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Elesa pressed her pointer fingers to her temples.
“Meowth Syndrome,” she said.
“Meowth Syndrome,” Ingo confirmed.
“Meowth Syndrome,” Emmet added cheerfully.
Elesa’s eyes moved back and forward between the twins like an oscillating fan. Her blank stare slowly lifted from their swaying gray tails to the black feline ears sprouting out from their heads. After a moment, she tilted her head back to stare at the ceiling.
“Okay,” she said tonelessly. “Sure.”
Like anyone who had had to grow up in this world, Elesa had been given precaution after precaution since she was old enough to walk. Don’t play with Venipede, don’t follow Litwick… memorizing all the obvious “don’ts” was just part of being a kid. But part of becoming an adult was having the grace to accept that, on occasion, Pokemon would just do some absolutely bizarre shit that no one on the planet could have expected, and everyone would just have to live with it.
Still: Meowth Syndrome?
“How long does it last?” Elesa asked, watching Ingo’s kitty ears twitch.
“It should be a-meowt one week, the doctors said.”
“Ingo,” Emmet said with a smile that did not match the motion of his ears going flat against his skull, “don’t you start. Don’t you even fucking start. You know as well as I do that this doesn’t force us to make bad puns.”
Ingo’s lip quirked the slightest bit, and his tail went straight up– the tell-tail sign of a happy Meowth. “You don’t find this a-mew-sing, Emmet?”
“Die. :3”
“Okay, okay, enough,” Elesa said, waving both her hands to get their attention. It was clear she was the one who was going to have to be the adult here, no matter how strong the urge was to pounce on them and stroke their fluffy, fluffy ears. “Obvious additions aside, what else does it do? Are there… behavioral changes?”
“It clawses–”
Emmet looked at Ingo.
“-it causes some behavioral changes, yes,” Ingo amended. “It shouldn’t be anything drastic, though, just the kind… of thing you’d expect from…”
Ingo’s voice faded. He was staring at Elesa, his pupils noticeably dilated.
“Ingo? What are you looking at–”
Ingo’s hand shot out. For a bizarre moment Elesa thought he was going to do a kabedon, but it turned out his intended target was actually–
“Wait– ah, augh, Ingo!!!”
Ingo had grabbed one of Elesa’s long, long sidelocks and was in the process of trying to pull it to his mouth to bite. But Elesa’s voice seemed to snap him out of it, as he suddenly gasped and dropped the length of hair.
“E-Elesa!” He sputtered, face going red, hands going up, and ears going down. “I-I’m so sorry, I just lost control for a moment, and–”
Ingo’s voice cut off as he immediately forgot what he was saying and proceeded to attack Elesa’s hair yet again.
“Augh, no! Bad boy, bad boy!!!” Elesa writhed, attempting to get it out of his mouth without doing too much damage to her hair. Finally she turned to the other Subway Boss. “Emmet, do something–!”
Emmet’s eyes were dark and shiny and round. He was staring at her other sidelock, which waved around with the motion of her body-
“AUUUUGHH!!!!”
It was going to be a long week.