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It wasn't every day that Nix took the caravan up through the mountains, but this wasn't something that Margarita would want to miss out on.

Nix had been sent another report that the scientists wanted him to check out -- another wild goose chase, what a surprise -- which led the band to the northeastern foothills of the Arceus Crest Mountain Range. Well... somewhere around there, at least; none of them were really quite sure. Either way, it had been their first time, as a group, to get so near the mountain range... it was truly much too fascinating to pass up!

While Margarita was sure that anyone else wouldn't have minded acting as a chaperone and traveling companion (or possibly even insisting upon it), she acted of her own accord and traipsed up the slope of the nearest sheet of rock that she could get a foothold on. It wasn't all that steep, which she dubbed as being marvelously lucky! She was just so determined, especially after she had smelled the scent of fresh water from where the group was camped out, downwind. Making sure her grip on the salt shaker in her hand was tight enough, she stored the object in the pocket of her colorful shorts and moved as fast as she could, under the spattering of stars in the night sky.

"Wooooow!" she gaped once she reached the top of her ascent, as though she were speaking through an inhale. She let herself gape for a few moments before bouncing down the rock face she stood on and jogging to the side of the crystalline lake. Really, she could never quite get enough of the oddity it was to see fresh water, despite her polluted hometown being the oddity in this case. Nope, much too incredible a spectacle for logic!

Kneeling down to hover her head above the water's surface, she grinned cat-like at the reflection that smiled back from the depths of the water. While she had since checked out what Jirachi's star had done to her outward appearance, she was still nowhere near used to seeing it. In fact, this was the first time she had seen it reflected from the water, wasn't it? With a pleased giggle, she poked at the water and watched as her reflection rippled with the soft waves as they expanded from her finger. Ha, she looked so silly like that! Much more so than when she was a full grimer, that's for sure!

It was then that she noticed the looming shadow over the water, further out, and watched as it grew in size. Wind ruffled at her lavender wisps of hair lightly before she bounced upward to stand on sandaled feet, taking a gander skyward at something that hardly cast a form through the liquid image. She immediately found her arm reaching up to block the breeze as it picked up, tossed around by the dark-skinned legendary's flapping wings. "Since when did shadows have to land!?" she called over the roaring wind, peering from under a forearm.

Who was this that decided to drop in for a visit? Another grin crept along her face out of blank confusion.

Margarita stared in awe at the massive girth of the pokémon that stood before her, jaw dropped in suspended belief. It didn't linger there too long, however, and soon the grimer-girl was ready to take this... this... was it a pokémon? on! She hadn't really seen a pokémon quite like this one before her, and unfortunately, with the carefully-guarded city life she led before joining up with Nix, she hadn't really ever heard of a legendary before, either. Let alone a shadow-type! For all Margarita knew -- or cared -- this was the normal hide of one of the strangest pokémon she ever had the pleasure of being in the same vicinity. Silently, she wondered if things would have met with the same situation had she not been forced to get her pungent smell under control after... 'evolving.'

"Young one? Naaaw, it's Margarita!" the child laughed as she pointed to herself with a jab of a thumb, finding it weird that the large bird thought her name was Young Girl. Her giggles were quickly stifled, but her grin remained, "And yours? What are you? Who are you? You some sort of shadow or something? Like Peter Pan? Oooh, did you run away from Peter Pan?" She was much too fascinated with the prospect, but she knew that only time would really answer that for her. Well... that, and the lugia's verbal response, but that was hardly concrete!

The grimer-girl peered around the small expanse where the lake was situated on, contorting her face as though she had just tasted something sour. Brightening her expression, she pointed to the sky, "It's not all that dark out. Besides, I like this time of day, and no one's going to pester me about staying home when I sneak out like this. It's pretty out, and I wanted to see the water!" It made so much logical sense to her that she didn't seem to realize how many questions she may have been irritating.

"You like my name?" the child asked, perplexed. Okay, nobody had really complimented her name before! Then again, usually the first thing out of someone's mouth on introduction was 'What is that awful smell!?' Margarita had since become more accustomed to hiding or otherwise nullifying the repellant scent of herself, of course, but that just led to a new horizon of introductions that she wasn't quite used to. Nevertheless, she laughed about it, cheery, "Ha, really? My trainer made fun of me for it when I told him what it was. Said something about it being funny I was 'all key-holic,' or something like that. I don't even know what that means. Do you, at all?"

Meanwhile, the grimer-girl had taken on a more relaxed stance as she studied her new acquaintance, hands in her pockets. She supposed there were some helpful things about clothes, but she still wasn't used to it... One hand gripped around the salt shaker that she had so carefully climbed to the summit with as she observed that her new friend -- or foe? -- was also sporting a shadow of her own. Peter Pan's shadow didn't have it's own shadow, did it? "Hmm, suppose you're right, Spethy," she mused, forgetting to ask for permission to shorten Elspeth's name before putting it to use, "but I've never seen a pokémon like you before, either. You sure you are?"

Already, Elspeth was under scrutiny, and Margarita found it even more fun that way. True, she had run into enough in her short time outside the confines of the city's sewer system to know that pokémon came in all sorts of varying shapes and sizes... and logical backstories... but that didn't stop her from trying to come up with an alternate idea on the matter! The reliable explanation Elspeth gave to Margarita seemed to bounce right off her purple skin, as well as her indication that the grimer-child should listen to her master more, and she began spouting altered possibilities, "Oooh, are you a witch? Or maybe a witch's familiar, like a black cat! Or a spell, maybe?" She seemed so shadow-like... witches were into things like that, weren't they?

"Bundle?" Margarita repeated, toned as a question. She rocked back and forth on her feet in contemplation, Bundle... what, like from a stork? But I was already born, so that seems rather silly. The grimer-girl was back to her little tick of not speaking her thoughts fully, so oftentimes her remarks came unexpectedly, and with little backdrop as to how she arrived to where her statements made sense. She giggled, "Time moves forward, silly!" Unless one occupied her mind alongside her, it was rare that she was comprehended.

"What, you don't like 'Spethy'?" the child asked, trying to sound hurt but only managing the query. She waved off the lugia's inability to understand what her trainer meant, either; they could both be confused about it together, that worked perfectly fine for her!

It was then that Margarita took a more defensive stance -- or rather, a more victorious one. "Ah-ha! That's just what you want me to believe, isn't it? You didn't outright deny it!" she called Elspeth out, despite the flaws in her own judgment. Pulling out the salt shaker in her pocket, the girl painted a wide smirk on her face as she held it up, as though it were on display, "Know what this is?"

Margarita blinked as she absorbed the information given to her. For one, she was confused as to how you could package up energy, but then assumed that the 'burlap sack' of a bundle she had been envisioning must actually be her skin, which she was still not completely used to having. She glanced downward, arms outstretched, as though verifying that she did, indeed, have skin. "That's kind of creepy..." she mused to herself, imagining a stork just carrying along an individual wrapped in their own skin. Truly, she was a marvel of stupidly abstract imaginations. "Backward and forward?" she gaped, raising her head questioningly, "That's... huh." She was going to argue, but thought better of it, "Does that mean that I'm getting older and younger at the same time?" No, she found this train of thought to be highly dangerous -- and nearly incomprehensible -- as though she were a calculator trying to divide by zero. She shook her head free of the thoughts, clinging onto one that she was most dead-set on, "Fiend! Your witchcraft almost made my head explode!" It was spoken with less malice than the words may have hinted at, finding herself more dizzy than angry.

Despite the false tension in the air, the grimer-girl grinned as Elspeth mulled over the nickname Margarita had given to her. She liked pinning shortened nicknames to people, for better recollection, but rarely ever asked for the opportunity before grabbing it. "Then that's what I'm gonna call you!" she chirped happily.

She also couldn't help but giggle when Spethy batted at her, as though the lugia were, in turn, calling the grimer silly as well. "Oh yes, yes, everyone fears Salt. Salt's her undercover name, when she comes out to assassinate things, like potatoes and slugs," she wiggled the spice container, as though it were a vial of poison, "She knows when people are fibbing, I bet!" Placing the salt shaker to her ear, she tried to listen for a voice that would never come. As she did so, she peered back up to Elspeth, still listening but intent on answering, "Oh, I dunno how to read. Terpsichore's the one that likes to tell me fairy tales. She's um... a teammate, I suppose?" Blinking, she realized she had no idea how to refer to the shroomish, or to Endymion. However, that was a different thread of thought altogether, and she needed to relay what the assassin in her hand had said. Bracing herself in a rather victorious pose, she pointed at Elspeth and then glided her pointer finger to the lake, "She says that if you're a witch, you'd melt when you got wet with water. Or... you'd drown. She's not entirely sure." Her expression became less sure of her proclamation. What, was Spethy suppose to take a swim or something to prove herself? That seemed a little odd...

Margarita rocked back and forth on her feet as she watched the lugia before her, her lavender eyes glimmering as though she were just waiting for the pokémon to do something magical. Or perhaps she was just curious what would come next, either was plausible. "But Spethyyyy," she whined, "my brain almost collided with itself, and it can't even turn! Isn't that what being confusing does?" The girl pouted, as though her words were as crystal clear as the lake before them, "I think it pulled a hamstring!"

"Aww, but I'm not that li--" Margarita started to argue before she thought about it again. She was shorter than Nix, she was shorter than Endy... heck, she was even two inches shorter than Terpsichore! She was the shortest one in her whole family! "Well.... well what about Paprika?" she asked, holding up the salt shaker for Elspeth to inspect; surely she was the 'little one'!

"Eep!" Margarita squeaked as Elspeth sent a wingful of grass blades at her. Honestly, she had been expecting more, so balled herself up while still standing in preparation for it. A blade of grass tickled her nose, and she blinked at the offending weaponry in surprise as it wafted to the ground below. "Heeeey," she grumbled before giggling, "good one!" She may have been pretending she were an interrogator, but she was still having fun while doing it. Placing a finger to her chin thoughtfully, she took a sidelong look at the lake, attempting to determine if the legendary pokémon before her was trying to bluff. There was only one way of figuring it out, though, and the grimer didn't have a bathing suit. Not that that problem seemed to strike the girl. "Alright, you're on. Just don't go getting your melty self on me if you have a bad reaction to the water!" she reprimanded. Setting the salt shaker safely in a patch of grass next to a small rock (so as not to have her friend tip over while she was gone), Margarita sat down at the water's edge and slid her feet into the lake, "You ready?"

Margarita blinked at Elspeth's statement, as though trying to absorb what the darkened lugia was telling her through a stare. After a moment, she glanced back down to the water, now engulfing her striped feet in its grip. Leaning over to get a closer look at the mirror-like surface, she whispered to it, "Can you do that? You some wise old man on the mountain or something?" Water was pretty old, wasn't it? Frowning back to her acquaintance, she asked, "Do you ask the water for advice very often?" Did witches ask advice from their greatest arch-enemies so readily? This was strange...

As she watched the large dark form of the other pokémon stride over to the edge of the lake, Margarita huffed a pout at the response given to the grimer's desperate grapple with the label of 'little.' Well, at least it wasn't a knock at her height, but... She cleared her throat, trying to sound matter-of-fact, "What makes you so sure you're older than me?" Elspeth was most definitely older than Margarita, but the grimer didn't seem to understand that the lugia could probably make her educated guess merely on degree of maturity, of which the poké-child had next to none.

Eyes widening, she flinched and blocked any oncoming splash with her arms to her face. When no splash came, she peeked out from between her barricade before pointing at Elspeth floating above the surface, chastising, "Hey, that's cheating! Chea--!" She was stopped abruptly with the delayed splash, suddenly finding herself sopping wet with a mouthful of lake water. After a pause, Margarita quickly pulled her feet out of the water, expecting the lugia to start melting and get the grimer-child's feet all gross. When that didn't happen, she frowned and turned her head to face the salt shaker further behind her, "Well... what do you say to that?" The grimer nodded a few times, as though she were taking in something that Paprika was telling her although no sound emerged, and then she turned back to Elspeth currently enjoying herself in the water, "She said either you learned a spell that made you immune to your greatest foe, or you're not a witch." Seemed logical... sort of. She slipped into the water and dog-paddled nearer to the larger pokémon, "C'mere so I can poke you!"