokemon would associate. Arcadie hadn't had anything to do with the deceased Rocket, but because one's joining and the other's passing aligned so closely, she had been saddled with many of the agent's pokemon that needed new trainers. They were always so grim and serious and she wasn't sure if it was because of regrets associated with their original trainer or if it was simply their personalities. She at least had enough consideration, though, to give them some time for reflection, and that was the thought that had influenced her present location.

Arcadie sat against a sun-bleached desert stone not at all far from the base, her elbows on her knees and her chin in her hands, and stared out at the sunset-colored sky. Charmant had taken off into the desert to run upon being released - the Arcanine always wanted to run when she was out of her pokeball. Revenant had faded quietly into the desert's warm air, presumably for some kind of introspection. Mise, now finally an Ariados, waited glumly at the base of the rock that was his current trainer's seat. The girl felt some responsibility to comfort them but, well... what was she supposed to do? It wasn't as though they trusted or even liked her. All she could do was offer them some freedom and the time to do with it as they pleased.  

[BlackFireKitsune]

Not too far away from Arcadie, someone else was leaving the base with similar intentions. It had been almost a year exactly since Aila's death, and Inigo figured that Acier didn't need his new trainer's growing depression to realize the significance of the time of the season. The large Aggron had been growing similarly despondent recently, or at least Inigo thought he was, since he didn't let the hefty pokemon out as often as he'd like to. That was one reason why he was out here, so he could let the large creature out without worrying about making the building shake.

He had three pokemon out as well as he walked; Acier trudged sadly along to his right, Leilani stayed quietly to his left - she could easily sense his sadness and refrained from her usual joyous outbursts - while Sonata had burst ahead and left them all in the dust. The usually calm and subdued Rapidash couldn't help her nature when given such a wide-open expanse in which to run and expend all her energy, especially when it was here she had grown up and here where she had been unwittingly caught. She didn't mind too much, although she did love a good run once in a while.

Inigo had fully expected to have a long, solitary walk with his pokemon, free from distractions from his negative thoughts, but suddenly Acier made a loud, bass exclamation before he rumbled off towards a particular rock as fast as he could - which was actually pretty fast. The grass trainer stopped and raised his eyebrows, watching the Aggron run off towards what he thought was nothing. A brief moment later however, he caught sight of a flash of color which... was probably what Acier was heading towards. Crap.

While the brown-skinned grunt called after him, Acier didn't stop his awkward running - not until he'd stopped breathless in front of this strange girl and, more importantly, Mise. His expression and gestures at the small spider pokemon showed surprise and a great delight at seeing one of his old teammates - although Arcadie might not see such a large pokemon waving its arms about and rumbling loudly as anything positive.  

[Suudonym]

Having a large pokemon barreling at you all of a sudden wasn't something anyone could expect or react to cool-headedly, and Arcadie gave a sharp yelp and scrambled to a standing posture on top of the rock, putting her at an equal height as the Aggron that suddenly stopped in front of her. She thrust her arms out in a pose reminiscent of a poorly-dubbed karate flick and eyed the creature suspiciously, "Whoa there, pally! Easy now!"

Mise was more receptive to the sudden intrusion in his personal pity party, and he bristled with amiable attention and coos of greeting. The reaction caused Arcadie to raise an eyebrow; she didn't recall ever seeing the spider in such a good mood. She didn't drop her stance, but she did narrow her eyes and purse her lips thoughtfully. "And where exactly have you come from, stranger?"  

[BlackFireKitsune]

Acier paused at the yelp and the girl shouting at him, and when he turned his icy blue eyes on her it was as if he was only noticing her there for the first time - which wasn't at all true. It was the second. The first time was before he'd started running. Regardless, he went back to ignoring her as he suddenly dropped onto his stomach with a powerful THUD in front of Mise, to better converse with him. It was easier when you weren't four feet taller than whoever you were conversing with, after all, although it did dampen his attempts at large gestures. It didn't stop him from delighted and affectionate rumblings though.

Inigo slowed to a walk nearby - he'd started jogging over when Acier started running - and he finally stopped near the rock, his breathing probably a little worse than it should have been, but really he never was in very good shape. "Lo siento," he said a little breathlessly before he straightened up with a heavy sigh, making every attempt to pull his expression to a more normal one but mostly failing, "sorry about that. I don't know why he rushed off like that," he said with an apologetic shrug.

Leilani paused nearby, tilting her head curiously to one side. She heard what Inigo hadn't, and she crooned happily as she sidled up next to the large Aggron and peered down at the spider pokemon.

Inigo ignored all the pokemon for the time being, figuring they'd keep themselves amused for the moment. "I'm Inigo, by the way. Who're you?"  

[Suudonym]

Arcadie stared carefully at the Aggron as it regarded her, but it didn't really seem malicious. In fact, laying on the ground like that, it almost reminded her of a teenage girl laying in bed and talking on the phone with her friends. Apparently it knew Buggy somehow, and Buggy seemed to know it as well. They looked and sounded perfectly happy to speak with one another.

She dropped her defensive stance as another human approached, presumably to join the large pokemon. "Looks like he saw someone he wanted to say hi too," she ventured with a pleasant smile. She would have been a little brighter, but it was hard not to feel at least slightly offended after being suddenly and inexplicably rushed by an Aggron. She didn't have a whole lot of control over her own pokemon, but at least they didn't go charging at people!

A shape in the distance raised its head with large ears pointed straight up as it noticed the growing congregation, and in few short moments the large, pink Arcanine joined them as well, trotting around Inigo's side with a look of acknowledgment before joining the pokemon group. Arcadie watched in interest and a slight confusion.

"Ah, Arcadie," she said, realizing she had been given an introduction. "I suppose our pokemon know one another?"  

[BlackFireKitsune]

At the girl's first statement, Inigo raised an eyebrow. Acier was hardly ever out of his ball even on missions, let alone around the base, so who would be see that he'd want to--

The sudden intrusion of something large, fluffy and pink invaded his space before joining the other pokemon, and Inigo completely missed whatever the girl had said. Indeed, he completely failed to register the fact she even said anything at all, so surprised was he. "Charmant?" He said in a bewildered tone, coupled with an expression to match, and he reached a tentative hand out to the pink fur. "Charmant!" He leaned over Acier's back to see who-- "Ohh, and Mise!" He couldn't even believe it.

Acier twisted his head and peered up to see yet another old teammate, and his affectionate rumbles became even more profuse as he pushed himself to his large feet and gestured quite happily at the Arcanine. Looking between the two, he gave them a questioning glance before looking around for anymore. If there were two, there were bound to be more, yes? Where were they?  

[Suudonym]

Charmant didn't typically appreciate these "pettings" that other pokemon seemed to like so much, be she allowed it for now. She and Mise began to respond to the Aggron's wondering simultaneously and, after a brief glance between one another, the Ariados deferred the response to Charmant. Revenant was around somewhere, she clarified in low tones. Eclair was with the girl, in a pokeball; she was unmanageable despite what anyone told her. As for the others, they were all unaccounted for and had been for the duration of the past year.

"It looks like you know one another as well," Arcadie remarked offhandedly, lowering herself back into a sitting position on her stone. A vaguely bitter sense of jealousy seeped through her, preventing her usual sunshine smile. Why had she been saddled with this pokemon if there were others to whom they would actually listen? She sort of felt like she was being made fun of.  

[BlackFireKitsune]

Inigo didn't pet Charmant for long; it was more a brief touch as he leaned over Acier to see Mise. This lasted just a moment before Acier stood up, and the Aggron nodded at the two pokemon to show he understood, but it didn't stop him from looking around for the missing Mismagius. Suddenly he gave a loud, inquiring rumble to the ghost in question, hoping it would get her attention and cause her to appear. If Eclair were stuck in a ball, there wasn't really a whole lot he could do about it unless the girl wanted to let her out. All he could do was hope she would.

Inigo fell rather than sat on the rock near her with a sigh, finally taking note of the fact she had been talking. What had she said her name was? It started with an 'a' and it sounded foreign, but he already felt rude and he didn't want to ask again and admit he hadn't been listening at all. "Yeah," he admitted with a sigh, watching the group as Leilani and Sonata reappeared next to him. "They all belonged to.. to Aila." One year ago, almost exactly. Despite the amount of time that had passed, it was still painful to think about.  

[Suudonym]

There was a whispering "mismaaa" at Acier's side, a terse comment berating him for raising his voice like that. The hard words were countered, however, by the Mismagius's almost uncharacteristically warm expression as she faded into view, her head angled slightly to a side.

Arcadie propped her heel against the stone, dropping her chin into her hand. The name was only barely familiar, but she knew it well enough contextually to know whose it was. She leaned sideways to push her shoulder into Inigo's. "A friend of yours, huh?" she said, her tone lowered to a quiet sensitivity. She wasn't exceptionally used to comforting people experiencing or remembering loss, and those she had interacted with were generally the young child relatives of people who had passed during her internship in the hospital.  

[BlackFireKitsune]

The terse, almost chiding response from the invisible Mismagius immediately made Acier hunch slightly and put thick, metal paws - if indeed they could be called paws - over his mouth, but he straightened up with a rather happy rumbling croon at Revenant's appearance and warm expression.

"Ah, Revenant," Inigo all but murmured as the familiar Mismagius appeared. He sighed again at Arcadie's comment and focused his green eyes on the ground, no longer attempting to feign light heartedness considering the circumstances. "Yeah.. She recruited me about a year and a half ago. She was pretty much the only friend I'd had here for a long time," he offered, though it was probably more than the girl was expecting. Another sigh and he stared down at his hands. "She pretty much still was when she," a deep breath, "when she died."  

[Suudonym]

The pokemon situated themselves in a comfortable semicircle around Acier, asking pleasantries such as how he liked his new trainer. Theirs was okay, they said, though Revenant noted with a sad shake of her head that the girl had absolutely no sense for battling - and Charmant and Mise nodded in agreement. All in all, she could hardly hold a candle to their first, but she was still young and had a while yet to learn. (Though perhaps that was a bit ironic, given that this woman was already years older than Aila had been.)

Arcadie nodded her head as she listened. She remembered the girl who died, remembered the somber faces gathered in the infirmary lobby - none had inquired after her, for all of them had already known. She remembered the memorial that had followed and the worried whispers of how no one had ever died on a mission before. But, she understood, this person remembered much more than her. "I bet she's happy," she said slowly, "that she was so important to you that thinking of her still makes you sad." It felt sort of contradictory to all the cliches about 'she's in a better place' or 'she wouldn't want you to be sad,' but he'd probably already heard those lines. Everyone had heard those lines. They didn't help anything.  

[BlackFireKitsune]

Acier thumped his thick tail against the desert sand as he scooted around a few degrees to face all of them better, so he could see all of them at once with minimal effort. He rumbled softly at their comments on their new trainer, and he nodded his head briefly. He liked his alright, he said, although he, too, wasn't nearly as good as their previous trainer. That was to be expected, though, he also noted, since neither of them had yet attained the rank as Aila had. Overall, though, his was improving. He still had a ways to go yet, though. Especially if he kept moping about things. But he was very nice, when he wasn't moping, and he politely inquired if their new trainer was nice too and how she'd been treating them.

Inigo blinked, momentarily pulled from his memories by the woman's words. True, they weren't what one normally heard in times of mourning (recent or otherwise), but instead of feeling better, he instead pondered on the statement. He frowned at the sand slightly, "She might be, in a way," he started uncertainly, "but I don't think she'd condone prolonged mourning, really. She was always very serious and..." The grunt searched for a fitting word, "unemotional."

His green eyes lifted to watch the small gathering of pokemon converse and, in all likelihood, catch up and reminisce, and he quirked a brow at Arcadie and gave her a sidelong glance. "How are they doing for you? Sounds like you didn't know Aila at all." While the two statements seemed, at face value, to be completely separate, they were actually very interrelated. He wasn't having too hard a time with Acier because he had known Aila, and because he'd considered her such a good friend. This girl hadn't known her at all, so it stood to reason she wasn't faring nearly as well with a group of them.  

[Suudonym]

Perhaps a little too nice, the pokemon agreed unanimously. Revenant shook her head disapprovingly: The woman called them by such silly nicknames as a small child would imagine. She seemed to be more concerned with their relationship as master and pet than as trainer and pokemon. She was emotional and energetic in excess, and she didn't seem to care to apply either trait to the effort of becoming a better trainer. Mise contested that she was indeed trying and that she had been trying ever since the mission to rescue their comrades, but unlike Aila her concerns were with being a good nurse rather than being a good Rocket.

Arcadie listened to his considerations with a similar thoughtfulness. 'Unemotional,' to her, sounded more like 'poor at expressing emotions,' but she wasn't in any position to voice that theory. She shrugged with a light smile, "Yeah, I never met her. Her pokemon don't really seem to like me a whole lot, to be honest," she said with a slight disappointment, catching the Mismagius's critical expression in a sidelong glance. "Those three can get the job done, but only the Spinarak seems to care what I think." A pouting frown. "There's this Pikachu who's a little monster. Not only doesn't listen to me, but goes out of her way to make sure I'm having a hard time." She felt bad leaving the poor thing in a pokeball all the time, but there wasn't much she could do with a pokemon whose only goal seemed to be to sabotage her.  

[BlackFireKitsune]

The Aggron sighed a bit, visibly deflating at their summation of their new trainer. At least his new one had been familiar with Aila, he said, so he was lucky to be called by the same name their original trainer had given him, and he expressed sympathy that they had to deal with childish names. Which was funny, he mused, since their new trainer seemed older than Aila. Humans were such odd creatures.

Inigo hummed thoughtfully to himself as he watched the group of pokemon continue to converse, and he nodded his head a bit. "Si, some of her pokemon have a similar disposition as her. Serious and kinda no-nonsense," he said, offering what little he knew of them. He contemplated saying something like 'I'm sure they'll like you with time' but then again, it had been a year... "I could try and help if you want." However, the mention of a Pikachu made his breath catch in his throat. "A Pikachu? Can I see her?"  

[Suudonym]

It wasn't that she didn't know their proper names, Revenant clarified, but that she insisted on 'cuter' nicknames for them based on her own whims. She was easily a hundred years Aila's junior.

"Ah…" And here Arcadie had been thinking the pokemon seemed kind of like stuck-up, standoffish know-it-alls. She kept those thoughts to herself. The desire to see the Pikachu was met with great hesitation, "I don't know if that's a good idea," she said. "She's not just disobedient. She's like, bitey and mean. It's not very cute."