[1x1] "Clefroka"

[clef]

The sound of a ship's horn blasted through the air, alerting almost everyone on Cinnabar Island that the S.S. Anne was preparing to lift its anchor and set sail. A slender feminine figure dressed in a dark grey burka pushed through the crowd. The sound of high heeled shoes clicked as she walked but her feet could not be seen. The only feature that was shown from under the garment was a pair of red horned-rimmed glasses that gleamed too bright to see the eyes underneath. A large puma-like pokemon followed behind her - a Persian - and the Pokemon easily maneuvered between the people that his trainer had to shove.

Julia Ross (better known as Anne Esthesia by members of her organization and formerly known as Nastasia. In fact she hadn't gone by her real name is almost a decade.) approached a man on the dock that led up to the ship. He was preparing to withdraw the stairs back into the hull of the ship, but her mysterious presence made him stop what he was doing.
"Ma'am it's too late to board the ship we're about to set sail." He told her apologetically. Julia did not move or avert her gaze. She simply lifted her hand and lowered her glasses with her index finger, exposing her cold eyes.
"Here's my ticket. Lower the stairs." She commanded him.
"I told you I can't let you on the ship I-" The man began but suddenly froze. His eyes met the gaze of an angry Persian. This was no ordinary cat, however, as it was easily twice the size of a normal Persian! The man on the doc did not protest any further and reconnected the boat stairs to the dock. He held out his hand for Julia's ticket.
"Good choice" She said dryly, caressing his face as she walked past him. Her long red nails felt sharp almost like blades. She gave him a playful slap before laying her ticket in his hand.

After getting on the boat she went to the service desk and retrieved the key to her room. It was a rather small room for her tastes, but as long as she had a private place where she could remove her shroud-like dress and feel fresh air on her skin she was content. The woman tossed the burka onto her bed, revealing a large pink bouffant adorned with a red headband. She wore a clean white blouse and a black pencil skirt with a red belt and heels to accessorize. Julia was a pretty woman, but her personality shone through this beauty and made her radiate with hatred.
"Step 1: Complete, baby." She said while rubbing the head of her large catty friend.

[safroka]

“You quite well took your time doll.”

Just over seven feet of a tall, lanky tracksuit emerged from a cloud of steam in the powder room. It was made of a darker pink silk with white stripes like thin blades of light cutting across both sides of the pants.

Slightly hunched over, he shut the door and slowly moved towards this Julia Ross. With each step he took, the floor clapped to match Julia’s clicking. His swooping skeletal form and intense Run-DMC getup even in all their screaming presentation did not take away from the massive chunk of hair which looked as manufactured as the rest of him. Such a large stock of hair was colloquially known as an afro although there was no way this hair could be natural in the sea of spectacle that he was.

“And now we are here again, together at last. It feels good, does it not? Nasta—oh, I forget if you go by that now. Was it Anne Es—no, no. Oh dear, you have far too many names for someone who most of us would hardly have considered special.”

Those white stripes shimmered as if they were cut from diamonds and played with space on the man’s body, extending endlessly if not for the gold belt and platform shoes which met them with an equally dangerous brilliance.

“I must say though, the years have done wonders for my eyes, you look absolutely radiant. I never chose to escort us back to Orre, mind you. They said I needed to be here because we were the closest in our time together. You look like you need a Grepa Berry, doll.”

The man reached in to one his pockets and tossed a Grepa Berry at Julia. His hands were proportionately long to the rest of his body, his fingers like branches, his knuckles bulbs.

“Now tell me, why would Cipher need you back?” The man’s lecherous smile fell apart. He was glaring at Julia although one could never tell behind his pair of elaborate and pink but reflective glasses. He knew Julia could tell though.

The man sat on her burka and scanned the room to make sure no windows or doors or vents would allow conversation to seep out, moving nothing but his eyes lurking beneath those bright panels of lies. It would appear to a stranger that he was completely motionless, looking dead ahead at Julia.

He scowled darkly. “I left. I was called back to answer to Cipher. Do you know what they did to me, Nastasia?” He purposely took a name he knew she was uncomfortable with. “They hurt me, doll. They hurt me well like I have hurt people, like I would hurt you if my life was not on the line as well.”

The man got up and moved towards Julia.

“Why did you not speak up for me then? You were nobody to Cipher until I brought you into the picture. How quickly loyalty fades away. You wear glasses for show, to intimidate perhaps. I wear mine because …”

Two pupils, milky grey. Dilated.

He put them back on. “You remember these very well. You loved them. I know you remember these, doll. I remember you would have killed for these to stare into yours and get us through whichever perverse mission Cipher had for us that day. Keith Agate? Madeline Marsh? You remember these names. You remember how we dealt with them. Yet here we are, me a shadow of glory. You, a lie. I hate you.”

He leaned in close to her, his white teeth glittering like the diamonds on his ears, once again forming a lecherous smile which threatened to rip through his sallow cheeks.

“But you know what they say about hate …”

He gripped Julia’s waist, the branches were rat traps now.

“… How similar it is to love …”

He tightened his grip, shaking as all the sadistic thoughts that had been dwelling in him for years now rose to the surface.

“… And I would love nothing more than to hear why Cipher wants you back. Nobody needs you anymore. Nobody needs you. Affur O. is dead. Your Affur Obaybee is dead. I am Fetty Sno and I am all that I will ever need.”

His glasses hid tears well.

[clef]

The sight of the man approaching her from the powder room was a lot to take in, as it had been quite a while since she had seen him. For a while she was unsure about his existence, but now she could be sure. There he stood - the only man on this planet Julia felt any sort of positive emotion for. No, it was more than that - this was a man that she would have followed to the end of the earth! She would jump off the edge given his instruction! This was the man she had loved at one point.

"Don't act like you're not excited to see me." Her dry emotionless voice sounded quite odd coming from such a pretty face.

Before Julia could say anything or make another move she was assaulted by some sort of desperate monologue. She could hardly follow where he was trying to go with this, but then she was handed a piece of fruit that he withdrew from his pocket. The woman simply held the yellow berry between her thumb and index finger at eye level. She was inspecting it for imperfections but then she was asked a question:

"Why would Cipher need you back?"

That struck a nerve. Affur O. always knew how to spark a reaction from her, but she would save it for the end of his performance. She began to feel heat radiating from her skin when he began to talk about their past. He called her by that name. That horrible reminder of what she used to be. She was weak and pathetic then, relying on her nickname and self-spread rumors to intimidate the Peons. She was nothing then compared to who she is now. Julia Ross was a woman to be feared. A woman who has killed and will kill again. A woman who needs nothing more than her bare hands to torture a man into talking.

Then were the eyes. Those horrible milky eyes that she hoped would have just been a bad rumor. It was true what he said about her before though - She did love his eyes, and seeing them in this state was quite saddening.

"I hate you" Here it was, the end of the spectacle.

Ms. Ross simply pushed him away from here, creating enough space for her to clap.
"That was excellent. Were you rehearsing in the bathroom?" She asked, the faintest hint of a smile on her emotionally barren face. She circled around to the window where she stroked her Persian who was eyeing the man who was berating his trainer. After feeling her touch he calmed down and lied back down.

"Oh they don't want me back." She laughed, "I never left. After the explosion I was advised by the men upstairs to lay low, so that's what I did." She turned around to face him, "That feeble little woman who followed you like a Lillipup is dead. You don't know anything about what I am now, but that can come later." She sat on a stool that was set up near a vanity where she looked in the mirror. The slender woman rotated her body to face him and crossed her legs at the knee.

"Oh and hun-" She began, "I don't want to be asked another question concerning the past. You got it?" There was slight menace in her voice.
"I think we can both agree that we want to close that chapter of our lives and stow it away."

Julia looked at her hand and noticed she was still holding the Grepa Berry. She almost considered eating it but upon inspection she noticed a small bruise, so she instead flicked it at the forehead of her old companion. Her nail created a small tear in the skin causing the blood of the fruit to spray dramatically when flicked.

"You know I don't eat anything that isn't perfect." Julia said, getting up to go wash the sticky juice from her hand.

[safroka]

Fetty Sno retreated and crawled back on to Julia’s bed, smoldering quietly.

Why would they tell her to lay low? Why was I to pay the price for our mishaps on Cinnabar?

She was trying to get to him. He had always seen her potential, but never acknowledged in fear that one day she might usurp him.

And now she has.

“Fine, I shall not probe you on trivial matters of the heart,” Fetty Sno conceded, dodging the Grepa Berry. “Tell me though, what your plans upon returning to Orre? They have not briefed me on anything and I would in all earnest like to know this much.”

They, being higher-ranking Cipher Administrators, had not told him anything. In fact, receiving Julia was a task he would have never dreamt of doing. He accepted it on the condition they would not play with his eyes anymore.

“Surely you have no hopes on returning to Cipher.” Fetty Sno had no idea what Julia had been doing with her life since. In fact, up until accepting his duty he was convinced she had died in a cataclysmic explosion on Cinnabar Island several years prior. “Please shed some light on your angle, doll.”

That Persian was much too large for his liking.

[clef]

Julia didn't want to admit it, but she hadn't been briefed either. She had no idea what their task in Orre would be or why she and Fetty Sno were even needed. The woman returned from the bathroom after toweling her hand off and returned to the vanity where she began to inspect her face for any lines or wrinkles. The slightest beginnings of frown lines were forming on her face. These years hadn't been good to her.

"Frankly speaking, I don't want to return to Cipher. Of course laying low was definitely not the easiest task in the world, as I had a lot of loose ends to tie, but after taking care of that it felt kind of nice to just be Julia." She had no idea why she was confiding in the man right after their previous exchange, but she decided to continue.
"They told me to let the rest of the Cinnabar Organization believe I was dead, most likely because the police were cracking down on all of the members and if I was believed to be dead I would still be of use to Cipher in the future. I didn't hear from them for years and I started to think I was free..." She paused and turned to face him for dramatic effect.

"Up until two days ago when I got a call from them. I was instructed to board the ship heading for Orre and I will receive further instruction upon arrival. Of course they told me that you would be the one accompanying me much to my distaste." Julia spun on the small stool to face the window and then stood up to go look outside. The ship was moving now and she could see the dock moving away from them.

"I had so much time to just leave the island and start my life somewhere else where they couldn't find me, and I neglected to do so." Her eyebrows tightened as she tried to restrain the sadness.
"You know I've had to do worse things outside of Cipher to protect myself - to protect us - than I ever had to do within the organization?" She decided to reopen the discussion of their past. There were a few people who were aware of the woman being alive, but they weren't after her, just information on her former partner.

[safroka]

Fetty Sno let the room fill with a silence of quiet understanding. Why resent her when she merely reflected who he was now? They were both clearly clinging to a tainted power. He looked at her clothes, the same. She smelled the same. She spoke with a cadence so lost on his ears. It was a painful empathy he felt when she studied herself in the mirror. How many identities had Fetty Sno run through by now? Their lives had been defined against each other from the start, sharing only a tether to Cipher, an organization which ultimately fashioned a power it could control. Vacuous shells.

“I did not know. I could not have.” He then spoke. “You should have left. I would have.”

He looked out one of the portholes and saw the sea cascading endlessly. He then felt the ocean on his skin. He became suddenly aware that the air had a texture to it. He preferred his air without texture.

“When I look out into the sea, I imagine all the swimmers, swimming along.” Fetty Sno was standing beside Julia now, still staring out the porthole. “Then a wave hits. A wave they can only stop and watch as it consumes them and whatever collection of experiences brought them to that point.”

He walked into the washroom, hunching over to get through the doorway and turned the tap on, splashing his dead face with water as if to revive it. “Did you know people who drown in cold water are more easily brought back to life?” He kept splashing his face with water. It was getting hotter.

“They say if you drown in hot water you are most certainly doomed as the heat severely increases the brain’s need for oxygen. But then again, I would assume not a lot of people drown in their friends’ jacuzzis.”

Hotter.

“But when we do swim in hot water, like you and me, we must come to terms with the fact that swimming in the face of large waves is not the problem for that logic follows a train of thought that supposes we not cook a meal in fear of burning our house down. Rather simply, it is the water we choose to swim in.”

The water was burning. Fetty Sno turned off the tap and let the remaining water run down his face. The air was hotter than ever in the powder room. He let his face buzz and decided to commit this particular sensation to memory.

“Our power has always been a false one. In the end, we were always going to drown.”

[clef]

"Hindsight is pointless. Life is a speeding car and if you spend too much time looking back you'll crash into a wall and die." Julia said with complete conviction. The metaphor might have sounded like a joke but she was serious. If she spent time thinking about how she could have done things differently it would tear her apart inside. She had to be strong and focus on the present and building a future.
"I dug myself into a hole by making it this far, and at this point it's better to dig deeper and see what's down there than to try to climb out." The woman was brushing her Persian with a brush she had produced from her purse. The cat pokemon yawned loudly.

As her colleague spoke she thought that he was rambling like some sort of psychopath, but as he got more into it she started to see the meaning. When he turned the tap on she watched steam start to rise from the stream that came out. The scalding water reminded her of the showers she used to take after a hard day. Especially hot on the day she had defeated a particularly annoying duo of trainers - Alex and Vaughn, the lovebirds. Allowing herself to feel the pain of the hot water was almost like a gift to herself.

"... we were always going to drown."

"Maybe so, er, Fetty, was it?" She was still getting used to the new name he had assumed. As much as she agreed with him, she didn't want to say it out loud. She was destined to meet a tragic downfall, but it wouldn't be the first time. She used to go by Nastasia - meaning "She who will rise again". Julia Ross decided that this conversation would only spiral deeper into the maelstrom of cynicism if she didn't stop it.

"This trip back home might not be so bad, sir." She bit her tongue on the last word. She was starting to fall back into old habits.

[safroka]

Fetty Sno exited the powder room and immediately perked up.

“Oh, that was melodramatic of me. I apologize, dear.” He put his hands together and smiled big. “For now though, let us look to what surprises await us in Orre. Perhaps though, we could maybe leave your quarters and poke around this ocean liner?”

Behind his glasses, he trained his eyes on the Persian while appearing to continue about the boat. “It is new and rather large, I would hope such a monster be interesting to explore.”

Fetty Sno made his way to the cabin door and turned to Julia.

“You know, since this is a new beginning for us, let us not fix to continue traditions of the past. I would love for you to lead the way, my Julia.”