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Open Streets Run Red

Thorne

Thorne

It's feeding time
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Night--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Few dared to walk the moonlit streets of Castelia. It was a hot summer night with an ever so slight rainfall, making the air humid. Yet the air was filled with tension, as if a war would break out at any second.

As if in just moments, the streets would run red with blood.


"Tweh, friggin' douchebag."

Yuri Sokolov stood under a lamp post, but had you been there just a while earlier then he had not been standing there. In that case you would have seen him throwing an innocent man into the water over the docks.

Then again, he wasn't yuri Sokolov at this time of the day. He was Gears, and he was the leader of Rhinestone Eyes.

"Okay guys!" he yelled at the group of youngsters who was following him. His gang, in other words. "You know why we're here. This is where we found the last sign of those bastards El Banana, or whatever they were called."

He slammed his large palm into the wall behind him. On the very same wall the text 'Nevermore' was written in a Gothic font.

"As would be obvious. We will find them today and show them who truly rules the streets!"

-------------------------------------------​

In a completely different part of the town, Thorne Bell, an unusual young man, was sitting on a metallic waste container. He had, just seconds ago, painted using every thinkable colour possible. He too was accompanied by a group of youngsters.

"As I think you all can see," he said, his voice as feminine as everything else about him. "Rhinestone Eyes has claimed this area their own."

He pointed to the wall in front of, which was filled with various signatures, as well as the words 'Rhinestone Eyes' written especially large and clear.

"How about we show them how a true artist does his job?"

He grabbed a red spray can he had been carrying on his waist.

"And while we're at let's make some noise too. I can't wait to see their reactions to what we are about to create."

He giggled girlishly. Before jumping off the waste container and proceeded to shake the spray can.

"Mañana es más brillante." He said as he started painting.
 
Nessiah Mantarov, or as she was known when the sun hit it's lowest point, Tigress, studied the gothic script almost emotionlessly. She shook her head, the platinum chain that dangled from her choker following her movements.

"Morons." She stated, "The whole lot of them." Of course, that was merely her opinion. No doubt the rest of the gang had worse opinions. "Honestly, is this what passes for art in their eyes?" She suddenly asked skeptically. She totally agreed, those El Mañana dogs would get what was coming to them...especially if she had anything to say about it.
 
Standing on the edges of the crowd of El Mañana members, Anthony Morrow could only watch in boredom as their leader started to paint. Hovering over Anthony was his loyal Hydreigon, Vorser, glee with anticipation over the battles that would be fought tonight.

Of course Anthony (or as he was known in this time, Jackal) did not see these crude drawings as art of any kind. What Anthony considered art was the sounds of battle: the beautiful sounds and sights of the battles that true trainers could create. Such battles were the utmost of perfection, a dream that Anthony strove for every night.

As of yet, that dream hadn't even come close to being reached. Anthony hoped that one day, the Rhinestones would have an opponent worthy of his time.

For now, though, he had to contend with the third and second-rates that he was sent to kill, or that were sent to kill him. All that was keeping him on El Mañana was the knowledge that the fights they provided were better than what the Rhinestones would have provided if he were on their side.

Tonight, I assume, will be like just another night in this city, he thought, I do hope that I'm wrong, but I seriously doubt that I am.
 
Looking slightly thrilled, a young man leaped down from his perch on an overturned crate, pulling up his baggy, paint-stained grey sweatpants in the process. Flipping his curly, dingy-yellow bangs out of his eyes, he pulled out a luxury ball from his pocket and rapped it against the crate. The ball, so covered with paint that the indelible glittery finish was completely lost, opened immediately with a golden flash and let loose a smeargle. The dog-like pokémon, tail dripping with cobalt-blue paint, had a ragged ear that looked like it had healed not too long ago.

"Alright, Vango, you know what to do, I hope..." muttered Collen, now fishing out his own paints from the satchel he carried with him. The smeargle, with a slightly manic nod and smile, grabbed his tail and scrambled over to the wall, leaving a blue half-footprint here and there. Although he was a gifted artist, Vango had no concept of writing other than 'squiggle humans like to paint instead of pictures', so he needed at least some help with graffiti. Collen, or Pinta as it were, was glad to supply it.

Having decided what to paint before now, Vango had quickly developed the bold, spray-paint-like lines of an image depicting a blue iceberg in the shape of a magikarp. Meanwhile, Pinta carefully drew a perfect, highlighter-yellow circle above it. As the smeargle began carefully adding the human-paper-squiggles that his trainer had had him memorize months ago to the iceberg, Pinta sprayed several long trapezoids of red, pointing downwards at the iceberg below. Several grey rectangles were added to the background, representing the city, as Pinta painted the familiar 'El Mañana' over the sun, while Vango finished up the wavy 'Rhinestone Dies' in the middle of the melting magikarp iceberg.

Ruffling the smeargle's beret-thingy, Collen stepped back for a moment to look at the graffiti before setting out to do another one.
 
Nicole-Maria blinked at the graffiti. It was absolutely disgusting! Those El Manana dogs probably couldn't see the difference between a work of art and a pile of Growlithe feces (she refused to say the word 'shit'. She was too much of a lady use such profanities. Well, as much as a lady you could be when you were in a gang...).

She looked upon her leader and smiled. It was nice to have someone as wonderful as Gears as the leader of their pack of adolescent delinquents. Nico, as she was known by her fellow gang members, turned her attention back to the graffiti. Nevermore. She had heard of him before. Supposedly he was homosexual or something, with his high-pitched voice and feminine features. Whatever, he was probably just a stupid pig of a rival gang leader, someone that needed to be eliminated from the ranks of Castelia.

"Yes, sir!" Nico stood up proud, ready to fight. Of course, she didn't get her hands dirty. Why, she used her beloved Pokemon to fight for her. Especially her beautiful Rapidash, who would trample anything beneath her hooves. Yes, her Jane was certainly the best Pokemon ever.

Pushing her thoughts aside, she whipped a spray-paint can out of her designer purse. Hell, even if she was in a gang, she had to look good. After a couple of minutes, she looked back on her work. She had spray-painted her name in lovely cursive letters.

Nico <3

Suddenly, one of the PokeBalls suspended on her belt sprung open.

"Mrow," the Delcatty purred, patting his big black eyes at his owner. Nico stooped down to pet him.

"Sorry, Eneko, but right now Mama and her friends are busy. Back in the PokeBall you go," she said in a sing-song voice. The purple cat retreated into his Ball.

((Sorry if my post offended anybody...))
 
Following his leader's actions, Mike Sombers of El Manana, better known as simply "M.K.," began his own little work of art. There standing next to him, the scorpion quadruped dubbed Vasko chuckled at others' boredom. And yet, Mike needed no translator to be aware of this. He simply ignored his Drapion, carefully spraying the outlines of what was soon to be a picture of the sun, the word "Manana" stroked across it.

Becoming quite bored considering he could do nothing but stare as his master slowly sprayed his graffiti onto the brick wall towering next to them, the scorpion began to crawl along the walls, watching others form their creations. While ambling around the gang Vasko stuck his tongue out at a seemingly bored Anthony. And after finishing this minute action, he was back to his previous location.

Sombers stared impassively at the giant, menacing insect in hindsight, once again showing no signs of sympathy towards the Pokemon, whose patience was quickly fading. Mike was nearly done with his masterpiece; the sun was emitting its divine rays, enhancing the appearance of his gang's title. One would assume that even the goddess Amaterasu would appear due to that beautiful graffiti, despite how emotionless the artist was.

Michael sighed as he leaned against a trash can, Vasko eagerly tracing his footsteps. Finally, he was finished. Saying nothing as he did, Sombers gazed into the dark sky, it being as mysterious as him. The Drapion glanced at his master, who was still displaying no hint of feeling, and rolled his eyes, annoyed. Crawling back to the others, Vasko left Mike to be in isolation, one of the few things admired by the boy's unknown conscience.

"What's gonna happen?" the boy inquired himself without speaking a word, watching as his scorpion continuously bothered other members of his brotherhood.
 
~Holden

Holden stiffened up slightly, awaiting orders, above him Josh, his Scrafty was staring up at the sky, a toothpick in mouth. Holden found it est not to act impulsively unless a battle had started. Josh was significantly less like his master, and preferred to remain out of his ball, despite Ignacio being Holden's main 'mon.

Holden's mind was on his brothers, his ears on Gears. He resented is older brother for being stronger, and better than him, and he resented his younger brother for doing something good about being the shadow child of the three. Holden felt he was better than both, but had been proven wrong a good number of times. Holden sighed,feeling it est to just allow the persona of Tussle to remain prominent, the muscle-man and mediated mind of the gang.
 
Jason Rain, or as he was known at night, Zero, stood behind Nevermore calmly. A small smirk was on his face as his Leader showed his artistic talent. He adjusted his glasses quickly before he turned towards his Zangoose, Claymore, who was standing right beside him. He looked rather unamused at the moment.

"Come now, Claymore, lighten up a bit!" He said, his voice a much more cheerful tone than normal.

"Grrarr..." The beast replied. Jason just rolled his eyes a little before pulling a can of red paint off of his belt. He shook it up a little before painting the wall. When he was finished, a large circle with what looked like a slash through it was on the wall.

This was his tag, a Zero unlike any other.

Jason was officially smiling. This was the only place where he felt happiness. Only when he was serving the El Manana was he happy.
 
Rico Hernandez, Seneca when the sun went down, pulled a can of spray paint from a pocket after their leader, the eccentric Thorne Bell finished speaking and began spraying.

His tag tonight would be a familiar one to him. First, he sprayed an upward curve, the ground. Then a circle rising out from behind, the sun. And finally, a sprout growing out of the ground. Below it, in neat print, 'La Mañana'.

Both Rico and his boon companion these days, an Espeon named Hina, stepped back and admired tonight's work of art.

"Well, I like it.", he said.

The Espeon shook her head.

"I don't think you could do better.", Rico replied.

He then sighed as he looked up at the night sky, the stars obscured due to Castelia's lights. Hopefully tonight wouldn't be too troubling.

Ah, but those Rhinestone Eyes guys are flat out crazy., he thought, Then again, some of our guys are nuts too, but at least they're on my side.
 
Looking around LeAnna, who is called Silver during the night, eyed her Umbreon. It was sitting waiting orders to do something. He tended to be her right hand man when she needed something done, usually without mercy just like her. Merciless in most of her actions, her Umbreon copied her.

She eyed the terrible gang sign from the other gang and snorted in disgust. I'm sure I could even do something better than that. Even a POliwag could do better then that. I'm sure we'll fix that soon, though.
 
"eh so they can draw, whooptey friggen doo," ace said from his perch upon the lamppost," I could draw better art blind, he." he surveyed the area, but to no avail, these streets were dead at night. He liked being up high made him feel free.

"so, what we do now boss," ace asked, "we gonna track em' cuz I figure they probely on our turf disrespectin' our art."
 
On Nevermore's command, Lee settled on a particularly disgusting piece of crap crafted by the untalented Rhinestone Eyes. It was jagged, and not a single word could even be distinguished from the black wall. It looked like someone had opened fire on a can of paint. He began to work. Rift, his Gallade, watched him with a slightly bored look on his face. Rift was bored unless he was tearing something open.

As Lee finished, he looked back on his work. El Mañana was etched on the wall in large, curving letters. Lee walked up to it and quickly sprayed "L.M." in the corner. Much better than the absolute shit that the Rhinestone Eyes tried to pass off as 'art'. As Lee went to tag another wall, he was stopped by Rift.

"Lade. Gal Gallade."

"Sure, Rift. You can give it a try."

He handed Rift a can of spray paint. The Gallade, rather than trying to make a tag, threw the can in the air and slashed it in half on the way down with a Psycho Cut. The can exploded, but the paint was collected in the shockwave of the Psycho Cut. The paint hit the wall with the shockwave, creating a jagged splatter of paint that completely covered up the Rhinestone Eye's previous work. Lee sighed as he picked up another can and began to work on another tag over the spray of paint.

"Nice work, Rift. Maybe next time you could try it without slicing the can in half, hmm?"

He finished his tag, which appropriately said "El Mañana tienen el noche".
 
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Tigress looked at Yuri, or rather, Gears.

"I wouldn't be surprised if Ace was right," She said, as one of the balls at her waist opened to reveal her 'icon' pokemon, Iris. The moth fluttered around the girl's head, as she reached into her coat, fiddling with an orange and black keychain of a tiger, "Then again, I wouldn't be surprised if he was wrong, either." She said good-naturedly, the laugh in her voice taking out any offensive implications in her comment.
 
This... is pathetic.

Anthony was more than disappointed with how childish Nevermore was acting - how childish everyone was acting in this matter. Nevermore was thinking that countering this fake art with more fake art was the right way to fight the war. It was, to say the least, disappointing. A growl from Vorser was all the signal Anthony needed.

"I hate to be the one that states the obvious, but it seems to me that the more efficient way of doing battle with the Rhinestones does not strike me as being through this battle of so-called art. It would be much easier for us to show them how capable we are of wiping them out if our battle was true art - or, as you might see it, an actual battle. With a true battle, killing the enemy and making this city ours would, well, actually happen."

And even if it didn't happen through an actual battle, Tobias wanted to add, it's better than this "art" of yours, which is barely getting us anywhere.

He knew better than to say that, though. Better to imply the need for a different strategy, so that the leader would feel more eased into the plan.

Either way, if this continues. Tryna, Vorser and I will strike out on our own. But I bet he knows that would happen from experience.
 
Davey don't help but laugh to himself. So much pretentious display of loyalty to this gang here, he thought to himself as the others started on their works. He knew full this was just the dull prelude to the fun that was sure to follow that night... That was the part he was waiting for. Mary, his beloved Banette, floated over his head, her eyes closed contently as she fed off the tension and hatred of the group. Davey smiled at her. At least she was enjoying herself.

"Such a lack of creativity..." he muttered to himself, watching as the others just wrote the same bloody words over and over on the wall. Prettying it up with different scripts did nothing to stop the monotony. Something had to be done about this. So he picked up a few cans of spraypaint...

And drew a pretty little sunrise in the corner.
 
"nice to see someone trusts me," ace said with a chuckle, not sounding too sarcastic or too rude. He decided to let out steel, his icon lucario. The lucario perched himself on top a building across the street looking at the 'art' and then jumped next to Ace.
"reminds menof when I had diharrea," steel whispered to ace.
Ace laughed," yeah but even that had more design to it!"
 
Hearing the words of Anthony obviously portrayed him as eager to fight, and following these words, Mike silently dug through the trash can, armed himself with a cleaver, and walked toward Anthony, no expression on his face whatsoever. Vasko approached before M.K., allowing his master to attach titanium claws on his bare skin.

"Fighting?" he inquired with no expression. "Fine by me." No emotion was showing, his impassive eyes striking through anybody's heart. It was as if he were not human. a living corpse. Vasko could tell, however, that Mike was holding back a smirk to display his excitement and adrenaline building. His previous quote had just been answered, and Mike was not about to let the chance go.

Releasing the smirk, he stated, "Ready when you are." The scorpion could not believe what he words he was detecting. Mike had never been so eager, so curious, for anything. The thought almost made him nervous.
 
The way night fell in this city was like someone had tied rocks to a curtain and let it fall. Graham had visited other towns in Unova, places like Nuvema where the ocean shivered on its edges, like Nacrene where the soft hum of dusk was the same color of the sky, and there the sunset came down in soft watercolor strokes over time and the cities would cool into sleep. Castelia, though, was like turning a page and suddenly it was dark and dotted with lights brighter than the stars, and somehow even though the streets thinned out, the buildings thrummed with a completely new energy. That page-turning moment was like Castelia concentrated down to bite size. It was what had Graham pulled into the deepest corners.

It was the same darkness, almost physically thick with humidity, that Graham squinted through, catching the light that bounced off the edges of shaken spray paint cans.

Standing this close to practically every other member of El Mañana, especially in this sort of summer night, was bringing sweat up to his skin and into his shirt. Graham had rolled up his sleeves before night even hit, but he could still feel how it was damp on the back of his neck, and ugh. Planning a shower between the night and his dayjob was already giving him a headache, and that meant he'd wake up with one, too, and then he'd be pretty much useless all day tomorrow -- he forcibly shoved the train of thought out of his head, because there was Nevermore talking, and moving in that weird and almost undulating way that he did. Sometimes the curves on the side of him and the pitch to his voice would catch at some of the pushed-aside planes of Graham's brain, and he would think wild ideas about what was up with this guy. Nevermore was brilliant -- he had to be, with the group he led, it was like walking into his own death every day -- but there were certain things about him that always had Graham thinking. Like how Graham towered over him, like how the angles on his face were soft, like how he giggled excitedly (as in just now, where the sound rang into Graham's ears).

Sometimes Graham considered that maybe that was the real reason he stayed in El Mañana. A mystery to be solved.

A mystery that always had to wait, and this was no exception; spray paint cans sounded off in a completely un-snakelike hiss that overpowered words and a smell that had Graham cringing. This part of the gang thing, this was not his strong point. Not that he didn't prefer it, God, he remembered once when they'd abandoned the graffiti for a brawl that made him see streaks of red out of the corners of his eyes for days. But he had a niggling feeling of uselessness here, so he watched interestedly instead, tracing the lines of people with his eyes.

Some of them, they really flickered on like a light when Nevermore put them to this; one of them -- this kid barely out of puberty, broad and blond, practically shivered with a visible delight when Nevermore brought out the paint. Graham watched him vaguely for a moment, trying to remember a name. A C, he thought. Calvin? No. And another one all taught with excitement wasn't far away, flanked by a zangoose, and it was a contrast between their expressions that Graham could practically taste. He knew that one's name, especially as it took form on the wall. Graham stuck his hands into his pockets, standing out of the reach of the fumes. It was nice and all, and some of them didn't look happy unless they had their fingers spread with the strange paint dust that came out of the cans, but throwing the whole gang together for a mass attack on a wall seemed ... a little unsafe, to Graham.

And, well, his timing was spot on -- "I hate to be the one that states the obvious," he said, which wasn't true at all if the guy, Jackal, hadn't changed from the last time Graham saw him (which, really, was doubtful). Graham half-frowned, eyebrows pressing down, because this was him begging for a fight. Graham imagined a dog staring up at a buffet. Well, two dogs, now that the other one (God he had to get better with names: M? MK, like the guns) had joined in, and Christ, they'd kill each other just to have a taste --

"Really? You're going to fight each other," he said, which he hadn't altogether expected. But now that the words were out he had to keep going, oh god that one had a knife. "And then when you're both in pieces you'll have achieved what, exactly, because that's not helping us at all." The 'us' was punctuated with a glance at Nevermore, a secret meaning of 'his' since sometimes Graham wasn't sure what their goal was, just that Nevermore had one. He glanced between Jackal and MK. A rock and a hard place. He hadn't realized cliches could be real.
 
The eyes of Mike quickly converted back to their impassive state while M. K. had begun to speak. "I'm sorry," he muttered in a monotone. "I was referring to a raid. An old fashioned street fight with weapons and the like." Vasko could really sense his master's eager eyes opening, worrying and surprising him during the same moment.

"This cleaver here," he continued without waiting for a response, stroking it as if it were a pet. "If you'd rather have me not kill anyone, I could always swing with the blunt side." His scorpion could truly see a new personality emerging, replacing his isolated and impassive state. It was almost alleviating him. Almost.

"What do you say?" he asked, implying that he was opening the inquiry to all members within range of listening to his words.

(Sorry for the post being so short! I'm on my iTouch, so it's more stressful to type a long entry.)
 
(hehe me too except I have to do that all the time, and to look at poketribe thread, that first post was done on my iPod touch)
Ace yawn,"well this is thrilling," he said sarcastically.
 
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