Pokémon Legends: Court of Kings

[Jump Einatz]

"Horton Balibar. He's a philanthropist with shady intentions. At least that's what most people say." Mia turned the Chatbot over, lifting up a broken wing. "The news is covering up the whole thing as some kind of gas leak. They haven't even declared Horton missing yet."

"So he only targets the skeevy nobles." Sal smirked. "Might as well just blow up every Chateau...you know, without Matheson around at least."

"I tried to get the security tapes but he wiped them clean with a Magnezone. Juliet said she'd get me access to evidence if she could-"
"Yeah hold up, the ******** is up with that?" Sal put her hand on the table. "You got buddy buddy with a Nostrad?"
"She's not bad. She's just quiet, probably lonely-"
"First time I met her, she had a sword to my back."

Mia rose an eyebrow. "Did she have a good reason?"

Salieri wrinkled her nose. She had entered the hospital room of Juliet's fiancé, a noble who Sal was on a date with, without permission. "Does it matter? Her daddy ******** up my daddy...ugh, why'd you have to phrase it like that, Zack?"

Mia was the one who did the brow pinching. "It's like she said before. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. When your enemy is Ratio, don't you guys want all the help you can get?"  

[Marsuru]

'You think she'd give half a s**t if any of us were in danger?' Zack raised his eyebrow. A million pokémon in the world and another Ratio attack was being attributed to gas. The nobility needed overthrowing just for that, Zack thought. 'The enemy of my enemy is still my enemy. She'd use us as bait or as a meat shield or some s**t. These are the same people who will kill commoners to stop them from winning the pokémon league. You can't trust them, Mia.'  

[Jump Einatz]

"I don't trust her. But I don't want to write her off." Mia looked to Sal for backup. "You've trusted Matheson plenty of times and you've known him for days. How is Juliet different?"
"Because he's been there for me when it counted. And she's horrible, can't you tell? Zack is right," Sal told her. She gagged for a second. "Sorry, just...ugh. Look, we hardly know anything about her. She could be a Darkhorse Hunter-"
"Or she could be the one to save your a** from Darkhorse Hunters-"
"Just don't tell her about what we do, okay? Come on, Mia. We need discretion."

Mia looked down and closed her eyes. After a moment, she nodded. "Whatever. I don't really care anyway." She did, but if she wanted to strike up a friendship of her own with a noble then it wasn't anyone's business but hers. She'd respect Sal's wishes, but no one was the boss of her. Mia lit up her spliff again, eager to change the subject to the familiar territory of robotics. "So this, erm, Chatbot. What do you want me to do with it? It's totally scrapped."  

[Marsuru]

'Whoever controlled it's gonna look a lot worse, believe me,' Zack said. 'We got attacked in Shalour City by a Cofagrigus who did this to us.' He lifted his and Sal's shared hand. 'Its trainer communicated through the bird, said it was some kind of punishment and that we'd be released on his say-so. Or when we die, whichever. Is there enough left over to figure out where he was transmitting from?'  

[Jump Einatz]

Mia held Chatbot by a foot and let it dangle, spinning slowly so she could see all sides. "Maybe. Depends on what's inside. It could take someone days." She spun a screwdriver out of a draw into her hand and opened a hatch on the underside. The sun reflected on her glasses, hiding her eyes as she smirked. "But it's me, so, two hours? Three?"
"Mia, if you can do that, you are a godsend!"
"That's what they call me these days."

She put it all down to open one of the huge crates that got delivered to her with a crowbar. Mia put all her weight into it, and the lid hardly budged. "Gimme," Salieri said, taking the crowbar in her functional arm and popping the lid off like a soda tab.
"Showoff," Mia grumbled.
"Noodle arms," Sal replied. "What's this?"

Inside was a set of what looked like medical equipment. Monitors of all things biological, wires and wrap. "Stuff Dr. Fennel sent me," Mia explained, taking out two pairs of suctions cups attached to wires which she plugged into her computer.
"Ooooh." Sal peeked at the screen, peeking at what Mia was working on. The girl typed up code on multiple windows too fast for the other girl to comprehend. Not that Sal would have understood it anyway. "Research into what?"
"It's a whole thing. You'll see." She held up the suction cups. "I need to put these on your chests to measure your heart rate."  

[Marsuru]

Zack eyed the suction cup like a kid eyeing broccoli. 'There are less weird ways to get me to take my shirt off, Mia.'  

[Jump Einatz]

"You can't take off your shirts with your arms attached," Mia observed. Another inconvenience Salieri hadn't yet considered.
"Merde, she's right..."

Not waiting for real permission, Mia slid suction cups down both of their shirts and slapped them on over their hearts. She went back to the computer. "I want solid data on what's going on with you two. Then we might know how to get you unbound. Was this guy some random, or...?"

"No idea," Sal said, adjusting the suction cup to be marginally more comfortable.
"This is fascinating. Has one of you had to use the bathroom yet?"
Miraculously, no. "We'll cross that bridge when we get there." Sal cleared her throat. "Anyway, I think it's a Darkhorse Hunter. This isn't Skarada's M.O."
"Skarada?" Mia blew strands of hair away from her eyes. "Isn't that the pirate guy you-"
"Yeah, he's around. And up to something. We're trying to hunt him down."
"You guys are busy Combees today." Mia took off the suction cups, apparently done with her measurements already, and moved back over to the Chatbot. "You'll have to tell me all about that after I cook this bird."

That was their cue to leave. Salieri knew Mia needed concentration, and she wasn't going to get in the way of that focus now. "You're the goddess of brains, Mia."

"Let's not get carried away. By the way, Esme is coming over soon, she wants to take her archive on Darkhorse Hunters and digitize it. I know the girl loves paper, but it's time to join this century. We can look to see if any of the victims match your symptoms." Mia gave them a flick of the wrist. "Anyway. You guys have some time to kill. Just try not to kill each other."  

[Marsuru]

'Darkhorse hunters only go for threats to the league championship,' Zack said under his breath, grinning because he spoke just loud enough for Salieri to hear him. His levity dissolved once Esme was mentioned, and adrenaline flared in his gut. He could not let her see him like this.

'That's right,' he said, 'time to kill. Time to get away from here and do something else in another city. I vote we go back to Shalour. Maybe the guys at the tower of mastery can cure this.'  

[Jump Einatz]

"Makes sense, they've left Helena alone so far," Sal snarked back before feeling a fire in the pit of her stomach. What was this? Did Zack have diarrhea? "What's up with your stomach, man? Is this a panic attack?" She stuck out her tongue in rejection. "I feel like I just got asked on a first date."

Mia got up and started to push them out the door while they were talking. No one wanted to hear the two of them together.  

[Marsuru]

Leaving Gotengo was like walking into a wall of noise. Cars rushed and people chattered, and Zack immediately felt lost. Of course, he wouldn't admit that to Salieri, so he had to be clever.

'Fastest way to Shalour's gotta be the teleport zone at the center,' he said. 'After you.'  

[Jump Einatz]

"Teleport zone?" Sal scratched her nose. There was a reason she chose to fly around Kalos on a turtle and not Teleport place to place: she didn't like Teleporting. Having to break down all your atoms and hope they ended up in the right order somewhere else was too big a risk. What if it didn't work and she warped into a truck? No way.

"The fastest way to Shalour is the Magic Door Key," Sal postured, dialing Matheson's number. Portals were much more reliable in her opinion. She'd rather not personally be the one to fold through time and space.

Math didn't pick up his phone. "...it's this way," Sal grumbled, leading Zack down the street. She wasn't going to admit her Teleportation anxiety to Zack, so she had to be clever too.

She was going to get them lost.  

[Marsuru]

As Sal led the two astray, semi-familiar streets bled into the unknown and Zack soon had no idea where he was. Lumiose as a whole was Kalos's shining light, but here the buildings were shabby and drab. The side streets had fewer people, more ways to lose yourself, and it would take a Lumiosian native to navigate. So why did Zack get the feeling Salieri didn't know where she was going?

'You don't know where you're going,' he said. Not far away, a pair of punks were loitering beside a poster, maybe having a deep philosophical discussion but probably not. They definitely found something very funny, and as Zack and Sal drew closer, Zack saw what it was. The price, at last, had been paid.

'Ey, it's 'im,' said the shorter, skinny punk who wore a pink mohawk, nudging his huger, beefier friend in where the ribs would be if they weren't layered in flab. 'It's the bloody Couture guy!'

The bigger punk itched his chin, looking from Zack to the poster and back. 'I dunno, Trev, 'e's lookin an awful lot less fashionable. Maybe 'e's someone else?'

That was when Zack got a proper look at the poster. It had been freshly mounted on the wall, perhaps throughout all of Lumiose City. A picture of Zack in a stylish white suit, pouting at the camera, eyes glowering like emeralds in a coal pit. His hair had been stylishly tussled but wasn't wholly different to his usual mess, his face masked in light makeup and digitally brushed to seem too perfect. He looked like a clown.

Boutique Couture - 3 Days Ago

'Mmmmove it!' called fashion expert Viro von Silver as he charged through to his studio, hips swinging this way and that. His purple shirt was puffy in a way that was probably meant to evoke a blossoming flower, but to Zack he looked like some kind of effeminate pirate. Of course, as his date meet-up-as-friends with Esme was now in less than an hour, he kept that observation to himself. The studio assistants cleared out except for a few, who dropped everything on Viro's command and lined up before their boss like troops before a drill sergeant.

'Ladies,' Viro said, swinging his gaze along the line, 'Cristophe.'

He said the name of the only male assistant with the kind of weight and venom that told volumes of unspoken history, summed up in Viro's airy pouting and Cristophe's return fire of flickering, perfectly groomed eyebrows. Viro put his lips away, then stood aside to reveal Zack in full. The assistants gasped, one of them screamed, and another collapsed and began frothing at the mouth.

'We have a stylistic emergency,' Viro said, biting his knuckle. 'This poor soul has come to us for help and by our honour as stylists, nay, saviours, we will help him.'
'But Monsieur von Silver, how can we help him when we can't look at him?' one of the assistants cried, her tears threatening to spill onto her cheeks and melt her makeup. The other assistants chorused their agreement, and Zack imagined setting fire to each and every one of them.
'Look past the fashion, you fools,' Viro snapped. 'A true master can see beyond the look before him, and visualise the look that has yet to be. Note the powerful shoulders, the square jaw, the cheekbones that could cut glass.'

Viro clapped his hands on the air above Zack's shoulders, smoothed his jaw, rubbed his fingers along Zack's cheeks. The assistants opened their mouths in surprise, then wonder, then inspiration. Their horror turned to appreciative murmurs, and the collapsed assistant made a miraculous recovery, wiping away excess froth with the tip of her pinky. Zack, who felt like a dissected poliwag, resisted the urge to shuffle his feet as he stared at the blank white photoshoot canvas on the opposite side of the room. Yes, fire would do it, but why stop there?

'We have only a limited time,' Viro took his tone down a notch. 'Are you ready to work... magic?'

---

Half an hour later, the assistants had propped Zack up like a scarecrow and taken all his measurements, some he wasn't sure they needed and some in places he didn't know he had. They were busy bringing cloth to a Leavanny who span it into clothes with the dexterity of a card dealer shuffling a deck. It at least gave Zack something to look at, and pretend he didn't have Cristophe tugging and smacking at his hair and grumbling every other second.

'No good,' Cristophe said with a thick Kalosian accent. 'This is terrible. Viro, you have given a painter mud, I cannot work with this.'
'Gee thanks, a*****e,' said Zack, momentarily forgetting the old wisdom to never insult one's barber. The glare Cristophe gave him could've cut steel, but Viro pranced to his defence.
'Cristophe, dear, if you have to paint with mud then you paint with ******** mud,' the stylist said on his way past to inspect Leavanny's work, ensuring the pokémon followed his design to perfection. Cristophe rolled his eyes, then took out a particularly long pair of scissors, which he angled towards Zack's head.
'Oh relax,' he said, noticing Zack's expression. 'I will remove only the most offending of hairs. Hold still, I am sure you would hate it if I cut style into you by accident.'

As Zack's dead and split ends were separated from his head, he noticed another pokémon in the studio. A Smeargle sat on a foldout chair, kicking its legs absently as it surveyed the busy assistants. It jumped at little when it met Zack's gaze, and stared at the ground until he looked away. Zack was soon distracted when one of the assistants came lumbering in wearing a hazmat suit.

'Angela, over here,' Viro announced, keeping his distance from Zack. 'Once the "clothes" are removed, I will require you to dispose of them. As humanely as possible, please.'
'Yes sir, Monsieur von Silver,' said Angela in a tone like she'd been asked to kiss a slug.
Zack's face went red. 'You have got to be fuc-' Cristophe's hairdryer drowned him out. The stylist worked product into Zack's hair, bringing it into a shape that Zack thought looked goofy. He was at last either satisfied or gave up, and allowed Angela to step in with her gloved hands outstretched.

'Okay, I don't want to do this any more than you do.'
'You sure about that?' Zack shot back, voice rising.
'I'll close my eyes, that way it's easier on both of us.'

Zack exhaled harder than he'd ever done, and looked around the room. Viro nodded at him sagely, and he grit his teeth. Fine, he thought, pulling off his belt with his two working hands, fine. He placed his belt with his backpack on a side table where they'd be safe. Next he dropped his pants in a pile with his shirt, and Angela scooped them up, holding the unstylish clothing at arm's length like they were contagious. Viro seemed to notice that now Zack wasn't wearing much at all, work on his new clothes had slowed to a crawl.

'Are you silly bitches finished?' he snapped, and the assistants jerked back into action, feeding the Leavanny with whatever it asked for and chiming back 'No, Monsieur von Silver!' Viro huffed, and snapped his fingers toward the Smeargle. It hopped off its seat and waddled as it jogged over. 'Leonardo! I will need a full stylistic decontamination.'
'A wha-' Zack was cut off again as Leonardo sprayed freezing water from his tail, blasting Zack from chest to toe.
'Stop swearing and turn around,' Viro sighed while Zack launched a torrent of abuse at his attacker, fighting the spray with his two fully functioning arms. Leonardo soaked Zack in his entirety then, before the trainer could catch his breath, launched a hurricane of air that dried him off in seconds. Zack barely stayed on his feet. The Smeargle yapped something of an apology, then scurried away to safety.

'This place can go to hell,' Zack growled, which would've been far more intimidating if he wasn't stood almost naked in the middle of a studio. Leavanny lifted a finished fold of clothes into the air, chirping merrily. Viro gasped, ignored Zack, and tip toed his way over, inspecting the cut of Leavanny's work with a rare smile. Zack, who had stared down more than his share of rampaging pokémon in the wilds, gulped.

Viro glided over, cradling the new outfit like one might a baby, but Zack's skin prickled like there might be a bomb in that bundle.

'This is definitely stylish?' he asked, thinking of how he had to impress Esme.
'You insult me,' Viro said. 'I am Viro von Silver. This is my most recent creation, and therefore the single most stylish outfit in this flowery shithole of a country.'
'And it's free?'

That gave Viro pause. He had originally agreed to waive the price, but now he grinned like a particularly fast Sharpedo. 'Why boy, everything has a price. Now put these on and pout for the camera. I want your eyes to glow like ******** emeralds in a coal pit.'

Lumiose City - Present ********. Kill me.'

''Ere, int 'e the lad who we got in a scrap with the other day? An' who's that with him?' said Trevor, nudging the other punk in the gut. 'Ice, it's none other than Sali-bloody-eri!'

'The Gotengo girl?' Iceburg cracked his giant knuckles. 'Oh we gotta score to settle wiv 'em both!' Zack glanced sidelong at his handholding partner. Of course she had gotten into trouble with street thugs. Ordinarily he couldn't blame them for wanting a fight, but today he was not only disarmed but attached to Sal and shared every ounce of pain she felt. Why wouldn't they get dragged into a brawl?  

[Jump Einatz]

As much as she wanted to assume that Zack was pure moron, Salieri knew better, and decided she couldn't double back on any slum streets they'd already been on or he'd recognize they were walking in circles. They were running out of ghetto to get lost through, but everything came up Roselias for Sal when she saw the poster.

Sal burst out laughing, pointing at the picture of Zack looking more ridiculous than when she met him. She was trying to say something about it to Zack, only to fail because she was laughing so hard. "Y-you, ah, the-the, you-psssshaaahahaha!"

Her laughter died down in time for her to hear Trevor and Iceburg's threats. Of course Zack had gotten into a fight with a Lumiose gang in the one week he'd been here. "M-me?" she half giggled, wiping a tear from her eye. "What'd I do-oh, right. I beat you guys up once, didn't I?"

Salieri let her hand lie on Biz Marquis' Pokéball on her belt, but paused before she could take it off. Trevor and his whole gang were comprised of undiluted scrubs. She had no doubt her Pokémon would be fine, but there was a catharsis to be had in hand-to-hand combat. Especially if there was a challenge.

"Guys, be real. I've wrecked you before and I can do it with one hand tied to an a*****e. Walk away from this." It was an offer she didn't believe the thugs would take. Sal gave Zack a side whisper of, "How do you feel about being a human flail?"  

[Marsuru]

Zack rolled his eyes hard at Salieri's reaction. He wanted to ignore her, but the incomprehensible drivel coming out of the thugs' mouths made it a choice between two evils. He decided to ignore them instead, and raised his eyebrows at Salieri's suggestion. She wanted to him to swing her around like a flail? That was like a gift. 'Sounds great. Sure you're up for it?'

'What'd you say you silly slag! The cheek!' Trevor practically shrieked. He glanced at his bigger buddy for affirmation, but Iceburg was busy on his Holo Caster. 'Ey, what's that?'
'Y'nno what they say, mate. Picture's worf a fousand words,' Iceburg grinned, uploading his snapshot of Zack and Sal to social media.

Trevor mirrored Ice's grin. White Flag's sister's hanging around with male models instead of challenging the league like she said? Didn't take much to encourage a photo into a rumour, and in this case people would jump on the idea that One Shot's a loser just like her brother. Apples and trees and all that. Ruining Salieri's rep would be the perfect revenge.

'Looks like they're up to something,' Zack said. 'Better rush 'em before they get the upper hand.'  

[Jump Einatz]

Salieri felt her ears get hot at the unmistakable feeling of getting photographed. Being on TV holding Zack's hand in order to take on a gym was one thing. Being snapped in an alley with Zack, who was probably going viral now as well? That was a whole other story.

Thinking there might still be time to destroy the phone before the picture got uploaded, she acted fast. Sal put her free hand onto the bond, reinforcing it. "My pleasure!"

She lunged forward with a battlecry and used both arms to lift and pull Zack off the ground with her momentum. Sal swung on her heel, trying to whip Zack through the air so the trainer's legs flailed at both thugs. A full rotation would allow Sal to clumsily set Zack back on his feet again, hopefully without much discomfort to both of them.