One and Done 2: Parent Trap in New York

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WOW!!! Mercury THE Fennekin had been under the impression that the whole world was just constantly in a state of being slightly too cold outside her plushy soft fur, but then like magic: SHE DISCOVERED THIS PLACE!!! It was warm, very big, lots of rock, and it looked like you could jump in and fall forever. Which would probably hurt because of, you know, the rocks. That was okay though, because this many rocks was great for playing one of Mercury’s favorite games: ROCK TOSS!!! Only now-

GASP.

now it would be hot rock toss.

HOT ROCK TOSS WAS LIKE 300 TIMES BETTER THAN REGULAR ROCK TOSS IN EVERY CONCEIVABLE WAY.

This place was officially amazing. THANK YOU, strange little brain voice!!! Mercury could now see the intense wisdom that those weird imagination moving pictures that came to her at night and while she was out walking and sometimes when she sat down to scratch herself in that spot right behind her ear we’re capable of sharing. A place with hot rock toss, with no evil dumb water to be there being dangerous!!! Only - wait, without water what was the rock supposed to bounce on? Other rocks? That could be fun!!! Or maybe you were just supposed to toss them down into this big hole??? EVEN BETTER!!!

Man, this hole was big. It was less like a whole and more like the biggest crack that ever existed, actually. Mercury couldn’t see where it began, and she certainly couldn’t see where it ended. What was big enough to make a crack this big??? Why was it so important? For a moment, for just a very brief moment, Mercury wondered why the strange feelings in her gut that had definitely come from outside her gut had decided to lead her to a big ol’ crack in the ground. Maybe the rocks were alive, and they were trying to talk to her. Maybe they wanted to play a game? WAIT- HOT ROCKS PROBABLY LOVED HOT ROCK TOSS. Plus they can’t really move, so they can’t find people to play with!!! SO THEY CALL FOR FRIENDS FROM OTHER PLACES HSHABEHEH- yes it was ALL coming together in Mercury’s head now. She smiled brightly; she was so smart!! She crept up very close to the edge of her very tall rock.

“HELLO!!!!!!?!” she screamed joyously into the seemingly endless decent. “ HELLO ROCKS, I AM MERCURY. I CAME TO PLAY HOT ROCK TOSS, LIKE YOU ASKED WHILE I WAS PICKING JOLTIKS OUT OF KYE’S FUR!!!!“ That has actually been a little inconvenient, but Mercury couldn’t imagine that the rocks knew better. “ HELLO?!?!??”

She leaned as far as she could over her precarious perch, angling her radar-like ears as close as she could to the drop while she listened for a reply.

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"He IS!!" Mercury cried with glee, having now fully been re-focused on Kye's entire existence. "He'd be here if he could, but he's tied up in a VERY intense game of hide and seek right now. He doesn't like to leave my den at all, but I told him that's okay because I'd take care of everything because he's GREAT!!! Kye is my super-specialest bestest friend- he's really nice like you, and he helps me do the chores, and sometimes he cooks!!!! ISH!!!" Her eyes rolled up to the sky as she counted all the awesome things about Kye in her head again. His food honestly wasn't very good though. But that made it even more important, because even though it was terrible he tried!!! "I eat it even if it tastes like rocks, though- cause I know he tried super hard to make it!! He always tries super hard and he always plays with me and I- !!!"

...

Mercury just stood there for a moment, paused with her mouth wide open. ...she felt like there were words that belonged here. Words that she was supposed to say. What were the words you were supposed to say when you really, really, really, really, REALLY huge big liked someone and wanted to be with them forever and ever and ever and ever again?!?! What were you supposed to say?!? Mercury suddenly realized she couldn't think of anything that was enough to encompass the sheer enormity of the pounding feeling inside her chest. There just weren't words for what Kye meant to her.

"...I don't know!" she finished weakly, her chest deflating. She was now overwhelmed with the realization that she needed words for Kye, but- but where would she find them? Maybe Sie friend had ideas?!? He was a genius after all!! She turned to him and smiled meekly, her energy seemingly having dissipated in an instant. "What anout you, Sie friend? Do you have a super awesome, super cool, sometimes a little cold and clammy but still they're amazing friend that you like so much there aren't really....... words for it??"

She felt like she was going to cry... she felt like she had let him down.

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Thaaaat... had not been what Osiris intended. The dratini patiently (and cautiously) sat back and watched as the fennekin at his side went on—and there really was no other word for it—a bonafide rant about her best friend. It was honestly pretty sweet in a way, and the innocence of the fire-type really managed to shine through, making Iris smile a little bit. At least up until she ended, crashing and burning with a desperate question as she apparently failed to find the words she was looking for.

He hummed at her question, thinking about all of his friends. There was Chance, there was Geo, Sterlie, Acro... "Yeah," he said simply. "I know this one guy who's pretty clammy, but I don't hold it against him 'cos I think things have been hard for him. His name's Zircon and he's got wings and sometimes he forgets where he's at or who he's talking to or even who you are. I think that makes him mad sometimes," he went on, thinking about his charizard friend who was currently cooling his heels in jail. "So he can snap at people—but not me—and that gets him in trouble, but I like him anyway because he's powerful, and he's nice, and he still does his thing even if the whole world is trying to make him stop."

But that wasn't what Mercury was really asking, was it? She wanted the words for it, a way to put the puzzle together so she could tell her friend Kye how she felt, and have it feel right. The dratini scrunched up his snout as he thought about Zircon, and the kind of relationship he wanted them to have. "I've never had an older brother before..." he went with, shaking his head slowly a little. "but when I think about what I'd want a brother to be like, I think of him. So I think I'm gonna try to make him be my big brother, and that way we'll be family." he nodded one last time, definitively. "Family. That's a good word for it."

Hopefully, that was the magic ticket because a sad Mercury was not something that he wanted to deal with. It felt more natural if she was happy and excitable and playing games.

Mercury looked down, still solemn but not really... crying so much as getting lost in thought now. Family? Kye.....? Did she feel the same way about Kye that she felt about her family? She couldn't say she had ever felt this way about anyone before, so... no, not really. Maybe it was just a different kind of family? Mercury had never had a "brother" before.

...It still felt wrong, in a way, but she couldn't exactly question Sie friend on the matter because she didn't have any good questions to ask him. She didn't know what a "brother" was, so she didn't know exactly how to feel about a brother, or about Kye being a brother to her. She had been operating so long under the impression that Kye was special- like no one else in the world that she had ever met, making her feel things she had never felt!- that giving him a label that was so close to something else entirely she had felt... wrong, in a way. But Sie friend was very smart. He had proven that he was very smart! So probably... he was right.

"I guess," she hummed, only semi-enthusiastically. "If you say so. Zircen sounds really, really cool!! I dunno if he sounds as cool as Kye, but still so cool!! I guess if he seems like a... "brother," than Kye would be like- a super brother!!!" She was still pensive about adopting the term- she would have to see if Kye liked it too. It wasn't worth anything if it didn't make him happy, after all! "What do you do with Zircen? Do you guys hang out and like, live together and stuff?"

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"Zircon," he gently corrected, finding that part to be important. It was a pretty cool name, in his opinion. "His name's actually Garnet Zircon, but I like Zircon better and that's the first name of his I learned, so I go with that. We don't get a lot of time together because he's kind of, um, in jail right now." the dratini frowned a little bit as he considered this. His mom would probably freak out if he tried to bring the charizard back into the house to live with them, which sucked because that suddenly sounded like a great idea. "But yeah, before he got taken there we would hang out and talk about all sorts of things and he'd be the best brother in the world."

That last bit was a little bit defensive - it rankled the dratini to hear Mercury compare Zircon negatively to some guy named Kye. He didn't know what kind of pokemon this Kye was, but Zircon was huge and strong and he blew up all of Grassveil by himself fighting off like four whole rescue teams, by himself! Osiris would have told the fennekin all of this, but he refrained because if it were him in the charizard's position, he'd be pretty embarrassed about it. The guards at the jail said he came pretty close to hurting a few people.

"What about you and Kye? Do you guys only play games together or what kind of other stuff do you get up to?" Iris was genuinely curious; It would help to know what kind of competition this Kye thought he was.

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Jail? What is jail?? "Like- Like cops and robbers...?" Mercury wondered aloud, not so much dedicated to asking a legitimate question as much as she was just trying to work this out in her head. She had never heard of jail, except it kind of rang a bell so maybe momma or papa had mentioned it some time?? Either way- it sounded like a bad place!!! A place where friends became trapped and weren't allowed to come out!!! What if- what if Kye went to a "jail"?!?!? She couldn't imagine how she'd live!!! She couldn't imagine how Sie friend must have felt!!!

"Um- well Kye lives in my den, and we play games together and sometimes we go to places with a lot of pruple- one time. It made Kye really upset, so it was a pretty bad place..." she mumbled, but her heart wasn't really into it. She was far too concerned over "jail now, and of Sie friend's brother friend Zirycen being there!!! "A-about "jail-" where is it?! Why is Zircyen trapped there?? Does he need help, should we go get him??! What are they doing to him, what happens when you're in 'jail'?!"

Mercury hoped it was just a game. Just some kind of game that maybe Sie friend and Zircyn were having trouble playing, but they could still definitely win... That she could definitely still win if she needed to...

Ooooh no she was sad now. Osiris hadn't meant to do that, he just wanted to explain why Zircon wasn't absolutely blowing this Kye guy out of the water as far as awesomeness goes - he was in jail, so he couldn't always do cool stuff! "Zircon. Zir-con. But it's like cops and robbers, yeah," he confirmed, trying not to sound sad about it for the fennekin's sake. "Time-out for when you do something bad, you know? It's okay, though, because I'm helping him! There's stuff he can't do in there because they won't let him out, and I'm doing that stuff. If I help enough they'll probably let him go and say sorry and everything."

It might not go quite like that, but Iris thought he had a pretty decent chance to at least make a good case for Zircon. If none of the pokemon involved in the fight felt bad about it, and Osiris said sorry to the people whose stuff got blowed up, and he also proved that the charizard had brain sickness, they'd have no choice but to at least be nice to him. And everything would probably get better from there!!

He took a second to gaze around them now that they'd stopped to talk for a minute. No crazy gang of big fire-types on their tail yet, but there were a few curious onlookers. A slugma waved at the two of them from a ways away, a super mellow and chill smile on its face differentiating it from the ones before. The dratini gave a little wriggle of his tail back, letting himself get distracted by a group of other fire-types in the distance playing together. A cyndaquil and a quilava, alongside a pair of growlithe. And was that another fennekin?

Mercury continued to listen quietly, her eyes pointing forward as she considered the things that Sie friend was saying. Time-out... papa had tried that a few times when Mercury had done dangerous things that might have hurt herself or papa, but "bad" things? She had never had to sit out for "bad" things, or whatever the equivalent was. It still didn't sound fair!! Especially not after the heard Sie friend talk about how he had to do things to get Zircon out too!! That was even more confusing- and unfair!! How was Zyrcon supposed to wait around for somebody to get him out of the jail corner, and why was Sie friend supposed to also have to do things to get Zyrcen out of the jail corner too??

Immediately, Mercury decided that this jail corner was the bad thing. The jail corner was bad and scary, and separated bestest friends with silly impossible chores!! "Sie friend, the jails sound like the "bad thing." They are a very bad time out," she frowned heavily. "They are sepparating you and Zyrcon, and they won't let him out! Even if he did bad things, how long should he have to wait in a corner before he gets to see you again?!! That's no fair! If that happened to Kye..."

Mercury did not look sad now.

Mercury looked very, very mad now.

"...The jails are dumb. We should get Zyrcen out of the jails. So he doesn't have to sit there for dumb reasons anymore!!"

"It's... not quite that simple," Osiris hedged, not sure if he should be apologetic or remorseful. "There's a lot of big, strong pokemon that are keeping him—Zircon, Z i r c o n—in time-out. And, and what he did... it was kind of not good. Like, 'against the law,' not good." It was here that he got a little bit uncomfortable because he wasn't very fond of facing this truth. "He blowed up like half a town in a fight, but he attacked good people. He's a little bit... dangerous. Zircon can hurt people if they're not really careful with how they talk to him, or if he doesn't have a friend to calm him down."

Just saying the words out loud felt like he was betraying the charizard, but he had to make Mercury understand so she wouldn't stay so angry. As awful and dumb and lame as it was, Zircon being in jail was the best thing right now, apparently. Even if Osiris disagreed (which he did, a little bit), he didn't have any way to get him out. They just had to make the best of a bad situation, which meant that Osiris would visit him as often as he could and help him with whatever he needed on the outside.