#shadowedsapphire

Augustine was getting antsy. It had been a couple months since he’d last seen Sapphire, and though he tried not to worry so much, it was hard; despite telling himself numerous times that his darling niece was likely just busy hiding, that she was maybe with that Archer fellow or one of the executives or enforcers, he had remained on edge, unable to stop searching wildly in the dark corners of the base to try and find any scrap of hope, any signal that she was okay.

It was a maddening procedure—twisting and turning at night, unable to sleep, hardly ever hungry, but often seeing a figure out of the corner of his eye, seeing her shape in the shadows only to blink and realize he was just imagining it. If Brendan knew just what was going on, how useless Augustine was being in finding her, protecting her, he knew his friend would beat him bloody raw; it’s just how fathers were. And knowing that, knowing his imagined fate, Sycamore couldn’t help but feel more and more powerless, more and more of a failure. She was his niece. He should have been there for her. They were family, even if not by blood.

It was nagging at the edges of his mind; Archer hadn’t seen the girl in nearly over a month. The last time he had found Sapphire, she had been beaten, bloody, left in the hallway to bleed out while Damian had gone to do whatever it was dickless heathens did when they weren’t hurting innocent children, and Archer had taken her in, let her stay a while in his apartment where he thought she would be safe. But then one day she just disappeared, and though Archer had looked for her, had people looking for her, it was like she had never even existed in the first place. Something was wrong.

Still, despite his reasonable panic, he couldn’t just drop everything and go looking for her; champion of his homeregion or not, Archer’s duty was to Team Rocket, and he was the only one of the four left in charge--well, there was Petrel, but he didn’t count--and so he had returned to burying himself into his work with orders to a few members of the security team to keep their eyes out for her. So far, for the entire month, there hadn’t been a single inkling of her presence at the base, and a few times Archer contemplated the worst; but no, he would tell himself, if Damian had killed her, Archer would know, either through Tabitha or Damian, himself, as the former was a complete and utter loudmouth and the latter incapable of doing anything without boasting like some some narcissistic jackass.

“FUCK YOU SIR.”

So things had gone a little bit less than ideal when Archer first had tried to keep Sapphire out of Damian’s reach. It had been great for a while—the girl was somewhere safe where Archer could keep an eye on things, and it had pretty much worked. Pretty much. He hadn’t taken into account the possibility of Tabitha being sober enough to raid his fridge and devour her fucking flesh. Or the whole Kyogre thing. In fact, Archer still wasn’t sure if he was over the whole Kyogre thing, but that wasn’t what mattered.

What mattered was that after extensive courses of antibiotics for a psychotic infernape bite, Sapphire was ready to be moved before something else horrible could happen. Maybe Archer was being a little bit pessimistic. Maybe. But at the very least, he was going to make damn sure Sapphire would have a good day for once.

Food. Food. Foooooooooooood. At least, Tabitha was pretty sure that was what his tummy grumbles were saying; he could feel the craving in the pit of his stomach, the primal want for meat, bloody and red—but alas, he was broke, and broke boys couldn’t afford a juicy, rare steak, or even a shitty burger from the McDonphan’s in town. His pokeblock business had crashed and burned months and months and months ago, and so even that meager income was no longer available to him. Oftentimes, he had to get creative about where his next meal was coming from. Unfortunately, this was Tabitha, and the limits of his creativity happened to be bumming food off people he was related to. Besides, it wasn’t like Archer ever payed attention to what food he had in his fridge or even if it disappeared.

Humming a random tune or another to drown out the painful growling of his stomach, it was with a bit of a skip in his step that he strode up to Archer’s apartment door. It was funny; his big cousin had gone out of his way to keep his room a secret (mostly, Tabitha thought, because other people weren’t supposed to know, and Tabitha was notoriously awful at keeping secrets) but Tabitha had found it within the first week he’d come to Team Rocket, years ago. What was more, he had keys—master keys, in fact, as he was still in a dead-end position in a janitorial squad, but he supposed it had its perks. In short order, he unlocked the door to Archer’s apartment and let himself in, beelining for the kitchenette and rummaging around in the fridge for a while before his eyes fell on half a burger it seemed his big cousin had been saving for a quick dinner, and without a second thought, he stuffed the most of it into his mouth, grabbed a can of soda, and turned to head over to the couch, closing the fridge door with his foot—and stopped abruptly in his tracks.

Sea monsters. Who did the Camarilla think they were kidding? Like there would be any sea monsters this close to land. Archer sighed heavily to himself as he strode down the beach, notepad and pen in hand with his tail whipping along clumsily behind him. There had been reports lately about some sort of huge creature being sighted by humans at the beach, which Archer was certain was complete and utter bullshit, and he would have made his feelings on the matter very clear to his masters had he not been itching to get out of Venture Tower and stretch his wings.

The evening stroll was lovely, of course; he did miss taking the walk in the daylight, but with his condition.... Well, there was nothing to be done, and he would take what he could get. So he strolled on, enjoying the feeling of the ocean’s spray on his face and the cool ocean’s breeze, whistling slightly to himself as he went along. That was when he saw it—the person collapsed in the sand, just down the stretch. Cursing to himself, because he knew his conscience would not allow him to leave them, and he also knew the scolding he would receive should a regular human see him, he dashed forward, dropping to his knees at their side.

shadowedsapphire

If there was one thing Lyra didn’t like, it was wasting good weather being indoors. Her life on the road had given her an appreciation for the proper times to be outside, so she gathered her things, strapped on her running shoes, and left for the grounds around base. Antoinette ran beside her, the Umbreon being the smallest Pokemon she had and therefore the best suited for these kinds of ventures.

One thing she didn’t take into account, though, was the uneven ground. Logically, she kind of expected it, due to the base being located on a mountainside. The fact of the matter was that she was used to more even ground. She was used to the trampled-down, dirt roads criss-crossing Johto and Kanto.

She was coming up on another person when her foot got caught in an unseen hole in the ground, causing her to fall forward, straight onto the other girl. They both fell onto the ground and Lyra blinked vigorously as pain shot up her ankle.

It had taken maybe a couple hours for Petrel to decide that Archer wasn’t dying enough to merit staying in the infirm overnight; some stitches, some bandages, some painkillers, and strict orders to text if anything reopened, and Archer was up and about in no time. He supposed the fact should have put him in a decent mood, and to be honest, he wasn’t exactly seething, anymore—just tired, and grouchy.

Still, grouchy didn’t mean lacking manners or common decency, and when he nearly bumped into a grunt on his way out the sliding doors, he paused and took a step to the side, offering her a strained smile before following her out. “It’s funny,” he said as he stepped into the hallway, “Infirm and all. The one place in the entire HQ where all ranks enter and leave on equal terms. I do hope they haven’t given you much trouble, I know some of the nurses tend to get a little enthusiastic about keeping agents as inpatients.”