Whispers of Leaf and Jade

[Jackie Cat]

They say the pokémon of the Taleska Nation take secrets very seriously. Everyone knows the lapines love their gossip, but gossip is just amateur journalism. The truth of the heart, though—

Keep that close to the chest, lest the Comb catches it.

<><><><><>​

 

[Phoenixsong]

Jade's ears were filled with whistling and sighing she could barely understand, and then they were filled with calls and chattering she could barely understand.

Nothing... sinister, though? No ominous messages or wordless whispers from the wind singing through a warped dungeon. Only the myriad half-heard conversations of pedestrians as they swept through a city on a weekend afternoon.

And not just pedestrians, but human pedestrians. (Humans that seemed less tall than they should have been, compared to a meowth... if Jade were to look down at herself, she'd appear to be back in her original body.) There were pokémon, sure, tagging along behind trainers or chatting while perched on a railing or going about their own business—no sign of any of the pokémon she'd entered Whisperwind Comb with—but predominantly humans, hurrying back and forth between buildings as modern and as familiar in purpose as the ones Jade knew back home.

Maybe even more familiar than that. Not identical, perhaps, but if she looked beyond the passersby she'd catch some sights adjacent to things she'd recognize. A multi-story department store dominating the view to the northwest. Signs pointing League hopefuls toward a grass-type gym further south, with an image of a rainbow-hued badge. Just a few feet away, some sort of casino or gambling parlor. (She might've been a little less familiar with the building attached to the casino, or at least with the big cartoon meowth dominating the sign. LUCK E. KOBAN's Family Fun GAME CORNER! it declared, the sunglasses-sporting cat smirking out over the flickering letters and brandishing a floppy slice of pizza.)

The weekend bustle paid Jade no mind, pathing smoothly around her without breaking stride, like they were just barely registering her presence. She couldn't really see them, either, if she tried focusing on their faces. Except for... there, a tan-skinned preteen girl in a red jacket, jogging down the sidewalk straight toward her. Waving, even, with her other arm hugging a giggling cleffa to her chest.

"Sorry for the wait!" she said, panting a little from the exertion of catching up. "She wanted a snack, but of course she hates the stuff they serve in there." The cleffa in her arms burbled cheerfully up at Jade in between nibbles of candy. "Not that I get why you picked this place, either... hasn't exactly gotten any less lame since we were eight." A snort, and an eyeroll at the sign above them. "But hey, you're the one who's visiting, so it's your call!"

 

[Chibi Pika]

Jade blinked in the sunlight, shielding her eyes with hands that felt equal parts familiar and foreign as her ears failed to flatten and her arms felt suddenly bare against the breeze, no fur standing on end. Some weird, distant instinct wanted to scurry into a dark corner, away from everyone, but the rest of her was too busy taking in her surroundings.

She was in Celadon. The question of why? or how? felt distant, unimportant. She was here to find Brisa to meet with a friend (which friend?), and the Game Corner was the place to be, with all its underground cloning labs overexcited kids and flashing lights.

"She wanted a snack, but of course she hates the stuff they serve in there. Not that I get why you picked this place, either... hasn't exactly gotten any less lame since we were eight." A snort, and an eyeroll at the sign above them. "But hey, you're the one who's visiting, so it's your call!"

Jade gave a light wave to the tiny Cleffa before glancing up at the cartoon Meowth--she'd just been a Meowth, how was--on the front of the building.

"Right, yeah," Jade replied with a sheepish laugh. "I just... something about it spoke to me I guess?"

Had to get inside there, had to rescue Nine... no, Brisa... no wait--

 

[Phoenixsong]

The crowd's chatter remained nebulous; the sounds of excitement from inside were still muffled by the glass doors. But then there was something else, sharper and coming from nowhere and everywhere at once.

"Twice! Twice!" The woman's voice is shrill, incensed, words practically tripping over themselves in their rush to get out and crash into someone else. "You promise to stay away from Team Rocket, part of the conditions you agreed to so we'd even allow you to travel at all, and then turn around and dig yourself into the middle of their active operations twice! I even explicitly said you were not to go anywhere near the Game Corner—"

"That's funny." The girl's tone drips with sarcasm. "Last conversation I remember about that one is you flying off the handle when I wanted to go to Marisa's birthday party before we left. Don't remember hearing any why. So sorry the eight-year-old was too busy being upset about seeing her friends one last time to read your mind."

"That's not what I— it doesn't matter why! I said you were never going there, and that should have been enough!"

There was no one nearby. No one standing around having a heated argument in public, at least. The pedestrians went about their business as if they couldn't hear anything out of the ordinary. Jade's friend—Marisa, something (?) in the back of her mind helpfully (?) supplied—reached for the door's pushbar with her free hand like nothing had happened.

"If you say so," she said, her tone agreeable with only the slightest dash of skepticism. "But tomorrow I get to pick where we go, yeah?" Then she smiled and disappeared into the cool semi-darkness and frenetic whizzbang sounds of the Game Corner.

 

[Chibi Pika]

Jade followed Marisa inside the Game Corner, tensing up automatically the moment she set foot inside, all senses on high alert for danger to leap out at any moment. Neon signs, loud music blaring from arcade cabinets, kids running past, chasing each other... No danger so far. Just a kids' game center.

"Y-yeah, you get to pick next, no worries," Jade replied automatically. "Uh... where were you thinking of picking?"

She wasn't supposed to be here. That fact kept blaring inside her head like an alarm siren. She really, really wasn't supposed to be here. But she didn't have a choice, Nine was captured-- Mewtwo was-- Brisa was lost, they needed to find her. Except something about that didn't make sense, but trying to figure out what felt like grabbing at a forgotten memory.

(Who had forbidden her from gong here? The League? They'd... they'd banned everyone from helping the legends. But something about that didn't add up.)

 

[Phoenixsong]

The dimness inside the Game Corner was cut by the neon flash of ticket vendor signs and the enticing glow of arcade cabinets. Only some of which appeared to actually work, on second glance. Two kids and a geodude smacked the buttons on a resolutely dark-screened machine a few more times before giving up and slouching, defeated, back toward the stage (and the Luck E. Koban animatronic performing there, waggling its head upsettingly and flailing a paw four inches in front of its plastic guitar). Another kid—well, older than that, a teenage guy in a leather jacket with miscellaneous crap practically falling out of his pockets—gave another machine a half-hearted kick. Maybe that was part of why it was so dark in here.

"Well, if you want a better arcade, there's always Mr. Game's a few blocks over. It's smaller, but everything works, there's no creepy puppets, and they actually have Voltorb Flip..." Marisa went on, bending down as she did to set Cleffa onto the floor. The little fairy trilled and skipped toward a dancing game that looked functional, probably. Something rushed past Jade's legs at the same time—two more pokémon, a vulpix and a weepinbell (who had always been right beside her), scrambled up opposite ends of an air hockey table; absent any understanding of the actual rules, the weepinbell (Rajah) indiscriminately flicked pucks and strikers toward the vulpix (Reynard) so he could pounce on them. A wartortle (Tank, her best friend) still hovered nearby, as if not yet sure what he wanted to do.

"...anyway, I think that Morph Revenge cabinet still works," finished Marisa, pointing to a row of machines that were in fact brightly-ish-lit. "Only fair to warn you, though, I've gotten way better since the last time we played!"

A tiny shriek of delight sounded off to the side, where Cleffa had managed to set the game's dance pad strobing in rainbow colors by bouncing on it. The older kid was looking at Cleffa, too. Mostly at her, anyway; sometimes he'd cast glances to either side, as if... making sure no one was watching, maybe? Satisfied that this seemed to be the case—he didn't seem to have noticed Jade—he smirked and moved toward her, one hand coming out of a battered pocket with a poké ball. A zubat fluttered into existence next to him and drew back its head, as if preparing to lunge...

 

[Chibi Pika]

Mr. Game did sound nice, and Voltorb flip was always a plus. Maybe she should have gone with--

No. No being here was important; she'd come here for a reason, hadn't she?

"Yeah? I'll go for it," Jade replied automatically, not actually looking at the game Marisa game had pointed out. She'd glanced at Cleffa for a moment, and then... was that other guy staring at...? No, she was probably just imagining it. Right?

A Pokéball flash and a Zubat appeared, and was he seriously about to--??

"H-hey Cleffa!" Jade called out, forcing her feet toward the dance pad as her brain hurled words at her mouth. "Did you wan--one of us should join you! Like--like maybe Tank!"

 

[Phoenixsong]

Several things happened at once: Marisa and Jade's (?) team snapped to attention; Tank spun, confused, took a few steps toward the dance game, then broke into a run; the older kid swore loudly; the zubat, startled by the sudden noise, dove teeth-first into the dance pad; and Cleffa cheered as the crash set off a whole new extravaganza of color and sound.

"Butt out, kid," growled the guy, turning to glare at Jade—and then he stopped, confused and, if only for a moment... nervous? "You," he hissed, taking a step back, eyes darting around. "What, are you following me or something? You said no, I heard you, I backed off, god!"

(Ugh, that's right. She had seen him before. Back near Cerulean, a couple months ago: loitering around that bridge, seeing who he could strongarm into joining Team Rocket.)

Jade could hear Reynard growling behind her, the crackling of tiny flames building in his mouth. Rajah's whip unspooled from the top of her bell. Tank had crossed the difference and grabbed Cleffa, putting his shell between her and the zubat; Cleffa chattered fussily and flailed her little arms, as if trying to wriggle free and get back to her shiny rainbow floor game, but the wartortle held firm.

"...Dammit," spat the older kid. He shot a look at the ticket counter—currently unattended, earning another curse—then back at the arcade cabinets, or maybe at the faded poster–lined hallway leading away from them. "W-whatever," he snarled, grabbing for two more poké balls. "You got lucky the first time. I've got better pokémon now. If you're not gonna lay off and scram then I'll make you leave, and then—"

A torrent of water caught him square in the chest, bowled him off his feet and right out the door. The zubat fluttered in place in a few seconds of indecision, then hurried after him, away from the wartortle. Tank stared as it left, looking from the door to the soaked carpet as if not entirely certain what had happened.

Marisa hurried to pull Cleffa away from the machine; the little fairy protested, but submitted to the hug anyway. "Wait... who was that? What's going on?"

On the floor where the guy had been standing lay a few piles of sodden junk, presumably knocked out of his pockets. A plastic card glinted in the neon light of the arcade signs.

 

[Chibi Pika]

Jade stood there, gripping the support bar on the dance pad, mind racing as she processed everything that'd just happened. He recognized her. But she didn't recognize him.

"He's a Rocket," Jade replied, eyes automatically scanning the game floor in case there were more of them. "We met before." But even as she said that, she knew that they hadn't met before. It had just felt like they had, because everything about this place felt maddeningly familiar and yet not, like a memory that wasn't quite right.

That was it, wasn't it? It had to be. This whole place was like a chapter from someone else's life. Marisa, Tank, all of them, they were--

she had to push on, had to go deeper, had to find Brisa, had to--

"This place--there's not more of them here, are there?" Jade said, even while her brain was already sure there had to be, why else would she have come here if not to rescue--

Her eyes fell suddenly on the plastic card lying on the waterlogged floor. That had to be important. She scooped it up and spun around, wiling her brain to tell her where to use it. Someone knew, and that meant that she'd know, and even if that didn't make any sense, it felt true.

 

[Phoenixsong]

"Rockets? Wait, what—here?" Marisa held Cleffa close in spite of the latter's continued protests. All the playful teasing drained from her face. "We should go, we should go tell someone, or just..."

"I told you they were dangerous!" shouts the woman. "They could've mugged you, attacked you, and even if they didn't, they— they recruit children, damn it, they prey on impressionable, angry, lost—"

"They sure do! And they even gave it their best shot, you know," laughs the girl. "A Rocket did ask me to join. Said I'd be great at it, even!" Her manic smile is practically audible, maybe savoring a mortified expression. "But I said no, because—and I know this is hard for you to believe—I'm not an idiot!"

Several seconds of stammering, a barely-audible oath, half-started sentences ping-ponging between anger and indignation and relief. Then the woman rallies, mostly: "So then they might've been willing to leave you alone if you'd just— you keep asking why I don't trust you, isn't it obvious when you— then why did you go down there? You could've avoided all of this, could've avoided anything that might happen— why?"

(The guy had said something back on the bridge, of course. (Of course... not?) "We've got all kinds of real strong pokémon, like in Celadon. Better than these chumps, that's for sure. Better than yours, even, if you prove you can show 'em who's boss—")

"Because somebody had to."

The card was some kind of employee ID for the Game Corner. The punk's name, some dates, some incomprehensible numbers. A data strip across the bottom that looked like it might serve as a key.

(The hallway. He'd been looking at the hallway—at the posters, wrinkled and ill-hung—at something under them. There had to be something back there. Someone back there.)

Spoiler: hey.

 

[Chibi Pika]

We should go, we should go tell someone--

Marisa's words rang in her head, but she'd given up on that prospect a long time ago. So had Leaf.

"No, no I need to see where this goes."

Jade's eyes traced the walls, the hallway with the posters, where the Rocket had been looking. She had to find Brisa, and that hadn't changed, but she had to do this first. She had to. Who else was going to?

Because that's what it kept coming back to. The fact that somebody had to, and Jade was in a position to do it, and she didn't have a choice.

(Some part of her knew this was stupid. She didn't have her own team, she didn't have any of Stalker's resources, or the power of the experiments, or a Legendary patron, but Leaf hadn't had any of those things either. And so, clutching the key card, Jade made her way through the scattered crowd and toward the hallway with the posters, already sure she was going to find something.

 

[Phoenixsong]

Something shifted, went hazy and slow and then snapped, as if the world had been suddenly reminded of what it was supposed to be.

Jade was in a long hallway. Too long, maybe; it extended so far in either direction that both ends faded into darkness. Marisa and Cleffa were gone, presumably to get help; her team (no, Leaf's team) were still behind her, seemingly unaware they were following a different person. There were no posters, no arcade cabinets, no jangling animatronics, no children. Strange tracks in the floor looked like they might be able to move, some sort of conveyor system, maybe, but they remained motionless for now. No one and nothing here with them aside from empty walls and fluorescent lights that reflected off rows of closed doors.

Most of them were closed, at least. All the doors in this hallway had more keypads attached—keypads meant for someone of higher clearance than Bridge Punk up there—but one hung slightly ajar.

HOLDING AND RECONDITIONING, the placard above the keypad said.

 

[Chibi Pika]

Celadon Rocket HQ. Like everything else, a little bit off, a little bit different than it existed in Jade's memory, because this wasn't her memory. (Not the place where she'd been interrogated. Not that place.) Jade found herself automatically gravitating toward that open door, the one labeled HOLDING AND RECONDITIONING. The words sent a deep chill running through her. She found herself imagining the place where Nine and Razors had--

Jade steeled herself and threw a glance back at her team with an expression that hopefully looked a lot more confident than she felt before reaching out to push the door open.

 

[Phoenixsong]

Cages. The room's walls were lined with cages, and the cages were full of pokémon. (Holding.) A scant few were battering or blasting at their restraint—no use, they were all warded from the inside or something, nothing seemed to reach far outside the bars—but most were pressed pitifully against the back corners of their little spaces, staring blankly out at nothing or trying to sleep or, at least, pretending to.

The one cage-free wall was full of shelves, with a table and another keypad or access device sitting nearby. There wasn't much telling what most of the shelves' contents were: paperwork, notes, unidentifiable devices, empty poké balls in various states of... tinkering? Modification? More papers and poké balls on the table, along with some generic personal effects, maybe left there by whoever'd walked out of the room some time before. (For how long?)

Something in one of the larger cages hissed. Stone scraped against metal. Green eyes shone out from the dark, following Jade's every movement. The aerodactyl behind the bars was maybe a little smaller than Ajia's—though more than large enough to seem cramped even in the bigger cage—but it still glared at her with a fury that could've come from a pokémon twice its size. It looked like it would lunge at her jaws-first if the cage door wasn't in the way. It looked like the door hadn't stopped it from trying before.

The front of the aerodactyl's cage looked scuffed, too, as if from recent attacks. But not from the inside. Water sat at the bottom of the cage and in puddles in front of it, slow to dry in the cool, dim room. Dark discoloration marked the bars in places. Burns? Fire wouldn't do much to a rock-type, though... maybe from an electric discharge?

(Reconditioning.)

 

[Chibi Pika]

Jade stared at the winged Pokemon behind the bars, feeling her mouth go dry. In her mind's eye, she saw Nine, lashing out in blind fury, destroying his Pokeball, trying to take the plane (and Razors) down with him. Mewtwo, destroying the Viridian base, and six blocks of Viridian along with it. Pokemon used and abused by the Rockets again and again. Of course they'd lash out and anyone and anything, because what choice did they have?

Aerodactyl's eyes stared straight through her, and she knew what she had to do.

(Because somebody had to.)

Jade's hands moved as if on autopilot, reaching for the access device. She didn't really know how she was going to get out of this one. She wasn't entirely sure how Leaf had managed it. The blind confidence that everything she was doing would just work out somehow, because it was meant to, had started to waver, now that she was staring down the consequences of failure right in the face. Scattered, disconnected thoughts about waking up back at the entrance to the dungeon felt distant and unreal, not while this was the reality in front of her.

"Get ready to run. I'm going to do something stupid." Again.

She kept one hand near her Pokeballs in case she needed to recall her team, to get them out of danger. Her other hand moved to the keypad.

 

[Phoenixsong]

Another card was in fact sitting among the effects on the table, and it had the right clearance to access the keypad. Theoretically it should've been possible to open the cages one by one, but there probably wasn't time to peck through the interface and decipher which was which; no telling when whoever was supposed to be working here might come back. (No time, or no patience. They all needed to be let out, right away. None of them deserved this, none of this was fair.)

There was an option for a full release. Presumably meant for when most of them were empty and needed maintenance, or maybe for emergencies. (Well this qualified as a pretty damn big emergency.)

Rajah just nodded, stoically, as much as a weepinbell could nod. Rey glanced at the pokémon rattling the bars of their cages, frowned, but braced himself. Tank muttered something and snorted with half-amusement. No words Jade would understand, but the meaning was in there somewhere. Definitely stupid. Not leaving.

There was a series of clicks and hisses as the doors unsealed and the warding shut down. Then... nothing. For a few beats nothing happened; the pokémon in the cages shifted but nothing else, uneasy, not entirely registering what was going on. Then Rajah snaked one of her vines forward, tugged at the door in front of a tyrogue, swung it open. It took another couple seconds of confusion and disbelief for the message to become clear—or at least the opportunity. The doors were open; there was a human and some other pokémon but they weren't being attacked. The tyrogue clambered down the stacked cages and sprinted for the door, and then another, and another, nearly all the pokémon scrambling for the exit. Most of them gave Jade a wide berth, but one or two gave her a grateful look before they hurried out.

It might almost've felt good if the aerodactyl hadn't chosen that moment to charge.

It shot out of the cage with such force that it scattered the other pokémon still in the room. There was nowhere to go, no time to react, it was on her, teeth like a bear trap filled her vision—

The aerodactyl's jaws clattered shut on something hard—Tank's shell, suddenly between Jade and the pterosaur. The wartortle growled from within his shell, tried to wrench himself around, get an angle for a shot to drive it off. Vines wrapped around its shoulders and pulled taut, straining to hold it back.

Probably not for long.

 

[Chibi Pika]

Jade gave a half smile at her team—not her team, but with her here, now—sticking by her side. It made it easier to keep going with this.

That good feeling couldn’t last.

A flash of teeth aimed at her throat and Jade stumbled backwards, throwing herself to the floor. Not dead yet, Tank had blocked it, had to move. Grabbing the table to steady herself, she jumped to her feet and backed up until she was solidly out the door. Tank and Rajah were still holding it back, but now that she was out of the immediate line of attack, then maybe—

No time for thinking, only doing. Jade grabbed their Pokeballs and recalled them, immediately re-releasing them next to her—the same rapid recall-release trick she'd drilled a hundred times during the Rebellion.

"This way!" Jade yelled, making a break down the hallway. She wasn’t entirely sure if it was aimed at her team, the Aerodactyl, or both, but the one thing she knew was that they all needed to get out of there now.

(And maybe the Aerodactyl wouldn’t be able to move all that fast with those broad wings in a narrow hallway, and that was the best she could hope for.)

 

[Phoenixsong]

Tank fired a blast of water at the aerodactyl's legs, the only spot he could get an angle at. It shrieked and dropped him to the floor, leaving him spinning on his shell; it lunged, tried to grab him again, but Rajah's vines held it back, just barely...

Then they were gone, and then they were back again. Tank and Rajah froze momentarily as they rematerialized, disoriented by the sudden shift, not expecting the maneuver—but the disappearance of the weepinbell's vines holding it back sent the aerodactyl hurtling forward, suddenly overbalanced, and crashing into the Rocket worktable. That was plenty good incentive to move, at least.

Jade and the pokémon tumbled out of the holding room and into the hallway. But it hadn't changed since she'd last left it; it was still interminably long, stretching impossibly far in either direction. Which way had they even come from to get here? The fleeing captive pokémon had already vanished. Cries echoed out somewhere, the shouting of startled Rockets surprised by the stampede, maybe even some retaliatory attacks, but the noise was distant, directionless, useless for determining which way was out. (Was the base really that large and sprawling? Or was it a trick of the dungeon?)

Whatever the reason, Jade would have precious little time to think about it. The aerodactyl had thrashed its way free of the wrecked table and burst out of the room. It looked wildly up and down the hallway, locked eyes with Jade, and hissed. But it didn't move.

The assessment that it wouldn't have room to get airborne in the narrow hall, or even be able to run easily on all fours with its wings scraping the walls, was accurate enough. It hadn't seemed all that bothered by crowded space before, though; instead it looked... momentarily confused. You could almost see the gears turning behind its eyes, trying to figure out what was going on, what it was supposed to do. Its gaze snapped from Jade (a human, humans were obviously bad, can't let the human hurt it again), to the pokémon (they had attacked it, also bad, attack them back), to the room behind it (but it wasn't stuck inside there anymore), back to the pokémon (but not attacking anymore, why not), back to Jade (the human opened the door and left, why, what does that mean). The aerodactyl hissed again in frustration, its whole body tensed like a huge cat about to pounce, but it... didn't.

Yet.

"You keep acting like it was obvious the Game Corner was rotten the whole time. Like everybody should've known, like you knew—"

"I knew it because I saw them! Because I drove past one day and saw them unloading cages in the back! It was obvious what that meant! Of course I wasn't letting you go anywhere near that!"

"I don't get it," Leaf snarls. "I find out they're caging and breaking pokémon down there and I'm wrong for not just telling someone. Why didn't you tell someone?! If you'd said something to the cops from the beginning then Marisa and I wouldn't have had to, because they'd've already been dealt with!"

"It's not that simple!" The woman's voice cracks, not with anger but with something else. "I, I didn't know if they'd seen me— couldn't risk them knowing it was— they retaliate! That's what Rocket is like, they don't just let these things go! God knows what they would've done to me, what they might've done to you or your father to get at me, if they thought I had ratted them out again—"

She stops. It's dead quiet for a few seconds, almost like she realizes too late what she's said. Leaf sounds oddly small when she finally speaks.

"...what do you mean 'again'?"

 

[Chibi Pika]

Jade stood frozen in the hallway, jerking her head left and right as the hideout the dungeon? seemed to stretch infinitely in both directions, none of them leading out. Not yet, not while she still had something to do here.

Aerodactyl was crouched low, hissing, angry, and yet... obviously confused. Confused that it wasn't under attack? That it was out now? Some part of her brain was still screaming at her to run, while the other part stood firm. The same part of her that had driven her to talk to Razors while he'd had a blade to her throat.

Jade held out an arm to her Pokemon as if to say, hold fast, don't attack, not yet, as she took the sliiiightest half step forward, other palm facing outward and empty.

All the while, she was wracked with the agonizing feeling like she wasn't supposed to be here, doing any of this, even though it was so obviously what she was meant to do. Like... like someone wasn't going to let her, even though it had to be done. A voice that reminded her of the League, of Lorelei, reminding her that this wasn't her place.

(But it was.)

"H-hey. You're out. You're free. They can't hurt you anymore." Simple words, even voice. She wasn't sure how much humanspeak the Aerodactyl would know, so she put everything into trying to get the feeling across.

 

[Phoenixsong]

Leaf's pokémon looked up at Jade, tense, uncertain, but they held steady; Rajah let the little blades of grass energy she'd been charging up flutter to the ground and scatter.

The aerodactyl moved. Slowly. It squeezed itself all the way out into the hall, head still snapping back and forth because surely, surely something was about to come launching right at it any second. Out here in the hallway Jade could see what looked like irregular black markings in a few places—the protruding spine on the back of its neck, a few wing-claws, a streak running down one horn and over an eye. Or maybe, given the way they glinted under the harsher light, they were some sort of... little black stone inclusions, here and there? Probably not normal, either way.

It hissed again as its gaze settled back on Jade. The sound was still low and threatening, but at least it wasn't an I-am-about-to-bite-you-in-half sort of sound, either. Still thinking. Still searching for an explanation, for proof.

Which way, it almost felt like. Where. Is out.