[Game thread] Skull Ruins Pokerole

[Lord Windos]

Spoiler

Flashback indeed!

Ralts casts Malphena a sidelong glance.

...then goes back to ignoring her, his attention squarely on Nathan, his focus entirely on just being there for his best friend.  Who he's sticking next to like glue, obviously.  But moreso than usual.

It's rather...depressing.

Nathan's scared.  Scared of what might happen to Carbink and its friends.  He's afraid they'll hurt themselves for no reason...or that the Scimitars will finish them off if they don't do the job themselves with Self-Destruct/Explosion.  Or that Ventus might seek retribution for Carbink almost braining Shiva...it's not safe for them in the immediate future, no matter how he looks at it...

...and he can't do a thing about it because he screwed up so, so massively...

...the only thing he CAN do is move on, hope that they decide to listen to what he was trying to say...but he knows they probably won't...

...and so, he's sad.  Angry.  Frustrated.  Worried.  Scared.

...and Ralts is too.  How much of it is genuine is hard to tell, as he shares many of his feelings with Nathan and vice versa these days, but...it should be clear to Malphena (being a Misdreavus and all) that Ralts is genuinely afraid.  Of what?  Well, that's the hard part...

Nathan is completely oblivious to Malphena's presence right now, btw.  Swiftfire's noticed her, but has elected to just ignore the ghost unless given good reason not to.

While that glance Ralts gave her was only fleeting at best, it certainly gave Malphena a lot of Insight on the source of his woes, along with the genuine feelings of fear that he extruding like a miserable taffy machine that sorely tempted her to dig right into. He was afraid....no, he was downright tormented by something, and based on what she knew of the breed that her master told her about over his notes (*Bang!* goes the Chevok Gun!) and how such terrible feelings were almost a mirror image of his master.....she KNEW who the culprit was.

And judging by the thoroughly annoyed/miffed expression that took place on the screaming banshee's face, she was very displeased about this.

Doesn't that boy know he was sharing his misery UNDILUTED with his trusted partner, and driving them into despair too as a result?! Her master had said off handily that this 'Nathan' could be a bit insensitive at times, but she didn't expect that quality to manifest in such a offensive way! A trainer's job was to take care of their Pokémon and be with them when they need it, and so to they return the favor, but this display struck her as leaning WAY TO FAR onto his abnormal Ralts as an outlet for his grief! No, no, no , that wasn't right at ALL!

That thought firmly in mind, and figuring that Ralts would continue to be miserable/frightened and ignore any form of interaction with her unless she outright started slinging Ghostly magicks at him, the mischevious spirit decided to solve this issue by going straight to the source of it, te he !

To that end, she dematerialized from the young empath's side by phasing through the floor and leaving him by himself.....

.....and proceeded to jumpscare Nathan by shooting out of the ground and giving him a niiiiiice long and frightening glower while only inches away from his face, a low menacing *Screeeeee* being emitted by her all the while. If he was so wrapped up in his own doubts and worries that he was neglecting almost everyone else and his Ralts most of all, she'd give him something to REALLY get work up over and snap out of it as punishment, hmpt! Which should be VERY effective, seeing as he was COMPLETELY unaware of her existence until now, te he he......

Once he was all shaken up and withdrawned from his misery, she toned down her scary face and instead just fixed him with a irritated glare, before twisting around and directing her sight straight at his Ralts and back to him again, and letting out a displeased *Scree.......* . This should have indicated (to her) in a rather clear way to the boy that A) Ralts was miserable, B) She was displeased about it, to say the least, and C) She decided to scare him to teach him a lesson because.....? Given Nathan was a bright boy, he should be able to connect the dots and figure out what she's getting at. Well, presuming that Ralts didn't immediately try to sleep her with Hypnosis after the jumpscare. In which case, she at least got him out of that funk and to pay attention to the feelings of others!

During this time, Ventus had gone off to retrieve Turiel from wherever she was for the upcoming dig before he recalled her and Raphael (who elected to avoid Nathan and that conflict given his misery was making THEM extremely uncomfortable), making him completely unaware of what had went down.

At least, for now.....