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((Shaula, you had the exact same idea that I did. XD))

Juno waited and watched as Willam came back with his Harley. Oooooooh. Preeeeeeetty. However, his less-than-spectacular stop brought her back to reality. Do I ride with Paul or Willam?

She walked up to Willam and smiled. "Thanks for the offer dude, but I think I'll go and ride with Paul. However, I'll be taking this." She saw that her gun was with Willam's stuff and wanted it back. She hid it within the folds of her jacket while she walked back to Paul. "Hey. I wanted to get my weapon back. I seem to remember a certain someone had the same mentality," she stated pointedly. She got on the back of the older man's bike with no more words spoken.

"Once we get out of here, I'll tell you where we need to be heading." Neither of the two males knew where she was heading. It was her only advantage and she was going to make sure she used it to its full potential.

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Alex sighed. She was about to do the exact same thing that Lexi did, but was a second too late. Oh well. I might as well do something else.

She pulled out a pokeball and released a sentret. "Hi Giddy!" The little creature climbed up Alex's pants quickly and settled on her shoulder. "I need some help from you. It's spying time!" Giddy chirped happily and waited for Alex to pull out 2 more objects. She pulled out a camera sized machine and a small brown collar with a mini camera attached.

The sentret jumped down and waited for Alex to tie the collar on its tail. "Recon. Go." The sentret ran straight out of sight. Alex walked over to the organ and leaned on it. She turned on the other machine and paid attention to the screen. On it was fast paced scenery going by. Every so often it would stop moving and slowly circle the scenery. Then it would start speeding again. "No one ever notices a sentret passing by because they're so common." She stayed focused on the images while Lexi continued playing the organ. I'm not seeing anything...

Alex was so focused on the screen that she didn't notice Gerard looking over her shoulder until he said something. "Ack!" She jumped away from him and held the little machine to her chest. "Oh. I'm sorry. No one's ever been that close to me unless..." Unless I was killing them.

She cleared her throat. "So uh yeah. This is an image receiver. I'm not good with any of the techno-stuff so I can't tell you much. As far as I've used it, it receives all info I get from that camera that's attached to Giddy. It can zoom and I can always pause it. It's got a lot of memory so I can save any movie clips or any pictures I want." She held it out to Gerard. "I was an assassin. And some of the jobs I did weren't easy - guards, traps, potential witnesses. In order to be sure I knew what I was facing, I needed a way of getting that information without being noticed. That's where this camera and Giddy came into play."

Giddy suddenly came back and the picture on the camera was the same as the scenery besides the organ. "You did good, Giddy. Thanks." She took off the collar before returning the sentret to its pokeball. She turned to Gerard. "As is, there's nothing around us other than the trees."

Gabrielle Santa giggles, then forgets what was funny, which makes him laugh even harder.

He is hot, he realizes, and something is tickling his face. With a panicked gasp he shoves himself up and scuffles back from the nest of spiders he'd been lying in. They all sit perfectly still, save for the legs which all move in an oddly hypnotic pattern, back and forth, all in perfect synchrony. There are hundreds (thousands) of them, stretching as far as the eye can see.

Gabrielle blinks, and the spiders are gone, replaced by short, yellowed grass that sways in the breeze. He stares at it, his mouth working. Then he plucks a piece with his forefinger and thumb absentmindedly and giggles again.

As usual when he woke up these days, Gabrielle has no idea where he is or how he got here. Nor does he care. Well, that's not true. He cares a great deal; would, in fact, give anything to be able to remember. But he had long ago given up any hope of trying.

Baaa, ba-baah!

He looks up and tilts his head rather like a curious dog. He brushes a hand through his white hair, a strand or two floating down to rest on a grass stain that rides the bent knee of his khaki pants. When he stands up, the hair falls to the ground.

Gabrielle suffers from heterochromia, a very interesting disorder that makes his right eye's iris black while his left eye remains a gray, almost white color. Whether he was born this way or developed it later in life is anyone's guess, and Gabrielle himself certainly doesn't remember. He doesn't remember how old he is, either -- but, if we were to try and guess, we might say he is about thirty. But if we were to take a closer look, we would realize it is only because of his white hair and shadows under his eyes that we think he is that old. On second guess, he may be as young as eighteen. He is lanky -- almost sickly so, his black shirt too big for him, and he will every once in a while pull the sleeves up from where they naturally fall just below his knuckles. There is a half-moon shape on the shirt's right shoulder, but it is so worn away as to be impossible to guess its full meaning.

For all this, he is not ugly. He is tall, and though his face is smudged his dirt and his lips dried and split, there are no blemishes marring his countenance. His nose and cheeks muscles are boyish, offset by a well-defined chin. If fates had been kinder to him, he could be called handsome.

He turns his strange eyes now toward the top of the hill, behind which he is sure the noise came from. He scurries up the incline, standing to his full height when he reaches the top. Below him is a clearing in which a man and two women are standing around a funny looking piano. Gabrielle thinks it might be called an organ, and for some reason this makes him giggle. Swaying slightly, he watches one of the girls experiment with the keys, at first playing a discordant noise which quickly turns into a replaying of the tune from before.

Baaa, ba-baah!

"Baa, baa, black mareep, have you any wool..." he sings a tune softly, and giggles again. His sleeves have fallen too low again, and he pulls them up as the other girl takes out a round object. With a flash of light, a small brown creature with a stripped tail appears in front of the group. Gabrielle curiously watches as the girl attaches something to the creature's tail. Almost immediately, the brown thing zips off. It starts in the opposite direction of the hill Gabrielle stands on, but soon makes a sharp turn, beginning a wide circle that will take it past Gabrielle.

He sings another rhyme, watching the creature with interest: "All around the lum berry bush, the sentry chased a buizel..." The creature stops about five yards down the hill from Gabrielle and looks around. "The sentry thought twas all for fun." He is at too steep of an angle for the camera to see him, but the brown thing looks straight up at Gabrielle.

"Shhh." Gabrielle puts a finger to his lips and giggles again. The creature looks around in obvious confusion for a moment, the strange man he has seen forgotten. But soon it remembers its mistress, and enthusiastically resumes its mission.

Shortly, the ball of fur returns to the group of people, and in a flash disappears as quickly as it appeared. The gaunt man on the hill looks down on the gathering, a scowl on his face. "Pop goes the buizel." His voice trails off and he considers the people for another beat.

His scowl break into a grin, and Gabrielle Santa giggles. Then he forgets what was funny, which makes him laugh even harder.

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((Hey everyone! Don't worry that I don't have a profile up anywhere; our benevolent moderator and I have an agreement wink . I look forward to having fun RPing with you guys, and if I get anything wrong on account of not being here the whole time, correct me!!! I will edit it ninja like and no one will ever know. Except you and me, but it will be our secret.))

((Thanks! You read it right, but he didn't exactly erase it. He just made himself seem absolutely unimportant to Giddy's mind, and Giddy just forgot about him. Like walking into a room and forgetting what you came in for.))

"Pop goes the buizel." He pauses. "I already said that." Gabrielle muses, rubbing his chin -- which is completely bare, though he does not remember the last time he shaved. He lays back on the grass and puts his hands behind his head. It is only if you watch his mouth, the corners of which twitch slightly every few seconds, and listen for the occasional soft laughter in his throat that you might guess something is strange about him now. For this moment, though, he does not look like a man who's mind is broken.

((Joe has given me permission to control Justice temporarily. I asked him outside the RP and I'm only to do small things, such as what has been posted here.))

Alex had thought she'd heard laughter, but thought nothing of it. Giddy never reported it, so there should have been nothing to worry about. When she thought she heard the laughter again, she whipped out the pokeball and released Giddy.

Giddy saw her owner's expression and looked guilty.

"Giddy...did you really get everything in the area?" Giddy hid itself in its tail. "You didn't. But why keep that away from me? You know what could happen if we were caught unaware." Giddy shivered in a little ball. "I don't understand why you betrayed me like this..." Alex was hurt; they had always been honest and loyal to one another. And now this? I think I'm about to cry. "Show me what you kept from me. This won't fix everything, but it's a good start."

Giddy uncurled from its ball and started sprinting towards the direction of Gabrielle. Justice seemed to understand that Giddy knew where it was going and chose to follow the sentret. Alex followed the two pokemon.

As the image on Lexi’s screen settled, the area around her lit up with the energy of all the healthy plants and shimmered, but one spot at the very edge of her screen remained black. It took her a second to notice that it wasn’t just a darker red spot, but when she did all her attention got directed at the screen. She got her hand on the mouse and tilted the view to get a better look. What the hell…black?! it shouldn’t be black!…there’s growing stuff all around here, even indoors, darkest I’ve seen was dark red…readings of a few points, but *zero*? The empty region seemed to be roughly oblong, and probably several feet in diameter, judging by the curvature as she couldn’t see the whole space. Well…I guess that could be what a dark-type pokemon looks like... She couldn’t be sure though…She hadn’t really paid attention to what Rex had looked like last time she had the imager running, and he, being both fire and dark types, wouldn’t necessarily be the best example. She looked up, having seen the pile of bright dots she considered to be her friends moving toward the black hole, and released Phoenix who flew over to them. “Hey guys…” She called over the bushes, her voice wary in the wake of the anomaly on her screen, but her friends were probably in sight of whatever was down there already, meaning there wasn’t much she could do besides running down there too or waiting and seeing if things blew up…waiting seemed like the wiser choice(dangit!!!), at least for a few seconds.

((Good to see you back, Kaoz; I'll be in touch via PM soon... ish. I hope I got to everyone; AP has been updated; yaaaaaay!))

The house Ulysses found was not actually very impressive. Faded, white paint on a wooden frame and vinyl siding; moderate landscaping in the front yard; a two-car garage; quarter-acre; situated somewhat imposingly on a small hillock a block from the river. Some windows were broken in and the door was off its hinges, but other than that, it was in no more a state of disrepair than the buildings near it. However, as the cook Ulysses had left blushing and smiling had said, two rose bushes were in full bloom at the entrance to the front door, bursting out of ornate pots and full of beautiful red color.

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Willam was, quite obviously, not at all pleased by this turn of events. He sneered back at Paul and gunned his bike forward, leading the way down the twisting paths and leaving Jñan in a cloud of dust and smoke. The Light stared after them for a moment, then turned around in a flurry of dresses and made her way back to her Haven.

The ride didn't last terribly long, as it was just to the manhole Jñan had mentioned. Willam let a aipom out of a pokéball and the purple creature swiftly made use of the hand at the end of its tail to undo a series of latches that let down a chunk of ceiling to act as a ramp up into the outside world. After recalling the creature, the boy rode a wobbly path up to the top and found himself, as promised, not more than a hundred yards from the wide expanse of water separating Riverdale from the northern cities. He waited casually for Paul to get to the top, snapping on a helmet that had been hanging off his bike and offering a second to Juno as they arrived.

---

While Alex's most excellent camera could not pick up sound, it did transmit the image of Gabrielle to the girl when Giddy saw him.

More importantly, the instant Lexi finished playing the rest of the notes to a song that had become almost a sort of anthem to pokémon trainers pre-Calamaity, a black-haired man with an unforgettable, sable hat popped into existence next to the organ, holding the rim of said hat down low. Ignoring everything else, Dr. Terrian began tapping his foot to the beat of that anthem. Eight taps later, the organ started again, but this time adding in jazz chords and improvisations that would have impressed Thelonius Monk himself.

Abruptly, the circular patterns of leaves in the ground popped out of their hiding places, revealing spherical, brown bodies and smiling faces, that all opened their mouths wide in a stacked, gospel chord that reached to the heavens.

"OOOOOOOODDIIIIIIIISH!!!"

Dr. Terrian finally opened his mouth. "Hallelujah ladies and gentlemen this evening, I would like to welcome you to..."

"Oddish ooooddish!"

He held his fist to his chest as only a true soul singer knows how. "Yours truly on the microphone!"

"Ooooddish!"

He gestured broadly at his choir. "The seventeen oddish I psychomanced into singing this glorious gospel music!"

"Oddiiiiiish!"

He lifted his hand high in the air. "And as the main player! The maestro magnificent, the modern marvel, king of keys and organist of the highest level....!!!"

"ODDIIIIIIIISHssshhhhhh...." The leaves quieted, maintaining an anticipatory hush.

Dr. Terrian grinned gleefully down at his audience and gestured dramatically to the empty bench before the instrument, then declared in a resonant tone: "Mr. Mewtwo himself."

As the words slipped out of his mouth, a humanoid form faded into existence, seated at the piano. All brilliant, deep purple and ivory, the creature's feline head was bent over his instrument, accentuating the thick cord that connected the base of his skull to the top of his spine. His three-digit fingers flew over the keyboard as quickly as his massive thighs directed his feet across the pedals. His tail was held in a perfect curve up above his head as he pounded the music out of the organ until finally, he reached a major chord and the oddish chorus burst into full glory again.

And then Terrian deigned to notice Gabrielle Santa. His eyes widened and the mewtwo's snapped open as the music went dead silent, revealing an intense and unmistakable violet hue, and then the two of them vanished, leaving a crowd of confused oddish wandering about the hill and the words, "Oh, s**t cakes" wafting on the breeze.

Isa-sama: -3 AP, awesome recon device

Paul grinned as Willam snarled. Boy... put in his pace. Girl... not so distant. Paul... healthy, relatively uninjured, re-equipped, and prepped to ride. This might even yet turn out to be a good day.

Paul desperately wished he had some wood to knock on as he revved the bike's engine and more cautiously followed after Willam, managing to keep up quite nicely without pulling similar risks. He rode up the ramp after Willam, then stopped and looked back to Juno. "You're the one with the directions," he pointed out, keeping an eye on Willam.