[FIN] Dealing with Doubts

[Shawn Darrow]

"Oookay, guys...I think it's about time we started training," the young Rocket told his minimized pokeballs nervously. He'd been putting it off for a while, now, but he just kept accumulating more and more ghosts. If he didn't start training them while they were still at a manageable quantity, maybe they'd gang up on him and - and - well. He didn't dare think about that. His nightmares held enough possibilities.

The Jolteon at his side looked up at him and tilted her head as they walked to the training room. "Jol?" she asked. Usually they were patrolling the halls around this time in the evening.

"Nahh, not today, Lindsay," he told her. "The higher-ups told me to trade off with some other grunt for hall monitoring duties this shift. I think they guessed I was avoiding dealing with...them." He held out his handful of pokeballs for her to see.

She sniffed at them and barked. "Jol, Jolteon! Jol!"

"Heheh...you'll help me keep them in line, won't you girl?" he asked her with an uncertain smile. "I've let them out before and they've mostly been listening to what I've been saying, but that might be because of you. You're pretty good at getting them to obey."

The Jolteon lifted her head proudly as Shadow opened the door to the training room for her. It was about time he'd recognized her value and special skills.  

[Gwennythe]

Lasi had evolved without warning the first time; he'd been a useful Zubat, then, all of a sudden, he'd become a slightly overactive, but even more useful, Golbat.
Tambrey remembered this as she clipped his pokéball to her belt, before moving onto the next.
Pygi. She was another who had surprised her; the bird had reached Pidgeot and it hadn't felt like as much work as it should have, she suspected. Perhaps it had been the presence of Palu, Pygi's mother, always there to encourage her.
Whatever had made these two special- and she suspected Lasi's final evolution wasn't far away either- was something she wanted present for training.
Treestar, Ella, and, for better or worse, Neph, took up the other places on her belt, leaving one blank.
Training Octavia was still to be done outside, while Palu was happily, slightly lazily, 'guarding' the room against any potential Star 'decoration' or 'tidying'.

A gentle ruffle of Palu's head feathers and Tambrey left her room, heading for the training rooms, pausing to fix her ponytail not far from her destination.
She spotted Shadow heading into the room ahead and paused.
Would he mind company? Should she go in after all... This had been where she'd been heading anyway but...

The grunt chewed on the inside of her lip gently, for a moment, then determinedly headed for the door.
It would be nicer, maybe safer when it came to Neph, to train with a friend.

"Um, hello!" She called, stepping through the door a little way behind the other grunt and his Jolteon.  

[Shawn Darrow]

Shadow stopped and jerked around as he heard a familiar voice, a smile coming to his face when he recognized its owner. "Tambrey," he greeted, "Hi! You training your pokemon too?"

He expected the lady Rocket must have done so more regularly than he did, and for that he felt guilty. However, he was glad that it was Tambrey he'd run into instead of someone else who was more-likely to rub it in his face.

The Jolteon at Shadow's side was less pleased than her trainer. Upon noticing that this familiar face was female, (and quite pretty at that,) the hackles on the back of her neck rose followed by the rest of her fur until it was all standing on end. Her angular ears pressed back against her skull and she bared her teeth at Tambrey, a low growl issuing from the deep recesses of her throat.

Shadow frowned at her. "Lindsay, no. Tambrey's a friend." He looked back to the bespectacled young woman. "I got ordered to start training my ghosts. Up 'til now, Lindsay's all I've needed, but even she isn't invincible." He reached down to pet the eeveeloution.

Lindsay stopped growling at his touch, but she continued to glare intensely at the other Rocket grunt. She snorted and shook her head, clearly in disagreement with her trainer's previous statement.  

[Gwennythe]

Whoa. Tambrey stopped short, rather warily, as she heard the growl.
An electric type. That was growling at her.
Still, she knew Shadow, she knew his, or of his, pokémon...
"Um. Yes. It's," She lifted her eyes from the Jolteon, back to Shadow "nice to see you." The grunt was trying to ignore the slight flutter of panic that had tried to crawl it's way up her body.

A nod was offered as he explained and she realised she should probably comment on the fact.
"It is more useful to, um, have more types. F'r a while all I had were flying types, though Lasi is, uh, poison too. Still, I need to train, specifically, my non-flyers really. Ghosts sound like they'd be really useful." Her eyes slowly slid back toward Lindsay as she replied, and she found herself removing, and 'cleaning' at her glasses to, perhaps, try and hide just how the Jolteon's efforts were affecting her.  

[Shawn Darrow]

"Heh, yeah...but I can hardly handle the few types I have. I'm amazed you've managed to master so many different pokemon! I guess I know ghosts and poison-types best because they hung around the urban areas I grew up in, but it's just weird trying to train the same monsters that plagued me as a kid." He felt like a wimp admitting his weaknesses, but Tambrey was one of the few Rockets he could bear showing weakness to.

Despite the other grunt's polite attempts to conceal her unease, Shadow knew fear. He practically seemed to eat, sleep, and breathe fear. Slight as Tambrey's may have been, though, he understood the cause.

Lindsay had never been the friendliest person to others; heck, he still couldn't figure out why she was nice to him. He'd tried very hard to ignore the suspicious pattern that the Jolteon's hostility seemed to be most directed towards females - human and pokemon alike. And yet, considering that strange notion, he wondered if he could test a theory...

"How's your boyfriend?" he asked Tambrey with a playful grin, still stroking the electric-type's spiky fur. The static electricity tingled, but he didn't stop. He watched the amber-eyed eeveeloution out the corner of his eye.

Lindsay glanced from Shadow to Tambrey, not liking the familiarity with which he was addressing her. But her ears perked at the term 'boyfriend' and she tilted her head in a quizzical manner.  

[Gwennythe]

"Master?" Tambrey blinked, smiling nervously, and shook her head. "I think that any of mine do what I want them too is, um, kind of often down to luck and that probably makes you a better trainer, in a way." She mused. "If you're uneasy about something, you tend to learn a lot about it, I think, and then, if you know a lot about something, you can, uh, use what you know... better... maybe." Well that didn't sound as good as she'd thought it would in her head.
Her unease at Linday probably wasn't helping.
Though that particular question got her eyes to widen and, just for a moment, she managed to, almost, forget the fear she was feeling due to the electric type.
"Uh..." How was she to answer that one? Rory, of course, that was who he was talking about... but things still felt so strange and new, in a way, and she wasn't sure, still, just what exactly they were to call each other yet. She blushed, but that was no good response.
"I..." Don't know who you mean? Don't know what you mean? Don't know how to answer? She struggled to work out how to finish what she'd started saying, taking a little too long about it.  

[Shawn Darrow]

Shadow chuckled and shook his head. "You never give yourself enough credit, Tam. So modest. But thanks; that makes a lot of sense."

The Jolteon sensed Tambrey's change in demeanor, but she didn't seem to understand the context through which that change occurred. All she knew was Shadow had said something to her, Tambrey was now blushing, and her precious trainer seemed unnervingly comfortable around the dark-haired young woman. Her hackles raised and she began to growl worse than ever.

Her trainer opened his mouth, about to say something to his pokemon, when a Haunter seemed to materialize out of the air beside Tambrey. He floated over to Lindsay with a photo in his claws and waved it in her face, swatting her on the nose with it wearing a serious expression as if to say, 'don't be stupid'. The Jolteon, furious, snapped at the Haunter, but the ghost avoided her jaws and calmly turned around, holding out the photograph to Tambrey.

The male grunt watched all this with some surprise, running a hand through his spiky hair until he realized what the image was of. It was the picture the Shuppet, Eris, had taken during the past Rocket Christmas party. "Oh, uh, yeah - that. I was meaning to tell you about it, but I wasn't sure when would be a good time." He looked at his sneakers, ashamed. "I found it on the floor a while back. That camera-crazy, snap-happy Shuppet must have taken it."

Feeling uncomfortable and guessing he had made his Rocket friend feel similar, Shadow walked across the room, hoping to divert attention from the topic. "Hey, Tambrey, since we're both here, do you want to train together, maybe? I don't think Lindsay will be any more trouble."

He looked to his electric-type, who had haughtily taken a spot against a wall and settled herself there to watch. It seemed the appearance of the red-eyed Haunter had put her off. Besides, with no reason to be angry with Tambrey, Lindsay had no reason to threaten the female human.  

[Gwennythe]

"... I- Hrm." Growling. Lots and lots of growling. She fought the urge to take a half-step back, and found her hand wishing to hover near Ella's pokéball.
She supposed she should answer the question, terrifying Jolteon or not, and started to "Well, we're not really, uh... Oh!" The appearance of the Haunter wasn't nearly as alarming as the fact that the electric type had been growling at her.
That the ghost type actually helped to stop the growling, despite making her jump while already scared, made him fairly welcome. The snapping of the Jolteon's jaws was worth, almost, another jump, but that Lindsay seemed to be 'backing down' or something like it was a comfort.
Then she was shown the image that he was holding, and she blinked, then leaned forward to peer at it with some surprise.
That. That was an... interesting photo.
Shadow's choice of words made even more sense to her then... until he started talking about what must have taken the photograph.
"Camera-crazy, snappit, whatsit?" She repeated, mangled and clumsily, before shaking her head slightly as she felt the red creep up again.
"Well... Um. Right. Maybe I could... have that, please?" She tried; she wasn't sure how she felt about pictures like that just floating around (and perhaps literally where ghosts were concerned).

"Um. Okay." She tore her gaze from the haunter to glance, first, at Lindsay, then look to Shaun. "I was planning to try and train a few of mine and company's always better."  

[Shawn Darrow]

Shadow gave his fellow grunt a sympathetic smile. "I'm really, really sorry about her," said quietly, a hand conspiratorially put to his mouth as he nodded in Lindsay's direction. Her eyes peered at him suspiciously out the corner of her vision, but otherwise she didn't seem to care. "I think maybe she was treated badly or something by other Rockets before they gave her to me. She wasn't listening to anyone before, but for some reason I guess she changed her mind."

"Not like I don't feel like she's the one who owns me most of the time," he sighed with a smirk. "Have you had any...problem pokemon?"

The red-eyed Haunter, meanwhile, had remained by Tambrey's side, still holding out the photo. At her timid request, he smirked a bit and held it out farther, encouraging her to take it. He didn't need it and he certainly didn't figure Eris deserved it. Perhaps Rory might have wanted it, but Shadow hadn't really talked to his partner a whole lot as of late. They were probably still on rocky terms with one another.

"Oh - Eris. That shuppet that's been going around the base taking pictures," Shadow answered. "She's usually invisible or hiding in things like vending machines in order to take people by surprise. I think she started showing up around that holiday party, actually, so that was one of the first pictures she took." He shook his head. "She's not my pokemon, but I guess she likes to hang out in Rory and my room. She started littering the place with these Polaroid pictures, so eventually I just gave her this tack board to stick her collection on."

"I have no clue why she does it, but she's definately a shutter bug. Er, 'Shutter Shuppet', I guess. If there's a pattern to her pictures, it's that all of them are candid, strong expressions of emotion. I read somewhere that some ghosts like Shuppet eat human emotions, so maybe it has something to do with that...?"  

[Gwennythe]

As Shadow apologized for Lindsay, Tambrey found her eyes drifting her way again. Well, she couldn't deny that there were Rockets who would treat pokémon badly; after all, their definition as 'tools' and nothing more was one of the things in Team Rocket's manifesto. There was, then, some sympathy, even for an electric type, but she still didn't feel a lot less nervous about her.
She found herself nodding to the question before she'd even thought about it properly.
"Um. My Spinerak, 'Neph'." Tambrey found herself answering honestly, and pulling a little bit of a face at the thought of the bug type.
She tapped one of the pokéballs on her belt.
"She doesn't... Um. I guess she just doesn't like most people or pokémon or somethin'... She barely ever listens either."

"Oh, thank you." Tambrey smiled to the Haunter as he handed the photograph over to her. It was a relief to get that 'out of circulation', though she looked a little uncomfortable to learn about 'Eris'.
"Aheh, that's an... interesting name." She commented, noting, to herself, that the Shuppet's habits could probably end up making it very appropriate at some point. "Uh... Hm. She never... leaves the base does she?" There might be miles of desert outside, but a floaty-ghost, she suspected, wouldn't be quite as hampered by that as most other things. Tambrey found herself slightly worried by, not only that thought, but the photo-taking in general. The one she held, and she peered at it again, fighting off embarrassment at it, had existed until now without her really knowing about it. She made a mental note to keep an eye out for anything that might give her any indication of hiding ghosts, though she wasn't sure what such things might be.  

[Shawn Darrow]

"...I think I remember that one," Shadow agreed with a laugh. "The one who likes to...uh...attack things? Luckily usually inanimate things?"

"'Eris'? Oh, yeah, well I had to call her something. I'm guessing you know the reference with all those books you read," he mused. "Uhhhh...there was one time she followed me out on a day off, but I made sure her camera had no trace of Headquarter information or anything first. Since it's a polaroid and not digital, it's easier to make sure of that." He scratched his head, thinking. "Otherwise, nope, I don't think so. Seems like she knows this place pretty well and she likes to stick to lurking around...criminals, I guess."

The teen's smile faltered then. He didn't seem to relish the fact that he was a part of a criminal organization. "Guess we get worked up easier than most people or something. If you want," he added, noticing Tambrey's apparent worry, "you can check out the tack board she has the rest of the pictures on. I don't think there's any more like that, though, or Rory would have probably noticed."  

[Gwennythe]

"Aheh... Yes. Not /always/ inanimate but that would be her." Tambrey confirmed. "She just seems to want to... fight... and I don't, um... I don't even mean just 'battle', you know? I mean... actually just... fighting."

She nodded then, confirming that she had some idea of what would have led to the name. "Oh, um, that's good. I don't... really know cameras, " She admitted it like it was a weak point "but that sounds like a relief. Um. Well, you did say she was... attracted to emotions? We do tend to encounter, um, trauma kind of a lot." Tambrey offered a little quietly.
The offer to check the board got a smile.
"Oh, um, thank you. Maybe, but... yes, I'm sure you'd be right. It's just a surprise to... suddenly find out there's a photo of... uh, me. That's all." And the subject matter of the photo- Shuppet and the attraction to emotions in particular. That was just a little curiously unsettling, but, she thought to herself, with a little surprise, not in a bad way really.  

[Shawn Darrow]

"Heh, well at least it's better than having a pokemon who won't when you need them to, I think," Shadow commented. "She doesn't attack you, does she?"

"Oh, trust me, I didn't either," the street kid admitted sheepishly. "I had to have one of the higher-ups explain it to me. I got a whole lecture when all those pictures were found scattered around our room." He raised his brows. "Yeah, I think I read that Shuppets eat emotions...negative, mostly. And...I think that makes sense." Giving the other grunt a more concerned look, he asked, "Is something wrong, Tambrey?"

"Heh, don't worry. I'm sure she has a few of all of us. It's kind of human to have emotions, after all, right?" His brow remained furrowed, though. "Is that what this is really about, though? Having pictures taken of you? You seem...troubled."  

[Gwennythe]

"I guess so... I kind 'f think of her as a last resort but she can be very useful. No, she hasn't attacked me recently. We, uh, have an understanding of sorts, I guess..." Tambrey explained "I'm not sure... I know a pokémon like that might not be useful, but it might be nice to have something that's a pacifist; I think such a pokémon might really friendly..."

She nodded slightly, as she heard how Shadow had learned what to do about the camera and the photos and then frowned again. Negative emotions; she bit her lip thoughtfully and then let the two questions run together, choosing to answer all at once.

"Oh. Um, no, not really. Nothing wrong, just..." She considered the fellow Rocket she was talking to. Rory's partner, room mate and someone she considered a good friend; someone she certainly trusted, especially considering the experience they'd shared.
"Well. No. I mean. That's a picture of me and of Rory; you said Shuppets were attracted to emotion... and now, negative emotion?" She sounded like she was trying to explain something carefully, different to where she often rambled. "You asked after him earlier in... a certain way. Called him a certain term. We're... not that, but," The grunt paused, as if she was unsure about the next words she was going to speak "I think, I really think, I'd like it if we got there." It was, at once, both a relief and then a panic to realize she'd admitted as much as that, even to her friend. "Uh! Please, don't tell him that though!"  

[Shawn Darrow]

Shadow nodded. He tended to think of Lindsay the same way; as a last resort. When that Jolteon attacked, she went all out, and it frightened her trainer because she never held back for anyone - not for a pokemon nor a human. Even if she had a type advantage or a level advantage, she demolished her enemy as if she took pleasure in overkill. However, he chose not to voice this concern to anyone in case they thought him stupid for it. Who turned down a strong pokemon, after all?

"...A friendly pacifist, huh?" he repeated, smiling sadly at her concept. "Yeah...it's a shame Team Rocket don't seem to value those kind. I guess friendship with pokemon is something that's considered more of a trainer thing than a Rocket one." He turned that smile to Lindsay, who was listening to the conversation with her eyes closed. "Even then, it seems like friendships spark up anyway. And I think we have a few pacifists in our midsts. Like Agent Aulus' Spinerak, Paul." The teen winked. "I bet he and Neph would get along well, huh?"

His tone became more serious and solemn when Tambrey tried to reply. She hesitated and faltered a bit, causing Grunt Shadow to realized whatever it was, it was probably a difficult topic for her to talk about. He waited patiently for her to find the right words and listened attentively when she did.

"Oh." He blinked, not having realized Tambrey had been that sensitive to the term he'd used. "Oh! I'm so sorry, I was just joking earlier! That was pretty careless of me." Scratching the back of his neck, he gave her an apologetic look. "I guess I tend to tease him about it a lot, especially when he gets on my nerves and stuff. But...um, if you don't mind me saying," he said with a crooked grin, "you two kind of seem like a couple already to me. I mean, I know you're not supposed to be, at least not yet..."

He looked away, embarrassed, "...But I think it definately has a great chance of getting there. And you know what? I'm glad for you two. I really am." He met her vivd green eyes with his sepia brown. "He's a lucky guy, Rory. I've said it before and I'll say it again - I don't think he deserves you. But if he makes you happy, then I'm all for it."

The Haunter, still across the room and hovering a little ways behind Tambrey, smirked at Shadow and held up a single claw to his mouth meaningfuly, reminding the Rocket to do something.

"A-and you can count on me. I won't tell him, promise," the street kid added hurriedly, feeling so much less mature all of a sudden. "Not like he deserves to know anyway..." he murmured under his breath.