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Smiffy wiggled, or wobbled, perhaps jiggled, at Vivian's advanced, the gesture accompanied by a timid, purr like growl. Maddy ignored it and strapped her gun back to her pack "Maddy Cache, this is Smiffy" she poked the blob on her shoulder with a thumb and it went silent immediately "We've got maybe two hours of light left and I'm not really equipped for northern nights outdoors yet, we better get where we're going. Maddy stood up for the first time since they had met, pulling her pack onto one shoulder at the same time "By the way you were hauling it, would it be a safe bet that bike of yours isn't in working order at the moment?"

Twice. Twice today he had been scolded. He didn't mind it, he liked having someone to shout at him again, but to think it was a bunch of people he'd known for, what? An hour or so, maybe less? Another fierce growl sounded from the Absol.

"Hrm. Flora, you're staying put, right?"

Flora had planted herself next to Lorenzo's feet. She hadn't growled or tried to intimidate the Absol. The small fox knew that she was going to have to behave and listen to Lorenzo this time, as much as it pained her to do so. She let out a small bark, not as sharp as her usual predatory snap, but in response to Lorenzo.

"Good girl, girl. Thank you. Wait, hey!"

Although he had tried to keep his voice down in the prescence of the Pokemon so as not to disturb it, he nearly yelped as Alex stepped towards it. He heard had her muttering various things to herself earlier as she leant against Gerard. Lorenzo had caught some very nasty insults to her own person and wanted to say something nice, but there was the time. And the place. And the dumb stuff he'd done to get her to that point.

He gripped his hands into fists, hoping that it would somehow give him some iota of inner strength to form courage.

It didn't. But he walked forward to stand beside her anyway.

The boy looked up into what he thought was to be his very graphic and prolonged death. But... nothing? He leaned over to his side, not turning to her, but whispering so she could hear.

"It isn't doing anything. This is good... right? I mean. As far as not having our innards slurped up like spaghetti noodles."

The image made him giggle a bit, followed by the realization of how horribly possible it was for this Pokemon. His expression fell in the darkness of the room, his right leg quivering out of control. He slapped himself in the face several times and shook his thoughts out. A raw, undefined look of determination smeared itself in a mess across his countenance.

"Well, if it does happen to be sizing us up, it'll probably go for me first. I think I'm kinda bigger than both of you, high school food's fault."

He bent down and stroked Flora's auburn bangs, a sad smile unseen.

"Hey, how fast do you think you can go get that Pokeball for me again? I wanna try something with it. I think it rolled into the corner behind us. Do it quietly, we've got an important guest in front of us."

Flora barked again and padding softly to the corners and feeling about for the Pokeball with her nose. Lorenzo made his way back up to his feet, whispering again to Alex.

"If this thing moves on us, I'm gonna use the Pokeball. I'm almost sure I won't catch it, but I'm guessing there'll be a few moments for you guys to get away. Flora and I will do a little torching to the doorways behind us to see if we can keep it from following, while you and gerard make it outside. No, this is not a plan, by the way, I'm saying whatever comes off the top of my head. But it sounds pretty good, nonetheless. Are you up to it? Ah thank you Flor... agh."

Flora had found the Pokeball and picked it up in her slobbery maw, dropping a Poke-saliva-drenched Pokeball into Lorenzo's formerly dry hand.

"Yes, um... thank you. You're the best, girl... (Since when does your saliva smell like flowers...?)"

He wiped the sphere several times in the armpit of his jacket, looking at the excess on his hand. Lorenzo stared a bit, then smeared it on his neck.

"What? I haven't really taken a shower, and this is about the closest thing I've got to a cologne."

He tapped the Pokeball on the sides, activating some of the gadgetry and gears wind on the inside.

"In working condition. If not a bit... pre-owned. But before we jump to anything too crazy."

Lorenzo looked back up at the Absol. He flipped through his head on the different things he'd Googled on Absol. His ability to retain random useless information was hopefully going to pay off.

Okay... They're usually from the mountains... They come down from those mountains and appear to people if they feel something bad is coming... Their heads looked like yin-yang symbols...

Wait. If its normal nature was to help people, then why would it attack...? He risked a step closer to the Absol, looking into its eyes. He tried to be as honest as he could with it, since lying to something that could predict disaster probably wasn't such a great idea.

"Can I... help you? Um. Please?"

By the time Lexi and Alex were ready to enter the house, Lexi was two steps ahead of Alex for a change. While the older girl was panting, Lexi pulled out her computer again, starting the ether imager and an astronomy program that made the screen dimmer to help night-vision, and called out Rex and Phoenix, though she did keep a nervous eye on the woman...How was someone who was so active earlier having such issues with a little run? She couldn’t help smirking though when the woman said she was going to kill the two boys as soon as she saved their butts. By this time, she knew the expression was an expression, not a serious statement, but Alex backtracked all the same.

Lexi alternated between looking at her screen, and scanning the dark in front of them as she and Alex headed towards the boys. After the creepy man they met on the road who created the black hole, she no longer was convinced that she could see everything important with the device. Even with her divided attention, and the fact that the pokemon, as a dark-type, didn’t show up on the computer, Lexi still somehow noticed the Absol before Alex, probably because the woman was focused on the boys. She only nodded when Alex brought it up and told them to stay still

Lexi watched as the Absol studied them, and found herself returning the favor. She could have smacked the two boys, especially Gerard for completely misconstruing the moment, but she was confident that Alex, as part of the hushed, but intense conversation playing out, was handling that. Instead, Lexi dug in her bag for one of the last berries she had grabbed from home. Especially as the pokemon moved towards them, she could tell it was in pain, despite its overall threatening demeanor.

When she finally got the berry out, she realized how the argument was evolving and walked as calmly as she could over to the other three. “Will everyone please quit trying to sacrifice themselves for the sake of the team, it’s getting annoying...”The statement was as much about Alex’s plan earlier as it was about the boys’ plans now. She liked everyone here, and splitting up was bad. “Just relax for a second. If we have to, we’ll all run like heck out of here, together, without burning anything down, but before we do anything nuts, let’s try plan A while the absol's giving us a chance.” Her voice was quiet, not wanting to spook the pokemon who hadn’t decided to tear them to pieces yet, and with that, she passed the potion to Alex, the one person who hadn’t said anything about attacking the absol, and the one with the weakest team out of the four of them.

It was Lorenzo's turn to want to punch something. Or at least let Flora set something or someone on fire. Who did they think he was trying to be? He whispered back to them, keeping a smile on his face

"For your information, like HELL if I'm gonna sacrifice myself. I was just suggesting a hit and run if we can't get this thing to calm down. I want to live beyond eighteen, if you know what I mean."

And even if he was being a little heroic, did they have to shoot him down for wanting to help out? He'd been through high school before and he could say that there was no one he had ever met quite as complicated as these people. Though you couldn't see it in his expressions, he was slowly getting pissed, even Flora feeling it and whimpering. Lorenzo's hands formed fists, but placed them in his pockets. He took a slow breath.

"Fine, you be Ms. Nicey-Nice with the thing, since that's obviously what us guys are too incompentent to go through with."

((I'm personally having fun with this. I like seeing the tension and what we're going to do to fix it. If my posts have been too mean, I am sorry...))

Alex watched as the pokemon hesitantly took the potion from her. She gained at least a little bit of its trust. Thank you God! It was a nice to know she wasn't about to get her arm ripped off like a rag doll. When it finished the potion, it sat down beside Alex in a semi-relaxed manner. One problem solved. Now to deal with the others.

"...I think we're all a bit angry." That wasn't good. Anger led to mistakes which led to disruption which led to a harder time of keeping them safe. She listened to Lexi talk and nodded at what the younger girl said. "You know this is Beatriz's house right? The people here really care about this place. If it burned down, they'd get reaaaaaaally angry." Angry is the least of it. If it burned, they'd hunt us down, and then they'd probably blame me 'cause I look the most suspicious and then I'd have to run from the mob and then things would-- Good Lord, she really needed to learn to stop panicking inside her head.

"So um...I'm sorry for not listening to any of you. It was wrong of me." She started scratching her arms. "Is that why you didn't listen to me? 'Cause I didn't listen first?" She stopped herself from getting angry. The point of this was to get over the anger. "It's just...well, I know them more than you. You think that damned woman's machop was all she had? She has a 20-foot-tall meganium as a pet. You think they won't torture kids to get information? They will. You think they won't threaten your life and family to get what they want? They'll do it with a smile. And if you don't have what they want? They'll do it anyway. I know because I was there." Her arms were getting really red. "And they trapped me there with some God-knows-what kind of drugs that the damned woman made that trapped me in that shithole and now all I want is a dose so I can ******** relax!" That wasn't calming. You're not being calming. She took several deep breaths to try and relax.

"Sorry. I didn't mean to snap. It's just...without them, I'm useless. And I don't want to be useless. I can't be useless. I'm trying to be better, but I don't have much. All I can do is give information and be a meat shield, and if that's all the use you can get out of me..." Ohhhhh boy. Am I suicidal? I don't remember ever being suicidal. Was that a withdrawal symptom? If so, that was a terrible symptom. The absol must have noticed her darkening behavior because it nudged her. Unfortunately, the nudge knocked her over. "Ow! Oh sorry. Didn't mean to ramble." She got back up and shoved her arms into the sweater's pockets.

"What I mean to say is that I am sorry and I will listen to you next time. But if I say something about the Exterminant, please listen? I just want you safe." She paused as if to think. "I will also try my hardest not to act as if my life can be thrown away at a given moment." That might be a little harder to do, but at least I'll try right?

[[You too huh? That much came out through Lexi for me...'What are those three idiots doing?!?'
Glad you two are still having a good time though!]]
Lexi smiled as the absol sat down next to Alex. The white pokemon was beautiful when it wasn’t about to slice you into ribbons. Rex wandered over to the new party member and gave the absol a friendly look, hoping for more success than he had had with Flora.

Lexi sighed and smiled as finally her teammates regained their senses…well, what senses they had anyways… Okay, maybe Alex not so much… The woman kept going… “Alex…” And going… “Alex?” and the absol knocked her over… “Alex?” Then the woman finally said something solid. phew! Lexi sighed “Good.” She then went with an odd idea that occurred to her, and gave the woman a hug before looking back up at her “‘cause, I know for a fact you’re not useless. If you were, I would be dead several times over.”

Then with Lorenzo’s admission that he was mainly just lost… “Yeah, I guess that’s our fault a bit…we were having some issues on the road, but we didn’t expect them to follow us into town…maybe when we finally get to Gerard’s place we can give you the whole story.” She then thought about it for a second. “Actually, communication has just been a problem all around…” Lexi thought of when not just one, but two people in a row had run off alone without so much as asking what she thought about their plan. And then I did the same to Lorenzo…brilliant… She facepalmed. “Yeah…communication…” She looked up. “Okay, how about this…I think at this point we know no one here is useless…well, except for maybe me in a human on human fight, but whatever… so next time we need a plan, ask before executing said plan, and don’t start off by leaving everyone else behind…heck, seems to me getting left behind is just as dangerous.” She smiled and went to change the subject “So, while we’re here, you guys want to take a look around, or should we rather just head for Gerard’s place?”

((Lol, I was hoping for someone to hit Alex out of her "I must give up my life for them" spell because as much as I love this girl, I don't like dealing with suicidal withdrawal symptoms. She already has a concentration problem, no need to add more. XD Also, Siber is gonna be pretty busy this upcoming week, so hooray character development time. mrgreen ))

When Alex saw Lexi reach for her. she inwardly panicked. Was something wrong? Did she talk too much? She had a bad habit of doing that, didn't she? She really needed to learn how to be direct and not so chatty. Oh. Her arms are around me in a nonthreatening manner. I think this is a hug. All that love for Lexi earlier turned into confusion. Lexi is a smart cookie but apparently a bit of a weirdo. In return for the hug, she gave a light pat on the girl's back. But Weirdo Lexi is still a Good Lexi.

"As much as I hate to sound repetitive, we should go. The damned woman wanted us here for a reason and I don't like listening to her. Can't we come back tomorrow afternoon? With adult supervision and a plan?" They may have gotten an awesome absol out of the situation but there was still the possibility that the house was booby-trapped. Better to return when there was more light, more back-up, and a well made plan.

Rex and the absol got along pretty well. It initially growled at Rex but did nothing. When the dog continued to be friendly, it decided to return the favor. While the absol wasn't openly nice, it wasn't hostile. Rex seemed to understand this behavior and was able to make progress (probably due to being with Alex).