(OOC: For the purpose of those reading, popcorning is something guinea pigs do when they are happy, a sort of twitch and a little hop into the air. We call it popcorning because it looks like a kernel of popcorn popping.)
The dreamy aura around Phi intensified as her opponent arrived, slipping like glassy water over the softly churning air as the crowds mumble grew, crescendoed, then stretched thin and dispersed. The women's gaze floated, ambled towards her opponent as she pressed the pokeball between her shirt and her coat, so as to secure it in place while her hand slipped again through the musty heat of her coat into the hoarded coolness of the fossilized bag, the position revealing the threadbare corners, bitten and worn by edges of books, ever so slightly as she sifted through its contents, clutching the pokeball tight against her chest.
The actions she was making not warranting her gaze, Phi studied her opponent, fixing upon Bailey the aimless wandering of her eyes, and it appeared, from her swift, secretive movements, that she was making an unconscious effort to hide the bag that was adorned with the drooping petals, and had done so many times before. Her eyes and mind connected. She had a sense of recollection, like she had seen the girl before, but Phi had traveled a lot, and what had happened yesterday seemed as distant as what had happened a year before today, and what would happen a year from it.
The girl, in her nervous manner, cloaked by the smile she wore, reminded Phi of a Dedenne, with her senses heightened, always wondering what was this and what was that. She had the look of someone rather indecisive but also slightly worried and Phi, in her mind's eye, saw just the picture of the small rodent, with its whiskers quivering, and its eyes twitching to and fro, knowing what was happening in the world, but powerless to stop it. Wearing a smile that was fake, and then realizing that perhaps the world wasn't so scary after all, and spreading her smile into a full-out grin, with wrinkles beneath her eyes and the lot of it. After all, the little Dedenne was a fairy type- she had that hidden interior, that aura of mystery, the power of the unknown in her tiny, scuttling grasp. The fairy type, Phi contemplated, was one of the most mysterious, and one of the most common to smile when you really should frown. Nevermind that. They often served a great source of surprise as well and surprise was a great, powerful emotion that sparked fire in one's veins, light in one's eyes, ferocity of power in mind, ferocity of revenge, and wit. Not only that but, on the battle field, surprise was in its most potent form, and its most inspirational.
Phi had retrieved from the bag, coddled beneath her coat, a pair of goggles and a deck of cards, tied with a rubber band. She fondled the goggles in her left hand for a moment, feeling the numerous dents and scratches that the pair of eye wear adorned as if she hadn't actually meant to take them out. Her fingers, stained, smudged grey, traced over the plastic lenses, rubbed against the thick strap, seemed to feel grains of sand whipping, chafing her skin, and then slipped them back into the frigid air of her bag. Her eyes, aimless as ever, refocused, as if for a moment she had completely lost reality.
"The two competitors have entered the arena! We anxiously await their Pokemon's release!" the announcer called in his screech of a shout.
Retrieving the muddied pokeball, Phi imagined she felt the blood in her veins stir, pulse a little faster, as if the tranquil wind she had been riding had begun to pick up pace, to scurry across the field. She cast an eye towards the sky, its perfect blue picture smudged with wisps of clouds, as if some three year old had taken an eraser up to the vast blue canvas and had a field day, then gave up before all the blue had been swept away by the magic of the end of his pencil. Switching the pokeball into her right hand, and the worn, warped deck into her left, Phi held it's rough, muddied skin daintily on her palm and, with a spark, a shock of electricity that stretched thinly across the air, released her Pokemon.
There was a drastic change in color on the battlefield. Phi had seen it as a soft orange, milky, creamy, pool awaiting the muddling of battle, of wit and power and intensity. Now, as if it had been a lake dashed by a pebble, the orange rippled into a dazzling yellow, a sharp, tangy kind of yellow, a hyper, bright kind of yellow. Memories swirled, and the corners of Phi's mouth rose slightly in a grin.
Phi blinked, gazing at her partner. His fur was thick and tussled, as if thrown every which way by a thrilling wind, yet seemingly had a greater affinity for gravity than it should have, the dim yellow tufts of a mane mussed playfully in a scene strangely akin to that of a bedhead. The ruffled Manectric seemed to blaze with static, and his fur, sticking out every which way, caused a joyfully prickly appearance. Someone with a boyish nature would almost imagine that hugging the ruffled Pokemon would feel bristly and coarse, yet strangely comforting, like the hairs of a horse, or a bed of musty hay. But more worthy of attention than the bed head of a Pokemon was what he wore on his feet.
Upon each paw, crusted with mud, bound tight to his feet by the pure coziness of its fit, was a black boot. They were made of thick, coarse, rubber, durable yet strangely flexible, and stretched about five inches up the legs of the four foot three electric Pokemon. Despite the strangeness of his attire, the Manectric seemed overjoyed at the rugged, dirt-crusted, muddied boots, adding to his display by bashing his front paws into the ground as if to declare them his, and Phi was relieved that they had made the long trip to Unova, where a shoe maker had forged his prized boots into being.
The air fizzed with electricity, and from the moment Osh landed on the ground, he was moving. He bucked his legs into the air, thudded his feet against the turf, twisted and turned and leaped into the sky like a foal on a summer day who just realized that the sun was up and the grass was lush and life was good. He exuded an intensity of excitement, and the thick-soled boots he wore bucked against the ground with a thwomp and a thump. Osh was ready to fight, and the playful joy that he exuded threatened to overpower even the dreamy atmosphere of his trainer, as her cheeks wrinkled, and she smiled involuntarily. It was memory that caused it. It was memory that caused everything.
Throughout the folds of time, where many memories slipped away, this one had remained. She could see it so clearly, despite the long passage between then and now. A hyper little Electrike, dancing in a swamp, bucking his heels into the air, striking mud in waves, catapulting himself into space and twisting, trying to land again on his feet, perhaps missing, but always getting back up again. Now that she thought about it, it wasn't a dance, as the word implied. No, it was much more of a popcorning, a twitch of excitement overgrown, a buck for the pure purpose that he is alive, and he can buck, and the rain is washing over his bed headed form, battering his bed headed form, bucking with his bead headed form, and he is alive, and the rain is alive with him.
How strange. She'd have never thought about it that way. No, the thought would have never entered her brain! At least, not until she saw him. There was always something that couldn't be fathomed, and you never knew you couldn't fathom it, until one day someone showed you you could.
Was there something she was missing now? Wasn't there always? But was there something... greater, something right beneath her nose? Yes, Phi thought there was, but what it was... now that was the question.
I am swept in a storm of a thousand hailstones, and searching for the eye.
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