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((Way to blow my cover, Mars stare ))



The Battle Girl sat down at the front steps leading up to the Gear Station, next to a small band playing music for money on the sidewalk. It had only been five minutes since she texted Wayne back, so now she just had to wait.

Salieri was not very patient when it came to waiting on people. It didn't take her long before she got bored. She shifted and fidgeted around, trying to get the most comfortable position on the stone steps she could. But even laying down wasn't very relaxing on the hard surface. She did some stretches for a few minutes aimlessly until she got bored again.

So she started doing handstands on the steps, which evolved to doing walking up and down the steps on her hands. She fell a couple of times, but got it down pat after a while.

A few six year old kids that were coming home from the supermarket stopped to watch the Battle Girl do handstands. They asked Sal if she could teach them how to do handstands. Sal said she would in return for a banana.

She ate the banana while giving the kids pointers as they struggled to get into the position. Eventually, she had to teach by example again, until all of them were standing on their hands stably. This attracted more people to the steps momentarily, and in this time the band that was playing got the most tips they had collected all week.

The crowd dispersed quickly, realizing it wasn't anything but kids doing handstands, but the kids stuck around hoping Salieri would show them more cool stuff. Sal told them to get her some bricks for her to break, so they left promising to return.

And return they did, with as many bricks as they could carry in their arms. Salieri had Salem hold them up telekinetically while she shattered them one by one. The kids yelped and clapped in delight, until Salieri told them to go home since her friend would be here any minute. So they did.

Salieri went back to doing nothing. She wanted to pull out her flute to practice a little more since she the last time she played was in Nacrene with Moze. But her sound would clash with the band's, so instead she just fiddled with her xtransceiver.

The Battle Girl downloaded a voice changing app. You spoke into the microphone and your voice came out differently through a pre-selected filter. The app was poor quality, though. Thankfully it was free. She downloaded a few more freebies that were similarly useless until she got bored again.

Now it had been over half an hour since she got to the Gear Station. Sal thought it was fair game to throw Wayne another line at this point. If he's lost then I'll just give him directions. Doesn't he have a map? What kind of trainer doesn't have a map?

((Damn, that was a sweet vacation. Totally got over depression, got inspired by Mars and kicked existential crisis in the rear.

LET'S DO THIS!))

How many years ago had it been? Decades had gone by since the last time he'd felt it.

Anxiety.

Flash back

"Third one this week, and it's only Tuesday." McCoy the plump little cop said. Notepad for taking witness statements, chewing gum slightly muffling his words.

Kero Redgrave was just a step ahead of him, ducking over the police tape. "That's ten in the region so far."

"Yeah, some sick ******** got a thing for kids. I tell ya, if I could get my hands on him." His gum blew up past his lips into a bubble and popped.

Kero approached the corpse that went alongside this case and knelt down, pulling the cover back far enough to see the head - knife still embedded. Deep enough that the guard stuck part way in as well. Someone had hit him with it. Hard.

"Lady says her husband woke up to the kid cryin' and ran in. Then wham, he was dead. She found him in the hall. Never saw the perp." McCoy popped his gum again. "Got any leads?"

"It's the same location as all the other wounds." Kero examined it for a moment longer before he covered the head up again. "Take a microscope and I bet it'd be exactly on mark."

"So he's got a thing for knives and heads. Not much to go on, Redgrave." Pop. McCoy surveyed the scene a bit more. Blood, missing baby, wife crying. They'd gone from outside to the second floor of the house. Cramped little thing it was, half as wide as a normal house but twice as tall.

"He buys knives in bulk or makes them himself. My guess is they're custom made. We track down the maker we find him. Unless he makes them himself."

Pop.

McCoy shrugged his shoulders. "No leads Redgrave. Been trackin' him all this time and we've just hit dead ends. Gonna be a cold case before the summers over."

"No fingerprints, no dirt or mud or anything. You're probably right McCoy." Kero sighed. All they had were hunches and dead ends. More people had been questioned as victims than suspects.

Pop.

"Yeah, givin' us a dead end case like this is like bein' put in a ********' corner. Stevenson says it's cause the drug bust got botched last month. Captain ain't pleased."

"Stevenson just doesn't like you."

"Or you."

"Right. Ignore him. He's dirty anyways. Just got off suspension for erasing traffic tickets for bribes."

Pop. "Sure Redgrave. We ignore him, nobody else does and we still get a bad rep. This is a bust man, let's go grab some coffee. Little joint on West makes the best in town."

"You just like the waitress there."

"You bet your a** I do. So you in?"

Kero looked at the body one last time. "Yeah. Let's go."

/flashback

***

"Kid your age with a tat," the man at the counter said. Azucena had asked Henrietta to help hold her hair back and now she was showing the bar code tattoo below the base of her neck.

"We wanted to see if it would scan," Azucena said, turning toward the owner and slipping her hair from Henrietta.

The owner couldn't suppress the smile. "Yeah? Does it?"

"Once. Apparently I'm a twelve dollar microwavable pizza."

The owner laughed. Henrietta couldn't help the smile on her own face.

"Anyways, we gotta go. Can't miss the concert." She dropped some money on the counter and turned to Henrietta. "Right? Let's go."

Henrietta nodded. "Y-yeah." She produced her own cash and started for the exit.

"Remember, after party. Here." Azucena said this while she walked backward, speaking to the owner. "Be awake!"

"Yeah, I'll be here."

The two left.

"I get it if you're shy. I'll go on ahead so I don't bother ya." Azucena was a step behind Henrietta.

"N-no, it's fine."

"Cool." She took the extra step to catch up. "Man I'm excited! This concert is gonna be huge! They got a whole fricken' stadium. You see what they do with sports games that're huge, right? Half time shows and all that. This one should be ten times greater!" The girl was full of energy as she marched onward. Henrietta only had a small idea of where it all came from.

"Y-yeah, me too."

"Come on. Show some gusto, nobodies gonna believe you're excited if you don't show it."

"S-sorry."

"Tough egg to crack, huh?" Azucena looked like she was thinking now.

"Hum?"

"Just an expression." A moment later her face lit up. "Got it. Alright, before we get to the stadium I'm gonna make you laugh."

((Tsk tsk, nothing short of the shadow triad would be enough to take down Tk Mars. Anyways, I had a dream that something similar to this happened. so i decided to shape it into a post.))

It wasn't long before Tk got bored of his room in the Pokemon center and decided hed rather be exploring the city. He knew he should be challenging the Gym for the Bolt badge but he just wasn't feeling it. Instead, he found a collection of shop's, a plaza of sorts. it housed a Small Cake shop on the corner, an electronics shop, an arms shop named 'legally armed', followed up by a hardware shop, and lastly a small corner store.

"What a weird collection of shops.." Tk observed. Lancer, who was walking along side Tk merely pouted, still upset that his trainer refused to stop at the cake shop.

Parked outside the corner store was a police cruiser. on the hood of the cruiser was a box of donuts that seemed to have been bought from the cake shop at the other end of the plaza. Reaching for one of the pastries was a short tubby man with a handle bar mustache who looked way to friendly to be a police officer. leaning against the passenger side of the car was a tall and very thin police officer who looked malnourished, sipping at his coffee, that most likely was screwed up from from the grimace he made after sipping the drink.

While passing the officers nTk caught sight of the standard issue firearm at the waste of the doughnut eating officer. 'Weapons...' thinking back, both incidents at the dream yard as well as pinwheel forest could have gone way different if fire arms were involved.

"Hey kid, watchya starin at me for? want a doughnut or somthin'?" asked the larger cop. Tk was torn away from his thoughts when he was spoken too.

"No, no thank you" he quickly replied. he opened his mouth to speak again but was cut off but the thinner, mean looking officer.

"Then scram kid, cant you see we aint got time for kiddie games?" before Tk could make an equally smart remark about how they dont even look like they have time to do there jobs the rounder cop spoke up "Aww don't be like that Steven, were supposed to be role model for the kids" he finished taking a few steps towards Tk "so, what can i help ya with kiddo?"

"Uhh-umm, yea is there a comic shop around here? Im not from around here." in all honestly when Tk left he center he was half heartidly hoping to find one. To his surprise the cop nodded his head an pointed over his shoulder to a building right across the street called Arrow comixs. "Thanks officer" he said with a nod and walked past the officer and across the street, but not before casting the thinner officer a glare.

"Cute kid." stated the friendly officer.

"Tch, whatever. just wish those damn brewistas could learn how to make a simple caramel machiato." replied the officer named Steven.

~Ting ding~ chimed the small bell above the door. signalling the arrival of a potential customer. the clerk at the counter merely flipped the page of the comic he was currently reading. the inside of the store was nice. decked out it in nice display stands, lounge chairs and a rather large selection of both comics as well as manga. 'Why's the place so empty?..' he thought.

walking away from the doorway Tk begain browsing the shop selection, preferring to stay in the manga section rather than the comics area. after picking up the latest volumes one piece and paying for them he took a seat in one of the lounge chairs and began reading them. Roughly an hour of silence elapsed before a string of 'Chunk' sounds sounded. It was like an automatic baseball pitcher went haywire and just started firing off baseballs.

That was followed by a scream of pain followed up by the shattering of the front window of the comic store. "What the--!" Tk yelled, jumping to the floor.

"Hahahaha, sludge bomb sludge bomb sludge bomb!!!!" screamed a man from the street, who was obviously insane. his order was followed by several explosions from the ensuing attack. 'ok, so its a man and a pokemon' the youth thought, jumping up from the floor, rushing by the cowering shop owner.

after exciting arrow comixs, Tk Saw a man with long blond hair wearing shorts that were too short and a plain white shirt that was two sizes too big. In his hand was a gas powered nail gun. 'So that where the chunk sound was cumming from..'. furthermore there was a chainsaw strapped to his back. a few feet away was across the street there was flipped police cruiser, not far from that laid the round friendly cop with a pool of blood around him. Laying on his stomach roughly twelve feet away from the criminal was the twig thin cop Steven struggling to get to his feet. His pant leg was soaked in blood. The criminal raised the nail gun and pointed it at Steven.

"How's it feel cop? being so close to being dead like yer partna' ova there?" mocked the insane psychopath followed by an insane kacle. Next to him was an Amoonguss that was laughing along with its trainer. "Say hi to him for me" the criminal said, finger resting against the trigger of the nail gun.
"Drill rush!", The chunk should never came, however the criminal cried out as his nail gun spun across the ground, along with one of his fingers. landing a few feet away from the dead officer landed Spike.

In front of Steven stood Tk. "How could you...., why? whyd you do this!!!?" barked the young trainer. "Why?" the psycho asked, suddenly perfectly ok with missing a finger. "Why because its fun of course you silly child. Now i suggest you run along now before you get hurt playing in a game your too young to be playing."

"Tch, you'll pay" replied Tk.

"well see, Guss, use sludge bomb on that little brat" commanded the psycho/trainer.

Tk took off at a sprint, circling around the criminal, drawing the fire away from the wounded Steven. "Tch, try this. Go, Richie." the criminal threw out a pokeball, releasing a manectric. "Thunder bo-" the criminal began calling his attack but Tk was quicker. "brick break!" the manectric was clobbered on the head by one of spikes clawed hands. The drilbur then took his place at Tk's side along with Lancer, turning this into a double battle.

((Ill continue this in a little while. Fingers hurt.))

((But Zamaku, comic books and manga are the same thing~))

((There's a great deal of manga that's read the western way. Sadly, a manga is just a japanese comic book. manwha is korean. comic is american. it's a language thing, not that there's only two types(i recall there being a word for chinese ones too, and if you went out you'd find that there's problem different names for comics in every single language.))

"Okay, I got one." Azucena had spent her time thinking up a joke to tell and had otherwise been quiet during their walk. "So, you have a friend with only one hand." She moved to walk in front of Henrietta, walking backwards so she was faced towards her.

"R-right," Henrietta said.

"So how do you solve disputes?" There was a short pause as Henrietta didn't answer. "Majority vote." She raised both hands when she said this. Henrietta made a sound like an exhale caught between what might've been a laugh and what might not have been one, given some furthered degree of comedy.

"Almost, huh?" Azucena donned another thoughtful look as she went back to considering how you'd make one laugh.

"Y-you don't have to," Henrietta said as Azucena resumed walking alongside her.

"I said I would so I do." By now the stadium was in sight. "I'd hate to do it the cheap way, but a promise is a promise."

"H-hum?" Henrietta looked to her side but Azucena had disappeared. Before she could look around more she felt the wiggle of fingers on her sides and her body tensed up and her arms moved to her sides as she squirmed away - giggling the entire time.

"D-don't do that," Henrietta said, face red as she stopped and looked at Azucena.

"Sorry, sorry." Azucena's tone said it wasn't a big deal. "But you laughed. That's a good feeling, isn't it?"

"Y-yeah," Henrietta averted her eyes from Azucena.

"Then we're agreed." She hooked Henrietta's arm with her own. "So let's go see the concert!" And, tugging Henrietta along at first at a quickened pace, the two made their way there.

((Okay, now I'm ready. 3: ))

((right you are, i honestly didn't know that there were various types of comics out side the area of western style comics and Manga. But in my defense the two seem to be more idolized above the other nations variation of 'comic books' so please excuse my ignorance sweatdrop ))