This story was co-developed by Titan127 and beta read by ShonnaRose and JhinoftheOpera.
[9-2] Life and Death
"Oh, come on, why can't I go with you?" pouted Laina.
Ciel let muscle memory guide his typing as she and the Pokémon Center computer tore his attention in two. A fingertip smashed the border between two keys, and another missed entirely.
"Because I came here to catch a Pokémon," he said. "You came here to have fun."
"Yeah, but watching you is fun," she said, leaning into him and grabbing his arm. He straightened his eyebrows to make clear that he wasn't having any of it—she couldn't manipulate him, no matter how big and cute her eyes were. She was twelve, not three!
"Ren?" he threw behind himself.
"Of course. Come on, young lady, you're with us for today. The festival's in full-swing, so we have tons of games and shows to look forward to. Oh, there's going to be a full theatrical presentation today about Shaymin's creation of the town!" said Ren, clearly excited to share his heritage. He didn't seem to mind that both his nostrils were shoved with tissues with boxes tucked under his arm.
Eva grumbled something, which started a short, snappy conversation in Sinnohan that forced a snort from Ciel. Maybe it was a clash of beliefs. Ren had said he didn't share his partner's animistic thoughts on each flower's godliness. He said with an imperceptible grin, "Legendary Pokémon, huh?"
"I believe it's 'mythical', actually," replied Ren, cutting their little spat short. "Mythical Pokémon are known to local myths, while Legendary Pokémon are those whose reference spans cultures and time itself."
And depending on who you asked, Ciel continued in his mind, Legendary Pokémon actually existed. He still couldn't handle standing on an unexpected side of that line in the sand.
"I'm surrounded by neeeerds!" groaned Laina.
Ciel finally pulled away from his sister enough to finish his string of messages. He leaned over the CRT display, wondering why the Center hadn't bothered any upgrades in the past twenty years.
[Brent] Just about finished. He made good strides with Heracross recently, they hadn't broken anything in almost a week. I've got a little 'workplace accidents' sign going on
[Ciel] Ill makes ure to send him back soon so they can work out their lovers quarrel
[Brent] You want an egg if we happen on one?
[Ciel] Pass. Kids drove me up the wall as is
[Brent] Well, no biggie. Happy hunting!
The buzzing machine to his left sputtered a final breath, and he removed his active Poké Ball from within. He really had to ask why the Pokémon League didn't have an app or a web portal to do this, and why it was always required to do so at PC terminals. Centralizing information? Whatever the case, it was pain in his rear end.
He tapped the capsule open and a burst of red light revealed an equally crimson creature. The light reflected harshly off his metal coating, and the snaps of his pincers shot through his eardrums.
"Hey there, Mantis," said Ciel. "I hope you got some good sleep, because you're, how many is it, seven hours behind in the day now."
His Scizor, abdomen buzzing, stepped in a small circle around them to take in his new surroundings. His wings flared in split-second bursts, like a plane checking its winglets to prepare for takeoff. Mantis eventually turned towards him and awaited orders.
"Just bodyguard duty, I'm afraid. I need you to stick with my sister and these two for the day while I'm out in the wild," he said.
Mantis looked to his charges, and though his twitching head movements implied he was confused, he nonetheless accepted his task. Bug Pokémon were always so hard to get a read on. Brent had access to some breeding and care facilities at Cherrygrove University that helped him out most of the time.
Eva bowed at their chest with their arm outstretched. As expected, they offered flowers as thanks, but that seemed to be their response to everything. This time, it was some blue irises—he'd learned an awful lot listening to them talk his head off the past couple days, which he tried his best to parse. They were almost pretty enough to send to Kris and Saber, but he wanted to be the one to pick them out himself.
"Dette er for deg," they insisted. After a moment of pause, he took one and slipped the stem into his pants pocket so the petals poked out at his waist.
"I should be thanking you for hosting us and taking care of her. But I just thought I should leave you guys with extra protection after what happened. With those Galactic guys," he said, which wasn't wholly, truly, entirely a lie.
He was inherently unsettled by them, but shame as he was to admit it, he'd almost become numb to simple criminals. It was… mundane, like that was just the way the world functioned now. He guessed being two mistakes away from a plane crash carried some lasting scars.
However, why he decided on this was a far more personal danger. He had no idea what resources were at her beck and call. Ciel needed to have every precaution in place if he was to do what exactly he planned. Difficult as it was, he maintained his pasted-on smile to hide his calculations beneath.
"Why not bring that other stupid bird you got if you're so... oh, right. Then you wouldn't have a slot left." Laina tried to challenge him, and immediately backpedaled.
A close call. He would take Clovis, his Pidgeotto, with him, but he didn't want to seem like he was overpreparing, so 'needing an extra slot' was an easy excuse. Everything was normal.
"And what of you? You've only rested it for about a day," said Ren, pointing to his hung arm.
The lime-colored sling chafed Ciel's skin after a while. The doctors said to keep his arm bent and static to prevent unnecessary movement. He said, "I'll keep it light. You don't need many arms to use Pokémon."
Wishing good luck to Mantis, and a good day to Ren, Eva, and his sister, he rushed from the Pokémon Center into the paradox of Floaroma's autumn.
Not a single blade of grass in sight was yellowed, and a balmy wind blew through his sling and his clothes. He'd be hard pressed to guess it was October, and the magically boundless growing season of Floaroma implied one useful property.
It was always breeding season for Grass-type Pokémon.
Owing to their plant-like biology, Grass-types "flowered" and reproduced around springtime where they could most easily find beautiful mates or, if they spread pollen, offer it to the wind. Golden specks caught a northwest breeze around him and swirled into an aureate snow.
As he made for the north side of town, he tore through the center of the Floaroma Flower Festival. Pop-up stands sprouted from each other like petals searching for light, crowded by people looking for the tiniest sprout of happiness the flowers could provide them. They were laughing and smiling as they played games and exchanged blooms, but he wondered how many were just farces sewn from distant memories. Eva said these festivals were held once each season, and people came from all over like a traditional pilgrimage. Maybe they only participated because of that tradition, even if the joy couldn't reach their hearts.
He wanted to believe things were improving, that the Region had stabilized and people were embracing their optimism again. But those criminals at the flower shop told him they were still ages from paradise, and there was still someone lurking in the shadows whose danger he couldn't ignore.
A treeline overtook him, and for a sparse period he couldn't make out the town's brilliant colors. The desolate barrier ceased his heartbeat, as he anticipated what exactly was going to happen once he was beyond the limits of Floaroma.
Everything was in place for his mission. The first part was simple. He'd catch the Pokémon he'd had his eyes on, fill out his team, and set himself up for success once the Gym Challenge began again.
The second part made him quake so much he nearly toppled onto the ground, and only kept himself jogging with all the will he could muster. She was waiting.
The forest broke, and his eyes were bombarded with a rolling sea that blossomed along its waves. No patches of color grabbed his eyes. Each of the millions, maybe billions of flowers that floated endlessly over the hills fought against its neighbors, and the competition was fierce. It was so vibrant that, at some point in the distance, it all coalesced into an infinite white.
"It's not polite to be late," she said. "Certainly not by ten minutes."
Camella was a striking monument on the edenic backdrop. Her black dress and hat were the only void of color on the horizon, drawing him fatefully to her.
"Ah, sorry. I just had to sort a few things out before I headed out." He checked to make sure the Poké Balls were still on his boots. Raven was in her capsule for now so as not to encourage a reaction and attract attention.
"I was quite taken aback when you asked me to join you. It's hardly a proper date," said Camella.
He'd practiced himself the past two nights, and let that experience show on his gentle smile. Short breath, then long, then short, short, long. Natural. Proceeding with her banter was the best option. "I just wanted to get to know you. I don't know too many people in town."
"Well, lead the way. I'd like to see what you're made of."
He nodded, and ignored the warnings in his brain, heart, liver, and stomach to put one foot forward. She waited until he approached to stand, and for a painfully long second, they locked eyes. There was nothing in hers, and he hoped the same of his.
It'd be exactly like he told his sister. He'd venture into the northern fields to catch himself a Petilil, just as planned.
It just so happened that, after all was said and done, they'd be a safe distance from Floaroma with no one else caught between them. Just him and her, with more than a little to talk about.
As they navigated the blossoming realm, Ciel kept his face in his notes to keep his fear in chains. He let Camella walk at his side or ahead, but never behind him, and he glanced above the pages between each word. Hexagonal flying Bug-types—Combee, he knew from the bestiary—caught the wind around them, and their constant buzzing matched the twitching of his nerves.
He had one active Pokémon: Brisa. She was hunting down Grass-type breeding grounds, his eyes from above as they roamed a nation of blossoms. Or, he should say, she was tasked with hunting down breeding grounds, but whether or not she fulfilled it was in question. Ciel gave it two in ten.
As they smashed a trail of broken flowers into the dirt, they would talk. Simple questions. Small questions. All he could do to avert suspicion.
"So, are you doing well on your work here?" he asked.
She grabbed handfuls of her dress and lifted it over tall patches, apparently keen on avoiding pollen. "Ah, no, actually. My next client is a bit behind, but it's nothing to concern myself over. It just means I can rest here a little longer."
"Had any fun at the festival?"
"I'm a bit old for festivals."
"How old are you?" For some reason, he felt his cheeks burn after he asked that question. No matter who she was, it was still a rude inquiry.
Camella pushed out her lips in a strangely alluring gesture. "That's a secret."
Checkpoint passed. He didn't seem to raise any suspicion, and he was glad from this position that she couldn't note the beading droplets on the back of his neck. He couldn't explain it in nine-degree temperatures.
The more he prodded her, the vaguer her information became. He couldn't narrow down any specific information on her, aside from her mentions of her "boss" and her "job". He still didn't know what exactly this woman wanted, or why she was still watching him after all this time.
His limbs nearly seized then, as his mind's eye roamed through the time since their last encounter in Olivine, Johto. He quickly corrected, and laughed off that he tripped over a root, hoping that the tall flowers would obscure his lie. She'd watched him through the completion of his Johto Gym Challenge. She'd watched him in his own home, spending time with his family. Any time they sat in the tatami room, she may have been somewhere beyond the blackness of the windows. Always waiting.
She claimed the impetus behind their first meeting—he scratched his neck as the memory surfaced—was because she caught wind of a conversation between him and Cynthia Masuta about the Ruins of Alph. He understood quickly why she was here in the present.
When he spoke to Saber at the Sinnoh League, he willingly let down his guard. He admitted again to venturing into the Ruins of Alph, and he mentioned whoever it was that he witnessed at the bottom of the catacombs. It was that person that prompted Cynthia's vague promise with him to keep it close to the chest.
The only other time that topic had resurfaced was shortly before he earned his final badge in Johto. He had spoken to Lance Masuta about it, about her, but she never came for him then. Was she not watching? Were there gaps in her surveillance? He had no way to know, and the only other relevance of that moment was that it was the last time he ever spoke to the Champion of Indigo before—
No.
No, he didn't. He didn't.
Bile coated his throat on the way up, and he forced his hand to his mouth to stop from soiling the beautiful plains. In that moment, the flowers smelled like a corpse was buried beneath. Camella continued a few paces before she turned to him, and his eyes drifted upwards to her features outlined in shadow beneath her sun hat.
"Are you ill? You look horribly pale," she said, care bleeding through her voice.
Ciel tightened every muscle and joint in his body to stand back up straight. He swallowed the awful taste in his mouth. "N-nothing. It's just some allergies."
He reminded himself why he was here to push away that fatal thought. They encountered movement in the flowers, and he called Camella to be still. He traced the inverted pendulum of the rustling stalk and unclipped a Poké Ball from his boot to prepare for battle.
A bulbous red face jumped from beneath the waves and landed on the center of a flower. It was a relatively small creature, two cherry-colored bodies connected by a leafy structure. Its surface was dotted with a rainbow of pollen, and he sighed in disappointment.
"Cherubi," mused Camella. "They're quite common around here, I'm told. And docile."
Ciel returned his Poké Ball right before a black missile shot past. The Cherubi and the head of the flower on which it stood vanished instantly, and the only evidence of their fate was the feathers that rained gently onto the ocean's surface.
"Brisa!" he shouted.
His Staravia crash landed a few meters away, flattening a few bouquets' worth with her outstretched wings. Ciel dashed over just in time to see her rip the second body off the creature, tilt her head high, and let gravity drag it to an unfortunate fate in her stomach.
He tore the creature out of her talons, earning himself a furious squawk, and tried to comfort the wild in his hands. It didn't look disturbed at all, maybe a little confused, and acted as if the missing part of itself was a freshly excised tumor.
Hesitantly, he placed it on another flowerhead. It stared at him a little while more before jumping once to about face and then a second time to disappear into the depths.
Camella stepped beside him, and he realized he'd let her fall behind, which chilled his spine to freezing. She said, "I wouldn't worry. They can live without that smaller head of theirs, though it may delay their evolution."
Ciel looked at his Staravia and frowned. Her feathers were once again stuffed with various junk, from coins to leaves to necklaces. No wonder she crashed.
"You've gotta be kidding me," he said. "You were supposed to be looking for a Petilil. What is this?"
Ciel reached into her wing despite her screaming and withdrew an entire berry core, long since eaten and discarded. He turned its nose away from its rankness. And there were bits of skin at the edges of her beak. Had she been snacking on this?
Undeterred, he aimed a sharp finger right in front of her beak. Even if she could snap it off at the joint, he refused to be intimidated. "Show me where I can find the Pokémon I'm looking for or else I'll have Raven embarrass you in battle."
She barely understood "shut up", but she did know Raven's name by now, and that sent the muscled bird into a panic of shed feathers. She dove her beak into her other wing and pulled out a long, dark green leaf that looked much larger than her coat could reasonably conceal. He snatched it from her and compared it with his notes and bestiary. A piece of some poor Petilil's crown.
"Take me to where you found this," he ordered.
She lifted into the air, hovered for a few seconds, and then took off once again in the direction of an isolated forest. It stuck out like an island fortress over the rainbow ocean, blocking all beneath its canopy. He wouldn't have guessed they'd find relevant Pokémon there rather than out in the clear fields, but Brisa had to have beaten up a Pokémon somewhere.
He ushered Camella forward and walked beside her, watching as his Staravia slowly outpaced them on the way over. The trees were far taller than he anticipated and seemed to grow indefinitely as they approached until he couldn't see the sun's path across the sky. He was an enemy soldier, staring up at the castle he was tasked to siege, unaware of the hidden weapons that would rain from above and spear his body in the dirt.
The fortress consumed them, and for a time he could barely see anything but shreds of dim sunlight that clawed their way through the cloud cover and the canopy and taste the dirt below. The sudden isolation singed his nerves—he was glad his arm's shaking was obscured by the cast.
"Are you a Pokémon Trainer?" he asked, more forcefully than he intended.
She cocked her head and seemed to taste her answer before offering it. "Is it important?"
"I, erm… you said you travel often so I assumed Pokémon might help with that."
"Well, yes. I do train a few Pokémon of my own." She flashed her teeth between curled lips.
That knowledge alone spiked his anxiety, forming mountains from hills. She hadn't fought him with Pokémon either of the two times she'd threatened him knowing he had his own. If she was that dangerous without relying on them, his task just flew beyond his reach.
He didn't have a clear plan to stop her. Was he going to threaten her with his full team, and make her promise to never go near his friends and family again? Beat her to a pulp until she couldn't threaten anyone ever again? Maybe he could contact the authorities, but the police in Goldenrod said they had no information about the woman and no way to press charges. For all intents and purposes, he was attempting to corner an innocent woman on vacation.
Whatever of his limited options he chose, he knew for certain it would be far more difficult. His eyes roamed her body. She had to have Poké Balls somewhere. He could disable them, perhaps order Brisa before she could make a move. But now she was already beyond his reach. He wasted his chance.
"Let's sit for a moment," he said. He exhaled loudly three times in sequences and prayed he hadn't overdone it. "Getting a bit worn out."
She revealed her skepticism with her eyebrows, but nonetheless stopped in her tracks and cleared out a place on the forest floor. She seemed distraught when her dress touched the detritus.
"We have to be close," he said. "We haven't seen many Pokémon out in the fields, and according to some things I've read, a lot of Grass-types gather in specific breeding grounds to look for mates."
He reached into his backpack and pulled out some packaged food, offering some to her. She raised her palm to deny him, but he hoped the gesture made him more personable. The jerky tore easy under the force of his grinding teeth.
"So, where are you from?" he asked.
She didn't reply, and merely stared around the shadowed forest. All he could pray was that she didn't realize what he was planning.
"From your accent, I mean. You speak like you could be from Unova or Johto."
"Maybe I'm not." This, of course, was spoken with Sinnohan grind. It was perfect, nearly indistinguishable from every native speaker he encountered, only with syllables he could comprehend. And next, she sounded Hoenn. "I've been a lot of places."
She must know what he planned. She was telling him she could go anywhere, be anywhere, be anyone. Perhaps on every street of every city, she had been there. Watching. Waiting.
"How'd you get your job? Seems a pretty odd line of work," he asked. "Work in intelligence?"
"If I did, I wouldn't be able to tell you. But I'd say I just ended up where I am."
"Not your dream job?"
"Hah. Hardly," she said.
An interesting piece. Maybe he could use it against her, force her to back off if she didn't want to be doing this. That was, of course, if she was telling the truth.
"I'm a woman with big dreams," she continued, and for some reason it seemed like she was talking to no one. "I worry about every little thing in every little place because they're all important to me. All so I can be who I'd rather be."
"Is that so?" said Ciel. He almost felt something in her words because that was exactly who he was. A dreamer who cared a little too much about a little too much.
But it occurred to him that it was fake. She was all fake. There was nothing about her that was real, nothing about her that was even human, no matter the faces she wore. He could see the mechanical puppetry of her cheeks, her eyes, and her limbs.
"Have you ever understood what it's like to be powerless?" she asked. "To know you deserve something so much, but to not have the ability to grasp it?"
When Ciel blinked, he saw his sister's bright smile. He also saw the man who stumbled home from work and let a fermented tide drown him in rage.
"I was supposed to be a princess. I could look up at the sky and ask the stars to bow at my feet, and they would. The essences of the universe would be my servants and grant my every wish. But that's not the future I live."
She rested her hand on some scattered, dead petals that had been blown into the forest from the outside. For the first time since he met her, he thought he heard some emotion, not just polite, sharpened phrases used to parry his questions. He couldn't fathom what she was talking about, being a deranged space princess, but he had to hold the ruse together if it wasn't already shattered.
"I do know what that feels like. My sister and I slept one room from a monster for years, and any time I left my house, I was afraid there was nothing I could do to protect her. A stupid kid couldn't keep her safe unless he was standing there with his fists raised," he said.
Ciel vividly recalled the barrage of emotions when he saw that bruise spidering from Laina's eye, and her sobs that stole that night's sleep. His skin boiled with rage, yet he also nearly drowned in a flood of sadness. There was a piercing spark of betrayal and the hollowed expanse of nothing that prevented him from truly acting. And the strongest feeling among them, so concrete, was his want to see her smile again.
It was almost funny, thinking back, that the monster was nothing but an illusion. His father had been a monster once, and only once, and spent a decade simply trying to set one wrong right. That didn't matter to a stupid kid, and what was left was his aching desire to never know that emotion again. To always have control. To always have a path to action.
He could see her vanilla smile when he raised his eyes, and he knew this charade never even began. This woman was just toying with him, just as she had for the past year. Ciel didn't try to hide his swaying balance when he stood and told her to keep moving.
A tell-tale panel of chirps and buzzes led them to the faint light of a secret grotto, where the canopy cracked enough that mosses flirted in the dirt of the small clearing. It was a perfect, secluded place for a date, if only everyone else hadn't the same idea.
There must have been hundreds. Pokémon, uniform in only their affinity for flowers, danced and floated and prayed to feed their instinct the crumbs of true love. He recognized some, but not all.
Sunkern and Sunflora lit the stage with their sunny smiles. Floette, a beautiful fairytale creature, conducted the dance with its flower baton. Combee spread the sugary scent of their honey to the participants, competing against the rotten soliloquy of a sad Gloom at the center of the grotto. An audience of Burmy weighed down trees from the branches they hung, coating their sticky bodies with falling leaves.
There were many more he didn't recognize, like one creature that formed a lateral ring of flowers with its own body.
And of course, there were Petilil. The creatures hopped along the ground, mingling their crests of leaves with others of their species and trying to dodge the chaos of courtships consuming the grotto. Petals were thrown, songs were exchanged, and hearts were won or lost, all in the pursuit of future generations.
"It's quite beautiful." Her breathless voice failed to hide its own artifice. He urged her down by a nearby log to observe from a distance and stayed a meter from her at its opposite end.
"I need to find one that impresses me," said Ciel.
"Take your time," she said, and let him decide what exactly it was that could wait.
He became a talent scout. He observed the Petilil dances, searching for skill, for heart, for a future. They were even accompanied by some of their evolutionary superiors—Lilligant, boasting their vibrant headdresses, seemed to be whisked away frequently unlike their shorter relatives, such as one that took the arm of a Roselia and wandered off between the trees. This left the less-fortunate Petilil to present mere leaves to their suitors, never dancing for one of their own. He realized why. They were universally a single sex, but despite their dances, they weren't male.
Petilil could only mate across their respective egg groups to produce eggs of their own species. Because the mother's DNA almost always determined the species of the offspring, another Pokémon mating with a Petilil met a selective roadblock. It seems like Petilil had to emulate common male courtships to win over other species, and maybe the relationship was based on the expectation of cross-species altruism. He made a mental note for later to research scientific theories behind it.
Each creature proposed a unique world of experience in its dance. Some favored shaking their "dresses", others primarily twirled, and more used their leaves like antennae, each hoping their approach was more attractive than those they bumped hips with. One of the small bulbous creatures tripped and dove head-first into the moss. It was only then that Ciel noted one of the three leaves on its crown was missing. Poor thing.
"Why not that one?" asked Camella. "It's so cute and vulnerable."
He tuned her out, and accessed the archive of his mind, trying to replicate the feeling of seeing Hector that first time. It just… clicked.
Ciel's eyes were pierced with light, and he brought up his good arm to shield himself. When he looked between his hairs, he noticed something right near the grotto's origin. A Lilligant approached the Gloom, bowed, and began her routine. Each twirl, twist, and shake seemed to bend the light around her body and cast it right into his retinas. It burned his eyes just to keep his attention forward.
She seemed to shed shimmering particles with each movement, as if her entire body was a gemstone carved to perfection by the cutting air. She, and only she, was so beautiful among them.
And when her routine came to a close, and she bowed just as she began, the Gloom walked away.
Ciel couldn't understand. Speaking as a human, she looked stunning, and he hadn't been able to peel his eyes from her mesmeric movements and her diamond-like sheen. He watched her try her motions again to a Sunflora, who didn't even have the courtesy to sit through to the end. Each time she presented, she was rejected, and her swaying became more erratic as her possible mates walked away with new partners. It seemed like no one present was lured in by her dance.
The grotto's performers vanished as clouds began to cover the sun above, the rays falling through the canopy now too weak to bear. The flowered Pokémon set out for honeymoons with their mates. The shining Lilligant was left to wilt in her own dramatic soliloquy and collapsed on a bed of moss.
"I suppose some lose out. That's the way of life." Camella said it as if to reassure him, but by then he had already made up his mind.
Ciel stepped over the log, and the remaining Pokémon scattered when his boot slammed on the soil. He approached the sobbing Pokémon, quickly at first, but then slower as he neared. She didn't seem to notice him, so he kneeled down in front of her and, using his one good arm, maneuvered himself to a cross-legged seat.
"I get it," he said. "They don't think you're beautiful, do they?"
He was distantly aware that he turned his back to Camella again, but there was no movement by the log. She said to take his time.
The Lilligant pulled its flat limbs from its face, revealing her eyes shining both with tears and the peculiar glow that encompassed her. Only when he was closer to her could he see the contrary pigmentation. Her thick flower crown was a soft pink, rather than the vibrant scarlet of all her peers, and the leaves forming her arms and abdomen were each unique greens.
"I guess your colors aren't what they expect. But for the record, I think your dance was the prettiest of them all." His words wouldn't get through to her, but his actions might. He offered a flat hand to have this dance of hers.
She perked up, paused for only a moment, and then leapt for him. The materialization beam had already fired from his capsule, and it sealed in his palm after her figure vanished. It shook once. Then twice. Then three. Click.
Ciel clipped it onto his right boot, where Brisa and Mantis's empty capsules welcomed their new friend, and he grabbed one from his left. Then he stood, his back still turned to her.
All the Pokémon had been exiled from this promised land, and he could make out the vibration of water molecules in the air for how little sound either of them made. For him, it was his body frozen with stress. For her, it was her natural state of being. As she stepped closer to him, he noticed that her footsteps never reached his ears.
"Before we get started, I want to know why you're doing this," he said.
"Whatever do you mean?" she sang.
"Why did you show yourself? What do you gain from obsessing over me?" He flicked his eyes to her, keeping his shoulder slanted away, enough to appear unguarded even though all his senses locked onto a single target.
"You're exceedingly brave to ask me questions, little boy."
"What about Christine and Sebastian Masuta?" Ciel asked.
A grin dawned on her. Maybe she was being cooperative after all. "The girl's too much of a broken mess to consider. My Master already appraised her. And you're right, we are keeping tabs on her brother."
"You're not with the Rockets," he said, flatly.
"I told you once," she replied, and took one more step. His eyes darted to her left hand, her right shoulder, her foot, her face, her stomach, anywhere there might be a concealed weapon or capsule. Her dripping whisper locked him in momentary shock. "I'm the only one you should be concerned with."
They were in agreement.