Forbidden Waters – 12

WHOMP!

A meaty, broad-palmed hand topped in wiry black hairs like a cheap toupee smacked down the last of five brown bundles labeled ".308 +P" packed into dense paper bricks laid out like the start of a brick wall. His muscular fingers curled around the waxy wrapping like a Barbaracle clutching a stack of Barboach on the beach. The man before Valorie grunted in affirmation as he read a tiny label plucked from its surface like the petal of a delicate flower. "Val… Right. No last name, huh?" he said, brushing back a few loose strands of greasy brown hair in his eyes with a smirk.

She chuckled and smiled back. "Shut the hell up, Jacques."

The log pavilion sheltering them from the rain had been decorated in strange Pokemon-shaped fetishes made of twigs bound together with twine made of human hair, hung all around like ghastly Giftmas ornaments. Plastic white tubing was fastened all around, collecting water in a bright blue barrel from the roof. A twiggy fence separated the Armour and Son's from the rest of the speeding market highways, threatened with instant obliteration multiple times a day as immense migrations of Skidoo herded into riverboats for sale inland.

His belly rumbled with barely contained laughter as his muscular arms, embellished with fading blue hand-inked Tentacruel-and-Anchor tattoos wreathed in vines, folded in front of his chest. "Costs extra, that."

Val shook her head and punched him in the arm. "Hard bargain; guess I'll have to suffer listening about your family some more. Ya gonna make me suffuh dat, ain't'chee?"

His hand let go of the bullets and started fingering through an eclectically composed three ring binder, reading through various orders scrawled in with a stolen ball-point hotel pen. "Ye. Two uh'duh boys joined'a navy. 'Gainst mah wishes, mind, but'eh know how buddin' boys be."

Valorie breathed in, surprised for a moment, then nodded and rolled her eyes. "Hmph. May be better ass-lickers than me, but Sonya didn't birth no brown-mouthed boys last I saw. Wish'm luck, 'Gardless."

A single young man with mottled brown hair worked behind him in the background wearing an apron slightly oversized for him carefully measuring packets of dried Pop-Pod on a scale and then slowly grinding them down in a mortar and pestle. "Guh'job junior." Jacques reached over to the right as he smelled a plate of steaming freshly baked pastries floating by and nabbed one with psychic precision. "Thank'uh, dearest," he said like a prayer.

A woman with all-together-too-many white and silver strands in her cloth-wrapped hair for her age smiled in delight and held forth the hand turned wooden plate piled up with divine aromatic Corphish Pistolettes for Valorie to inspect. "Y'stay'n fuh dinnah hunney?" Sonia whispered, her rich Kalosian voice playing cautiously like a wooden ocarina in the night. Her gray and white dress had buttons carved from bone by hand and around her neck was a necklace beaded with Pyroar claws painted with bright blue floral scripts.

Valorie wanted to curse the sky. Of all the things to say no to. "Sorry, Miss Armour. Got big eyes leerin' me down. Castin' off inna hour."

Sonia smiled with teeth that radiated joy and her glamorous ivory eyes glimmered in the sunlight peeking through the chalky morning rain clouds. "In da case, take'm two'fer duh-"

Valorie swept up two of the buns in one hand and began devouring one like a starving Rockruff tossed a freshly roasted Torchic leg.

Both the shop owners gave each other sideways glances and erupted with familial laughter. "Take'm four, hunneh," they said in unison.

Val wiped some of the deceptively spicy filling from her cheek and licked her wrist like a cat. "S.. Sorre... fergit muh manners sumtimes."

Jacques pointed like a scolding parent, "Damn right'che do. Ye raised da woods?" he hounded comedically and poked at the binder pages as he chewed on his own culinary delight. "Furfty thurrrsnd urn hurrndred Prkurdurlurs," he murmured past a mouthful of hot stuffed bun.

Valorie smiled and wiped crumbs off her collar. "Seems a bit more than usual."

He glanced up from his work for a moment, unused to her bucking at mates-rates. "Ye was short a case," he said, curtly. "Not like'ee."

Val rubbed her temple, twisted her mouth up in confusion, then her eyes popped and she smacked a fist into her other palm with a grin. "Ah yeah, ah did. Hunter friend o' mine owes me a shell." She fuddled with the metal clip and loupes of her simple thick-canvassed olive-drab duffel bag and laid down a few hand-smoothed machine-stamped brass-alloyed coins reading Ᵽ10,000. "Lil shit," she mumbled, and then reached into her pocket and flicked a copper colored Ᵽ500 at him, which he snatched out of the air with an uncanny dexterity.

Jacques nodded, bit it playfully, then scooped the lot into his leather waist purse. "Whas dis? Valories leeee-vun tips? Sonia! Check'ee Lechonk; joinin' air-force soon ah bets!"

Sonia giggled and hugged Valorie as she bunched the bullets up into her bag. She licked her thumb, pressed it into Val's forehead, then smeared it to the right. "Porte-toi bien, Familiel." Her gaze was empty and distant, like she was looking way beyond Valorie's face, past her soul, and on to infinity. Her Pokemon partner, an ancient graying Meowstic with patches of fur falling out, peeked out from behind Sonia's legs, smiled with half-open eyes, then snuck out of sight.

Valorie kissed Sonia's cheek, and hugged her. "Merci beaucoup." From the trees, off in the distance at the far edge of the Azure Bay's coastal forests, she spotted an orange and red spot of fluff sticking out like untrimmed nose hairs on a court noble. She screwed up her face, released her hug, clapped Jacques on the back and hiked her bag up to her shoulder. "Later, Armour."

After she was out of sight of Jacques and Sons, she stomped along a couple boardwalks, cobblestone roads, wooden plank walkways, and muddy paths on her way out into the trees and the bushes. "{No way in Distortion Pangoro sent you here without someone crying like a hungry hatchling.}"

"{So hard to believe your big strong mate is up to the simple task of delivering a package? I'm injured. Perhaps I need to throw you around again.}" Fenni peeked his slender muzzle out from a tree behind her and she realized she had let him catch her unawares a little as he smiled like a Meowth with a dirty secret and she lost herself in his shimmering yellow eyes.

That evolution really did him some good, she thought to herself as she flushed inside like an entranced little girl. "{A'int the gettin' here I'm worried 'bout,}" she groused.

He brushed up against her front and hugged her shoulders, nuzzling into her neck, squeezing her tight. He sniffed in and sighed in distress as he smelled nothing on her but gun-grease and admittedly amazing smelling food. "{Yeah, you can have one. Bushbaby,}" she said as she fought shudders in her body from Fenni licking and nibbling at all her favorite spots along her neck and ears, the way he grabbed her delicately and firmly at the same time, trying desperately to disguise his paws reaching around for one of the buns in a side pocket of her bag.

"{Oh yay! Is it one of Miss Armour's? Is it, is it?!}" He slid off her, bun in the tip of his muzzle, and slumped down into the grass. His back was against hers as she sat with him, clutching the bun in his ashen paws and gnashing at his prize with ravenous hunger. Fenni threw his head back with a wide smile on his cheeks and a pink exaggerated glow of satisfaction. "{Oh yes, it is. It is Miss Armours!}" he cried out, legs wiggling like an excited pup

She popped the clasp on her bag and laid open a cloth sack, then she carefully cushioned the things she'd assembled for Stoutwood between gobs of old clothing. Before she left for good, she needed to know at least these things would make it back. This trip was gonna take a long while, a real long while, so those sick babes needed something to tide them over until she could get back with the good stuff. If she made it back with the good stuff.

Val recounted everything within, "fifteen ounces of perkup, twenty vials of raw potion concentrate, one quart of each vitamin powder," amidst those articles she stacked four of her five bundles of ammo, "Four hundred rounds of .308, loaded hot."

"{You sound dangerous, talkin' all human like that. Hehehe,}" Fenni teased her, throwing his head back onto her shoulder and nuzzling his mate like a drunk, trying to bring his nose up to hers for a quick kiss. "{I loooove you.}"

Val huffed, growled, and pushed his face away. "{Gah, stop, ya idiot. There's people 'round.}"

He whimpered and wiped away the dejectedness from his face with the scramble of little paws upon his nose. "{Sorry I… Sorry.}" He whimpered in a way that made her wince in disgust and also want to giggle at his inner nature that she loved so very very much.

Valorie tied the bag shut, spun around on her butt, and plopped it into his lap. Then she pressed her face into his neck, nuzzled deep into his fur, licked against his hide, and pet his shoulder seductively for just a moment. "{Prove to me you can get this back home without breaking anything and I'll let you clutch me up. Properly.}"

His ears perked up and a thundering innate domination began welling up inside him. "{Really? Like.. Like a-?}"

She looked left and right, saw nobody was around, and then kissed his cheek and raised her mouth to his ear. "{One whole moon. All yours, Fenni.}"

He swallowed, starting to huff and puff wisps of smoke along his jaw. "{But we can't…}"

She bit his ear and pulled him back roughly. "{Not if we don't try!}"

He spun around and leapt upon her, ready to mate then and there. "Nggggrrrrr!"

She roared and started smacking the back of his head with the hilt of one of her serrated military knives. "{Stop, let go of me, Fenni!}"

Fenni put up with the swats and the smacks, whining a little as she bonked him over and over again. He was in agony and desperate for release, dry humping against her as he failed to keep his instincts in check. He bit down on her clothes where he knew he could get his frustrations out without hurting her and held her down with her rear in the air where he could claim his prize. Man she was really hitting him hard this time, he thought. "{Not so hard, Val!}"

"{NOT RIGHT NOW, ASSBERRY!}" She shouted and elbowed him in the stomach, buckling Fenni over in pain.

"{But…} Nggggggrrrrrr!"

It was that exact moment in time that a couple of old ladies in gray robes and a gaggle of young girls wearing bright blue, freshly-dyed floral dresses rounded the corner of the path and squeaked in concern. "YOUNG LADY, ARE YOU ALRIGHT?!" one of the biddies squawked.

"YEAH, I'M- Ngggah! Dammit! I'M JUST FINE!" Val yelled as she wormed her way around Fenni's body and started locking his limbs in a painful hold. He left some long visible scratches on her hands and face as they fought, but he was no match for her decade of combatives training and wrought iron body.

"Is your… Pokemon?" The other, older woman with a mole the size of a walnut hanging off her cheek spat out past a mouthful of rotten teeth.

As if she was putting on a show for the crowd watching the two squirm and fight for dominance, Val shoved his muzzle down into the mud. She folded him up like a map, his arms behind his back, his legs bound up in her joints, head held low. "Nah," she started panting in distress, "poor idiot's got Riverworms fer brains. Needs shot. Better take the kids away!"

Fenni didn't know many human words, but "SHOT" was one of them. His eyes flashed open and he cried shrill, leaving a blackened scar in the grass as fire gouted from his maw.

The girls looked up at their nanas in naive sadness. "Aw, but he's so pretty!"

"He sure is, isn't he?" Val grunted, shoulder in his back grinding him back down into the dirt. "Too bad his momma didn't make'm smarter, though."

The old ladies shook their heads and led the girls down the road. "He gots the worms, baby. Can't be helped. Let's getcha some peachies when we get to town, will that make ye feel better?"

The little girl looked down at the road, far away from the grim scene unfolding. "I guess…"

As the onlookers vacated the premises, hastened by their elders, Val loosened the lock she wound Fenni up into, cut a little bit of fur from him with one of her blades, kicked the bundle of materials with her boot towards him as he crawled up on his knees, and then flicked the slide of her rifle. She gazed down the rifle's length and centered the cold cross of death between his eyes, aimed down at his dick starting to peek out past his fur, then right back up to his face.

"Pick it up," she barked.

He scooped the bag up into his chest like it was a precious doll, ruffled all over, and cowered before her terrifying aim. "{That's not fair, Val.}" It wasn't playful or fun at all now. Firearms represented something all together different for Mon, especially wild ones. It was something that equalized and eliminated a Mon's only dominance over Man; in every sense, to a Pokemon, it was cheating . In all the worst kinds of ways.

"{Life here ain't fair! You gotta get medicine back to the babies now! There's a paper in there for Hannah, she'll know what to do with it all, an-."

Her precious Fenni drenched in her shadow like that, gorgeous fur disheveled and covered in mud, kneeling in despair, avoiding her eyes in a way that made her stomach turn. It was too much, even for her.

"{Gods! Look, I gotta be human for way longer than either of us would like; I get that, ok? I'm gonna be thinking of your babies growing inside me the whole time. Not gonna let nobody touch me while I'm gone from you.}"

His ears dropped down, he clutched the linen bag close to his chest, and his eyes met hers one last time. "{… Promise?}"

Val smiled, and nodded with a wink. "{Promise…} Now GIT!"

BLAM!

"FOOOOOOOOOOX!" Fenni screamed as the fiery streak of an over-pressured hunting cartridge fired point-blank roared past his ear and made a crater in the earth behind him like a Minior fall. He nearly dropped the bundle as he bolted away from his love and transferred it to his mouth so he could scurry away on all fours. He ran as hard as his body would let him, his mate's last words washed away by a horrifying ring in his ears that numbed the body and dulled senses. So hard he wanted to puke up that wonderful bun she gave him, but he held it in and continued clawing with all fours at the ground until the sights and sounds of Man were gone.

He ran so hard that he barely missed the tears rolling down her cheeks as she watched her lover run back to Heaven with her boots firmly planted there in Hell.

She took a moment to breathe deep with her nose stuck to the collar of her fatigues, "{I hope I keep that promise, baby,}" she uttered to herself then slung the rifle to her back, packed up what was left just for her, and marched towards the docks.

On her way out she spotted the little girl, who had broken down crying, slung over her grandmother's shoulder. Valorie ruffled the little girl's hair, handed her a tiny lock of Fenni's golden mane of chest fur, and clicked the buttons holding one of her knives into its sheath. "Dun worry 'bout him, 'aight? He's in a better place, now." She wasn't entirely sure if her act of kindness was helping, in fact she thought she might've just made it worse, but it felt good to her and it sold a desperate lie just fine.

Mankind had a way of smothering anyplace they gathered in groups with a certain awful sort of miasma, one of polymers, petrol, and the putrefying trash of people . It always hit her hardest on a hike back from the woods and she held in any clean gasp of breath the could like a child sent to scrub the outhouse on a summer noon. The Riverdocks, a loosely connected city of platforms, bridges, and walkways that constellated the shallow waters of the Rhyne River Delta, was one of the largest points of commerce in Kalos. None of the interesting shit, of course. No gold, jewels, fashionable clothes, or black market slaves here. Nah, only thing that came through there was stuff that mattered; all men needed their beans, bullets, bandages, and booze. A nutrient rich blood that pumped through the arteries of an entire nation, and the heart of it was there. Then, of course, like the heart of any good soldier, it was wrapped in steel.

A fleet of military vessels patrolled the ocean off in the distance, painting the sky with long brush strokes of black smog from their massive metal stacks. Further in was an incalculable number of fresh water vessels tied up in a tangled roadway of toll lines, markets, work stops, and security checkpoints. This far in and at this time of day you usually only got the real official merchant types; the fact that Captain Clemens had what amounted to a military riverboat repurposed as a swanky floating tourist trap in early morning said a lot about the kind of cash being sunk into this voyage.

Clemen's personal vessel was an old military riverboat meant for housing versatile patrols and serving as a mobile HQ for them. He'd repurposed the thing to be a slummy yacht, coated in colorful protective veneers of white and blue paint anywhere the passengers' eyes might wander. Everywhere else the ol' girl wore her service record proudly. Yes she had rust spots, but only where they'd formed in the last few months. Yes she had places where she had to be welded and bent into place because her venerable nonstandard hull struggled to take his exquisite modifications, but how those modifications made her sing in her old age. Yes, she had bullet-holes here and there, but each one came with a captivating story and stood as a badge of honor. Yes she was a bit loud, but it was something else seeing crowds of locals flocking around and chasing her down the riverside to see her flickering light shows and to hear the military-grade Pokediesel engines in their chests; complete overkill even for the massive bronze water features that were the riverboat's two main paddles on the sides. She was his pride and joy, and he LOVED to show her off to anyone that dared experience the unique rustic glamor of a cruise aboard the Olivine Dawn.

"Welcome back, Valorie. I was worried you'd gone AWOL with that advance I gave you. Ha ha!" the Captain said, reaching his hand out to shake hers once more. Completely unnecessarily, and also completely mandatory for her. He clapped her on the back towards the gangway leading up to the vessel and tipped his hat at a few young ladies passing by. "Guests and service crew are out to market, no better time for a patrol."

Val jumped a bit at the sudden contact, but chose to try and hold in her complaints. "Fourteen days, y'says?" she asked as she marched aboard and peered attentively along the railing.

The captain waved the girls on and followed Valorie aboard. "Indeed, expect three days to Lumiose, a seven day security detail for the guests as required, three days back, and twenty four hours for good measure."

She managed to smile at him as she did her inspections. "Leadership really did teach ya good, cap. 'An extra sunset for the clerks,' I think is how it goes," she mused as she peered at an empty bracket along the railing and shook her head.

"There's a lot that can go wrong, I suspect. Royal family doesn't just want an in-and-out affair. They wanna show off the beauty of the nation; a real Toure de Kalos." The captain followed her below deck as she opened hatches like she already owned the damned place.

Valorie scoffed and tucked her braid into the back of her fatigues as she Mankeyed down a steel ladder with one arm. "Can't just enjoy a day off like the rest of us, can they?"

He laughed in a way she could respect, in some senses his laughter was capable of filling bitter resentful people around him with a little bit of hope and cheer. "If that was the case how could they possibly deal with you all day?"

Val stopped for a moment, tilted her head in thought, then shrugged. "Fair 'nuf." She slipped a leather welding glove from nearby onto one hand and wrapped her girded fingers around a steel latch holding shut a solid metal door that radiated in certain places with the orange glow of industry. She turned the latch and pried the door open, covering her face as a rippling torrent of heated air belched forth from the furnace's mouth and a blanket of soot began to fill the room.

"Wheeeezzzzz Innnnnngggggggg," sang the hymn of a dozen plagued throats, immolated silhouettes barely visible as they swam within their cauldron of flame and smoke.

Val closed her eyes and faced the opening. "{Eeeeey ol boys… oh, and gal! I see ya-}"

"Kofiiiiing!"

Val cackled and the Captain, who had begun to follow her, chose to abandon the journey and await his security detail above. "{Good on ye! Keep them healthy, y'hear!}"

She reached into her bag where there was a wrapped bundle of something that oozed through the paper a nasty purple. She chucked the thing into the flames and the sounds of the choir mellowed from an angst-ey overture to a mellow dirge.

The rotund shadows descended upon the bundle like a pack of devils taking one of their own to Giratina's feet. "{Vaaaaaloooorriiieeeee. Weeelcome… baaaaack.}"

She slammed the door shut and wiped at her face, leaving a Zigzagoon-stripe of clean flesh around her eyes, then started brushing the soot from her clothes. "Taken good care of the place while I've been gone."

Clemens coughed and hacked as he held the hatch open for her. "As any good sailor should. It's spooky watching you do that, Val."

Val tilted her head in confusion. "Huh?"

The Captain tapped his lips with velveteen fingertips.

She propped her fists on her hips and laughed aloud, chest bouncing with the force of it. "Spooky, but effective. Promise I'll keep it on the down-low for the silk-skins." She slipped the glove off suddenly, forgetting she still had it on, opened the hatch, and loudly slammed it after dropping it in the engine room. "So, ummmm. Where's the, uh-"

Captain Clemens tilted his own head in surprise. "The?"

She huffed and began her walk up the stairs to the second deck. "The defenses , cap! Last I boarded this thing y'had at least a port and a starboard Skarmory 40. cal! We're going, at minimum, into Gyarados breedin' waters."

He shrugged. "Clients said they were uncouth. Unfit for guests of the palace."

Val's face screwed up and she coughed aloud. "Unfit 'fer… Ah mah gods. Fine! Whatever, sure, why not?"

He tilted his nose up at her. "I feel plenty safe with your scope on watch."

Val huffed. "Yeah, real flattering. Guess yer gonna show me the cabin I won't be sleeping in?"

Clemens bellowed with laughter. "A sailor never forgets the rules of the waves, does she?" They stopped on the top deck, the viewing platform. On more prestigious river yachts and massive cruise-liners this level was constructed to serve as an auditorium or ballroom, but here it was barely big enough to fit forty-or-so for dinner. And Snugly at that! Then they moved on to the steep metal spiral stairs that reached up to the Murkrow's nest. It was the size of a closet, lined with chest-high gunmetal walls and populated by a few empty crates on the side because Captain Clemens was too lazy to clean up before Val got there. Open to the elements, rusting tread-plate flooring, not a single amenity to speak of; top of the world, best view in town. "Your room, madame." He bowed and gestured like a cartoon butler.

She nodded. "Yep, that'll do. Gonna get myself settled in, cap. Ye go and do whatever captain'en ye got left before we shove off… Oh, I'm gonna stalk everyone, sound cool?"

His palms turned up lazily as he walked down the cast-iron stairs. "Cool as a Cubchoo. Just don't frighten the children."

Val stacked the crates up into a stool that was just the right height for her to hold the rifle at eye level on the metal guard wall. She reached into her bag for a simple handmade rope with a cloth wrapped around the middle and sewn into a cushion. She tied the rope up to a couple poles to her left and right and boom, instant backrest. Now she could lean back, relax, and let this shitshow commence.

First to return and cross the gangway was a mess of lower class help wrangled up from the same workmeet she showed up to. She'd worked with a few of em, good folk. Francis there looked like he was still eating way too much, Rana waved goodbye to the third boyfriend Val'd seen her with in the last two years, Vincent with yet another tattoo added to the discordant patchwork of ink quilting his skin. One by one the circus of servants assembled below deck after a covert scan of Valorie's scope.

Her vision was suddenly dominated by a swirl of fuchsia on cream colored fur. An elegant, curvaceous, offensively effeminate quadrupedal body ambled across the gangway with a nose held just high enough to project status but not high enough that it slipped over into pretentiousness. Silky white, pink, baby blue striped tendrils swirled around his body like a crew of attendants there just for him. The velvety blue saddlebags draped over his midsection sagged a bit as he bowed to the captain before he was allowed to board.

"Welcome back," the Captain said. "You'll be showing Vincent the ropes. Boy's never worked a watercraft. He's the one with the long hair and all the tattoos."

The Sylveon peeked open one eye at the antique luxury ball on the captain's belt, nodded slowly with a frown, and bowed to the Captain in respect. "Sylvee Veesee," he said and lazily perched one of his ribbons on his head in a mock salute.

Clemens tilted his head back and forth and shrugged again. "That'll do, I suppose. Dismissed."

Valorie leaned out and waved her arms wildly. "Is that CHERRY?!" she called from her Murkrow's nest like a noisy cock in early spring. She slung her rifle to her back and scrambled down the stairs to the main deck as fast as her legs could carry her.

Sylveon winced at the name and his vivid blue eyes rolled wide across their sockets as he sighed a bit in contempt.

She barely stopped herself from tackling the mon by planting her boots down onto the polished wooden deck like an anchor in a shallow bay. "How ya been, Cherry? Glad ta see ye took…"

The prim and proper 'poke turned his nose up and away, eyes closed with a sharp hmph in his chest.

Valorie scoffed, looking genuinely offended with her mouth open in surprise. "Just like that, huh?"

The Captain chuckled as he leaned against a metal bulkhead. "Doesn't go by that name anymore, Val."

"Mmmmhmmm. Vee ." He sat his butt down and a light rattling could be heard in his bags.

She stomped her boots like a mangy Primeape, causing the servants below deck to jump in surprise. "Well how in distortion am I supposed to know that?!"

Captain Clemens smiled like a Nikit with a fist full of market stall fruit. "Don't be a stranger is a good start."

She huffed and turned her nose up too, arms crossed with a humph in her own bosom. "Ain't domesticate'n me, Jack."

The Sylveon peeked another eye open, seeing her properly offended and in a huff, and then his visage lightened up suddenly as if a complex ruse was underway all along. He covered his mouth with a ribbon and giggled as he pranced up to her leg and gently nuzzled her knee. "{...but my friends call me Spinel, now.}"

Her head bobbed around and she looked down at him, shaking away her absolutely genuine frustration. "Ha! I like it. Cherry was a shit name anyway." She looked towards the Captain, but then back to Spinel. "At least it wasn't Glitter ."

Spinel pointed down his own throat and hyperbolically gagged. "{Glad I dodged that one. Hannah bit that bullet hard.}"

"Aaaanyway." The Captain turned his upper torso with his hips locked in place, popping his spine one way and the next. "Back to your posts, Sailors. Our guests will be arriving any minute now, so-"

"LET'S GET THIS PARTY STARTED!" Richard Stone hollered from the docks, carrying a tiny barrel of rum with a straw sticking out of it and a tiny pink umbrella. Like a strangely endearing comfort blanket, Emil was kept nearby. With a muscle-bound arm around his shoulder, Em carried a few recycled plastic sacks filled with junky souvenirs. Vaporeon enjoyed the limelight of a dozen or so people, rich and poor alike, taking pictures of her and posing with her two idiot boys still in the limelight. They were accompanied by the other foreign creatures she saw before. These must have been the trainers that came to take part in that real big, real important, real special tournament. "KALOS ROCKS!"

Around the contestants were the Kalosian royalties she expected on a trip like this, the lot of them dressed in extravagant explosions of technicolor cashmere and silk. Chiefly, Prince Meyer of House Bourbon, who would normally have been considered under dressed for the occasion if it weren't for his own mercurial nature making up for the drab brown and black cloak he brushed aside now and again like a mysterious figure on stage in a play about to recite a mind-blowing monologue. "You'll find we water too, young man, better than any other nation. I daresay if you rock this boat hard enough we'll be making quite the splash." Every person that heard him collectively cried out in agony. Then he leaned in towards Richard playfully. "Why don't we try, hmm?"

If there's anyone she hoped would get eaten when she wasn't looking, it was definitely him.

The Captain plucked a gold and silver whistle from inside his coat and popped in his mouth like a freshly picked Jaboca Berry, slicing the sky with his proclamation. "AAAAALLLLL ABOAAAARD!