#hail giovanni 🚬💀 ic

[dogarsdude]

"Hey guys, back from the hospital after breaking every bone in my body, what'd I miss while I was—"

". . ."

He's turning and walking out at a brisk pace. His strides are long and his arms are swinging. Good luck out there Proton and Archer, this is not his business.

[dogarsdude]

...Yeah, he wasn't exactly surprised by this outcome. He'd hoped that in all of the shocking evidence he'd managed to dig up, the brat would comply in a moment of confusion. But alas, much like Bruno of the Elite Four, he was set up for constant endless disappointment.

The trickery only elicited a slow, dull blink. The man's 28, he knows nobody's gonna take the hard way out. Quite frankly, the ex-prodigy played his hand way too early by making Petrel realize the boy was still the brat through and through, rather than some sort of demon. The good guys don't kill, yadda yadda.

"Sure, whatever. Don't really care. I've seen unspeakable horrors today, and I promise I'm gonna fold from smoker's lung before your teeth hit bone." Was... was he talking directly to the Typhlosion?

"Stay mad about the Selfdestruct."

Okay yeah, he was talking to her. Quickly, his attention turned back to Gold.

"I'm off to go continue my starring role in Brycen-Man: Turn off the Dark. Enjoy the existential crisis or whatever. Oh, and one more thing..."

Popping open a Pokeball to summon his Weezing, he awkwardly gripped onto the tops of its heads, preparing to float away from the oncoming travesty.

"Have fun questioning why your Pokemon haven't tried to tell you."

His Fog Badge! Gold's eye sockets widened as he scooped the badge in his sleeve. That's right, it had gotten dislodged from his badge case at some point leading up to his death. He chalked it up to having been lost forever, but if Petrel had found it so easily...

What truly caught his attention, though, was the manila folder. Several paperclips lined the edges, probably holding the images within and preventing them from bursting out of the folder. Petrel had done it. He'd kept his word, and Gold would soon have all the answers he needed... but. Ah. There was always a catch to these things, wasn't it.

And here it was.

Gold pressed his lips together, anxious. Why was he the one apologizing here? He wasn't the one whose organization gave him secondhand smoke from the amount of lung pollutants they consumed, or wasted his time on a constant basis with stupid nonsense, or caused him to become vegetarian after seeing unethical Slowpoke tail farming practices firsthand, or... the whole Radio Tower thing. Or the Red Gyarados stuff.

But... it would be worth getting the truth. And with a brief glance behind Petrel, Gold knew what he had to do.

"T... thank you, Petrel." He has NOT earned the uncle title. "I- I'm so sorry- so sorry that..."

Without warning, Gold's adorable little face suddenly shifts into a grotesque skull-like grimace. "So sorry that you think I'm an idiot who's gonna fall for saying any of that. Please, get his ass."

Hey, Petrel? Remember when he glanced behind you? That's because there was a big-ass Mama Typhlosion waiting to snatch the folder from your twiggy little hands as soon as her trainer gave her the go-ahead. Which she does now, grasping it tightly in her claws and giving Petrel a dangerous warning snarl.

And yes, her boss music IS playing.

[dogarsdude]

"Fuckin' hell..."

That was all he could muster up while looking at the ominous scene. A Butterfree sure as hell didn't put this MASSIVE CRATER deep in what once was the darkest parts of Ilex forest. The ground had clearly been blasted away, only recently overgrown by grass and smaller plants. The trees in the immediate radius had either been pushed over into growing at an odd angle, or flat-out uprooted and taken over by moss and fungus.

A handful of rapid taps on his phone point to a rampaging Tyranitar being to blame, but... are you kidding me? The Champion of Johto, unable to take on a Tyranitar? This was utter Tauros shit.

Circling the area, he'd made sure to snap as many photos of the destruction as he possibly could, being thorough with his angles. That is, until something caught his eye. Something shiny... something...

A badge. The Fog Badge.

He let out a concerned hum that could only translate to one thing. That thing being 'I don't like this anymore, and I am VERY SWIFTLY LEAVING.'

Taking another quick (and I do mean QUICK) circle, in the event that he'd found something else in the wreckage, he'd found himself back at the path leading out, the sight of another object on the wayside getting an even deeper, more thorough frown from the Executive.

Great. He had a massive lead now. Wonderful. So much for going home and watching his Nimbasa Theatre bootlegs. The ones with the PEOPLE, not the Pokemon. What was he, a Pokefan?

Instead of that, well... he had some sneaking to do.

He hated government buildings. SO much.

[dogarsdude]

"What? You're wondering how that took me several months? Listen, YOU try ignoring one of the BIGGEST CHANCES of your life as the understudy of someone who mysteriously broke both of their legs and an arm right before the big show at Goldenrod Theatre."

[dogarsdude]

Petrel.

[dogarsdude]

No.

YOU.

COME C͈ L̜̺ O̬̙̱ S͖̼͙͙ E̪̠͈̙̹ R̘̤͇̭̹̳ .

[dogarsdude]

He wasn't going to humor the sneaker response. This kid sucked the fun out of everything nearly as much as Giovanni's anklebiter. Wilbur, or whatever his name was.

"Well, I scanned the place you mentioned. BIG-ass crater right in the deepest spot, I found that shoe there. And what's more..." Fishing around in one of his pockets, he managed to produce something that wasn't a box of cigarettes for once. Unceremoniously, he flipped the small piece of metal toward the boy.

"I also give you… the Fog Badge!" Ah. He was impersonating Morty. "With this defeat... I will go back to... I don't know, selling weed to middle schoolers. I don't have much going for me... other than seeing dead people..." "Congrats, kid. You can use Surf."

Reaching behind his back, he pulled out a folder that was tucked under his belt. "I also got this." A few taps for emphasis. "The feds blanked out a lot of info in this file, but I KNOW it's got enough for you to understand."

He wasn't even going to BEGIN to get into the contents. Between the war crimes that made Team Rocket look saintly, and that THING in the images. "Don't open it until I leave. On account that I'm not about to give you an awkward hug and pat on the back for what you're gonna see. Arguably still good news though, considering this file is EXACTLY what you wanted."

"But FIRST... I need to hear your sincerest, most heartfelt 'Thank you Uncle Petrel, I'm so sorry I was a big dumb baby that ruined your plans. You're so cool.'"

Ah.

@dogarsdude asked:

With a gentle toss as not to earn the undead kid's full ire again, a singular running shoe would lightly bounce off of Gold's head, landing on the ground in front of him. It seemed... old. Tattered, partially-disintegrated, and covered in moss.

"Bad news kid, your sneakers are fake as hell. Logo ain't even close. Now, you want the good news?"

Gold's face scrunches up as the sneaker makes contact with his head, a sleeve running to rub the spot it hit and brush away any dirt or moss that ended up in his hair. "W-what do you mean they're fake?" he asks, confused, "They were my size. Comfortable. I... think it's a real sneaker you can wear?"

Look. Petrel. He doesn't understand sneakerhead culture. He's the ghost of a 13-year-old autistic kid, you're gonna have to be patient with him.

Forever trots up to the sneaker and gives it a quick sniff before picking it up in his mouth. He takes it to a shady spot, where he lays down and happily chews on the absolutely disgusting shoe like it's his new favorite toy. Gold frowns at this, but he can't really stop him. It's not like he can still wear shoes.

Instead, he turns back to Petrel.

"There's... good news? What is it?"