foolishwren | 119. [FOURTH WALL! ACTION FOR ERRYBODY]

_{[It's begun.]

[THAT TIME OF YEAR.]

[No, not the time of year when the Christmas decorations start going up in stores-- let's be real, guys, that happened like two months ago.]

[No.]

[It's that time of year when the boundaries between worlds grow thin and all kinds of wild and wonderful things come pouring out of thin air onto the streets for all to watch and enjoy.]

[... And then on the other end of the spectrum, there's...]}

WHOA! HEY, EVERYBODY, LOOK! MORE NEW POKEMON!!!

_{[The shout of an excited Ace Trainer dudebro who never quite got off the September Swarm hype train rings out over the chaos as a small army of... uh... things come bumbling down the sidewalk, ineffectively squawking and bumping into peoples' legs.]}

OH! Oh, they're ADORABLE! LOOK! I'm keeping one RIGHT NOW!

_{[A Poke-Fan sweeps one off of its tiny nub feet and cradles it like an infant while it flops and kicks.]

[A crowd soon forms.]

[No one pays any attention to the trainer hopping up and down at the edge, waving her arms.]}

Guys-- GUYS!! STOP!

THOSE AREN'T-- THOSE AREN'T POKEMON, YOU GUYS.

DON'T TRY TO CA-- unbelievable.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Well, that's what they are.

[SHRUG]

They're nice and bite-sized, and it's not like they can hurt my teeth right now.

[He pulls out another one, but turns it over in his fingers to show her instead of just eating it right away.]

_{[She leans in to squint at it slightly-- but they're interrupted by a series of honks of varying pitches as a cluster of the numbodies come waddling up, craning their... non-heads towards the tiny red jewel in Envy's fingers.]}

[Envy looks down at them, surprised.]

Huh. I wonder...

[Well, it's not like he doesn't have plenty right now. And that makes him more willing to experiment. So he flicks the red stone down at them to see if they'll do anything with it.]

_{[The reaction is instant. The creatures fall upon it like ducks all striving for the same chunk of bread. Of course, there's only one rock, so only one of them emerges victorious. It's... a little unclear how the thing actually swallowed it, but it happened.]

[As soon as they realize it's gone, they cluster at Envy's feet, squawking expectantly.]}

[WELL, THAT ANSWERS THAT.]

[...8I]

[Envy reaches into the bag and pulls out a small handful of the stones, then tosses them to scatter on the ground a little ways away from where the numbodies are clustered.]

...I guess they like alchemy.

[Hopefully this won't turn them into SUPERPOWERED weird monsters or something.]

_{[No Envy, they like CONGEALED HUMAN ESSENCE. You know, like most monsters do. :)]}

Huh.

_{[She watches as they cavort and hop over to guzzle up the scattered stones. They're... weirdly cute when they're not trying to knock her down.]}

... Well, shit.

Wish I'd had some of those when I was wading through the Otherworld.

[HE'S TRYING NOT TO POINT THAT OUT.]

They do make a good distraction.

...let's move somewhere else before they run out, I don't want them to get all of these.

[Or be gross-looking right up near him begging for more.]

All I could do was just throw the occasional scrap of beef jerky into the corner and kind of hope they forgot about me.

_{[And it had worked on the dogs a lot more than it had on anything else.]

[But in any case, his suggestion gets a relieved nod. If these moron trainers want 'em, they can have 'em.]}

Let's go somewhere that isn't full of weekend bullshittery.

If we can find anywhere that isn't.

[BUT, OFF THEY GO. Leaving the trainers to their "next gen pokemon swarm".]

This weekend hasn't been that bad for me. Relatively.

[Famous last words. But for now, everything's going well!]

Yeah, well, I sure can't say I haven't had worse-- _{[All the ones where BOB had shown up outrank this one by at least three hundred places.]} --but it's still SERIOUSLY a drag when anything from home rears its ugly head.

119. [FOURTH WALL! ACTION FOR ERRYBODY]

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