paradise♡lost

Not letting her eyes off Lucy, he watched her back off even if only slightly. And if anything, the bluntness in her next question was to be appreciated. Shilly-shallying was one of very few things making a bad impression on him. He loved straight questions, out of context or not, just curious people mutually trying to get to know each other. It was a nice variation.

"Well, short version is that I had a career that forced me to travel around regions a lot. It got stressful, I lost sponsors and then got kicked out. Lost a lot of money as a homeless. I thought it was better to go here than hanging around the streets asking for trouble. If you only knew how people tend to get mad at me for nothin’. Just being me out there seems to be danger in it’s worst days." He replied, not really going into any details, even if he wouldn’t mind doing so. But it was a nice switch one had to press on or off on him. Detailed and vague. It was vague on a regular basis just to charge power, or rather, save people the trouble. Drawing out a smile again, the bluette let out a sentence that sounded like it was mixed with a sigh. “It’s not that being a criminal is new to me.” He admitted. “Not really like this, but I used to illegally sell painting on the streets in Kalos. Those cops chased me away everyday, but they never caught me. I’ve always been a good sprinter.” Cain turned to conversation almost to bragging, but his voice was neither mocking or teasing, it was almost as if he was stating something fairly obvious. 

She thought about the attention he must've received; clearly, he was a person of importance, to have sponsors and other people invested in his success. Lucy had never so much as held a part-time job before coming to Team Rocket. For her to be talking to such an intriguing - a rather vague yet detailed  - specimen, spiked her interest for the first time since her arrival.

Catching herself lost in thought, the brunette smiled widely. She, in a way, hesitated to divulge into those times, but owed him just enough of a response. Plus, even when trying to keep under wraps her sordid past, it wasn't quite possible when asked upfront. "I grew up in Sootopolis, Hoenn," she began, simply. "There, I spent my early years with family, and my best friend Alice. Nothing was extraordinary in the slightest, but I always had this urge to leave."

Lucy was beginning to feel like she might've been dragging on with it; even if Cain was listening attentively, her talking about her experiences was revealing in a way. However, at the end of the day, she really had nothing to lose. "I was kidnapped for ransom, when I was sixteen; you see, my parents are rather wealthy." She hoped to Arceus that she wasn't coming off distasteful. "I was transported away from Hoenn. I spent probably a few months under the kidnappers' eyes, but the second I had the chance, I darted."

As bad as being kidnapped sounded, Lucy preferred thinking of it in a positive light, that it was the ticket out of Hoenn she was always waiting for. And, not only did it reunite her with her best friend, but it hardened the girl into a more vigilant spirit - she was no longer soft, nor breakable. "I spent a year, learning how to survive, honing my skills and becoming someone who could defend herself. Living in the wilderness during that time was probably the best thing that could've happened to me."

"It seems that you are." He said with a pleased tone. Putting the pen behind his ear, like the painters back in Route 7 always used to do, the bluette looked into her eyes with a sly gaze. "Don’t worry though, even if I’m here and used to have sibling issues, I’m not that bad." He wrinkled his nose a little childishly. You could almost see his tongue sticking out, but instead he let it go of the grimace and returned to a slightly melancholic smile. Even if he wasn’t used to people touching him, Cain had no worries with physical contact. Whatever people called private space wasn’t really in his knowledge. If he felt like it, the bluette could’ve put a hand on her head and twirled a curl of her brown hair around his finger without asking for permission. Ones own body was yet a part of the world, and the world is a thing to cherish. Hopefully she wasn’t one of the girls not allowing themselves to feel beautiful. There was something different about her, after all. A glimpse of something adventurous, almost. And the young man, curious like a little boy, was always ready to find out what that was.

"This? No, I wish. Just found it myself. I’m… new here, per se." He mused, trying to figure out how long he had actually been an official member of the organization. A week? During his short period of homelessness the young man had lost track of days. Time was a concept he never really interested himself in. It was fluid and he lived somewhere inside it, but never cared when was time to sleep or eat, what week it was or how many months had passed. His world was simpler than that. At her compliment though, Cain’s smile grew only more playful. Leaning against the palm of his hand, a finger trailed down from his icy eyes to the edges of his smiling lips. “I’m always glad to hear when my appearance is pleasing a beautiful lady such as yourself.” He replied, barely blinking. He was personally more used to giving compliments than receiving them, but it was never troubling with a turn of events.

Her compliment being returned made her grin, in ultimate satisfaction. Lucy had heard a good deal of times that she was, indeed, attractive. Even on her worst days, when she wasn't feeling very pretty at all, she'd return to those kind words and perk up again immediately. Life was far too fragile to handle with neglect, and her body was her temple - it deserved to be cherished.

Sitting up slightly, but still leaning towards Cain, she ran fingers through her hair, combing out the strands and thinking to herself intently. "No, not necessarily," she sighed, unable to come up with anything on the spot. "I like getting away from, well." She tilted her head towards the door from which they both came, implying the headquarters beneath them as being the prison from which she was escaping.

"It gets too.... stuffy, in all honesty."

She locked eyes with his deep blue ones yet again, her heart stopping for but a brief second. Playfully, she rolled on the balls of her feet, placing both hands behind her back and stepping away from Cain slightly. She had been awfully close, she was beginning to realize - not that it made her uncomfortable, she was actually enjoying it; but, it'd be more proper for her to get a full glimpse of the man she was owing this intriguing conversation to.

Hearing the knock on the door she got off of her vanity stool. The complaints could be heard from the other side. As she made her way to the door, she took a moment to check her appearance. Of course it was just them, so Lucy didn’t care about how she looked. 

The girl pushed up her glasses and opened the door with a smile. “You’re late! And its all your fault for deciding to bring all that stuff.” Moving out of the way for the other girl she checked the hallway before closing the door behind them.

"Whats on the list tonight? Ive got some leftover wine from last weekend." Alice tugged at the corner of her sleep shorts. They were short and made out of a very plush white fabric. Her top was low cut and tight as ever. When they were together the girl really had no shame, they had been friends for years and there was nothing to hide. 

She was lucky - no, blessed - to have been reunited with her Aiichan, after what had happened a few years before. The fact that it was Team Rocket that had placed them back together, well, that was only an afterthought. Both had toughened up enough to fit in, but were still pretty much the same girls they were before the runaway and the kidnapping.

Neither would let anything get in the way of their friendship, that much was certain.

Plopping on Alice's bed, Lucy waved her legs in the air and rolled around. It was a lot softer than her own bed; Alice had a thing for comfy linens, it always made the brunette even happier to steal the covers at night. "We can do whatever you want!" She chimed, handing over the two glasses.

This woman, seeming not much less straightforward as he was on a daily basis, made him feel if just a little intrigued. Who was she to enter a spot like this with her headphones and introduce herself with her name, wearing a sweet smile like that? It was not labeled like the regular ways for a girl to behave in what Cain would call ‘his studies to understand… people’. If anything that had to be a good thing. He was completely ignorant about her interest in his looks, but not bothered by her coming closer. Never had he been fully aware of the fact many people assumed he was attractive. His interest in physical beauty was mostly directed towards everything around him since that’s what he had to look at. What was only seen in mirrors were not as important. His clothes were merely a way of expressing himself, and he got a new hairstyle to avoid being recognized when he returned to the Johto region as the weak boy he once was. But he turned his head to her with a sly expression.

"Cain." He answered, drawing a hand through the blue bangs falling across his pale features. Like always his answer was simple, but he looked at Lucy with eyes telling her he had something to add. Whenever this happened you could say he had to go within himself and look in his own little library of memories and facts to make sure he pulled out the right information. He opened his mouth a little as he got closer to certainty. "Your name is a form of the French name Lucie meaning ‘light’, isn’t it?" He asked, even if it was mostly rhetorical. His interest in name origins had always been a nice way to start conversation. He knew that people talking good about something that’s yours is always a boost to their happy-scale, except for the people who hate when others show off. "I think it’s pretty." He continued bluntly. "A name to be associated with something hopeful. My own is acquaintances with a man from an ancient story that killed his own brother. Doesn’t quite sound the same, does it?" The young man asked with a playful grin. "Lucky for me no one knows about it."

His azure eyes fell down from the brunette’s face and to the headphones, as if he got silent just to listen if he could hear music still coming from it. He hadn’t noticed her picking up an MP3 player or cellphone to pause it, but the sound of the wind and the distant voices from pokémon and trees down in the forest made it hard to tell.

"The sound of your voice," she winked at him. Her tiny fingers reached down to locate the MP3 player, which was situated on a clip attached to her hip. Shutting off the distraction, she trailed her eyes back up the boy and to his face. He was incredibly more entertaining that whatever she had been listening too. Something about him wasn't like the other Rockets; she felt no need to mute their encounter.

No one (other than her closest friend Alice) knew of Lucy's love for classic literature. "I'm very familiar with that story, actually," she said, hoping not to come off as smug. "The son of Adam and Eve, supposedly, our very ancestors. Cain was their first born. And, according to the story, the world's first murderer." Such a tale full of woe, still nonetheless interesting. Lucy was fond of the name, in all aspects; it was aesthetically pleasing, even dangerous, and that made her love it so much more.

She leaned over the cylinder and closer to his lap. Personal space was never a concern for the brunette, and sometimes her lack of better judgement imposed this carelessness on strangers. His blue eyes were icy, but not uninviting. And the fact that he showed an appreciation for her name spoke volumes about the soft-spoken lad. There was more depth to Cain than the other hooligans scurrying around the establishment.

But it was true, from where she came, nothing but light filled the sky. Sootopolis was her Garden of Eden. But from it, she was ripped. Perhaps she, too, was separated from the light. Although she liked to believe there still was a glimmer hidden deep within her, that tiny pinch of hope was dimming. Now that she knew just how cruel and unkind the world was.