[X] My Assistant

[Master Houndoom]

This RP's participants have already been decided. Please do not ask to join. Any bunnying has been pre-approved by the holders of the bunnined characters.

Bryce already hated this room.

It had been set up on the "demands" of his newest subordinate, who was neither subordinate nor new. Technically, he was Bryce's Aide de Camp, sent to him from the Maw to "help with the problems his Sector were facing". In reality, he was under the head office's orders to bring Sector B back into line. Bryce wanted to spit. They tasked him with the hardest job to do behind what was more or less enemy lines, and because he allowed his people free reign to do so, they took umbrage. Not for the first time, Bryce thought about striking out his own way.

This room was one of the many changes the "aide" insisted on. Along with the insistence that uniforms be worn at all times, the new aide had decided that mandatory weekly meetings would be implemented, in a central conference room. The old hotel had several such rooms available, and the aide had picked one with windows facing the corner street to the front of the building. It was the first major conflict between Bryce and the aide, to keep those windows covered. What Magma agent would have been able to resist attacking a room full of aqua uniformed agents visible to the world?

From that moment on, Bryce refused to call him by his name, which was Wilkins. He was the aide. The rest of the Sector followed suit, save for two.

He looked over the assembled agents under his command, some looking exhausted, having worked a night shift before being forced into a meeting. Others simply looked bored. One was stone faced, and it was on that face that Bryce's gaze lingered, and then on the seat next to him, held empty since the meetings had been implemented.

Lange sat, dutifully in his Aqua uniform, back ramrod straight, eyes wavering neither right nor left. He had claimed that very spot at the first meeting, and the spot next to him, and, as today, Kylarian silently supported him by sitting with the empty seat between them.

Kylarian doing anything in silence was cause for concern, from what Bryce had observed in her before.

The aide came in, a tall, thin man with male pattern baldness leaving a horse-shoe of hair around the back and sides of his head. His face was unremarkable save for the prominent nose, which seemed to be constantly half-stuffed, and held small, square spectacles with thick black frames. A deep blue button up shirt with the Aqua stylized A was his own concession to the uniform, a supposed compromise, since Bryce had insisted that his people be given the right to personalize their uniforms.

He set up his little laptop computer with the projector, bringing up a series of graphs and charts. Bryce did not interrupt him; for all he cared, this was an hour for the agents to either wind down from the end of the day, or to gear up for the beginning. Scant few were interrupting their duty, and even that grated against the Officer's sense of duty.

Near the end of the meeting, Bryce felt his hackles raise. He didn't believe in sixth sense, but once in a while he had hunches that, oddly, seemed to come true. This moment screamed of extreme danger, and Bryce almost stopped the meeting right then and there, but could not, stunned as he was by the strength of the feeling.

"Now, the search for Smythe, who was lost under the nose of one of our agents," Bryce sat up straighter, seeing Lange do the same. The boy's eyes narrowed, but that was the only change the boy's face had taken for the entire meeting. In the seat two chairs over, Kylarian's face took on a sharper look, like a hunting animal having caught scent of prey. "Nothing has turned up, despite our best efforts. We will be halting the active search for Smythe, effective immediately.

The entire room went silent, as if each person was holding their breath. Kylarian looked ready to lunge over the table. Lange looked at the seat between them, looked at the man, his face melting into a shadow of the relaxed smirk he had a month before, when Smythe was still safe and within reach, then, slowly, stood up.

The aide seemed to be expecting this, a protest, and opened his mouth to address it. Lange didn't give him the chance. With barely a motion to Kylarian, not an order or a threat, but a casual flick of his head toward the door, he turned and made to leave.

"You haven't been dismissed, Mr. Lange," the aide said, his voice dripping with contempt. Lange stopped at the door, looked at Ivy, either to make sure she was actually with him or to have the opportunity to hold her back if she did what Bryce expected her to do, and then, satisfied with whatever he was looking for, looked at the man.

"No, but you have been." His voice was quiet, devoid of emotion, and his face was a shadow of it's usual cocky expression. Without another word, Lange opened the door, let Kylarian out ahead of him, and stepped out, pulling it closed.

Bryce could barely hold in a laugh, and as the man sputtered, the rest of the team stood and filed out.

-----

Jay did what he had done for the entire month that Sagira had been missing.

He ran. His feet moved almost of their own accord, dodging obstacles, turning corners when there was a new direction to go, and just moving the young man forward. Videl kept easy pace to his left, and Cammy to his right, each of them having also joined him from the day he began.

The pace was a steady one, no out and out run, but not easy to keep without training or being a pokémon, or both. Jay kept it out of spite at first, and lengthened it for the same reason. Unless given a mission, or eating, or sleeping, or perfecting the special way he had devised to communicate with Cammy, a riolu who had had her vocal cords severed as part of a sick experiment, this is what occupied Jay's time. Running, or walking the city, looking for the missing person on his team.

He would never phrase it as such, but, more than trying to reconstruct his team, he was seeking the missing piece of his heart. Sagira was gone, and it seemed to have pulled half of him away, too.

The only section of town he avoided was the section where Doctor Robinson lived. There, watching over her pokémon companion and, recently, lover, was his first pokémon, Hinata, a kirlia blind since birth. Jay had been born with a type of natural defense against psychics, he'd been told, emotions running so strong in him that they would overwhelm a psychic's mind. His sister, born with a powerful telepathic ability, had suffered for years before it was discovered, and it took her teacher, Sabrina from Kanto, to find it and teach Jay how to curb it, with a type of blanket of artificial calm.

That calm was shattered, and he wouldn't risk harming Hinata, nor the injured Paladin, a kirlia like her, which had been integrated into Sagira's team. The psychic link between the girl and the kirlia had been strong, and Paladin had been injured, and was still in a coma. Thus, he stayed with the doctor, who could only make him comfortable, and Hinata stayed with her, to protect her with distance since Jay's calm could not. Siryn, Jay's misdreavus, acted as a messenger between them: Jay would not even risk contact, even at a distance.

Cammy slowed, and Jay looked back at her. Her paws came up. Sleep, she signed.

No, he returned, turning to continue. She swatted his thigh, and he looked again, not stopping until she did, Videl taking her side by stopping as well.

It gets dark. You are tired. Sleep. Jay's lips pressed together, and so did Cammy's. Cammy watches. Videl watches. We find her, if she can be found. It had taken time for Jay to get used to the constant present tense in Cammy's speech. He thought it might be a remnant of poor training in sign language. At any rate, it was evident. She and Videl would keep watch, and if Sagira was out there, they'd find her.

It was a lie, because if she was going to be found, Jay would have found her long ago, but it was a kind lie. Jay let his head drop. He was tired.

Follow me back. Then come back for your own rest when you're ready. was all he signed. Cammy sketched a salute and turned, leading the way back to the hotel.

She led him to his own room, but knew as soon as he left, he would open the door between that room and the room next door, where Sagira had last slept, crawl into that bed, and fall into a deep, dreamless sleep.

As long as he slept, that was all she was willing to push for. Leaving him in the capable wings of Lady Jay, the Swellow that perched on the headboard, and watching as Raven, the silver-brown eevee, curled up behind his knees, Cammy and Videl left the room, running into the night, on the mission their trainer had taken.

Find their missing piece, and make the Pack whole again.