In the past thirty or so years that Marzanna had been a permanent resident of the Rebellion - well, not the organization, but rather the quaint little meadow that the Rebellion claimed as theirs - there was usually no major commotion going on amongst the residents. Sure, an occasional petty argument that sometimes escalated into a physical altercation wasn't unheard of, nor was the Rebellion completely cleared of criminals. Where there's a community, there's bound to be some sort of criminal activity, but it never escalated further than someone swiping a few extra berries from someone's stash (Marzanna may or may not be guilty of liberally taking a couple of mouthwatering Spelon berries from an especially dimwitted Greedent), or stupid quarreling between two neighbors or lovers, and it was practically unheard of that a Pokemon would disappear without a trace from the Rebellion's perimeters.
Having settled herself on the area the unnamed Luxray would come to claim as his long before the concept of the Rebellion even formed, Marz knew the area like the palm of her own hand and could practically navigate from one end to another blindfolded. So naturally, after the announcement of a missing Fennekin was given (and one of the few kids she could tolerate being around, no less), Marzanna didn't even give herself time for second-thoughts and pondering before she launched herself into a scavenger hunt for the missing pup. Silently, like always, she gathered information from eavesdropping, sneaking around in an attempt to get at least a clue or two on which she could grip on to accelerate her self-given mission; the area they all resided in stretched over approximately twenty-five hundred acres of land, and to search every specific nook and cranny would take double the time it took her to learn the basics of the area.
But to no avail - even when she begrudgingly decided to start asking questions around (Arceus knows how much she hated small talk) it seemed like no one really knew when or how the kid disappeared. No one had any contact with the Fennekin a couple of hours before the kid was reported missing, and the police were also clueless as to how and why she disappeared - or so they said. Not even a scent of the Fennekin lingered behind the residence in which the kid lived, and none of the neighbors saw anyone going in or out of their residential place on the night of the disappearing. Some even hypothesized that considering a similar situation happened exactly seven days before with a young Metang, Fennekin's disappearance might be a small part of a bigger serial kidnapping operation. Both weren't in the Rebellion long, both were similar in personality, and both disappeared overnight.
Needless to say, these were all speculations and some even bordered on the verge of being conspiracy theories; Marz even overheard that the police department is orchestrating an operation of kidnapping and murdering young and vital Pokemon under Luxray's watchful eye to harvest their organs and sell them to trainers for additional funds for the Rebellion. She almost rolled her eyes back into her skull once she heard the eccentric Mismagious say that. Okay, that would make sense had the other Pokemon been a non-mechanical one, but what parts would a Metang have that the humans couldn't create on their own? The Beldum, Porygon, Magnemite, and all similar lines were basically sentient machines and with the sheer technological advancement the humans have made (for fuck's sake, Pokeballs!), Marzanna highly doubted that the Metang had a screw or coil that the humans couldn't synthesize on their own.
Her only other viable information source was a young teenage Elgyem that, despite being nearly three times younger than her, had an impressive thirst and determination for the knowledge of this world. If there was a single Pokemon on this meadow that would be able to notice something was off or that an inconsistency happened somewhere, it would be him. Along with the Elgyem, who they all lovingly nicknamed Elgey, there were a couple of other Pokemon Marz had kind of warmed up to. They were a hilarious little ragtag group - an extraterrestrial Elgyem with what Marz liked to call a freak-streak of OCD, a short-tempered sass-machine Weavile, a gluttonous materialistic Sableye, a pacifistic spineless Altaria, an edgy murderous Umbreon, and a geriatric grumpy snide icy Ninetales.
They'd all known each other through different circumstances but never really realized they all had a common friend in Elgey until he rounded them all up and requested them to meet him at his little hut the morning after the disappearance. Marz was, needless to say, quite unsure what Elgey was thinking, as she got the feeling he might've noticed something not even the police or Luxray noticed - or perhaps, he noticed something the governing bodies of the Rebellion didn't want them to notice. Either way, knowing that Elgey was the type of person who didn't rest until he has the information he wants on hand, Marz knew she would definitely come to his room first thing in the morning. As for the other Pokemon...
Marz was highly skeptical, to be honest. Not everyone had the streak of doubtfulness towards Luxray and the rest of them that Elgey and Marzanna shared; a lot of them, in fact, considered the Luxray to be at the rank of a god, a messiah or savior that gave them grace and shielded them from the clutches of the wicked humans. Oh, but Marzanna knew that Pokemon could be equally cruel too. And not only from human command but under their own will too. The wild pack of Houndoom and Houndour that attacked her minutes after escaping instead of helping a visibly mangled and tortured Ninetales surely weren't commanded by humans. No one really communicated on a day-to-day basis with the Luxray, at least no one that Marzanna knew of. There always was a possibility - no matter how ridiculous it sounded - that the Luxray was a psychopath and hoarded the Rebellion just so he could fill out some kind of sick satisfaction he had.
With that thought, Marz strolled back to her house after the impromptu meeting the Elgyem held. That was enough thinking and being social for one day - there were a warm quilt and a cold room waiting for Marzanna to come and recharge her batteries. Slamming the door behind her with one of her tails, Marz stumbled over to the room she appropriately oftentimes called her den, and slid between the quilt and hay-filled mattress, drifting off into an unsettlingly dreamless sleep.
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The sun rose and with it Marzanna as well. Despite not really being a morning person, her internal clock awoke her surprisingly early for someone with a well-known sleeping-in streak. No one dared to wake the Ninetales from her sleep till the sun shone perpendicular to the sundial. While she would usually just uncover herself or turn to the other side and continue her sleep, Marz knew that the jitters she started feeling at the base of her tails wouldn't let her sleep no more.
Throwing her quilt aside, Marzanna got up from the bed, stretching into a bow position once all four of her paws were on the ground and feeling the satisfying crackle of her joints getting back into their proper places. With one paw, she rubbed away the watery gunk at the corners of her eyes - she'd been getting more and more of them after she turned forty (ah, the charms of old age) - and stepped out of her den into an improvised kitchen area. It's not as if she had any cooking abilities, nor were there any traditional kitchen utensils or gadgets - there was a wood stove that doubled as a furnace and fireplace (which she seldom used - after all, she was an Alolan Ninetales, not a Kantonian one), and a huge wall full of shelves upon which she stored most of the berries, herbs, meats, and other foodstuffs she would buy or forage.
Throwing a quick glance across the shelves, she picked up two Tamato berries for herself and a Yago berry for Elgey. It was an unspoken rule that one should bring something when visiting another Pokemon's housing unit, whether it be a nest, den, or a proper house, and no matter how cold Marz usually was, she would rather take a couple of seconds of her time to pick out something for Elgey than to have multiple years of bad luck. She contemplated bringing a basket and stuffing it with other food in case the other Pokemon from their... gang, she assumed, would come, but there was a high possibility that she would be the only one there. Maybe another Pokemon too. Or maybe all of them would come. She wasn't a Psychic-type. She had no way of knowing - but she wouldn't risk wasting her stash and letting it rot.
With another look around her house, she exited said building and, once again, slammed the doors behind her. It's not that she liked slamming doors, but the door she had installed was faulty from day one and took much more force to open and close. Luckily, she had eight tails, and zero fucks to give about the door. The Rebellion offered free housing, and that included maintenance and replacing broken doors.
Luckily, Elgey's house was not that far from Marz's. Only a three-minute walk later, and Marz was at the front door of the Elgyem's home. She raised one of her tails to knock on the door but decided against it at the last second. Elgey was the type of person who would probably leave the door unlocked, and the knob rotating when she moved it with her tail confirmed that. She made her way inside and, after seeing that he wasn't in the main area of the house, beelined to what she assumed was the bedroom door.
In a similar fashion as the front door, she opened the bedroom door with no prior warning - not even a hey or a knock - and was greeted by the smell of old books and fresh linen. As expected of the alien Pokemon, his room was fine-tuned to his mixed futuristic bookworm aesthetic. The furniture was modern, almost as if it were made for a human and not a Pokemon, with stark whites contrasting deep black accents, and yet, the books that were scattered all over the room, some on the table and floor but mostly on the floor-to-ceiling shelves that lined the walls, breathed knowledge and antiquity. In the time that Elgey spent in the Rebellion, Marzanna was pretty sure he read and analyzed every single available book on every single topic he could get his stubby little three-fingered hands-on, including almost every written piece on the history of the Rebellion.
Elgey was sitting in a modern, sleek white armchair tucked in one corner of the room, surrounded by multiple books haphazardly dropped on the floor. It seemed that Marzanna arrived just seconds after one of Elgey's intense research sessions, and he hadn't had time to clean up the books he dropped on the floor while studying. Marz glanced at Elgey's face to try and get the feeling on how he was doing judging by his expression, but as he was an alien Pokemon and had no way of showing facial expressions, Marz didn't know if what he had found - if he even found anything concrete - was good or bad.
"Yo, alien-boy," Marz spoke, voice dull and monotonous, and as she did, she picked up several books from the floor and placed them on the nearby table, "got any news for us?" she finished, plopping down on the newly cleared area of the floor while tossing him the Yago berry she brought for him. "And is anyone else planning on coming or is it just gonna be you and me?"
/// OOC: my hand slipped ahahhah whoops. > < sorry if the post ended up being too long!! this is mostly to set up how marz feels about the whole situation and give insight on another bit of marz's past && some things that may or may not be useful further in the roleplay ^^
