Chapter Text
The desk was in a state of pure chaos, and with Zola’s boss ruffling around to find her mission folder, it was even worse. Papers were falling on the floor, CONFIDENTIAL in red stamped on it. The Pokémon ranger sighed heavily, pinching the bridge of her nose. It wasn’t the first time she had to deal with him being disorganized, but with the current situation, it was too much for her to handle.
She looked for it herself, finding it quickly, thank gods, opening it and closing it almost immediately.
“Ah, you found it. I should have told you that… yeah…” he barely said, looking at her losing all colors on her face
“How can anyone do that?”
“Well.” he began, coming to sit at his desk in a long sigh. “The guy is known to be… weird.” he said, moving his hands to try to make her understand to open the folder.
“I am not opening that again.”
“Just skip the photos, come on, we don’t have all day.” he ordered on an almost annoyed voice. “Anyway. Someone already saw him kick a pokémon or yell at them, nothing too bad at first. But then he opened a farm without a permit, and no one in the village really believe that he was fit to raise and sell pokémons. And they were right, as you saw.”
A genocide. The guy was at first only releasing pokémons in the wild, which was fine until the area was filled with eevees and people started complaining. Zola already went there once, asking him gently to not over-breed, but apparently he found another solution… if you could call that one. Murdering the poor things and letting them rot in plastic bags like trash. The image of the pictures came back to her mind, making her gag.
Her boss lazily waved to make her focus on him again.
“You OK there?”
“I’ll be fine.”
“Good, act as soon as you can. I trust you are more than able to catch that monster. If you need someone to come with you, ask any of your coworker, really. Just, not a trainee or student. We don’t want them to see this part of the job, yet.”
She nodded, and he came back to his papers, letting her leave. She needed a coffee. Or ten. Not that she will be able to sleep tonight anyway. Going down the stairs, she slipped the pale green folder in her backpack, and went straight to her usual bar, not even telling anyone goodbye. In all honesty, she didn’t want anyone to see her in that state.
Walking to the Lysandre Café, she tried to put herself in the shoes of that man, with little success. Even if she was on the verge of dying because of a lack of money, she would not kill anyone, or anything. Maybe there was something else she didn’t know? She opened the door to the red café, getting comfortable at the bar. At least she knew something here would try to get this issue out of her head for a little.
“Isn’t it my favorite lady?” the barman arrived, red suit, red glasses, red hair, pouring her some coffee. “You don’t look so good today, kitten.”
“Could be much better.” she said as he was removing his apron, coming to sit next to her. “What are you doing?”
“Takin’ a break. Tell everything to your future amazing boyfriend.”
“Come on.” she laughed a little. “Just work stuff. A guy being an ass to some pokémons.”
“Well, this is your everyday job, for you to look like you saw a corpse it must be much worse.” he said, installing a small silence between them. “Are you kidding me?”
“I wish.” she said, trying to take a sip of her coffee but getting immediately stopped
“I barely poured that, you don’t want to burn your tongue. Anyway. You have a partner to go at least? You’re not gonna go see a creep without any pokemon or other ranger, right?”
A new silence.
“Zola, come on!”
“Listen! It’s more complicated than that. And I don’t want anyone to see the shit I just saw.”
“Show me. I’m just the barman, come on.”
“Ah so now you’re not the future boyfriend?”
“Come ooon.” he whined.
“Valentin, what are you doing?” arrived Lysandre himself, a pyroar-like tall man, making the red haired man stand up and go back to his job. “Good evening Zola.”
They exchanged the shortest polite conversation, as he went to the back door, leaving them rather quickly. Valentin waited a little before going back to his stool, his hand reaching out to her, asking to see the pictures. She gave him the folder, letting him carefully open it and have a look inside. She could not see his eyes through his shades, his face conveying little to no emotion, which was unusual for him.
“Are you alright?”
“Yeah!” he said smiling again, giving her back the folder, holding on tight on it when she was trying to take it. “Hope you get that asshole. Which I’m certain you will, kitten. Oh hey look who’s being all shy again.”
Valentin gave his arm to his green zubat who perched there, kind of hiding in her wings. It was something she was doing for some reasons, even with the ranger who was usually good with ‘difficult’ pokémons like violent wild pokémons, or extremely shy ones. She was also maybe being a drama queen. Pokémon often liked to take some… quirks of their trainers. It made her smile a little, and finally drink her coffee, feeling better.