19.

ChɅrm's HɅndsome StrɅnger


It was early in the morning on the day Cyllene lost her eyebrows and the sky broke open. In the Obsidian Fieldlands, three women in facepaint stood above Volo's corpse and considered whether to steal his clothes…

It was uncertain how the Ginkgo Man had died. Could've been infection in his empty left eye socket. A Dark or Psychic Pokémon's invisible torment. Poisoning or drowning, accidental or otherwise. (They'd found him by a river in the dark, and Coin, in all her bloodlust, was disappointed to find him free of warm, gaping wounds.)

"Smarmy bastard," Charm remarked. "He won't be missed in Jubilife. When I was there he learned I liked Ground-type Pokémon and tried to peddle me a Gible egg. Do you know what a Gible evolves into, if it doesn't feast on your intestines first?"

Clover kneeled down to remove the cap and claw the platinum bangs away from the left side of Volo's face. The lid was long sewn shut and healed into a lumpy scar.

"The corpse that we, the Miss Fortune Bandit Three — I myself, Clover known formerly as Suzu, Coin known formerly as Dione, and Charm known formerly as Captain Kiku — now observe shall decompose slowly, as is right in the eyes of Almighty Sinnoh, He who makes no haste and—"

Coin kicked her. "Use the base language. Sinnoh is long dead to us. At best, She is cruel."

Charm rolled her eyes at the night's umpteenth haiku, drawing her dagger out of its slit. She tossed it down to Clover and nodded.

"Cut off his apron and coat. We'll see if he had anything stuffed away for safekeeping. Ginkgos are a bit of a hit or miss these days. More and more villages are waking up to their chicanery."

She kneeled on his other side, then, cupping the soft, pale cheeks in her hands. A glazed gray eye peered up at her curiously. Unseeing. Unknowing. Unable to consent to this, in a way the former chief engineer found simply delicious.

"You were a fetching young specimen, if not for your eye. I'd love to know how you lost it. That is, if I were into platinum-blond fairy princes. And haven't you suffered enough, poor, unfortunate Volo?"

"Don't flirt with the dead," Clover hissed.

Charm blinked demurely. "You're right, sister. It's not as fun if I wasn't the one to kill him."

"You haven't killed anyone since our blood oath," said Coin, standing guard above the quiet little robbery. "You're not a bandit. You're just bitter because your father didn't love you and now younger men won't either."

"Dare say that to my face, Coin?" Charm growled.

"Shut up. I hear something."

Clover loosened her grip on the dead merchant's apron. She was clumsy with the blade, but at least she was gentle. Coin would make a mess of things, Charm thought, and even in the dark it unnerved her.

"What," Charm said.

"I thought I heard a man's voice groaning," Coin told her.

"If Volo has a partner, get him with Poison Jab. We can't have Ginkgos on alert. Kamado would know immediately."

"That could be fun. If the Galaxy Team come after us your first kill could be a Security Corpsman," Clover suggested, digging dirt out of her nails with the dagger. She narrowed her black-painted eyes. "So are we grave-robbing il Patrono della Luce or not?"

"Accursed, Charm," came Coin's voice from not too far upstream. "You need to come see this."

"What!?" Charm snapped again, temper shortened with tiredness and hunger. She stood up and carefully squelched through dew-soaked grass to where her sister's silhouette stood stooped over…

Who… is… THAT?

Moonlight could scarcely make it through the cloud cover, but if it did, Charm hoped it wouldn't reveal the sudden flush of pink that spread across her cheeks. She knelt down, knees sliding into mud just so she could get a better look at the man who lay sleeping there.

"If Volo's a fairy, then what's this one?" Coin scoffed. "A mer who just got his legs?"

"Well, he's…" Charm stuttered.

Nothing short of gorgeous, her mind finished for her. She wished the sun would rise right then and illuminate him fully. His hair was the color of midsummer sunlight — short, fluffed and spiky, except for where two long wings framed a narrow, pointed face.

He was tall. Slim, with a long torso like a swimmer and just enough toned muscle to make him look confident and capable. The outline of a gentle set of pecs sloped beneath the V-shaped slit in the collar of his thin black shirt. Large, rough, long-fingered hands emerged from the bright blue sleeves of his jacket — the nails trimmed down to perfect moons and the knuckles lightly dusted with shock scars. His legs and feet were trapped only by a too-tight pair of coal-gray pants and simple shoes. Thighs and calves were steely and sculpted. Casually draped in the river rushing past, almost as if they could've once been a tail.

As Charm descended, the stranger's lips parted and stretched into a smirk, revealing straight and pearly teeth. His hooded eyes began to open a crack. They were a dark color — No. They were a full, intense gray that in the light of dawn would change to brilliant deep-ocean blue.

He started to rise, those muscles flexing fluidly, and Charm thrust herself forward, her soft lips crashing onto his so fast she tasted ozone and static crackled beneath her skin.

The bandit woman bit him over and over, nursing on his warm saliva. Her tongue scraped against those perfect teeth. His breath was strong and bittersweet as it filled her. Delightfully, he kissed back. He was slower, sucking her lips slightly longer and savoring every sensation with a low, amused buzz in his throat.

"Well," he said when at last they came apart, those blue eyes widening in pleasant surprise. His voice was a light, breathy tenor. Playful and powerful at once. "To whom do I owe the pleasure?"

Charm couldn't help but giggle. She squeezed one blue-sleeved bicep, fingers twisting around a gleaming brass button above the elbow and an electric thrillride building up in her chest.

"I'm your lucky Charm," she told the stranger. "What's your name? You don't look like you're from around here."

His smirk stretched wider. He brushed a few knuckles against his own hot blush. "That depends on where here is."

"You're in Hisui, darling. The Obsidian Fieldlands. Did you fall and hit your head?"

She reached out to touch that sunny yellow hair, but the stranger pushed her hand away. His dark brows were pinched in confusion now. He wiped his lips with a swing of his wrist, then peered up at the other two bandits, who had watched the whole lusty exchange.

"Doesn't seem like my usual nightmare. Unless one of you ladies has a very sharp beak."

"You're not dreaming," Charm said, pushing past his defenses and gently gripping his face with her nails. His jaw clenched. A stray string of pale blue static flickered across her fingers, as if his skin and hair were alive with it. "You're here now. You're with me. You're… an electric boy. I like it."

Clover beamed, an evil sneer forming. "He's just your type, Charm. Why don't you twist a dagger in his heart and see what piddly things he's got in his pockets?"

Charm gave her own grin to that. While he was gorgeous, and naturally magnetic in a way she'd never thought possible, he was still daft enough to sleep alone in the dark, and by the Oath of Sisterhood she had sworn off all prospects of true love entirely. There could be nothing but lust. Nothing but blood. Nothing but screams and blue eyes darkening to night.

"The dagger then, Clover," Charm said. "I choose this man to be my first."

The knife felt wieldy in her right hand when she caught it. "Would you like me to kiss you again? It won't hurt any less, but perhaps you'll die weak in the knees and stupid."

The stranger cocked his head at that. Charm braced herself. Now was not the time to hesitate in front of her sisters. She would do it this time. She would kill a man. She would rob him. She would forget him. That was a life unchained from expectations. That was the gateway to freedom.

"Sorry, but I think someone beat you to it," was what the stranger said next.

Charm's eyes widened. His hands… were now coated in blood. He shifted and winced. The fabric of his pants was blackened and torn around a long, snaking burn on the outside of his left thigh. It was angry pink and bubbling with blisters, one of which had just ruptured all over his fingers.

"I'm hurt!" he remarked, like this was news. "My chain… where's my chain?"

"You're hesitating, Charm," Coin yawned.

"He's even cuter when he's confused," mused Clover.

"Where the hell am I!?" the stranger demanded, rising now to his full height. "Why can't I remember how I got here!? Do you have any idea who I am and where I'm supposed to be on Saturday!? My special training CAN'T BE INTERRUPTED!"

"Ooh, now he's mad!" Clover squealed.

"Don't test me," said the stranger. He narrowed his eyes into a steely-blue glare, sizing up the three of them. Now his hair was sparkling in the darkness, little charges collecting on the spiky tips.

Charm grit her teeth. She popped up and lunged for him, dagger swinging high and that V between his pecs centered in her aim.

Next thing she knew, she was on the ground, breathless. The stranger was bent in a fighting stance. He huffed and rubbed his hands together, cringing at the drying blood.

"Now you've done it," Coin said cooly. She raised a Poké Ball, lifting the latch and releasing a puff of steam that coalesced into the Poison- and Fighting-type Toxicroak. "Poison Jab. And make sure the man is actually dead this time."

Her command had the stranger startled. As Toxicroak's barbed fingers glowed, he patted down his jacket and pants, fingers curling quickly around a lump in the left back pocket. They dipped in and tore out a short chain sticky and reddish with old dried blood, the end of which was affixed to a clip holding one miniature Poké Ball.

Charm held her breath from where she lay. She'd cut herself. There was a shallow red line running along her side, and when she looked again the stranger was holding a full-sized Poké Ball — one that shone unlike any dinged-up painted apricorn the Galaxy Team could craft.

Toxicroak trilled as it jabbed both fingers upwards in an X toward the stranger's chest. He jerked away, sending a flying kick into the Pokémon's soft belly. Toxicroak stumbled backwards. Its throat sack inflated with rage, and its fingers started dripping with venom.

"Why would you attack me!? Unacceptable! Let me call out my own Pokémon!"

"Pathetic," Coin called back. "But all right, then. Go on, golden boy. Bring out your own bugger and we'll fight in the modern way."

The stranger's pointed nose wrinkled. He clicked a button on his Poké Ball where a latch should've been. Instead of steam, a glittering blue beam of light erupted from between the hemispheres, forming instantly before him into the largest Luxray any of them had ever seen. The creature growled. His black mane sparked, fur raising down his spine to the star-shaped tip of his tail.

The stranger clenched both hands into fists, then splayed out his index and middle fingers into two back-handed Vs.

"Electric Terrain."

Luxray roared. Waves of blue plasma erupted from his muscles and rippled out in all directions. The bandits gasped. Charm felt a shudder go through her chest where she sat in the mud. Her ears popped, and her skin started prickling.

The stranger rolled his head and shoulders back, a smile of pure pleasure stretching across his face as the lightning sparked and snapped between his fingers.

"TOXICROAK, USE SLUDGE BOMB!"

A sweep of the blue sleeve too quick to see.

"SNARL!"

A deep, guttural noise rattled in Luxray's throat. Then all at once, he roared even louder than before. Toxicroak's Sludge Bomb burst before it could even finish forming the projectile. Poisonous filth splattered all over its slimy skin and dribbled down into the mud.

"THUNDER WAVE!"

Now the big cat kneaded his paws into the earth, purring and sparking until a quick jolt burst from his staticky skin. Toxicroak was already stunned, and now it gurgled in anger as its muscles locked up with the heat of a shock. It croaked in surprise. Poison fingers twitched, but were completely unable to move.

"Damn, this is boring," the stranger said.

His Luxray grinned with all its fangs, golden eyes flicking back to meet the human's blue.

"TOXICROAK! SHAKE IT OFF!" Coin screeched.

But Toxicroak was paralyzed.

"Amp-amp-bay, Luxray. Let's rev it up. Carrington Showstopper," the stranger said, splaying his left hand while the right one throbbed behind his back. The air shifted. The static intensified. Muscles of trainer and Pokémon twitched in perfect rhythm. He didn't have to tell Luxray to hold his power, nor to slowly raise his startling electrical output. The command was in the air and in the blood. Thundering through the heartbeat. Stronger and stronger. Hotter, until the atmosphere itself seemed to crackle and split.

"RISING VOL— uh?"

The ground shook like an earthquake. The stranger grunted as he stumbled forward, Luxray catching him before he could faceplant in the river. His built-up power rocketed through the man's veins and he giggled when his hair all stood on end.

Then he looked up. All of them were looking up.

"What the accursed is that?" Coin whispered.

The sky was beginning to ripple above the summit of Mount Coronet. Cloudcover buckled, and inky black bled blue as it stretched, like gravity was swelling downward behind it.

The sky stretched.

The sky ruptured.

The universe churned and thrashed beyond.

The atmosphere was crackling and splitting. A jagged, spinning, white-hot hole had appeared, just brushing the old temple on the summit with its blinding glow. Auroras of red, blue, and green came misting out like a cosmic kind of blood, buzzing deeply in their alien harmonics and snaking in hot, feathered waves across the folding Hisuian sky.

Charm plunged her dagger back into the slit in her jacket. She'd let the man live, whoever he was. Maybe kill him some other day, if the universe gave her a chance.

"Coin! Clover!" she barked. "Back to the cave!"

Coin shook her head. The rumbling of the sky was so loud her words were nearly drowned. "GIVE ME THE DAGGER! I'LL KILL HIM AND HIS BEAST!"

Charm rushed to where the others were standing, but a wind strong enough to carry the river water into crashing waves knocked her right in the back. All three sisters fell, rolling over the grass and mud, while the handsome stranger braced himself, both fists gripping Luxray's mane.

It was a beautiful sound, she thought, when she heard it. The kind of unreal tone that echoed in dreams but could never be remembered. Two notes sounding at once — or a full chord, and in a dark, flutey timbre that spoke of deep, deep caves and high castle towers sealing away gates to the unseeable past and future.

But remembering was useless, anyway. Terrible, even.

Charm's heart broke when she watched the stray red lightning bolt connect with the brass and the blue of the strange man's back — his limbs splaying outwards, his mouth open in a silent scream and his partner biting down hard on the collar of his jacket, mane flaring with static as he tried to protect his master.

Guilt wracked the bandit woman's senses.

She should've killed him with a kiss.


~N~

I like how I capitalized the V in the title and you all just thought it was an aesthetic choice. ;) Just who is this mysterious and powerful stranger, though? ;) Do you have any idea? ;) (Seriously, I want you to scream at me now.)

I have no real-world experience with kissing or appraising a sleeping hot guy's body so that's all taken from my imagination and other fanfiction I've read... and fanfiction I've commissioned that isn't posted anywhere online... o.o

Published by Syntax-N on FanFiction . Net and by scrivenernoodz on Ao3 September 11th, 2023. Thanks for reading!