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They're ahead of the circuiters, that much is certain. One the way out of Ehqaj, taking an unusual detour essentially across the top of Roaring Hollow, armed with a pair of good binoculars given to him by the Pyu Ivvi gym leader, Rhaptor watched them enter the city. He's been entirely quiet about what he's looking for, and none of the conversations she's witnessed him have with gym leaders - which up to that point were Tove Zipporah and Rose Kaiki as new additions to the list - have seen him talking about any of his observations.
So far, Rhaptor's prediction that the rest of the gym leaders would not treat him with scorn seems to hold true. Tove seemed delighted to see him without even so much as a hint of wariness, Rose kept a motherly air around them both, and Yarver Bakema, while in the first instant pattern-matching to something of a slave driver, explained his fondness for the boy in an entirely believable fashion. While she can't claim she's seen stranger dynamics, it had become obvious very quickly that it was consensual - and Yarver had eased up considerably after discerning her discomfort, nudging interactions into perfectly ordinary circles.
The oddness of it's essentially forgotten by the time they're hiking toward Kzye. The strange warning Rhaptor had given her about Keith Sirius meanwhile isn't. Since Rhaptor's not brought it up on his own again, evidently unconcerned about the location himself, the topic has yet to be revived. That said, a separate topic of conversation found an awkward end; she'd asked him why he goes by Rhaptor if Dakarai is his real name, and he had politely declined her any explanation.
The area that Kzye is nestled into appears to have more in common with Mars, if someone had stopped to photoshop some dusty shrubs into a photo of it. Thorn is fairly steep here, making travel even along marked paths testing - it seems like the only way roads go is uphill. Rhaptor seems quite comfortable with the incline, evidently far more used to this kind of travel than she is - and it's about two kilometres from the edge of Kzye that they pause and sit on the rocks to have the snacks Yarver had left them with and the entire rest of their water supply, mostly for Elena's benefit.
It doesn't help that it's late afternoon and the sun's heat is swimming across the ground. Most of the way here they've been accompanied with cool, string gusts of wind nudging at their backs and helping them along, but that seems to have died down.
“You don't sunburn easily, do you?” Rhaptor asks, his eyes narrowing as if he were tempted to squeeze them shut against the bright, bleached landscape. The heat is nothing Sarchus couldn't likely help them against with a RAIN DANCE or some more direct conjuration of humidity, but it's not really the problem. It only emphasises the problem, all of Elena's limbs aching - even parts of her she could've sworn weren't even involved in walking.
Following Rhaptor's remark, Iris hesitates for a moment, then flutters up to hover between the sun and Elena, casting his shadow onto her and watching her with concern.
A few weeks ago Elena had thought she was reasonably fit. She spent a lot of time hiking in the semi-wilderness and climbing trees and didn't mind spending a day walking. Doing the circuit was going to be much the same, wasn't it? The hiking would be a little brisker and with more purpose, there would be some more gear to carry, and she could expect it to be somewhat more mentally tiring as well, but overall she should be -good- at it, right?
Apparently not. And the key difference was hills. Mostly in the form of one giant volcano of one, which was rapidly teaching her that Njoty has very little in the way of UP. It turned out that 'up' was very exhausting and involved muscle groups she'd never paid much attention to before.
“I hope not,” Elena answered, taking off her floppy white hat to push a loose strand of hair behind her ear and out of her face. Thank you Tove so very much for gifting it to her, she was totally sending the Pyu Ivvi gymleader cupcakes when next in the area. She could put icing Zubats on top of it. “I never burn much at home, but… well. Trees. These shrubs don't count.”
A meow in her ear makes her startle as the pokemon on her shoulder stirs, and then she has a lap full of very warm kitten nosing at her water bottle. “Thirsty?” Elena asks the Onca with concern as she pours a little water into her hand for it. Theoretically after raising Sarchus from an egg she should have no issues with another tiny Blood-type. In practise she'd never raised a Fire-type (after all, it was more accurate to say Roman had raised her) and every breed of pokemon was different. She was eager to ask advice from Keith on how to handle this supposedly wild animal that had decided she belonged to belonged to it now.
“I wonder sometimes if fate was so kind to give me a decent resistance to sunburn as an apology for making me unusually prone to mild heat stroke instead,” Rhaptor is narrating, even as the air above him ripples, a few syllables shy of the end of the phrase. At the 'in' of 'instead', a pink bundle of fur pops into existence two handspans above him and drops down with all fours like a falling cat and a dramatic 'Mew!' in the tone of a triumphant announcement. The 'stead' of 'instead' promptly warps into some guttural cry and his arms snap upwards and his torso shifts forward significantly as if he'd planned to roll forward in a well-guided instinct, before remembering something. “Mew! I swear, one day…!” Rhaptor's hands snap to grasp the lean creature, which predictably blinks out of appearance again, then reappears a few inches before Rhaptor's face. A rapidly moving hand seizes a hold of the creature's tail an instant after its appearance - but of course it simply blinks back out of the grip, giggling and hovering just out of reach a moment later. Rhaptor stares at it, his posture half frozen, as if carefully considering his options.
Heat stroke? That wasn't good, warm as it was. But before she could ask if Rhaptor was okay there was a flash of pink attacking and he was flinging hands into the air. Elena lurched to her feet and had enough presence of mind to curl the hand with her water bottle across her chest to catch the kitten in her lap. The palmful of liquid splashed unnoticed onto her pant leg as the Onca dug sharp little claws into her shirt (and skin).
Ouch. She's spared from deciding what to do next when Rhaptor grasps at and scolds the aptly named pink thing. Apparently they know each other? Good, because Elena isn't sure how she'd fight a Psychic - and what else could it be, Teleporting around like that - when it could blink out of the way and any move would hit Rhaptor too.
Or at least she HOPES they know each other, because he looks rather uncomfortable. The gymleader's pokemon, maybe? He'd mentioned Keith was a prankster, and this pokemon seemed to be one too. Elena squeaked slightly when the Onca decided it didn't like the height disadvantage and leapt for her boobs en route to perching on her shoulder once more. Mentally she noted she needed to get it a piece of leather or some canvas to ride on if it decided to stay with her.
“A friend of yours?” Elena asks carefully, wary of upsetting the strange pokemon.
If Rhaptor's expression was any way to judge the situation, 'frenemy' was perhaps the best category to sort this creature into. He seems unsettled, albeit evidently not in a sort of way that demands action. It's only slowly that he thaws out of his state, righting himself from the almost coiled posture from before. “By some measure,” he adds, his tone suggesting a cautious, wary reverence of the creature.
Unspoken, his mind fixed on the pokémon. 'It's not good that you're here.'
As if she picked up on the stray thought, Mew giggles, her long tail twisting and curving in some barely contained excitement - then her attention seems to drift upwards, her expression morphing into an 'oooh', perhaps slightly dreamy, perhaps distracted by a bird, and-
The world pops as if it had been a vivid hallucination contained within a balloon and drops them with a sense of skewed gravity on a gravel path between one of the roads and a house at the edge of Kzye. The psychic pokémon, not in the least disoriented by the change, twirls herself into a forward tumble, long tail faithfully dragging behind her to trace her loop. “Mew, mew, mew-mew-mew mew!” she sputters in delight, leading the way along the path.
✘ IN PROGRESS