"I do apologize for the rough start between us. I'm glad you're open to trying again."
"Oh," said Aggron, startled out of his glaring at Steven. "Yeah sorry. We kinda barged in on you at the boat. My bad." He took a sip of his pitcher of ice water. "Thanks for being cool about that."
Odette held up her hands, almost as if she were surrendering. "No harm done. Initially," she said. "Those birds wouldn't leave me the fuck alone and I'm convinced they'd have followed me back to my room if you didn't show up." She snickered bitterly as she grabbed hold of her glass again. "Not that I can't handle myself in battle, I just really
didn't want to battle. And I have a short fuse I sometimes struggle to keep in check as it is, and that certainly wasn't helping."
"Really, I never took birds to be so obnoxious."
"I don't mean to rush into this, but I'm rather curious about that explanation of yours. I can't say I've ever met a pokemon like Odile before."
She exhaled sharply as she looked over her shoulder at Odile, who looked like she was having an intense conversation with the bartender. Nobody was yelling and nothing was being thrown, though, so she wasn't too alerted to it.
"I didn't think so," she said into the rim of her glass. She took another sip of her water, before she began to swish it around. "I've yet to bump into somebody from another universe who has, so I suppose I'm just lucky."
She turned back around to face Steven, putting the glass back down and folding her arms on the table. "But, I'll give you the rundown. I'll preface it by saying that it's a lot to digest, and I already struggled to chunk through it with somebody else. I just ask that you pay attention and try not to interrupt me unless it's really important. You can run my ear off with questions when I'm done. Sound good?"
She waited for the agreement, before launching into her explanation. At this point in time, it almost sounded rehearsed. From the way she talked about the seven deadly sins and how that pertained to Odile's existence, to her type, to her legendary status, to the fact that there were more like her, both legendary and not. Even going into detail about how blood types actually worked and how she'd ended up with her felt like Deja vu. Odette had to remind herself that she was talking to a completely new person about it.
"So when I told you I gave you the benefit of the doubt over you losing your cool, I meant it," she explained. "Odile's presence alone can fire people up. That's just what she is, you know? So if she was filling your head with bullshit and you lost it for a second, it's most likely not even your fault. It's just her, being
Wrath."
Odette leaned down and fished around in her backpack for something, before withdrawing a Pokeball. Or at least, it looked like one. A much more
secure looking one. It was entirely black, fit with a red button, and a series of small appliances fixed to it that somewhat resembled locking mechanisms.
"This is her ball. It was designed to hold 'mon like her. The legendaries, mainly. It's pretty much the only thing that can halt that passive ability of causing anger and keep her from getting out." She frowned deeply as she turned the thing in her fingers, eyeing it closely. "I have this really
intense thing about Pokemon autonomy though, so if I can help it, I don't like putting her in here. But as with training a primordial deity that only knows
chaos..." She let the sentence hang as she shook her head. "Sometimes it's a necessity. It's a hard balance. Especially when the thing relies on your blood to battle, too."
She sat it down on the table and rolled it toward him. "Feel free to look. Doubt they have balls like that where you come from."
As she leaned back against her chair, she crossed her arms behind her head and exhaled softly. Giving herself a moment to recover from all of that talking.
"And now, the floor is open."
