And then it was there. Despite being a clearly highly formalised procedure, there was no fanfare about it, no grand posturing. No, the setting was doing all of that for them.
The room Adelaide was being led into had once been some kind of church hall arranged for a mass, since gutted of any pews it might once have contained, but still sporting a disembodied altar at one end, and imposing pillars, past which she could see a rainbow's worth of Legendaries. The hall was decently well lit from strips of white light set into corners, though overall more as though it were trying to be a nice place for a romantic dinner than a place for any court's proceedings - or it would have been, if it weren't for the glow of one of the Legendaries, easily brighter than a full moon, but quite shy of the strength of direct sunlight.
There were six of them, altogether. She recognised the one that had once made conversation with her, all flowing plume and eerie skin. Then there was the star made flesh from the day before, and its crimson tuning fork companion. The other three were new to her perception.
One of them was on fire. That wasn't altogether unusual for a pokémon, of course, but something about the black skin made it feel like it would actually burn her if she touched it - not like the benign flames of a Rapidash. While it shared the overall shape of the others, the arms were short and curved, clearly designed for digging.
Another was some kind of aquatic adaption of the general theme, with a fin where a plume might be, and webbing between its white fingers. It might have been a partial albino of some sort, even for its species, but the eyes had the dead white of some ghastly blindness instead of the kind of soft pink she might have expected for that, and there were rich blue feathers spattered in decorative tufts along the edge of its arms.
And the last was a clear electric type, all spikes and spines, the smallest of the batch by body, but perhaps not if measured spine-tip to spine-tip, visible current running along the protrusions from the back of its head.
Jagdish was walking beside her, bringing her into view of all this, but he might as well have been invisible. All Legendary eyes set on her.
The church hall was oddly fitting. These were the ancient gods of the island, and a month ago she would have said no living human had seen them gathered together. Now she was forced to correct that assumption: quite a few humans had seen them, some of those humans were still living, and all but one deeply regretted it.
What did one say in this situation? The standard human greetings all revolved around 'this is a pleasant encounter' which seemed inappropriate, a simple 'hello' was too disrespectful. Adelaide awkwardly nodded to the Legendries and resisted the urge to turn to Jagdish for guidance. That also felt rude. Possibly dangerous, her instincts added; these individuals were unknown to her, but the red one definitely felt like they were glaring at her.
From what she had been told, none of them were happy to see anyone but Jagdish, so maybe they all were.
“Adelaide Mawne,” Jagdish said, in the tone of introducing her to the others. Then his mouth opened and hung that way for a few seconds, before he finally casually disgorged: “Actually, all my usual lines don't work here, the conversations we've had were honestly quite friendly and reasonable. I might actually enjoy defending this one.”
Ahead of them, a kaleidoscope of subtle emotions rippled through the creatures on display - but with their faces not at all human, it was hard to say which emotions they were. It was only clear that they were very much not acting in unison.
~Very well,~ a clear voice rang through her skull - and presumably Jagdish's. With how disembodied it was, it was difficult to attribute, lingering anonymously for a few awkward seconds, until her instincts caught on to that it was the luminous one that was most steadily staring her way. ~Adelaide Mawne,~ the syllables echoed the pronunciation of Jagdish's introduction with the finesse of a recent memory, for that moment barely possessing a tone of its own that wasn't simply borrowed from the human's speech, like a copied sound clip.
But the rest that followed had a clear personality - a sceptical, displeased individual, who would perhaps really rather not be having a conversation about this at all: ~You have been brought here, before the Council, to stand trial for the crimes you have committed. The charges you face are as follows: Emotional manipulation of pokémon to serve your own goals, and multiple counts of forcing pokémon into battle against their will, partly in circumstances of purely your own orchestration.~
Things were already going off script! She wasn't sure what the usual script was - and it sounded like a somewhat positive change? - but veering from known ground only three words in sent a jolt of anxiety through her.
At first she thought it was Psynateh speaking - was speaking the correct term? - as the only known Psychic, but that felt wrong. So, two of them used telepathy. Maybe all? Did it matter?
There were no contesting the first charge. The second rankled slightly, made it sound like she'd bodily flung them into battle. Which she hadn't, and the 'against their will' bit felt potentially debatable for… well. At least some of the team? But… 'coerced' was uncomfortably more apt, witting or not, and that was its own form of pressure. “I understand,” she said, being uncertain what else she was supposed to add at this point, beyond not irritating the Council further.
The response subtly but visibly rippled through the one that had spoken, as though the simplicity of that response had triggered some unidentified emotion. The crimson-skinned creature gave a low-volume growl. But regardless, it was the same speaker again that said, with its usual scepticism: ~Do you?~
“We've spoken a good deal about all of these,” Jagdish offered, nodding mildly, by way of answering in her stead, and perhaps cutting off an unproductive line of enquiry.
It was Psynateh, scratching lightly at the underside of her muzzle, who opened her maw a little to denote that she was the one speaking, even if she didn't need her throat to do it, and said: ~Then let the human tell the story for its perspective.~ It was a prompt, if an indirect one, and Jagdish forwarded it to Adelaide in spirit by simply glancing encouragingly at her.
That wasn't what she expected. That was very much not how she thought it would go, and the thought was near paralysing. Tell the story? In what way? Full detail? Brief outline? With or without emotion? Was Psynateh asking for a contextual overview or a full-fledged defense?
She couldn't get this wrong. If she got this wrong, it was her LIFE on the line. And it wasn't how human trials went either! Adelaide knew, from many training sessions and repeated reinforcement, that one was supposed to answer questions and no further. Going further and guessing lost you control of the narrative and allowed for misunderstandings and miscommunications, even if you had the benefit of being the same species and, in theory, could guess at what the other person may desire.
This was Jagdish's job! Help.
“I'm not sure what, precisely, you would like from me,” Adelaide said hesitantly. “As in, timelines, or very broad outlines, or detailed reasons for why I acted as I did and how that shifted over time?” But they had asked, and she was expected to provide something. Maybe that was, somehow, part of their decision process?
If it was an attempt to get her to feel emotions so the Legendaries could read her mental state, then it was succeeding.
“A timeline to start with, to fit other events around: in my twenties, I took a job working on the S.S. Anne. This is a cruise ship that travels between various regions, most frequently Johto and Kanto but also Sehto, Hoenn, the Orange Islands, and the Sevii Islands at least every other year, and some more distant locals on an irregular basis. All crew members are expected to have at least one pokemon, and the majority of the passengers are trainers.
“After working on the ship for several years, I,” she paused a moment to consider her wording, “took my pokemon team to attempt the Sehto gym circuit. I have seven badges hidden back home. I went to Taqnateh and met Jagdish, but-” What was a polite way to say 'decided she wanted nothing to do with this any more'? -“declined to challenge him for the Astral Badge and quit the circuit.
“A few months later I quit my shipboard job, and took up a role in Ehqaj port instead. That was nearly eight years ago.”
✘ IN PROGRESS