#expresshipping

“You want to know about White?” One of the volunteers at the Nimbasa City homeless shelter, a portly middle aged woman with her blonde hair done in tight curls, looked at Ingo skeptically. “Why?” She added, her tone somewhat accusatory. 

“She has... become friends with my brother and I.” Ingo replied evenly. To be more specific, she had all but attached herself to his hip. Her upbeat, plucky attitude quickly won Emmet over. Ingo liked her fine enough (despite her completely shameless violation of his personal space), but there was something... odd about her. She claimed to have a lovingly family, and yet she had been wondering Unova with nothing but her hoodie, and she lived in a shelter. It didn’t add up. “As her friend, I have concerns about her.” 

The volunteer (her name tag read ‘Eva’), crossed her arms and cocked her hip. Ingo had seen White adopt that stance whenever she was particularly sassy or defiant “Nothing dubious? You don’t plan on hurting that poor girl, do you?” 

“You have my word.”

Eva glared up at Ingo a few moments longer, holding all the weight of a judgemental mother (Ingo almost felt like he had been caught with his hand in the cookie jar). She eventually deemed him trustworthy, and she huffed a sigh. “I don’t know what her life was like before she came here, and that worries me the most. She has no identification. No last name; at least not one she wants to say. She’s clearly foreign, given her accent. Girl didn’t even know how to read when she was brought in.” Eva snarled, her fingers digging into her sleeve. “Her case has Orre’s human trafficking written all over it.”

Ingo’s stomach lurched. Despite Cipher’s best attempts to make Orre appear to be an upstanding, if not down-on-it’s-luck region, everyone with eyes could see the filth hiding underneath. A cute young girl stolen from her home, stripped of her identity, and groomed to be a commodity for the highest bidder was disgustingly plausible.  He had the sudden urge to find whoever brought her to Unova and beat him senseless with his own two hands. He was literally and metaphorically jerked from his thoughts by Eva yanking on his tie to bring him to her eye level. “That said, if you do anything to her. If you hurt her...”

“You want me to let you do what?” White glared down at the ultraball Ingo held out to her like was something foul. She recoiled in disgust, her long, shaggy brown hair almost wrapping protectively around her shoulders. “Absolutely not.”

“White,” Ingo tried to reason, but was cut off when the Dewgong-Selkie began to pace around the room. Her hands fisted into the white hoodie tied at her waist (her agitation caused the illusion magic to falter, showing brief glances of the sealskin it was). The temperature in the room dropped.

“It’s demeaning!” She exclaimed. “If I let you go along with this-this-” White struggled to find the word in the Common Tongue. She substituted it with what Ingo could only assume was profanity in her language. “-plan, I’d be the first Dewgong in my herd to be captured! That’s disgraceful!” White crossed her arms tightly across her chest, her breath coming out in white puffs.  She turned away from him, her shoulders hunching up to her ears. Trying to make herself as small and as tense as possible. “It would be no better than you taking my skin from me.” She finished in a harsh whisper. 

Ingo sighed, putting the ultraball down and rubbing his hands together for warmth. It was hard to tell where the inbred pride of being a Selkie ended and White’s hardheadedness began. She had survived so far, but how much longer would luck continue to favor her? Dewgong had been hunted to near-exstinction in Unova due to their fur and blubber being valuable commodities. If someone found her out in the wild... or someone else discovered she could transform... 

Horrible, disgusting images of White being dissected and studied for the sake of science, or locked away somewhere as an attraction flashed through Ingo’s mind. It was almost enough to make him want to vomit. 

“It would be to protect you.”

“ I can protect myself just fine, thank you!” To prove her point, the frigid air White was creating solidified into sharp spears of ice in a circle around her legs.   Their points glinted menacingly in the light, promising the swift and brutal impalement of anyone or anything White perceived as a threat. 

“I’m certain your brother felt the same...” Mentioning Black was a low blow, and Ingo knew it. Her brother’s death was still a fresh, festering wound. With a vicious cry White turned and launched herself at Ingo. One hand gripped his tie, the other the collar of his coat, soul-chilling cold sinking into him as White bared her teeth.