Bad Luck and Tumbling Skunks

Nessa grinned at her reflection in the mirror. The pink dye was beginning to wash out of her hair, her makeup was on point, she'd gotten a good night sleep for the first time in weeks and best of all; she'd managed to keep a job for three whole days.

Three days! 72 hours! That was more than two days! She couldn't believe it. The only job she'd been able to keep since she was cursed was in Team Skull, but that was mostly due to the incredibly low standards the gang had. But all the same, three days! This remarkable turn of events was due to caution, hard work and for the first time in what felt like forever: good luck.

She turned away from the mirror, unable to wipe the grin off her face even as she tripped down the staircase and stepped into the pouring rain of Po town.

Today she was going to start her fourth day of work and nothing was going to stop her. No bad weather, no bad boss, no bad curse. Everything was going to be perfect.


She returned back to Po town four hours later, head hung and shoes dragging in the mud. The rain fell from the sky like her tears. Well, not really. She wasn't upset enough to be crying. She was just upset. And a little frustrated that she had been surprised by that day's events; she should have known better than think that something wouldn't go wrong. But the rain was beautifully poetic nonetheless.

For a minute, Nessa considered dramatically standing in the downpour and contemplating her entire life choices as she'd once seen in a movie. But four seconds of being pelted with the icy droplets and being battered by the no less chilling wind, she opted to go inside instead.

She was shivering when she stepped inside the mansion, pinkish hair plastered to her scalp and clothing completely soaked through. Her shoes made that annoying eek eek sound as she walked and she had to stop in order to wring them out. Her socks, too. In fact, everything was as soaked as a sponge. A sponge filled with bad luck and despair.

She frowned to herself and made a mental note to think up a better analogy later. She peeled off her coat and hung it on a hook by the front door. The hook instantly came off the wall and her coat hit the floor with a splat. She sighed and draped it over a nearby chair to dry before trudging up the cluttered staircase to her room.

After the disbandment of Team Skull three weeks ago, most of the grunts had gone their separate ways and searched for jobs and housing that did not consist of abandoned mouldy buildings. Those who either had no relatives in Alola or couldn't afford to stay anywhere remained in said abandoned mouldy buildings. But it really wasn't so bad. There were plenty of other ex-grunts who kept each other company and every now and again, Plumeria would come around to visit them. Sometimes, she brought cookies.

Plenty of her old co-workers and completely turned their lives around. A man who previously spent all his time shoplifting TMs to sell for ridiculous prices was working for the reformed Aether Foundation. A woman who used to (pathetically attempt to) mug people behind the Pokémon Centre was now working in one. And meanwhile, Nessa was still stuck in the same place she'd been for years: unemployed and cursed.

The doorhandle to her room broke off as she tried to turn it and she huffed a sigh, tossing it into the piles of junk that clogged up the halls of the once beautiful mansion. It had been almost five years since this curse had been placed on her and it had stopped being funny long ago. But it appeared that her breaking and walking into things never stopped being amusing for the people around her.

Almost as soon as she'd closed the door, she heard somebody knock on it. With a frown, she opened it to reveal Plumeria standing before her. Immediately, her mood brightened.

"Big sis!" She swung the door open and took a step back, almost tripping over more junk piles that somebody had thought was a good idea to store in her room. "How did you get here so quickly?"

"I was right behind you the entire time." Plumeria responded.

"Oh, I didn't hear you."

"Really? I was calling your name and everything."

"Ah." Maybe she'd been too busy wallowing in self-pity to hear. Oh well. "What are you doing here? Did you bring cookies?"

Plumeria tried to hide her smile as she handed Nessa a paper bag which she took eagerly, "How are you doing? I heard you got a job at one of those clothes stores."

Nessa shrugged one shoulder as she crammed an entire cookie into her mouth; she hadn't noticed how hungry she was, "I got fired just then." She mumbled around it, "I almost set fire to the shop. Some kind of problem with electrical equipment. It wasn't even plugged in." Stupid curse bending the laws of physics…

Plumeria nodded. What Nessa loved about her was that even if she didn't understand what you were on about, she was great at pretending that she did. It made everybody feel so much better about themselves. "How long have you had that curse of yours now?"

"Five years." Nessa told her, eating another cookie. They were store-bought but tasty nonetheless, "Since Team Flare got destroyed." She could remember the event as if it were just yesterday. The earth quaking like a, well, earthquake. The air filled with dust. The panicked shouts of the other grunts as they trampled over one another to get to the exit. Dragging herself out of the rubble of Gosenge town, her suit shredded and flecked with blood.

Those were not fun times. And things got a lot less fun since then. Bad luck and a sudden tendency to break things caused a chain of unfortunate events that ended with her getting shipped off to a prison in Alola where she accidentally escaped and ended up joining yet another gang. But at least this one had a cool big sister figure who brought them cookies.

Plumeria's voice broke Nessa out of her thoughts, "Have you heard of the Trials of Rebirth?"

Nessa frowned and shook her head, her mouth too full to reply. Whatever it was, it sounded needlessly dramatic. Like some kind of video game quest or something.

"Me neither. But long story short: Hala wants Guzma to take part in it and to do so, he needs three others who need redeeming. I was wondering if you'd mind coming along. It shouldn't be too difficult or take too long, so you can go back to job hunting before you know it."

"You're forgetting something." Nessa said, chewing on another cookie, "I'm not a very lucky person. And if you bring me along, we're not going to be a very lucky group."

Plumeria nodded, "That is true." She conceded, "But who knows? We might find some way to break that curse of yours."

Nessa snorted, accidentally inhaling cookie crumbs before having to spend the next minute hacking them up, "What are the odds of that happening?" She gasped, blinking tears from her eyes.

Plumeria shrugged, "I don't know, but it won't hurt to give it a try."

Nessa considered this. She hadn't let a very good life so far, hopping from Team to Team. Of course, she hadn't been fully aware that Team Flare was planning on wiping out everybody in the world (but honestly, could you blame her? None of the other grunts ever acted like they knew) but she nonetheless took part in working toward their cause. And no matter how poorly she'd worked in Team Skull, she'd helped steal and scam other people for years. By the looks of it, she was in some desperate need of redeeming. Maybe that could help break her curse somehow. And even if it didn't, it might be fun. It had been a long time since she'd gone on her pokemon journey as a kid and she'd been sorely missing the open road.

But there one more pressing matter to address first.

"Can I finish these or do you want me to share them with the others?" She questioned, holding up the bag of cookies.

"You can keep them, I brought more." Plumeria responded, "So is that a yes?"

"Heck yeah." Nessa nodded eagerly before turning her full attention to the cookies.


Kurou hit the ground rolling.

And rolling.

And rolling.

And rolling.

The world was a blur. Stones dug into him and he could feel the breath being knocked out of him when he finally slammed to a halt with his face in the dirt. He gasped for breath and instead found himself breathing in dust and flailing around as he struggled to breathe properly and fight down the wave of nausea that swept over him.

In short: it was not what he'd call fun.

He tried to stand and the world tipped to one side. No wait, he'd simply fallen back down. That explained why he was still lying face-down in the dust. Everything was so blurry.

Heh, blurry. That word sounded weird. Blurry blurry blurry blurry blurry…

What was he doing?

He couldn't think clearly; he must have hit his head on the way down.

Was he saying that right? Head? Heed? Hade? Hed? Hod? Was it even a real word? The more he thought about it, the less it sounded like one.

Something felt wrong. He tried to think what it could be but all he could think of was whether or not he'd been lied to his whole life over the existence of the word 'head'. Was there something wrong? Asides from the fact that he felt as if the thing that he thought was his head had been repetitively bashed with a rock and then filled with cotton. He frowned to himself. That hadn't happened, had it? What had happened? He was… He had been… Head head head head….

"Hey, are you okay?" He jumped and fell back down as a bluish blackish whitish figure appeared in his vision. Kurou squinted at the shape but his eyes just wouldn't adjust. Or maybe it was a living, breathing, talking blur. Kurou had never met a talking blur before. This was going to be an experience he would tell his grandchildren.

"Yo, are you alright?" Another blurry shape appeared, followed by a third. So many blurry shapes. His grandchildren were not going to believe him when he would tell them this.

Yo? Now was that even a word? … No, it sounded right to him. Yo was definitely a word. He wasn't sure about head, but at least he was certain about yo. Thank Arceus.

Ar-see-us? Ar-kee-us? Ar-kay-us? Everyone seemed to pronounce it differently. How did he pronounce it? Who was Arceus? What was life? What was time? He felt like curling into a ball on the ground and rocking back and forth, back and forth, back and-

Wait no, he was actually doing it. Ah, everything hurt. Head, back, arms… Arms? Oh, he had arms. He couldn't remember ever having arms. Did he? Was that even a real word? Maybe he meant army. He had a feeling that he never had one of those, either. He had a lot of legs though. Or at least, he once had a lot. Now he appeared to only have two. How strange.

But something else was bothering him. Something he couldn't quite put his paw on. Something- Someone- Some people- Was he meant to be alone? He could have sworn that he wasn't before he'd gone tumbling down that hill. He struggled to organise his misty thoughts, but all he could think of was whether or not 'head' was a word. Because it really wasn't. It sounded too dumb to be a real word. Hed. I hit my hed. Heeeeeeed…

"You think he's drunk?"

"Nah, maybe he just hit his head."

What had he just said? The speaker had been making up words, Kurou had just established that 'head' wasn't a real word. He tried to say that but a slurred jumble of half-formed words came out instead.

There was a pause. The blurs must have been contemplating his words. In Kurou's opinion, he'd raised a rather valid point despite not knowing what the heck he'd just said.

"Should we take him to the hospital?"

"He's really starting to scare me, yo."

"I think I should go get my grandfather."

"Watsagrendfether?"

"Andy, Baki, stay with him and make sure he doesn't do anything too weird. I'll be back."

"Wait no! Don't leave us alone with the crazy guy!"

"Too late, he's gone."

"You don't think he's dangerous, do you?"

"Armnetdengerisyurdengeris."

"I- He seems ok I guess."

Now the blurs were talking about him as if he wasn't sitting right in front of them. How rude. But he couldn't blame them, maybe it was a cultural thing. Maybe all blurs did things like this. If he was now living in their world, he'd have to learn the ways of their people. Blur people. Bleeple.

There was a pause and shuffling sound. Finally, one of the blurs spoke.

"So um, what's up?"

"Neh." Kurou was tired. He didn't feel like talking to the blurs, even if he knew he was never going to meet another one again. Before he knew it, he was curled up on the ground. Maybe if he pretended he was asleep, they'd leave him alone.

"Try and stay awake, yo. Um, he should, right? That's what they say in movies when somebody's dying."

"He's not dying, is he?"

"No, he just looks sleepy. But he might be dying."

"Nooooooooooo Imnatdying."

"He says he's not dying."

"He could be wrong, though."

"Hey, are you wrong?"

"Nooooooooooo."

"Oh, ok." There was another pause, "So who are you, anyway?"

Kurou groaned and buried his face in the dirt. There was a patch of grass a metre away from him that would have been a much nicer place to put his face, but he couldn't be bothered to move that far.

"Sorry bro, couldn't hear you. What did you say?"

"Imthebossoftemskul." Kurou mumbled, shuffling over to the patch of grass as the dirt soon proved to be very uncomfortable.

There was a third pause, even longer than before.

"Did… Did you just say Team Skull?"

Had he? Maybe he had. What was a skull? He was dimly aware that it might have something to do with heeds. Heds. Heads. Feds. Fed. He was hungry. He chewed on some of the grass and instantly spat it out. That wasn't good fed. Feed. Food.

"Yo, you got something to do with Team Skull? I've never seen you before."

"Imtheboss." Kurou groaned, rolling over so that his back was to the blurs. He needed sleep. The blurs needed to respect his personal space. He decided at that moment that their culture was a very rude one.

"You're the boss?" One of the blurs echoed. There was yet another pause. Blurs must be obsessed with those. Finally, the other blur spoke.

"I think Guzma might want to hear about this."