Welcome to Gaia! ::

Okay, this wasn't something that Endymion ran across every day.

The day was a particularly warm one, just a dusting of clouds in the sky. It made the light on the surface of the water rather blinding, but the scyther-child didn't mind too much; he just had to keep his eyes pointed downward more than usual. The nice weather prompted Nix to travel down shore-side and see if he could run into anything interesting as far as water pokémon were concerned.

Endymion had never actually been so close to such a large body of water. A few times, as he walked along the edge of the water, he would stop just to stare out at it. It seemed so strange, to have so much water in one place. He couldn't even see the other side! It was almost unfathomable, and although it made him a little uncomfortable to think about there not being very much land (at least, out at sea), he also found it very interesting to find out about.

He dipped a bladed arm into the water, flicking it outward a few times as though he were a little kid playing in the bathtub while simultaneously trying to look as though he wasn't having fun. He failed to notice the half-submerged ruins further down the beach, nor anyone who may have been investigating the interesting structure.

Endymion jumped at the sudden appearance of an unfamiliar voice, though he probably would have reacted in the same manner had it been the voice of Nix. He pulled his arm out of the water and hopped to stand fully upright, quickly turning toward the source of the sound. Again met with the blinding reflection of the sun on the water, he flinched, raising an arm to block the sunlight originating from above him though doing next to nothing about the light that was actually bothering his eyesight. Squinting, he wondered what on Gaia anyone would want with the likes of him, especially if they were on vacation or something.

His initial instinct was to run, but that would seem a bit too... cowardly; he wasn't a coward, and he was going to prove that to himself by, er, standing here dumbfounded. Okay, half of that idea worked.

It was then that he finally noticed the ruins that the woman appeared to have come from, and intrigue found its way to replacing nervousness. The woman that spoke to him also didn't seem to be entirely human, and although there were plenty of oddities in Gaia when it came to sentient races, she seemed to lean more toward the pokémon variety. Though which, he was entirely unsure of. "What's up?" he asked her, though refused to move forward; he was still assessing the extent of the situation, and was unsure if it would be best for him to get out of there or not. This wasn't... dangerous, was it?

He was a tad intimidated as the teenager neared, her full height becoming apparent the closer she got and her calm outward appearance only adding to the effect. Wait... wasn't he suppose to be the intimidating one? Not the intimidated! He would have attempted to grab at the opportunity to right that matter had he known how the heck one was suppose to do that. Instead, he took the opportunity to decipher anything further he could find about her outwardly while simultaneously trying to look like he wasn't. He wasn't very good at it, but at least he managed to keep his composure this time. She was definitely a water type, something that was strikingly obvious despite the fact that Endymion had never before actually met one before. This in itself was enough to cause intrigue, but it was paired with the fact that she was also quite pretty, was dressed in a way that would cause someone to wonder if she were royalty, and yet she apparently acted quite... un-princess-like, emerging from the depths of a submerged and grungy ruin just off the coast. The boy wasn't sure whether he should be fascinated or amused, so fell into an alloyed mixture of both.

At first, Endymion wasn't sure that the teenager would actually speak up. She was definitely not as hyper as many of the other acquaintances he'd met lately, and he found himself suddenly unsure of how to approach someone like that despite being more comfortable with it; after all, that's how he tended to be. Searching his mind for something else to say, he tried to fill the silent space but words failed him, like they were so prone to doing. He didn't have the time to fret about it, though, and his contemplative frown quickly dissolved into a more attentive expression. Aha, so she was exploring that place! He wasn't just seeing things! "Got bored and wandered over there or something?" he asked with a snicker, completely unaware that people might do that out of captivation. Then again, he wasn't the most comfortable about randomly swimming out to sea to check something like that out without first being really bored. He nodded to her question; that was the first time anyone had asked something like that right off the bat, and it threw him off-guard. In an attempt to return the sentiment, he motioned to the teenager, "And you are... um... you're a pokémon, right?" Well, that was less than gracious.

Frowning softly in realization, Endymion turned back to take another look at the ruins before his eyes returned to the one speaking. Research, eh? She... she wasn't as bad as Nix could be, was she? Well, at the very least, she had enough mind to pry herself away from her work when some other situation arose, and that was at least a bit better. She wouldn't be wandering into any toxic sludge puddles that way. Despite the scyther's annoyance with research of that nature in general, Cascade's explanation of her findings seemed to hit a nerve with him. Something like that was so close to land, in the reach of anyone wandering by? He indicated the ruins with a nudge of his head, baffled, "R-Really? Right there? An old civilization may have been living just off the coast like that, and nobody's sealed the place off from tourists or anything?" It actually seemed pretty fascinating to the scyther as well, and he wasn't much the exploring type.

He watched as the older girl seemed to wander off into her thoughts, and he found himself amused by this fact. She definitely seemed the studious type, and although she was the one to initiate conversation in the first place, she seemed to be more of a thinker than a talker. His gaze moved away when she looked back to him, afraid it might have looked like he was staring when he hadn't been, before turning back to her when the silence was broken. "Ahh, that would be why I couldn't tell," he noted, nodding to address the star issue as well. He frowned again as he took note of something, "Do you... need a towel or something?" While they weren't exactly inside, she was getting water everywhere... and he wasn't sure how well she enjoyed the sand sticking to every surface that was still wet.

Endymion nodded in response to Cascade's explanation, after a moment turning attention back to the ruins she was speaking about. It was pretty strange to think of them that way, but then again, it all made sense. Water types would have a much easier time unlocking submerged secrets like that than the average archaeologist. Being a scientist and being an explorer didn't usually correlate, no matter what the movies may portray. He gave a slightly scrutinizing look to the teen, but it was more out of disbelief for the way humans worked than anything she said, "You mean to tell me that they completely missed a lab hidden beneath it? Well isn't that just sloppy, now." He took a quick glance to the ruins, then back to her, "And... you went in there? What was it like? How advanced?" The hybrid girl certainly had a passion for exploring the unexplored, that much was certain, but Endymion was actually rather interested in the idea, despite not wanting to really check it out for himself. He had a good enough imagination, where he was more comfortable staying.

"Heh, you have a point there," the boy laughed; Gaians could be rather predictable, it was a wonder that all of the poké-children hadn't already been locked away for study purposes already. Maybe they hadn't caught on, or they truly did have more discretion when it came to free will, who really knew? Though, technically, Endymion couldn't count himself as one of those individuals; he was constantly under study by a researcher, in a way. Confused, End blinked as her comments went on, "Team Rocket? What's that?" He got a vague idea, from what she was saying about them in context, but outside of that hadn't a clue.

Noticing the sand around the teen was becoming more mud-like, Endymion became quite amused. He hadn't actually ever met a water type, so these attributes of Cascade felt pretty eccentric. He snickered, "Thought I'd offer, though I don't really have a towel." Tensing, Endymion realized that they hadn't actually properly introduced themselves, and felt rather embarrassed for forgetting such a simple task yet again. "Ah, oh yeah... Endymion," he stated simply, indicating himself with a twitch of a wrist, "Sorry 'bout that."

She was certainly a very knowledgeable girl, Endymion had to give her that. While she wasn't confusing in the way she spoke at all, keeping her explanations to a level that was easy to follow, all the information was making End's head spin a little. Had she been scoping out the area that long, or did she even need to to figure all of this out? "Did you know someone who worked in that lab?" he asked, though it was a far-fetched idea, even he had to admit. Maybe she was just that perceptive, something that the boy had trouble grasping at completely. He had a vague idea of how it worked, but no experience to back it up. "Weird that they'd just up and abandon something like that, even if they were sure someone wouldn't find it. You can never be too sure of that... obviously," he commented, "What sort of things did you find in there?" He was also curious as to why she knew the research was on genetics, if the place had been flooded. There wouldn't have been a paper trail, and most computers would have been fried. Other than that, was it easy to find out that that was the basis of their research?

Endymion scrunched his nose at the explanation Cascade gave him, thoroughly confused on the matter. Maybe it was because he hadn't really thought of any sort of pokémon to be any rarer than the next (outside of the unique legendaries), so didn't really see the point of such an organization. "Well that doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me," he stated bluntly, "Plenty of people have pokémon out there, and they are all weak to something. I don't see them getting very far that way." He huffed, grumbling, "Besides, that means they wouldn't want anything to do with me. I'm not so much the... fighting type."

Huh, though he had meant to be more helpful than he apparently sounded, Endymion realized that he had just unintentionally made for a slightly awkward predicament. He shook his head at her thanks, realizing he didn't really deserve it. Sure, maybe he could have made for a makeshift towel (maybe swipe Nix's lab coat, he was sure it wasn't being worn in this warm weather), but that didn't seem as 'nice' as he had been expecting. "Heh, I think... Nix was trying to make fun of me when he named me that," the boy admitted, unsure, "I'm just... not sure what it means. I never really thought to ask, and I'm not sure I want to know..."

Momentarily, Endymion feared that his questions had irritated the hybrid girl, with her frustrated-sounding sigh. Once she started explaining herself, it became more evident that that was far from the case: she was far more annoyed at the laboratories themselves, despite it seeming as though she were fascinated with the prospect just moments before. Maybe she had been excited about the ruins themselves, but with such an intertwined history when it came to the horrors of genetic manipulation, it was no wonder she was more than a little sour with the subject. Endymion stared at her, wide-eyed, momentarily wondering if she was making a joke. There was no need to make one as elaborate as that, though, and he was left wondering what he could possibly say to lighten the mood. Really, he had no idea, nor did he have any grounds to stand on to try to connect with such a story. Glancing at the tablet she held, he could think of only one thing to ask among the weight of the shock, "You're just going to... destroy something that old?" He winced after the words left his mouth, realizing that he must sound pretty cold to ask something like that after the relayed story.

He was actually starting to feel better, after he had pointed out that he wasn't something that Team Rocket would really want with them. Why did she have to burst his bubble of security? Sometimes having all the knowledge left little in the way of tact, and this was becoming that much more obvious. His anxiety was certainly rising by this point, and suddenly he wasn't really feeling all that safe, out here in the open. He tried to mask it with a frown, but he did so poorly, "I've... not heard of a dark ball." He fidgeted; he hadn't even ever had the misfortune of seeing was a regular pokéball was like, but now, even those seemed more terrifying. The boy was unsure what to say about the matter, how to counter such facts, and how he would even go about doing so without sounding as scared as he suddenly was.

Well, this certainly made things more awkward. With these ideas in mind, it made Endymion's responses not want to come to him. He could tell she was just trying to be helpful, and she wasn't afraid to let him know what she knew, but he wasn't sure how to deal with it. Even the offered friendly sentiment came with a brain freeze. Trouble was, while Cascade was good with words even when unsure of how to handle it, Endymion definitely was not. "Yeah. I'll... have to ask him about it," he tried to reply with a slight rock on the balls of his feet, but it felt like that only managed to make the situation more awkward.

It was good to know that Cascade wasn't taken aback by Endymion's poor handling of the conversation, but she was still rather forceful about her opinions on the matter. Normally that wouldn't have been a bad thing, but speaking in facts for so long was leaving for little interpretation, or at least the ability to see it. Her change in tone didn't go by unnoticed, and the scyther boy found that he felt almost compelled to let her continue, if nothing more than to let her vent. Maybe it would help? "Why'd they do it?" he asked, unsure why anyone would feel the need to. It wasn't their own lives they were messing up, it was the ones they ran the tests on. What, just because they were pokémon, they had to be seen as lesser? He glanced down, noticing he was already getting wrapped up in it, and he hadn't said more than two sentences on the matter.

He tried not to fidget any more in anxiety, but it seemed like the more he thought about it, the more it happened. Staving off panic attacks was hard work indeed, and he wasn't about to leave like that. He'd done it too much in the past, and he was trying to change that! "I'm... not the best myself, s-so don't worry about it," he tried to offer, though that only left the part he dreaded. Rarity wasn't really a problem with people that just took what they wanted, was it? Besides, they could just reuse something that powerful... and then just add to it whatever would be more powerful than that, and it would only be adding to the numbers. Ugh, all this stress was giving him an adverse effect; he wasn't starting to feel all that well, what with the rising body heat from a more swiftly-moving circulatory system and the accompanying headache that came along with it. "Th-Thanks," he tried to counter, attempted to make her feel better about her rough explanation. He tried to wave it off, as though it didn't really bother him, even though he tended to be rather horrible at acting.

Considering what Cascade had said after, Endymion began to wonder if she was offering him a way out. She seemed a bit frazzled, no doubt due to her admittance of her poor social skills moments prior. While the scyther child was eager to take the opportunity, he tried to urge himself to stay. He knew what it was like to royally screw up a conversation, or at least feel like it, and he really didn't like feeling as though he were making her feel that way. Even if, well... he was, and there wasn't much he could do about that. It wasn't as though he was afraid or disliked Cascade herself, he just couldn't handle the severe apprehension that went along with the conversation track. He and stress were never on the best of terms, and lately, it had only seemed to be getting worse. "I've been meaning to. It'd be good to know. I'm not the one that studies everything like he does, s-so I wouldn't have a clue," he said. Being dizzy, at least, made it a bit easier to talk without thinking about it, though the problem was that it could be a dangerous road, to speak before thought processes could be completed.