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Mew had taken up temporary residence in his hair, curled up in the short tangles much like in a nest, dozing in a state approximating a nap. He didn't know what to make of that living omen. Terrible things happened while she watched, and she seemed all too eager about Kzye City. It meshed uncomfortably with his memories of his gym battle - dragging himself in quivering intervals along the warm stone, muscles refusing to execute his instructions, hot air swimming around him, pulse throbbing in his skull, breath struggling against the circumstance.
Simply put, he should not be here. The evidence was overwhelming, really. And yet… paradoxically, did that not make it all the more reason to be here? He'd done Keith's pokémon no particular injustice but it was clear he couldn't use normal templates to try and gauge how the Pyre gym leader would react to his appearance.
“Any idea where Keith is now?” he asks, addressing Mew with hesitance in his voice. He could waste some time trying to find him manually, of course, but she was likely to be able to lead him directly to him, and he'd rather cut this shapeless anticipation short. He could allow himself to freak out when it turned out that Keith was going to carve his innards out of his body and claim accident - and not a moment sooner.
Mew's form stirs lightly at the prompt, pawing at the tangles of Dakarai's hair as she pulls herself slowly back to lucidity. Her head peeks up over the tangle of hair she's claimed as a pillow, glancing around for a moment to get her bearings - and then a soft, bubbly purr spills from her. They're in Kzye, not far from Keith's house nestled against the mountain's slope. She stretches out her limbs, forepaws batting against his forehead; then she closes her eyes, focusing her thoughts for the few moments it takes for her to find where Keith is. “Mew,” she confirms, nodding her head once, then lets herself slide off the back of Dakarai's head, floating around to tug on the sleeve of his shirt, pulling it in the direction of Keith's house. It won't be long now, she thinks to herself.
The sky is coloured in streaks, and there's a chill bleeding in from the top of the mountains as a lazy breeze. An unusually warm day notwithstanding, the night stayed true to the season, and he was wholly tempted to put on his jacket, but that required poking around for it in within the confines of his bag. An uneasy glance briefly wound itself through the landscape, looking for his long-term companion tailing him sceptically in the distance, but Iris has made himself scarce. For a moment of paranoia, a knot forms in Dakarai's gut, corporeal manifestation of his worry that perhaps something had happened to the Venomoth.
One foot misses even ground for a moment, nearly tipping Dakarai into an embarrassing stumble, but he catches himself in time. “Sorry,” he whispers to Mew, given the lurch would have disturbed her, too, with how she's attached to his arm. “I was looking for Iris,” he explains, keeping his voice down.
They don't seem to be heading for any one place of residence in particular. Instead, she seems to be leading him past the house closest to the Magma Chamber and out into the wilderness - at least that's his impression for as long as it takes them to cross the side of the building far enough to reveal a verandah out the back, and the beginnings of what sounds like conversation filter through to Dakarai.
“…not honestly surprised, are you?” It takes a moment for the flimsy fragments of sound to find themselves associated with Keith. “I try to be transparent, I really do. And you really shouldn't worry, I'm not going to hurt you much, I mean-”
As luck would have it, they spot each other roughly simultaneously. Keith is stood with what looks like an all too pleased sort of exaggerated pride beside a delicate looking table, his left hand raised as if he'd been gesturing along with his speech and felt abruptly self-conscious, right resting three fingers against the rim of a glass set down on said table. Silence. A metre away from him, slumped awkwardly but very much alive on one of the chairs, looking pitifully like an accident waiting to happen, is another person that Dakarai doesn't recognise.
Keith's gaze jumps from Dakarai's face to Mew and then back to Dakarai. His left hand springs back into motion index and middle finger aligning as if to form a gun pointing to the sky to fire a bullet, a gesture that lasts only an instant. “You're a day early,” he says, tone a bizarre mixture of apologetic and scolding, coming out almost deadpan neutral. What follows, however, is not: A broad, manic grin, and a gushing, enamoured: “It's so good to see you again.”
The sudden lurch of gravity prompts a shocked “Mew!” from Dakarai's current companion, claws clinging tighter to his arm for the moment in unpleasant surprise. Once he's steadied himself, she releases her grip, choosing to float a few feet ahead of him instead of attached to his sleeve. It's fine with her if Dakarai wants to stumble and hurt himself, so long as she's not attached to him when he does it.
As they round the corner, Mew's eyes widen as they find Keith, ears perking up and tail twitching excitedly. Keith has a guest! What a pleasant surprise - they get to share two sources of entertainment! “Mew-mew-mew-mew!” she calls out, flinging herself through the air to impact lightly with Keith's chest, scrambling about to perch on his shoulder, peering down curiously at the young man slumped on the chair. His expression's just turned from fear and anticipation to confusion, eyes darting between Keith and the bundle of pink fuzz, unsure what to make of this. Has help miraculously shown up?
Mew nuzzles against Keith's cheek, then turns her gaze up to look at him. “Mewww,” she says, full of deep admiration despite the light scornful tone in her voice and the mock-glare in her expression. Oh Keith, why didn't you say you were having a guest over? He knows how much she likes his particular form of entertainment. Her gaze drifts down to the young man in the chair again, then returns to linger on Keith expectantly. Is he going to introduce his friend?
Said friend, meanwhile, has managed to, with enough effort, turn his head enough to make out Dakarai in the gloom. With a bit of effort, he manages to vocalize a sound, but his tongue and lips don't quite cooperate enough to turn it into a meaningful word.
For that very first instant, the surreality of the situation bypasses instinctive fear altogether, though as his gaze falls on Keith's unfortunate victim, even past the numb shock, his skin transforms, happy to take the chill of the approaching night as an excuse to ripple into gooseflesh. The pleased response does nothing to soothe him as he might have expected. Anger was preferable to this. Contempt was preferable to this. Instead, Keith is so clearly wholly unconcerned that Dakarai has just discovered him with a poisoned victim that he's effortlessly categorised himself as metaphysical danger more than any human being made of flesh possibly could. It knits into his memory of his gym battle, forming a disconcerting picture. Dakarai's left hand finds itself clasped against the elbow of his right arm, clutching at it lightly, as what might as well have been a narrowly missed fate plays out in his mind: Dangling by bound wrists off the precipice leading down into that lazy golden glitter of molten rock, with Keith smiling contently as he sways.
He forces himself to close his eyes, struggling with the overwhelming but useless emotion of fear that's spiked in his gut. He's not here on vacation. Whatever's going to happen is unlikely to compare to anything Jagdish did to him. It's unlikely to compare to the lucid moments of what Vendetta put him through. But at the end of the day, neither of them had this predatory radiance about them, this sheer delight, and that's what disturbs him. He's equally sure it has no right to, but his instinct is difficult to quell.
Mew's chittering and enthused greeting helps dispels the feeling - causelessly, of course, but given that it had no right to exist in the first place, he had no trouble fighting irrationality with more irrationality. Let such nonsense annihalate itself. His eyes open again, discovering the distressed look of the stranger and lingering there.
Calm. Just… remain calm.
“Mike, I'm really sorry,” Keith's turned his attention to the guest, even as both his hands lavish Mew with affectionate attention. “I'm going to have to pay attention to my guest here. You're not upset about that, are you? We can get to know each other some other time. My friend here isn't staying very long, you know, I don't want to keep him waiting.” His right hand reaches out and slides in a gentle grip against the hapless victim's jaw, cautiously twisting his head to make him look back at Keith. “And stop being scared of me, you silly goose,” he adds, scolding him with a light grin. “You don't honestly think I'd do anything that might genuinely jeopardise our friendship, do you?” Apparently, paralysing your neighbour was a forgivable sin?
Exhale. Inhale. Keith glances across at Dakarai again for a moment, then at Mew to give her a significantly more lucid scritch against the back of her neck. “I don't like splitting my attention, sweetheart, don't take it the wrong way,” he apologises softly. “You can visit me any time, though, you know that, right?”
A shudder grasps Mike's spine briefly, and one hand manages to find itself gripping the arm of the chair in some attempt to get away that was, unsurprisingly, ultimately futile. His eyes dart back and forth between Keith's face and the purring bundle of pink fuzz draped across the gymleader's left hand. 'Getting to know each other' didn't usually involve drugging your neighbor and threatening to poke some knives into them for fun. Well. Maybe it did for Keith. Still, not exactly reassuring.
Mew seems momentarily dismayed by this turn of events - twice as many humans is twice as entertaining, after all! - but she quickly forgives him. She'll still get to watch him with Dakarai. And maybe the next time he has a guest over, she'll come and pay him a visit. She stares down at Mike for a long moment, cherishing the image while she can, before her gaze swivels around to Dakarai instead.
Maybe Mike's died and gone to hell. That ought to explain the surreal, horrifying situation he finds himself in, surely? No human being could leer down at a paralysed victim with so much relish, but a demon conceivably could. Maybe this is just a particularly vivid nightmare he's having. He fell asleep and now his dreams are taunting him. The fingers at his jaw linger a moment longer, then drift down across his throat as if indecisive whether he should truly let him go - then his gaze wrenches away from the unfortunate man and across to the one standing immobile beside the verandah.
“Come on, don't be shy,” Keith says, glowing with a deceptively warm, welcoming air. His right hand gestures for Dakarai to come closer in a rapid, near-impatient motion. Then he's glancing to his home for a moment. “Raichu? Raichu, we have a guest,” he calls across, peering with some uncertainty into the opaque band of shadow flanked by the reflective transparency of the sliding doors leading out into the night.
Dakarai's approach is steady but slow. He can't judge Keith's motives. For all he knows, he's a loose cannon just waiting to scatter his component parts through the martian landscape around Kzye. On the other hand, he might be infinitely more stable than he appears and hard to provoke into anything that might - as he put it - 'jeopardise' his position of prestige. The fact he's clearly playing with fire is hardly a soothing realisation, of course. Whatever side of the line Keith is on, he's happy to teeter near it.
Raichu's compact yet graceful body warily steps from the confines of the house - only to spot Dakarai, abruptly narrow its eyes, nose wrinkling, tail coiling in recognition, visceral hiss coming to be accompanied by a similar hiss of static as the wire of its whip-like tail glows with charge.
“Oh no, no, stop that,” Keith comments, not quite frantic or alarmed, not quite scolding, sounding more surprised than anything. Raichu had a habit of reacting to resurfacing trainers with a paranoid scepticism, especially those it knew had the misfortune of suffering through some paralysis of their own - the chance they might do Keith harm seemed high enough that the default behaviour felt justified to it. Nonetheless, it simmers down almost immediately. Keith, after all, is an adult and can mostly take care of himself, and if he says it's all right then it probably is. The clarification that follows helps smooth down Raichu's worry, replacing it with a light form of resignation: “He's a special guest who's just a bit early for his appointment, that's all.”
Reluctantly, Raichu sits down just outside the house, tilting its head in some curiosity, taking in Dakarai's appearance, then glancing across at Mike, at Keith, at Mew, back to Mike, across to Dakarai again… with a light scowl it hunches itself forward, waiting to hear what it's been summoned for while glaring idle daggers into Dakarai, uncertain what damage he could do now that he's seen Keith indulge in his questionable hobby, even keeping in mind that he's likely to be tied up in something similar soon enough. Blegh.
Keith, meanwhile, is torn on whether to introduce his guest by name or not, instead simply wearing an expression awkwardly suspended between a happy grin and a concerned frown. Finally, he opts for something else entirely: “…oh, come on.” An exasperated sigh spills from him. “Be happy for me, just this once?”
A discontent 'fsss,' spills from Raichu, scowl deepening as it glances across disapprovingly at Keith. Keith could do whatever he pleased, but that didn't mean Raichu was going to enjoy seeing him indulge in such reckless behaviour. Its tail flicks restlessly for a few moments, nose twitching slightly as if it might be tempted to add something more eloquent - then it opts to stare at the doorframe instead.
Keith frowns lightly. “…could you at least get Mike some paralyse-heal and make sure he gets home safely?” he asks, the concern in his voice seeming surprisingly unmistakably meant for the paralysed human he's still partly looming across.
Raichu pauses for a moment, gaze sliding across to Mike again, as if to consider whether the request was beyond contempt and Mike was acceptable collateral damage to make that point… then caves. “Rrrr,” it rumbles, tail whipping around and up as it rises to its feet, walking with a posture full of stubborn pride back into the house.
Both to keep himself still and to, in a more compact posture, find a sense of safety, Dakarai crouches into half a kneel, left knee on the ground, right raised, rest of his posture one of tense attentiveness, expression one of enforced neutrality. “Your Raichu's not a fan?” he asks.
Keith glances down at Dakarai. For a moment, he's staring down at him in silence. Then, in a tone entirely devoid of the earlier cheer, making a line entirely apparent to the visitor by sheer blunt contrast: “I don't believe it's any of your business.”
Mike's expression is suspended somewhere between disbelief and terror. Abstractly, on some level, he knew Keith had a prankster side to him, and that it was really only a matter of time before something like this would happen to him; but the situation is so surreal, between his paralysis, Keith's impossibly bright grin, and now his sudden decision to just let him go, part of him has difficulty believing it's not some twisted nightmare. If he woke up tomorrow morning and discoverd it had, in fact, been a dream, he wouldn't be terribly surprised.
The Raichu's appearance evokes a chilly reaction from Mew, her gaze landing on it for a long moment in an indecipherable expression - before turning back to Keith and giving him an affectionate nuzzle, ignoring the other pokémon for now. She's well aware of Raichu's opinion of her, but she's certainly not going to let something like that ruin her fun tonight. Not when she's been looking forward to this for so long. She bats lightly at Keith's hair impatiently.
Rather than let himself be goaded into rapid action, Keith merely maintains his mustering stare of his new visitor in the slowly morphing evening light, right hand stroking its thumb along Mew's spine, waiting out the silence and Raichu's absence. When the pokémon returns with a small, flask-like container trapped between its teeth, then hops in a single powerful but graceful motion onto the table, only to bound onto Mike's left shoulder, Keith finally thaws out of his posture, exhaling audibly. “It's getting a bit chilly out here,” he observes. “Let's continue our staggeringly lively conversation inside, shall we?” He tips his head to the side once, indicating to the door.
There was, technically, nothing stopping Dakarai from walking away after rising to his feet. No one was holding a gun to his head to comply - not even metaphorically. He was to report to the gym leaders, but the order in which he did this was arbitrary as long as he didn't vanish from the face of the earth for longer than forty-eight approximate hours.
The barest sound of disapproval can be heard from Raichu, but it's clearly put no effort into making itself heard - it's not an attempt to communicate. It seems to be dealing quite well with its assigned task, generally giving more of an appearance of a human trapped in a pokémon's body by circumstance than anything else, with how it's sorting some strands of hair back out of Mike's face and cautiously balancing itself on its perch. With its displeasure expressed, it instead focusses on 'talking' to Mike - a series of soft, soothing, bordering apologetic sounds. 'Sorry, I know Keith isn't the most well-behaved,' perhaps.
For a moment, Dakarai's stood where he is, regarding Raichu's polite behaviour, running his - really, all equally unpleasant - options through his mind. The pause seems to cause no impatience, at the very least, and his gaze lingers on the heartening scene for a while; then he peels himself out of the mental circles he's running about himself and lets a glance graze Keith as he finally follows the invitation.
Keith's expression softens at the motions, then glances upwards as if trying to catch enough sight of Mew to be sure she's there. He knows she's not the most patient, but if she's had any foresight at all, she would have anticipated this for a while, and what were a few more minutes wait compared to a few days of the same? Still, he didn't like her being upset any more than he liked Raichu being upset, precious friend that she was, so concern snuck into his air.
A few quiet moments later, Keith's paused in the doorway, peering back out at Raichu and Mike, allowing himself a moment of worry for the both of them - then steps inside after his visitor.
Dakarai is stood barely a metre into the room, a bit to the side as not to prove an obstance for anyone entering or leaving, eyes closed. They don't open as Keith pauses beside him and only a subtle twitch travels through his visitor as he grasps his left hand, turning it first one way then the other, inspecting it in the dim light. Then he lets go, letting the limb as a whole drop back to Dakarai's side, and walks in further, meandering casually across to the nearest light switch. It's as he's taken a few steps away from Dakarai that the same dares open his eyes again, cautiously glancing after Keith.
The light flicks on, dim at first and not able to compete even with the dying light outside, but gradually warming to brighter illumination. Keith glances across at Dakarai, a sudden caution in his body language. “So, let me just make sure I haven't misunderstood anything,” Keith says, idly kneading at his left hand with the fingers of his right in a way that looks deceptively purpose-driven while being entirely absent-minded. “You are Dakarai N'Sehla, born in Togi, resident of Njoty until recently, notoriously ex-criminal in the eyes of our beloved Arbiter,” he narrates, casually. “…and now… you're the circuit's prized and loyal pet.” A pause, staring across at the aforementioned. “As such, you are here chiefly because… you intend to do exactly what I tell you to do? Is that right? Forgive me for spelling it out so blandly, it's just… I don't usually get gifts like this dropped in my lap and I'd like to be very… very sure of my good fortune before I do anything Jagdish might want to hold against me. …or you, for that matter - I'm always ever so crestfallen if people start giving me the wide berth.” The casual smile betrays just how far 'ever so crestfallen' goes… not very far.
At the precise moment Keith catches sight of the pink fuzzball, her attention is directed towards Mike and Raichu with an idle curiosity, tail twitching randomly. As long as she's waiting, she might as well derive what entertainment she can from observing the human in his current terrified state. She notices a concerned look from Keith, and reaches down to pat his forehead lightly, uttering a reassuring: “Mew.”
When the pair are finally on their way inside, Mew peels loose from Keith, pausing in a hover several feet above Mike, peering down at him. A shame that she wouldn't get to know him today, but she'd have her chance in the future, surely. She waves to him, a bubbly: “Mew!” spilling from her, and then floats quickly after Keith and Dakarai, soon settling on the former's shoulder with her gaze firmly fixed on the latter, purring incessantly.
The narrative seemed to have trouble deciding where to slot itself emotionally, suspended between evoking a deep unease and soothing the worst of Dakarai's worries. He was given the chance to walk away with a single, simple, hypothetical word if he so pleased. As a lie it formed no genuine option, but the underlying question made a sincere impression and firmly as if - despite transparently expecting and prefering one answer over another - it could accept either response. Objectively, he had little to fear if Keith was this concerned about his opinion and that of Jagdish.
Subjectively, the meticulous obsession with details and the unapologetic and unashamed way he carried himself was enough to replace the chill outside and leave his hair where they were: Standing on end. He had to find a different way of looking at this or he'd never be able to keep still.
“Yes.” Despite all reservations, the syllable betrays no hesitance. He straightens his posture, glancing at Keith with all resolution he can muster.
The change in Keith is fairly subtle, creasing his lips into a fonder smile - and an edge of pity that he can't quite resist applying, given that as much as he's used to people constructing their own bad fortune… this certainly takes the cake.
“Thank you,” he says, softly, meaning it. The slight tension that had crept into him peels away as if someone were stripping invisible, puppeteering wires from him, leaving him to act entirely on his own volition. One hand of his rises to trace the tip of a digit along Mew's spine in almost absent-minded fondness. A misplaced warmth creeps into his tone as he addressed Dakarai again: “In that case… I'd like to get a better look at my temporary possession, if you don't mind. Step forward.”
Easy enough. Dakarai's gaze slides to his bag, shrugged off a moment later as an unnecessary obstacle and unlikely to be in danger of getting stolen or damaged, its owner tipping to the side briefly to set it down in a spot closer to the corner of the room than even he'd nestled himself in. Then he takes two steps forward, encircling himself with free space, striding back into the darkness of closed eyes, grappling with it as a source of calm.
When he's next aware of Keith as more than a shadow at the edge of his perception, fingertips have unravelled the edge of his shirt and slid up beneath it to drag the backs of nails along the curves of his ribs, pushing a minimal motion into him that gathered at the outline of his body as tension. The pause that follows lasts only a moment; then a toneless whisper beside him instructs: “Up with your arms.”
In a cautious motion, deliberately blind as he currently was, his arms swept up and lingered above him. Fabric crept up along copper skin a moment later, peeled up and off him, until the ring of it paused at height of his elbows, collar caught against his chin, Keith's wrists touched against the skin of his upper arms. “That'll do; down again, please.” A saccharine, mocking tinge weaves through the words. Obediently, the arms finally escaped their sleeves, falling back to Dakarai's sides.
Briefly and abruptly, the motion of the shirt reverses in the grip of Keith's right hand, twisting against the back of his neck, pulling fabric taut against his throat, free fingers slid into his hair, palm of that left hand pressing against the back of his skull, keeping him from simply falling back. The spiral contorts itself into more of a knot, trapping his pulse against his skin as a strained rhythm of warmth, crowding weak fireflies into the darkness behind his eyelids - then relents before it allows itself to morph into anything too alarming, letting blood and breath move freely once more. The fingers against his scalp let go of the strands trapped between them; a moment later, his shirt simply flutters down to the ground in the vicinity of his discarded bag.
Not a sound of protest so far. Palms set down against his shoulders, fingers curled against his skin, briefly travelling as if to tap indecisively against a surface, but without ever lifting. Then nails drag themselves along his left arm, light at the beginning of their descent, borderline punishing at height of his wrist, each point of pressure nested in a prominent, shadowed indentation, leaving a dusty scratch in its wake.
Then the imagined threshold to his hand is crossed by a lighter touch, before the nails of ring, index and middle finger curve themselves against his palm and press against it. For a moment, their bite is only uncomfortable, pinpricks of warning firing almost at random up along his nerves - then the pressure mounts and morphs the sensation into that of a blunt, cutting edge, throbbing through the whole palm and all of his fingers, creeping a few nauseating inches up along his wrist. Dakarai shivers, teeth gritted, eyes squeezed shut, resisting the urge to cry out - and then does as those foreign fingers adopt the tremble of strain and pour what feels like all their strength into that punishing grip. Instinct curls his fingers into claw-like shapes, arm and shoulders tense, curve of his spine keeping his body slightly skew in an arrested flight. The sharp pain burns up along the tendons of his arm and draws the glittering sheen of a hint of tears from the edge of his eyes from its flavour alone; something he had no control over.
✘ IN PROGRESS