The Preamble (The Test Thread)

[lowreaches]

Who: The cast

Where: 7-0's classroom

When: Lunch!

What: Some basic testing.

Churlish.

 

That was the word that had gripped 7-0.  No one knew exactly how it started, and not everyone was so charmed, but it had become a magic word for the 7th graders on the basement floor of the Belfry, who had not even windows to escape through and spotty reception at best.

 

The kids took to notes instead.  Simple, hand-written, paper notes.  Passed between themselves constantly. People were getting bullied for their handwriting now.  Churlish had appeared somewhere, some time, in one of those notes, and then again, and again, and had wormed its way into their vocabulary.  A catch all:  The teacher's driving me churling crazy.  Raury's such a churl.

 

No one wanted to be a churl.

 

It might've been the school proper what done it.  The Belfry was a spindly, mean thing, looming over a stretch of pretty beach like a malcontent lighthouse.  It hunched in the wind, which licked misty off the cold grey winter waters of the lake, roof slung over it at a surly angle, old and brittle and arthritic even in its youth.  Several stories tall, and perched lonely atop a hill that was murder on a bike, churlish was an apt word for the Belfry.

 

In all likelihood, the word came from their teacher Ms. Poplar. She was a fair teacher most of the time, but notoriously temperamental. Today, she was of the private opinion that she was much too pretty and promising to be toiling away in the basement of The Belfy.  Her bad moods were often given away by her hair, and today it was a particularly high and sloppy ponytail.  Churlish was an apt word for her, too.

 

Ms. Poplar's mood had spread through the classroom;  kids were skittish and quiet.  The first whisperer of the day had been made example of, and several notes were plastered behind her as grim trophies; she scowled and stared down the class while she hung them up.  More mortifying, the contents had all been read aloud after.  She'd only handed out petty busy work, the kind that made it easy to keep checking her phone and biting her lip.

 

When the bell rang for lunch period, Ms. Poplar sat in her seat for a few long minutes more, head in her hands and the class holding their breath.  It wasn't until a girl, Notoriously Nervous Ruby, finally stood up and after several false starts dashed past the teacher's desk and out the door that Ms. Poplar lifted her head, glared around sulkily, and drug herself out of the room.  Churlishly.

 

A gentle buzz of voices filled the room as the pall broke.  Bags crinkled open and kids disappeared out the door, fading away into the cacaphony of the halls.

Comments

[heart_swap]

There were two worst kinds of days, as far as Marron was concerned. The first of those was the days when the work was too hard, when they touched on a subject that had given her trouble years ago and that she still struggled with now, the ones where she struggled through because she was too proud, too stubbornly not that kind of helpless idiot to need guiding through something she should have mastered before the rest of this class even found their way to this place.

That kind was rare, where the second kind was all too common.

The second kind - today - was the kind of day where she understood everything, where the work was so easy as to be insulting, where there was no point to doing any of it. At least insurmountable obstacles were still obstacles, still something that she could fight even if they weren't something she could defeat. This was just boring.

The bell rang, and she poked her bag with a foot. She could get away with it, if she just took her lunch out now. She could get away with a lot of things, but she wasn't quite hungry enough to make provoking Ms. Poplar worth it. Instead she just stopped making a big show of explaining the workings for sums that she (that anyone) could do in her head and started scribbling in the corner of the page, the kind of irritated scribbling that served only to do something mildly destructive but that could be explained away to a teacher as getting a stubborn biro to play nice.

It wasn't until the teacher was safely out of the door that she leaned back in her chair and stretched. Then she stretched more, phone in hand, trying in vain to catch a signal. Then she waved her phone around. Nothing.

"Churlin' basement. Why'd they give us the room with no reception?" She said to nobody in particular as she continued to move her phone through the air in search of some invisible perfect spot where it might be able to update her IMs. They had her saying it now, even if she'd be mocking their 'childish language' later. "Come on- come on-"

[roarin]

"That ain't gonna work."

Raury had himself a light, sharp voice, like gravel with glass mixed in. Mayhaps one day it would darken, bloom like the butcher's blade of a timbre his father had, but all he had now was a promising scratch under that high and lonesome song of his. Other boys' necks had started stretching, but Raury's voice kept steady and strong and he hated it for that.

He hated a lot of things.

You could see it on his face when he wandered up, and Raury was a wanderer, because he was a curious fellow. So shiny with it you'd think he'd been spat on. He'd been wandering past the girl's desk -- he always had to, he sat behind her -- but stopped to stare stupid at her, perching his bony behind on the lip of it like he had mind to sit a spell and gabber. His eyes swam wet and dark in his head, and he had a petulant, rubber mouth that curled perfect around curses, and slashed easy into smirks and cheshire grins. His vocabulary had not caught up with that mouth, yet.

He had skin the color of paper and he possessed himself tiny, sharp teeth. He colored easy, and so his cheeks and lips were rosy with the cold, which was made worse with the purple fog peeking out from inside the big front pockets of his hoodie.

"You got any more of that sick kid candy left?"

That was a request. Raury hooted and bullied his way through life, but he treated Marron with a shade more respect. No one knew why, and it upset him to wonder at. So to make up for it, this unfairness, this unearned deference, he wanted some of her candy. Sometimes Murk would lick the back of her neck or steal her pencils, too.

[heart_swap]

A few more hopeless waves of the phone - a single bar appeared in the reception icon, then vanished just as quick - passed before she gave up, giving her phone a look that suggested that this, all of this, was its fault and that it really ought to go to jail for it.

"Yeah, prob'ly."

The IMs could wait, even if she was eager for more photos from Celadon's department store. With a sigh, one that might trick an uninformed listener into believing that this was the absolute worst thing to have happened in Blackbell, disappearances be damned, she shoved the phone back into her bag and felt around for a small, round tin with an illustration of a sliced orange on the top.

She still had something like twenty of these tins at home, most unopenned, sympathy gifts from people who wanted to feel like they'd done something. Better than the flowers, at least. The tins of hard sweets kept longer.

"You're neither of you getting nothing, though-" She fished the tin out of her bag and put it on the desk, but then poked the front of Raury's hoodie. Not enough to actually make contact with him, but enough to disturb the fog. "Not 'til I get my pen back, Spooks. The purple one."

[roarin]

Now that pugnacious mouth did push into a pucker.

"That ain't fair, I didn't do nothin', it was Murk."

And that was true. What was also true was Raury could be heard snickering every time it happened.

The slight boy folded his arms across his slight chest and canted his head slightly. Those mudpuddle algae eyes cut and his nose turned up with a tilt of his head that should the crown he thought he wore actually exist, it would go tumbling. He rose from her desk and gave the leg of the one beside it a sulking kick, as if it were expected from him. It was.

"Besides, we're equal victims here. He constantly eats my homework."

That lie hung between them, thick as a rain cloud, and he didn't flinch from it. He brimmed with mean, and he wasn't getting no bigger, so it found its way out through his mouth, or it marked him. There it was on his tiny knuckles, or that gap when he grinned; he was raw boned from it. Seconds passed, him staring, but the set of his thin shoulders drooped.

Then they sagged with a sigh.

"Alright."

He produced the pen from the den Murk had made of his front pocket and slapped it on her desk, eyes carefully averted to the ceiling.

[foxfeathers]

"You need an amplifier for that. The basement's the worst place if you're signal hunting. Can't you go on out? It's really not far." Rhyssa, who'd stayed to get the rest of her answers down, inclined her head a little so her twin tails swung and glanced at the other girl.

"It's much easier out of the building proper."

Behind her a green Rowlet swiveled his head from where he sat on her chair and her Eevee's head popped up with interest. They were, as usual, out and about but never seemed to stray far from her. She'd taught them reasonably well, after all.

[hexalogical]

Belladonna had worked quietly and diligently at the work handed out, grades were important her parents had told her as she'd questioned their relevance long ago. Not because they expected her to go into the sciences or any such thing, but it was vital to maintaining dignity and aloofness they had said, to be people's intellectual superior was better than to be their equal. She looked around her at classmates, there were plenty who got grades as good as hers' and deep down she suspected they had far more natural talent than she did, all she had was hard work.

She toiled away at her studies obediently and as such she had made easy work of what Ms. Poplar had handed out and as soon as it became apparent they could leave she began slowly gathering together her things. She never moved quickly, instead her movement were almost floating, careful delicate movements and wafting grace.

Her bag was a black and white lace affair with multiple internal 'secret' pockets, she opened one of them as she finished putting away her pencils and paper and looked down at Bamba's pokeball, touching it gently with a finger and then lifting it out and holding it in the palm of her hand. She had left Nightshade at home, he didn't really like being brought to school and she could tell from his behaviour he thought it was innapropriate for her pokemon to act as a distraction from classes. She wished she could let Bamba out there and then but he had a habit of getting into scuffles and being far too boisterous for the classroom, dignity and aloofness had never been traits of his.

"No, not now." She said to herself, her tone quiet and filled with far more of an ominous tone than it really needed.

[gingernaps]

What Cookie lacked in wafting grace, she made up for in the uncanny ability to appear out of nowhere, as though she hadn't moved at all. There wasn't any trick to it. She walked, like anybody else. Plenty had see her ambling down the hall, usually with her shoulders rolled forward in a relaxed, lackadaisical slouch and her hands deep in her hoodie pouch. It's just sometimes they didn't see her, too. As far as Cookie was concerned, she never did anything worth being accused of sneaking - but all that quiet seemed to give her a knack for it, anyway.

"What'cha got there, Donna?"

Her voice was light, curious, a bit airy; her question was a pleasantry, the kind of thing she wouldn't be asking if she hadn't already decided she was interested. And she was interested, rocking forward on the balls of her feet, hands still dug in her pockets. Her big, sleepy eyes were trained sharp and appraising on the delicate lace bag. It wasn't the kind of thing you'd expect to see someone like Cookie take an interest in, swathed as she was in an oversize hood and perpetually hiding under a fringe the colour of dishwater.

Maybe she'd seen what was inside.

Then again, maybe not. Cookie had a way of surprising beyond just appearing out of the shadows.

[hexalogical]

Belladonna turned her head slowly to look Cookie up and down, showing no surprise at having someone suddenly appear beside her. Living in a house of ghost and psychic types had given her a tolerance of these things, besides it just wasn't right for someone of her family to jump at suddenly appearing sleepy girls. Although Cookie's ability to slide out of nowhere was admirable, it was a talent Belladonna lacked, possibly the lace, flounces and silver white hair made her hard to miss.

"A creature of untold destruction, the stars aligned at it's hatching to bring forth an animal of deep and forbidding terror." She said with grandeur and raising her hand to her temple. It was only a slight exaggeration, Bamba, adorable little pancham that he was, had caused a fair amount of property damage and was always up for a fight. Not that he often won any. Actually anyone who knew Belladonna remotely well had met Bamba and could probably guess it was his furry self inside the pokeball in her hand slightly obscured by her bag. If he was a creature of untold destruction was subjective.

She turned to Cookie her face blank. "Also I wish to locate an item, it might be something you could assist me with. I have something interesting in return." Her house was full of the spooky, the weird and creepy, coming across trinkets and curios that appealed to Cookie's economy had never been hard for Belladonna.

[gingernaps]

"Really?" Cookie answered, more interested than skeptical but certainly both. Her eyes flicked upward as she considered what Belladonna qualified as an alignment of stars or if perhaps she had meant to say planets and if it the state of the sky on Bamba's birthday was worth further probing or if this had been strictly an expression used for dramatic effect. Probably the latter, Cookie decided with private disappointment, and let the matter drop without further comment.

Her gaze shifted slow back to Donna at the mention of a request. Cookie didn't exactly have a business face - she usually laughed into her sleeve at the kind of self-seriousness that was prerequisite for that kind of thing - but there was a subtle shift in her at the mention of a job anyway, some gear clicking into place behind her eyes that shook the sleep from them.

"Oh yeah? What did you have in mind?"

[foxfeathers]

Rhyssa patted her lap after the mass exodus for lunch had departed and the teacher had disappeared. Kali hopped up for a quick brushing, her long ears flicking as the mint green Rowlet, Fallon, resettled himself on Rhyssa's shoulder. He nibbled distractedly at one of her ribbons as she fussed over the Eevee who was delighted with the extra attention.

"Well," Rhyssa murmured, "it's probably I packed something for everyone, hm? A little treat or two is as good as finding something out there. Come on, you lot. Fresh air is better than the basement." She wound her way out of the school, her neatly packed lunch in hand, and found a decent tree to sit at that grass had decided to grow in oddly fluffy spots.

"If I let you pick," she said as she scratched Kali's chin, "you musn't take two. One is for Fallon and you must always look out for each other. Only one." There was a purple and a red one in her hand and the silver Eevee looked between them with longing. Eventually, she chose the purple, and Fallon seemed pleased as he got the green from Rhyssa's fingers.

"If you're still hungry, you know where to go," Rhyssa said with a smile as she settled in to eat her own lunch now that her friends were settled. "And try not to bother anyone this time, Fallon." The little owl gave her a quizzical look and puffed up his chest before taking flight. Without only her Eevee left, who curled up at her feet, she watched the other kids with a grin.

There was a great view from here.

"...I should get some more pokebeans," she said thoughtfully. "Maybe someone else has them?"

[pay_day]

"Oh! Um. Excuse me..." And with those words, Anastasia practically materialized from around the tree Rhyssa was seated against--though the sound of footsteps on grass nearby would have provided an early warning.

(It wasn't so great a coincidence as it seemed, nor she so unobtrusive, really. She had also opted to take lunch outside of the school building, and wandered rather far afield in hopes of finding some patch of flowers her own pokemon might enjoy; and, having failed to do so, she'd been heading back to find a closer spot to sit for lunch when she overheard Rhyssa.)

"I didn't mean to overhear you, but--well, I did," she gave a small not-quite-laugh at that. "I hope I'm not bothering you," though her tone was polite rather than concerned, "But I do actually have some, if you'd like? Pokebeans, that is."

[foxfeathers]

"It's alright and definitely no bother," Rhyssa said and pat the space beside her. Kali looked like she might bite but was gathered into Rhyssa's waiting lap a moment later. "Come sit?" She flashed a grin, settling back against the tree a second later. "Do you? I usually have enough for lunch and then some for the end of the day but, well, I suppose it happens. It's just two, really. I'll stop by and snag some special ones for you to repay."

[pay_day]

The eevee got a slightly alarmed look (Ana's attention had gone naturally to it because it was adorable--but the intended smile-and-wave were preempted by its less-than-amicable reaction), but that didn't stop Anastasia from answering the invitation with a cheery, "Oh, sure!"

And, as she sat down and shifted her backpack off her shoulders and into her lap, "Mhm, I'm pretty sure I have a bag of 'em... um, let's see..." And sure enough, it took only a few moments of rummaging around in her backpack to produce a small, still-unopened bag of pokebeans. "Yeah, there it is. Here you go!" Anastasia almost handed the bag over... but after a brief, wary glance towards Rhyssa's eevee, opted to instead just set it down between the two of them.

"And don't worry about it, really, it's no trouble. I'll just pick up some more on my way home." The beans had, in fact, been meant for her and her parents' mostly-stay-at-home pokemon--but she'd be passing the same general store she got them from on her way home.

"Ah, do you mind if I get my lunch out, by the way? I was actually just looking for a place to sit when I was passing by. I mean, as long as it won't bother your, um..." she gives the eevee another glance, and this time a brief, finger-waggling wave.

[foxfeathers]

"Don't mind Kali, she'll calm down eventually. It takes her awhile to warm up to people in general. So, sure. Lunch is important if you want to learn." Rhyssa soothed her eevee and murmured for awhile before the pokemon settled with a huff and twitched her ears at the other girl.

"You can call her Kali," Rhyssa said with a nod. "She's always looking for danger, I guess. Even here. I can't see why, either."

[pay_day]

"Mm, thanks!" And without further ado, Anastasia did in fact get her lunch box out, set her backpack aside, and open said box on her lap--sandwiches, juice box, nothing particularly noteworthy.

"She's adorable, by the way," Anastasia enthused. "...My dad says Sinjoh actually makes some pokemon nervous, something about the climate I think, but I guess you'd know her better." A brief smile to Kali, then one to Rhyssa. "I'm Anastasia, by the way. We have class together, right? I think so?"

[foxfeathers]

"She really is lovely and very sweet once you get past the initial friend or foe screening." She opened up her bento box she'd prepared the night before. It was onigiri because that was the easiest thing to craft into something edible. Rhyssa had always enjoyed making things presentable, so it was shaped like pokeball with one half mixed with chili powder to make the rice red.

"I'd say she's been pretty nervous since we moved this summer," Rhyssa murmured. "Your dad much be right, it must be this area. My Rowlet, Fallon, too. They weren't this protective before we moved. They seemed like, you know, every Eevee and Rowlet you ever read about."

[pay_day]

"Oh! So you're new around here? That's really cool!" Anastasia flashed a smile. "I grew up in Sinjoh, so I don't have anything to compare it to, really--well, I did visit Johto for a while last year, but that's not really the same."

She stretched her legs out in front of her, crossed them at the ankles. She hadn't actually read anything in particular about Rowlets, and what she had read about Eevees... well, did touch upon their temperaments, but mostly in the context of what owning and caring for them was like, not so much how they could be expected to behave around stranger.

...But that wasn't really the most interesting topic of conversation available at the moment, so!

"Sooo, where are you from? You know, if you don't mind me asking."

[foxfeathers]

"I was born in Alola, in Malie City," Rhyssa murmured, "where I lived until, well, I guess midway through the summer before moving here. So, sure, I'm pretty new. I miss the islands but, in a way, this feels like a journey of my own. Maybe the start of the biggest adventure yet. Oh! If you visited Johto, then you'd sort of understand that Malie City is a great deal like Johto. I've never been there. I've been all over the islands, though."

Fallon swooped in on silent wings just as Rhyssa opened her hand with a berry for him. He snatched it nimbly before landing to give Anastasia an appraising once over. Rhyssa smiled at him and gestured.

"I spent half a year looking for him, even if probably shouldn't have," she admitted. "In fact I fell down a hill to catch him. I think it was mostly because I'd never seen a green Rowlet before." She shook her head a little. "We sat for awhile, Fallon and I, and I talked to him about wanting to see the world. I guess that's when he decided he wanted to join me. I had mud and dirt all over me, scrapes, nearly broke my ankle, too. I suppose that's all he needed to know, that I'd come after him like that even just to talk to him. Some people will throw a pokeball at anything that moves. I can't seem to do that. I just want to talk with them and see what they see first. Right, Fallon?"

The Rowlet, looking extremely satisfied, made a soft sound in agreement and waddled in closer both curiously and for a pet. He was interested in the food, too, but only to see what it was.

[pay_day]

Aside from a broad smile and a little wave offered to the arriving Rowlet (well, and the occasional moment taken to actually work on eating her way through her lunch), Anastasia listened attentively while Rhyssa spoke. She wasn't actually sure what 'like Johto' meant (not constantly in danger of being swallowed whole by the wilderness, like Sinjoh, maybe?), but still politely, even enthusiastically nodded--particularly when Rhyssa went into the story of how she'd met her Rowlet, which Anastasia didn't feel sort-of-lost regarding.

"Oh wow, that's--that's really impressive!" Rhyssa had painted a fairly clear picture with her words, after all. "I can't imagine doing something like that here, with the forest being all... you know." Inhospitable. "But yeah, he's got really gorgeous feathers! They're not usually like that, then? That color, I mean." The Eevee she realized had an unusually-colored coat, but Ana wasn't so knowledgeable what constitutes normal for the other species.

"Do you just have the two, or...?"

She tentatively extended a hand towards the Rowlet--slowly, non-threateningly--with two half-curled fingers offered for inspection; and, if it reacted favorably to that, and subsequently allowed her, smoothed the backs of those fingers down along its chest.

[foxfeathers]

"Just the two! My father left an egg for me just before he..." Oh that was hard to explain. Her brows knit a little. "Well, he went on an expedition and just. Kinda disappeared. But not long ago, the egg hatched and I got my Kali, here." The Eevee pressed herself against Rhyssa as close as she could get as Rhyssa worked on eating her lunch around her words.

"She seemed like she'd been waiting in that egg for a long time," Rhyssa said thoughtfully. "The note he left said she'd been waiting for me. I guess some pokemon are like that, waiting for their trainers. He said she wouldn't hatch for him and he'd found the egg some time ago." She smiled as Fallon made appreciative noises and scuttled closer for more petting. He did enjoy attention and today seemed to be a relatively relaxed day for him.

Rhyssa glanced to the forest speculatively. One day, inhospitable or not, she was going out there. If she, Kali, and Fallon, trained really hard, nothing would be able to stop them exploring and talking to other pokemon out there.

Even if it was creepy.

She brought her head back around to the question instead of thinking in two places at once. Focusing would definitely help.

"Rowlets are usually a very light brown, white, and green," she said quietly. "But sometimes, they can be green. It's very suited to hiding in trees, really." Her fingers smoothed her Eevee's coat soothingly. "I guess neither of mine can be said to be the expected standard of their kind. Kali's coat is different as well, silvery instead of the more robust deep golden red of other Eevees. I've seen some like her here and there in my island travels."

Rhyssa laughed and shook her head, her twin tails flipping merrily.

"You know, I think I just attract odd pokemon. I don't mind at all, it's always their choice! That's why I go out and talk to wild pokemon and don't try catch them."

[pay_day]

The discovery that Rhyssa's father had apparently just gone missing was enough for Anastasia to raise her eyebrows in surprise, before filing that little bit of information away (it was good to know what topics to avoid around certain people; easier to just not hurt people's feelings in the first place than placate them later).

"Huh, wow, really? That's..." well, it sounded like something of a story, but that might come across the wrong way. "...really touching!" she went with, after the story of how Rhyssa had met... Kali, had it been?

Ana looked up periodically, enough to make it clear she was paying attention, between bouts of delicately stroking thw minty-green bird pokemon. The feathers, she thought, were surprisingly soft.

...On the one hand, she did want to step in (figuratively) and gush about, and maybe show off, her own pokemon, but--seeing as the one she had with her was a bug, maybe bringing Rosa out in front of a bird and a territorial eevee wasn't the best idea. Not that she thought anything bad would happen, just that her own pokemon probably wouldn't appreciate it.

"Yeah, I knew that about eevees! I've seen pictures of them before, anyway. Um, I don't know if I'd say odd... Well, they're your pokemon, so you'd know better, of course." She pauses, hums and tilts her head thoughtfully, "Though maybe I'm just used to unusually-colored pokemon? You know, with that whole... Sinjoh tradition about them." She gives a mild roll of her eyes (and a hint of a smile to soften that expression) at the mention of the tradition.

"...Oh! Do you have something like that in Alola? You know, local coming-of-age customs, that sort of thing."