#mxstball

...? Tor couldn't stop looking at Pascale.

"Why do you feel older than my big sisters? You gotta have a crazy skincare technique if you're as old as I sense that you are."

Tor DON'T BE LIKE THIS WTF

It's hard for her to contain a laugh, but she does her best, only letting out a slight chuckle.

"I'll take that as a compliment. It's not every day that someone picks up on something like that, so good job." She doesn't mind letting her secret slip every now and then. It's not like most people would believe it, anyways.

In a corner of the cave and at the cracks of rocks, some small amounts of grass suddenly started to grow. Then, at the center of the small patch, there was a Gracidea that quickly grew to be fully formed. That's strange. Flowers shouldn't grow this far down, let alone flourish like this.

Oh? Whatever were a good number of the Carbink suddenly crowding around? It was highly unusual for their attention to be so abruptly captured - well, by anything but their princess's return to her domain.

"Excuse me... make way, please... pardon me..."

Said princess gradually made her way through the flock of her subjects, and when she saw the flower that had captivated them so... her brow furrowed in confusion, initially.

I haven't seen anyone whose domain is flowers recently, have I? Or any other plant life...?

...

Wait. Plant life-

Rose's confusion immediately gave way to a delighted grin.

"I can sense something on the horizon. I don't like it, not one damn bit." Her words were snarled, bitterness seeping into every spoken syllable.

// I have a cogita minor muse and a surprise muse from PLA, but I need to make icons of them. I just... haven't gotten around to iconing lately DX

"Mister Koko." Lillie's here. It seems that Rayquaza isn't with her, nor Lusamine or Elio. "I wanted to thank you again for everything that you do to protect Melemele Island, and thank you for answering the prayers that I send. I... wanted to introduce you to someone very close to my heart if that's okay.... Someone that I don't think that you've met yet if I'm allowed to."

"Oh, hey, Lillie."

It's funny that Koko was so casual with Lillie when she is usually really polite. Then again, she's probably used to it, considering that she lived with Professor Kuki for a while. And that man could be so laid back that he probably could win a limbo contest.

With Agni being the (unfortunately) busy Gym Leader (and the many side quests they're on) they are, sometimes they...miss things. Sure, they're not oblivious to the Ghost Pokemon becoming more restless. Or the rumblings of forbidden shit being revived, that ceremony being one of them. You know, the one where they die for a day.

Nor are they oblivious to the ever growing dread that one day the region might collapse if a new Champion isn't crowned soon; besides the ones listed, there isn't anything specific that fills them with dread. Maybe it's the anxiety of waiting for the other shoe to drop. Other times it's probably the South-West Deity giving them nightmares just because.

And normally they're so careful, given what happened to them in the past. Normally they would have Houndy or Arccy out with them but today...today was certainly a Day. Just tiring full of customers and then clean up and visiting the Battle Temple and--well.

"Howdy, neighbor!" Oops. Looks like Serena spawned out of nowhere. She's still playing this game. "Hey, so, I was talking with a friend of mine and after some talking I thought that the two of you would love to meet! I brought her if that's okay."

"..." Wait. Was that a fucking Yveltal? What's Serena doing befriending one of those?

"C'mon, Tor! Don't be shy!"

"... H—Hi. I uh... My name's Tor. It's nice to meet you. I uh... wanted to know if uh... you wanted to uh..." The fact that she's looking a Yveltal in the face with the appearance of Calem is messing with her head. "Uh... wanted to come by my friends' hotel and stuff..."

Serena's chuckling. She's never seen Tor this nervous before!

Calem had gotten a little better at predicting when Serena would appear out of nowhere. Call it instinct, a musician's trained hearing or even the fact that he was the one who started this little game of sneaking around, but this time around he didn't actually get that startled! The object he was holding, a peculiarly-shaped alarm clock he had received from Clemont earlier, didn't get completely disintegrated under his grip this time.

An improvement! Internally, he was proud of himself for being classy this time, turning around to face Serena with a sensible amount of surprise.

“Neighbor!” He greeted her cheerfully, and then turned his attention to the person accompanying Serena, who he didn't know. “And… I see you've brought a friend! Nice to meet you, uh…”

Whoever Serena's friend was, she seemed… nervous? Scared? Calem took a moment to think about the way he looked today. He thought his fashion sense was improving, but did it actually get bad enough to scare people? No, maybe that girl just wasn't used to seeing someone so tall. That was normal too.

If she thought Calem was scarily tall, he was kind of grateful for the fact that she probably never met AZ.

“Tor! That's a nice name, easy to remember.” Calem was bad at remembering names, but surely he could manage three letters, right? “And I'm Calem! I'd love to visit your friend's hotel, but…”