sup, y'all?
Dawn sits by the balcony door peruses a magazine, idly listening for the rain under the sound of each turning page. Normally, she'd drag the lone chair out onto the wide ledge and enjoy the dark sky and bright stars and cold night air — midnight is her favorite time of day — but the storm coming down outside renders that impossible. And this is no little drizzle; it is a sudden split of the sky and outpouring of buckets and buckets of rain.
The Grand Festival shall take place in just a couple months, so she enjoys this free time by herself while she has it. There is a nursery downstairs and many of her Pokémon friends have elected to explore it. She isn't worried about them; Piplup and Buneary and Pachirisu are poffin-sized, but they are used to looking out for each other, and she is confident that they will protect Togekiss (and vice versa) if it comes to that.
Dawn turns another page and then nearly jumps out of her seat. With the storm hit thunder and lightning every few minutes, but what she'd thought was just another crash of angry clouds is now yelling with an angry voice.
"!" it yells incoherently. Puzzled, she puts down the magazine and opens the door to her room.
"Barry!" she says, taken aback. The blond menace grins.
"What's up, you?"
"I'm...reading," Dawn rememberers to answer. He's soaked through and dripping onto the carpet, thoroughly unconcerned by the matter. But then, she supposed that with an Empoleon for a buddy, that could possibly be expected.
"Reading?" he echoes incredulously. "The Festival is only three months away and you're sitting on your skirt, reading?"
"Wow, Barry, I didn't know you cared," she says, sarcastic but actually honest, too. "Three months is pretty far away, and I've been training for this for years."
"Then you won't mind if we battle right here, right now!" She blinks. He has certainly not mellowed out any since home.
"Barry, it's raining."
"Indoor battlefield!" Finally, Dawn sighs. But when she looks up again, she is grinning. Where, in her first years of traveling, she had been scared to walk alone, never mind cook and sleep and make quick escapes by herself — all of which she has been doing quite well for the last handful of years, thanks. Well, she traveled with Zoe for quite a few years, and then May. But Zoe is living with Candice in Snowburgh and just last week she read a magazine featuring The Princess of Hoenn herself.
"What? Not afraid you've gotten rusty, are you? Get it — rain, rust."
"No need to worry," Dawn promises. It's been a while since she's battled a familiar face, and she intends to win. "You're on."
"Great," he says, determined, and then he turns and races down the hall without her, presumably for the battlefield. She takes her time to stretch and collect her belongings because it will take even longer to get to Piplup and the others anyway. She doesn't think that the alleged fine will fluctuate much if she's late by two minutes or an hour, but she has a feeling that he'll wait for her.
this might evolve into a chaptered fic, but if not or until then, i hope you enjoyed this snippet!