Maxine Daniels
Scene xv: Hostility and Leafeons
Scene xv: Hostility and Leafeons
“...”
“...this doesn’t look right at all.” Turning away from the wooden doors stretching down the length of the massive corridor, Maxine Daniels took new stock of her surroundings. Her fists propped on her hips, her glare firmly affixed on her face like she could intimidate the hallway into giving up its secrets. “Are we lost?” she said, her voice turning from annoyed to slightly hysterical in the space of three words. “The muk did we get lost walking down to the seventh floor!?”
“I told you to read the guide more carefully, didn’t I?” Max spun on her heel to glare at the pokemon speaking. Standing behind Max with her slim arms folded across her chest was a Mawile with an expression so icy anyone not used to it would have frozen up. Max herself would have been intimated if she hadn’t possessed a glare ten times as fierce.
“I did read the guide, Avarice,” Max replied with false cheer, glaring at the small yellow-and-black Fairy. “Ten times. But somehow we’re still not at the gym.”
“We could always ask someone…?” A hesitant male voice suggested, obviously doing his best to break the tension between the two females. Max and Ava both slid equally unhappy glances towards the blue pokemon who had spoken. Posey looked like he regretted his decision to speak almost instantly. The Dewott’s blue fur bristled under the force of the combined glares and his paws shot up to fiddle with the zipper of the white hoodie-like vest he was wearing. “I mean if we ask someone who does know where we are, then they could help us get to the gym and arenas.” His gaze skittered all over the hallway like he was searching for a way to flee to the great sea outside. “Back me up here, Conrad!” He finally cried, shooting a desperate look at the pokemon sitting a little ways away.
“Huh?” Conrad didn’t look at all impressed at being interrupted from whatever thoughts he was thinking. Rising to all four paws in smooth, languid movements that spoke of years of training, he regarded the fight happening with the cool look of someone who didn’t want to be bothered. “Who cares what we do as long as we get to the gym eventually? Standing here fighting won’t do us any good, but if you feel it’s necessary, feel free to continue.”
“Conraaad…” Posey despaired, slumping down to the floor. “Come on, you're Max's starter, you’re not supposed to be so apathetic!”
With a humph, Ava tossed her head to the side. She shut her eyes and with a superior sniff said: “Well, I supposed if Conrad says fighting won’t help, then we should stop.”
Max rolled her eyes and massaged the bridge of her nose. She had been on this cruise for less than a full day and she was already getting the start of a headache.
“Glad that’s cleared up,” Max grumbled unhappily, “And I’m thrilled we’re not wasting time, but I must point out that we are still lost.”
“You realize we could just take the stairs, right?” Conrad asked, his leafy tail brushing against her leg as he came to stand by her. “If we go back up to our room and look at the map, we can figure out where to go from there.”
“Wisest thing I’ve heard all day,” Max muttered. “Pick yourself up, Posey. We’re going back to the room.”
Stepping over the fallen Water-type, Max strode towards the stairs with all the confidence she could summon. As she shoved open the door to the staircase, she had to admit that her Leafeon’s words were probably one of the wisest things she had heard all day, especially considering where she even was.
The New Horizon Tournament. Her ticket out of pokemon Trainer mediocrity and into Professionalism. After eating, breathing, and sleeping pokemon battles for all eighteen years of her life, the constant losses she faced in actual tournaments made her blood boil with humiliation and rage whenever she thought about it. She was weak, a failure, and she despised it.
Gritting her teeth as a wave of anger stole over her, she fisted the pokeball charm hanging around her neck. The cutting pain of the charm’s round edges served to bring her back to reality. She took a deep breath and focused back on the present.
The only reason she had enrolled in this tournament was so that she could finally gain the strength she needed to become a Professional Trainer and finally make her and her team’s dreams a reality. She had most definitely not enrolled to make friends or talk to people. As far as Max was concerned, all of the 63 other trainers were her enemies first and people second.
After arriving in Vancouver, a place her father had spoken about quite fondly, she had avoided any and all social interaction beyond her team thus far in the trip by choosing a table far out of the way during the ball and glaring at anyone foolish enough to come close to her. During the boarding, she had, to her immense displeasure, been introduced before she could avoid it. Of course, the only satisfaction she could take from such an incident was that her pokemon hadn't been introduced and that fancy-shmancy, gag-worthy couple riding up together at the end had ensured nobody would remember her.
She didn’t want to be introduced, she didn’t want to be liked, and she didn’t want anything to get in the way of her rise to success.
The only flaw in Max’s plan so far? That she had gotten lost on her way to the gym to train.
How one could even get lost in a confined space was beyond her, but here they were.
“I know that look,” Conrad interrupted her dark thoughts. “You’re thinking unpleasant things, aren’t you?”
If anyone other than Conrad had asked Max that, she would have adamantly refused to answer. But, since Max had known Conrad since he was gifted to her as an Eevee at age three, she sighed and relented. “Maybe I am, so what?”
“So stop it,” the Leafeon didn’t even break stride up the stairs as he reprimanded his Trainer, a snarky smirk fixed on his split lips. “You never fight your best when you’re distracted. Focus on the here and now. We’re finally going to get the power we need and that’s all that matters.”
“Is Max thinking bad thoughts?” Posey asked, jumping up about ten steps to meet Conrad and Max. “Don’t think bad thoughts, Max!”
Max huffed out what could have been a laugh in between breaths and closed her eyes, forcing her angry thoughts away. “I’m not, I’m not,” she said. Partially to make Conrad stop worrying, and partially to wipe away the adorably pathetic sad-otter eyes Posey was sending her way.
“If we’re going up to our room, does that mean I can put my ribbon back on?” Ava interrupted the somewhat touching moment spectacularly with her vain remark.
“Should have named you Narcissa.” Max remarked under her breath to a chuckle from Conrad. Then, louder, she said to her Mawile: “Yes, Ava, you can get your ribbon. I don’t even know why you took it off in the first place.”
“I didn’t want to get it sweaty.” Max laughed at the affronted tone of voice her Mawile adopted.
“Whatever you say, Ava,” Max replied, setting her hand gently against the door to the ninth floor and pushing it open. “You realize we’re still going back to the gym, though, right?”
“If we keep this pace up, it’ll be dinner before we get down there,” Ava replied, walking past Max with a lofty tilt of her hand. “And I have to look my best before the enemy.”
“She’s got a point,” Conrad said while smirking, “You want her to look her best, don’t you?”
“You guys act too much like humans,” Max griped, following her smug team down to her room.
“The only reason you think that is because you can understand us,” Ava replied. “We’re not the ones who decided to dedicate her high school years to being able to understand at least some of all pokemon languages.”
“Oh, so now it’s my fault, is it?” Max said with narrowed eyes, stuffing her hands into the pockets of her green-and-tan hoodie.
“I like that you can talk to us!” Posey offered with a smile. “You’re the best trainer we could hope for.”
“If she’s so great, why did she leave the problem children at home with her mother and father?” Ava tossed back.
Max’s eye twitched. Why the muk was Ava taking so many shots at her today? She was being more hostile than usual and that was saying something. Max and Ava usually got along fine! Heck, they were on great terms back at the club when Ava was making Max laugh with frank appraisals of the passing Trainers fashion choices, so why was she being like this now?
Conrad turned his head to appraise the small pokemon walking alongside him. “You appear to be angry at Max this fine afternoon. Any particular reason?”
Ava sniffed. “She didn’t let us be introduced on deck. All those people who didn’t get to see how amazing I am. It’s such a waste.”
Now Conrad looked like his eye was going to start twitching. Before Max got a chance to tear into her selfish little brat of a Fairy-type, Conrad took the initiative for her. In fact, he stopped dead in his tracks and spoke in a voice so dark it lowered the temperature in the hallway a few degrees. “What do you mean ‘It’s such a waste’?”
Max skidded to a stop as Posey ducked behind her legs with a ‘meep’ of fright. Uh-oh, Max thought as she watched this catastrophe unfold. Conrad’s gone into total hostile mode. I just hope he doesn't actually end up using any moves this time around, I don’t know what this ship’s policy on hostile Leafeon attacks are.
Even Ava had gradually come to the belated recognition that she was in terrible danger, she shuffled from foot to foot and even took a few steps back as she formulated her response. “Well…er..I just mean that...the enemy should see me being fabulous and Max shouldn't have taken thatawayfromme?” She was rushing at the end because with every word, Conrad’s expression grew more murderous.
“Oh?” Conrad took a step closer to Ava, his amber eyes glinting with something dangerous. “You mean to tell me that your own personal vanity and pride is more important than our trainer’s?”
Ava took several more steps back, then the jaws on the back of her head hit the wall and she was forced to stop as Conrad kept advancing on her. He looked for all the world to be a hunter cornering prey. “Max has made it perfectly clear that she does not want anyone to know of her yet, as to better have the element of surprise when she attempts to beat them. Getting announced in the first place put a sizable dent in her plan, but by now most people should have forgotten her. Announcing your presence in an ostentatious way would undercut that plan to stay under the radar quite spectacularly, don’t you think?”
Max would have liked to see where Conrad would have gone with this, but she saw the beginnings of leaves beginning to flicker to life in the air around him and decided it was best she step in before any actual corporate damage was done to the ship.
“Annnnd that’s enough,” Max announced, putting herself between her furious starter and terrified second. “Not that I wouldn’t like to see where this was going, I don’t think any of us want to test the higher-ups’ tolerance of Razor Leaf damages to the ship, right?” she cast a sharp look at both Conrad and Ava.
Conrad instantly backed down with a nod of his head and the air in the corridor returned to normal temperature. Max and Posey breathed identical sighs of relief. “Ava,” Ava jumped when Max addressed her. “Sorry that you couldn’t get your grand entrance,” Max apologized, meaning every word. “If I had known you would feel this mad about it, I would have told you that you were going to have to stay in your ball.” She played with the green ends of her ponytail and shrugged, “Still doesn’t give you the right to act like a brat, however.”
Ava nodded sheepishly. “Sorry, Master.”
“You’re forgiven. But don’t call me ‘master’.”
“Sorry, Max.”
“Much better.” With a nod of satisfaction at her successful disarming of a teniouse situation, Max turned to walk the final stretch of the corridor and arrive at her room in the middle of Deck 9.
But of course, since Max’s luck sucked that afternoon, that wasn’t to happen. Instead, all four companions froze like statues when an ear-piercing shriek echoed through the corridor from the front of the deck.
“What in Arceus’ name?” Max muttered, turning around halfway to glare at the directions the sound had come from. There was a lounge that way that only trainers had access to, right? “You all heard that, right?”
“That sounded like…” Ava started, her expression confused.
“Someone’s in trouble!!” Posey cried, his fur bristling like someone had used an otter-whistle in his ear. “We have to go help them!”
“Nooo, we don-” Max tried to say, but it was too late. Her Dewott was already making for the lounge at the end of the hallway faster than a Jolteon on Diet Mountain Dew. “NO!” Max cried, her arm shooting out like she could use the Force to pull her pokemon back at her. “Dang it, Poseidon, we just had a conversation about how we don’t want to deal with other people!” She yelled after him. He ignored her completely.
With a noise of abject frustration and irritation, Max shook her head wildly and then broke into a run to follow Posey, “Screw this! Come on, Conrad, Ava, we have to catch him before that idiot does something we’ll regret!”
Conrad instantly shot forward to catch up to Max without any complaints, though the return of the dark look in his eyes promised Posey merciless retribution when they got him back.
“But my ribbooon!” Ava wailed behind them, then she used some choice words that a lady should not even know, and soon the staccato thumps of her feet joined Max and Conrad’s.
Dang it, Posey, Max thought as she darted down the hallway. You and your stupid hero complex, we had better not be dragged into anything because of this!
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