Charizard smiled and raised a wing. "Thanks, man." Blue resettled himself in the shaded chair, took a few more sips of his slightly melted slushie, and tried to go back to relaxing.
Apparently the operative word in that thought was "tried". The drink was nice, the shade was nice, but the edge still hadn't quite gone from the whatever-the-fuck-that-was, and he found himself unable to ignore the growing number of people moving about the deck. Which was stupid, because c'mon, what were the odds that someone
else was gonna to rock on up to his chair and casually tell him that
actually he'd never met Gyarados or
actually his birthday was in February or something? They were all just doing normal cruise stuff, or hanging out with their pokémon, or being distracted by Wallace Wallace-ing at someone else, it sounded like.
She continued to observe Blue somewhat warily, not even registering that Wallace had walked off, as he got up to splash himself by the pool and resettle under his charizard's spread wings. What was the point of sunbathing if you were going to hide in the shade...?
But this one girl kept
looking at him, and it wasn't the "oh my god, I can't believe it, it's the toughest gym leader in Kanto!" sort of look he'd been anticipating when he first sat down. More... confused? Concerned? Calculating? Something??? Ugh,
why. Vacations weren't supposed to be weird and complicated once you got past all the "oh, crap, did I forget my passport at home" part of it.
Eh. Screw it. Whatever her deal was, best to just tear the bandaid off and get it over with. Maybe once she was done gawking or being awkward or whatever that would be the end of it, and he could actually take a god damn nap.
"Yes, it's me, and yes, this
is my partner Charizard, and if you're wondering whether it's true that he wrestled one of Lance's dragonite to the ground in under twenty seconds then the answer to that is
also yes," he said, arching an eyebrow and trying to shove the weird edge back down with a grin. "You and your espeon are welcome to see if you can do any better if you want to hit one of the arenas later, but right now we were kinda hoping to take it easy out here. There somethin' else I can help you with?"
Charizard was finally comfortable. It really had gotten very cold up on the mountain, sometimes, even for a big fire-type like him. Impressive that Venusaur and her little human had been able to tolerate it, honestly. (He wondered whether Moltres ever got cold when it roosted there.)
It wasn't cold here, though, and that was nice. An awful lot of water all around and distressingly little land to speak of, sure, but the big boat seemed sturdy enough. Gyarados was probably happy about it, at least. Charizard hadn't seen him in a while, and he'd seemed like he was doing better, but some time to himself out in a big stretch of open ocean like this would probably still do him some good.
That human hadn't been particularly nice. Not
rude not-nice, but
weird not-nice, and he'd kept saying things that didn't make any sense. Like Blue was supposed to be partners with a squirtle? But that was Tank, and Tank had his own human, and frankly he could keep her because she was fun and all but also kind of exhausting.
Blue was Charizard's human, and always had been, ever since he'd told Mother he wanted to see the world and see the mountain and she'd told him that he should take Little Sam along to help. Why would someone say it should be different?
At least that human was gone now. Kind of gone. He was still being loud at someone else off in the distance, and the someone else also sounded kind of distressed, and that was a little concerning? But out here it was comfortable and nice and Blue was just trying to relax and he should be relaxing, too, so Charizard adjusted the dark glasses Blue had gotten for him and tried to close his eyes behind them.
One eye opened again anyway, unfortunately. That espeon kept thinking she was so sneaky, trying to paw at Blue's drink under the chair like that. He'd had half a mind to tell her off himself—a little fang, a little flare, just enough to drive home that she really ought to go find her
own drink—but her human had been
mostly on top of things, at least. Now she was chattering incessantly about something, and he had half a mind to be annoyed by that, too, but the little pokémon tagging along behind her made him pause. He wasn't entirely familiar with that species, but whatever it was, it didn't look very comfortable. Lost, it sounded like?
"You're looking for a pokémon with wings?" he rumbled, but soft, questioning. "If they're still near the ship, or if they're on the deck, I can help you look. I'm sure you'll be able to see them from up in the air."
