Team Snagem HQ (Mt. Silver)

[RCCaughtem]

Ryan wanders around the new HQ. This was nice. He had been hearing about it periodically when he would check in with either Blizz or Sub. He had been otherwise...preoccupied. In the time he wasn't off training and honing his skills as a Water Channeler, he was either scouting around Kalos or off somewhere out of region with Skyla.

Things between him and the Mistralton Gym Leader were getting very far along. If she was forced to be in Mistralton during the busy part of the trainer challenge season, he would go there. He would help set-up and re-set the Gym as needed. When the trainer season died out, Skyla started traveling more and they would visit cities in other regions when she went out for deliveries.

When they weren't out on dates, taking care of pokemon and battling one another helped to keep one another sharp. Ryan was especially keen on making sure Dewdrop, the one Ducklett that was responsible for their meeting in the first place, up on his training.

But as they both knew, Once things were set up, Ryan would have to return to the front lines in Kalos. And here he was. Well, with one more thing than usual: a silver chain now hung around his neck and at the end was a piece of Aquamarine, cut smooth and polished. It was a gift from Skyla right before he left.

Ryan looks around, seeing if any familiar faces caught his eye or new ones to meet.  

[Isaac Hawking]

Isaac, having joined Team Snagem at his friend's request, had found it quite to his liking. There were good people there, even if some were a little rough around the edges. However, for the first time in a very long time he finally felt like he had found a place where he belonged.

When the move to Kalos got underway, Isaac was able to pitch in with the assembly and installation of the many technological devices and mechanical systems throughout the base. The installation of the chair trap doors that lead from the cafe had been the most labor intensive to assemble, and he had lost his lunch a couple of times while trying to calibrate the drop speed. The tablets built into the tables had also been a pain to install, as they had stubbornly refused to refused to work consistently when they had first arrived. After taking them apart, and realizing that most of them were plagued with factory defects, Isaac and his Magnemite had spent the better part of a week up to the waist in parts, trying to fix the problems. In the end, with the application of around 20 rolls of duct tape, they had managed to get them in working order. Well, most of them. There was one in the back corner that still needed a bit of percussive maintenance in order for it to activate the "Chair Drop" entry into the real HQ below.

During this time, Isaac had also managed to catch his second Pokemon. He had found the Beldum while he and Magnemite were setting up some of the equipment for the supports for the first C.D. system. After a quick battle, Isaac had walked away with his second Pokemon, and a couple hundred dollars in accidentally destroyed equipment. Sub had NOT been happy.

At current Isaac was lying on his back under the table in the back corner, once again trying fruitlessly to completely fix that damn table.  

[Kasumi of Vientown]

The trip down into the base was always interesting to Ren and Kasumi. They had joined Team Snagem just before they started relocating to Kalos, and had helped with the move, at least with the first part of it. Six months into the move, they had left again in order to isolate themselves with their Pokemon and train them.

But they kept track of the date and knew when they were supposed to be here, and so they arrived when they were supposed too. It helped that they knew where it was before hand.

The place had changed quite a bit in the past six months that they were away. It looked really nice now. They didn't really know many people, since their job when they had been helping had merely been going out and collecting needed items and bringing them back, and while they had explored the base on past visits, they hadn't stuck around long before getting sent out to collect more items. All that traveling hadn't been an easy job, but someone had to do it.

As they were looking around, Ren's Linoone and Kasumi's Persian were following them and also looking around.  

[Atlantis_Darts]

"Yeah, yeah you hunk of junk." Darts grumbles as he drops into the bottom of the cafe. "I suppose I'll have to make my own coffee too, right?

Darts' outward appearance hasn't changed much, if at all over the course of the one year time skip, but for the sake of noting his cursed form it will be described herein once again. As a Giratina hybrid, most of his head and his face is invisible, as the entirety of it is taken up by the enormous golden crest so familiarly donning Giratina's own. There is only a slit in the middle of it for two crimson eyes without pupils, and an opening near the bottom where a mouth should be. Beneath that, a black t-shirt and a pair of black pants below that proved that Darts knew how to coordinate black on black clothing, even if he knew nothing else of fashion. His skin underneath his clothing had become a luminescent non-reflective silver, matching the skin tone of the benefactor who had granted him this look. His most defining feature by far was the large and (in his own esteem) most essential garment on the face of the planet, the only thing possibly more garish than his golden crest, his jacket. Originally a plain black trenchcoat, the jacket underwent more than a few changes when Darts was condemned to his current form by a Giratina. Once hybridized, golden accents were added to the bottom in the form of various jutting gold spikes downwards out of the bottom of the jacket along with gold accents across his collar bones, looking very much like the chest protrusions of his progenitor. If such a thing were imaginable, those were not even the oddest things about the coat.

Since hybridization, the jacket seemed to have become a physical part of Darts' being, much as an arm or a leg would, but with less motor ability. Nocioceptors run through the membrane of the jacket, providing Darts with tactile response and pain functions just like any other part of his body. In addition, the jacket does respond weakly to his mental cues, mostly being able to flap weakly, though he anticipated through exercise he could probably eventually garner actual movement. In addition, the jacket now served as a dimensional anchor to fasten him to this world. As a Giratina hybrid, he was constantly at odds with the parallel shadow world that runs adjacent and invisible to our own. Because Giratina had been long since banished to the Distortion World for its violence, the same ban attempted constantly to take Darts and dump him there whenever he found himself not swathed in his trusty jacket, and too many of the Snagems had seen more of Origin Forme Darts than they ever wanted to again on their last trip to the Distortion World a year ago. When in that crazy backwards dimension Darts gained a great deal in terms of destructive power in exchange for anything resembling a sanity that wasn't beastially crazed and bent on destruction.

Darts' only other defining characteristic (like he needs another one) was a set of six odd black circles on his back, where blackened tentacles had emerged during his Origin stint in the Distortion World. They seemed benign enough to him, and were almost always covered by his shirt and jacket so out of sight out of mind, like Darts always says and then promptly forgets about. During the year Darts had been on the road, things started off like they usually did whenever he wandered off on his own for a long period of time with no explanation. He started by hitting up the casinos. An avid gambler, and a man well-known for playing only by the rules. (Heh.) Darts made his way to the seediest casinos and most dingy game corners in search of monetary prey. And for a while, things seemed to be going fine. Getting in fights with the locals was a lot easier as he became more and more familiar with his new body, even though he hadn't learned any actual Giratina techniques yet per say. Not to mention he had little fear of dying, as by removing his jacket he could return to the Distortion World instantly, entering a rabies-like fit of unstoppable rage in the process, but as a last resort it made a great escape button that ensured he could walk away from any shady deals more or less unscathed. He gambled at the biggest pots, took the largest share of the winnings, lied, cheate- er, played as fair as circumstances would allow, and lived the life of an underworld king (he was practically waist deep in black... coffee.) but for some reason deep down in his soul he was tormented and never at peace. Deep down there was a thirst for rage and a thirst for violence that he had never felt as a human. It was something uncontrollable, something that the usually fully in control gambler had never encountered, even counting his usual reliance on caffeine, especially coffee, which now had an almost elixir-like effect, helping balance his temperament against the rages deep inside of him.

So he left the underworld with its mobs and pit bosses and uncontrollably temperamental owners and backers, who usually got really unhappy when they ended up losing big piles of money to hybrids in flashy coats, and he went on a journey. A journey of the soul. Darts left the underworld he knew and started traveling across the land in search of anything that could resemble peace. Coffee was quickly becoming not enough to quell the violence in his heart, gambling no longer quickened his pulse enough to drown out the same hybrid urges. Money no longer had any merit to him. (Yeah okay maybe not that one.) As to where he went? Well, this description
has run on far too long as-is, and perhaps that can be saved for later.

Regardless of what has happened, Darts now looks more in-control of himself, and more focused than the last time the Snagems saw him, not quite comfortable in his new body but getting there, and that was more surprising than anything else. "Now..." Darts muses, as he enters the living area. "Where is the coffee in this coffee shop?" He asks, almost scathingly.  

[glitchedmirrors]

Two familiar faces would show up in the HQ together, both of which were smiling and chatting away. Kairi and Dante hadn't spent too much time together because of the break, so, it was nice to catch up with one another. Considering they were practically best friends at this point, it seemed obvious that the two would enter HQ together. The redheaded girl would look somehow different to most people, if they cared to notice. Maybe it was just because she was smiling, or maybe it had something to do with the fact that she no longer wore the bandages that customarily adorned her the right side of her face, exposing all her scars and her silvery eye. Dante looked pretty much the same as he always did, though he did have a bit of a change in wardrobe. He had spent a great deal of time with Aria and Lynnette - the girl had begrudgingly decided to join them after a great deal of compliments from Dante on her own wardrobe, and once she had finally gotten past Aria's usage of the nickname 'Lyn Lyn', which still infuriated her to be honest. The two girls had helped him in designing his new clothes, which included a light blue jacket, one sleeve ripped off to show off his intricate green tattoos that climbed up to his face to curl around one eye. The difference in the two trainers's appearances didn't matter much though, as they were still the same people they were previously, though Kairi could be considered a little more cheery nowadays.

The redheaded girl had spent the majority of the break off in Goldenrod, staying with her father and helping him with training and finding homes for the many Houndour he owned. Her own Houndour, Tetra, was currently walking along beside her, a lot calmer than she would have been had it been a year ago. The Houndour was out of her puppy stage, but, she still wasn't quite ready to evolve, though it wasn't for a lack of trying. Kairi and Tetra had trained together quite a bit over the year, but, Kairi knew her Houndour would evolve when it was ready to. The year off had been good for her. She became closer with her father in that time, and she had a new respect for the man. She hadn't told many about where she was going. No one but her sister anyways, as Kairi had promised herself that she wouldn't abandon the young girl again. She had made sure to keep in contact with Leslie the entire time, inviting her over to visit the Houndour pups on occasion. Although, the redhead was wondering whether or not she should have mentioned to Kain that she would be in Goldenrod? They weren't exactly dating, or at least not yet. To be honest, Kairi still felt a little off about the whole concept of relationships. She hadn't exactly ended things with Reno well, and, while they were still friends, she did still hurt over it all. She wasn't sure if her heart was prepared for another relationship. What if things went badly? Of course, thinking of Kain, Kairi couldn't help but blush, her face going almost as red as her hair.

Dante on the other hand, had made sure to keep in touch with everyone he was close to. In fact, when Kairi had left without a word, he was the one that hung out with Kain. Heck, they actually went on a couple of dates, which Dante hadn't really expected to happen. The blue-haired boy could tell how much Kain cared about Kairi though, and he had told the other boy that he needed to stop lying to himself, to go after who he really loved. Dante hadn't been hurt in the slightest, he had come to realize that, while he found Kain attractive, and he was a great friend, one of his best friends actually, he wasn't entirely interested in him romantically. He was content with being friends, and he wanted his other friends to be happy, specifically Kairi. Although the girl was being really great about smiling right now, Dante could see the pain in her eyes. She had missed everyone, that much was obvious to him, but, it was even clearer to him that she had missed Kain. He had decided against telling the girl about his own dates with her crush, knowing it would be easier if she simply didn't know for now. He just hoped that Kain would arrive soon, and hopefully act on what Dante had told him (he had made it very clear that Kairi was head over heels for him and that he just needed to ask her out). He also wondered if Lynnette had found the place okay. As soon as Dante had gotten the details, he had set the girl up with getting into Snagem, so, hopefully she would show. He was just looking elsewhere when... Well, when Lynnette appeared.

The girl was the embodiment of class. The way she held herself, the way she dressed, the way she looked condescending at pretty everyone. It wasn't that she thought she was better than everyone else, she just knew she had a higher status within the Kalos region, being a classical musician. Lumiose City was her home, and it seemed it always would be, since Snagem's HQ was now located here. She quickly located Dante, walking over to him and Kairi with such grace one would think she was a dancer, not a pianist. She held her Ralts in her arms, the Psychic/Fairy type having fallen asleep there. The girl didn't have the heart to move the young female Pokemon, so, she chose to simply carry her carefully. "I don't suppose Aria has arrived yet, has she?" Lynnette asked, a slight tone of annoyance. Dante simply shook his head in response. He hadn't seen her yet, but, he knew they'd see her eventually.  

[Darksol88]

For Sol's group, more than a few things had gone on in that year. A lot of it was spent doing some sort of recon whenever possible; exploring Kalos, learning more about the region and its usual goings-on as they traveled. It had been decided that he, Amaranth and Cera stuck together during this time, more for those two than himself. For Cera, he knew that having the Master Ball that Sub caught her with would allow him to keep her safe in a pinch, especially what with the police officers and the apparent stance of the King. It didn't make for the easiest of times sometimes, and so the ball became a necessary evil to the Mew.

For Amaranth, it was to not only keep her somewhat safe in her travels, but to give her a sorely needed learning experience and maybe get her to come out of her shell a little. It seemed to pay off especially well for her, as she ended up being quite interested in the region's lore and had a tendency of making the group to stop in the event of a Pokemon needing help. While at first, the whole thing seemed odd for her, her reasoning quickly became apparent: she knew what that stuff was like, and if she could do something about it, she'd do it without hesitation. It might've also been Cera rubbing off on her slightly, but the way Amaranth seemingly lit up in these events couldn't have been that. It also paid off for a particular Metapod of hers, having since evolved several months ago through.

If nothing else, she wasn't quite the quiet, solemn type nowadays. But she also wasn't the unbridled ball of pink, cute, and girly that Cera often was either. Either way, the year had helped her in a lot of ways.

Sol... well, had nothing really of note. There was something, but for now, he settled on getting a report about it situated. He was even tapping away on his SNAG about that now that things were situated at the Snag-A-Cup, and the HQ below it, stopping only to help an odd girl named Aile for a moment.

As for Aden, Sol's report actually had a bit about that too. It turned out that he had been doing his own traveling since the gym circuit in Johto, and it wasn't without a few odd events. Or, better put, a whole lot of odd events. His ending up in Kalos was purely a chance thing, and the group and him managed to run into one another for a bit at Shalour City. However, he wasn't with the three still, as with everything that appeared to be going on, he figured to keep to his travels at that moment. That, and something about one of Korrina's Lucario and Aden wanting to get the heck out of the city before anything could happen. Other than that, who knows what the hell had gone on with him, or was going on with him now.


In any case, Amaranth had found her way to Darts, her head tilted. She still wasn't too fond of this guy. "Can I help you...?" She asked, still having a slight habit of letting her sentences trail off.  

[Isaac Hawking]

"A little of A, a little of B," Isaac responded to the red headed woman standing next to him, as he continued to solder electrical wires to the circuit board he had exposed. Returning his soldering iron to its case, and sliding out from under the table, Isaac flipped a tiny switch on the bottom. The top of the table began to glow as power once again began to flow through the device.

"Would you mind doing me a favor?" He turned to address the newcomer in the green jacket, "Could you sit on that chair for me? I want to test something."  

[RCCaughtem]

Ryan takes another look around. "Not Bad, Sub. Not bad at all. " Ryan says. He blinks as two blurs go by him. Ryan sighs. "She hasn't changed a bit." he mutters.  

[Darksol88]

While Sol did his own looking around, Amaranth decided to sit in a chair near Aile. "Do you need more than one subject?" She asked. If Cera were out of her ball at the moment, she'd probably cling to the hybrid's shoulder and wonder if that's really the best idea. But alas, she was securely in that ball and in Sol's pocket for now. Better safe than sorry.