Espeon Wallet [Jian]

Jian’s stomach growled and she placed a hand upon her mid-torso, her ribcageable to be felt through her shirt. It wasn’t as though she were starving, and losing weight because of it, but she was definitely hungry. Her stomach growled even louder than before, causing the young red-haired girl to grit her teeth and give a hushed ‘sh!’ as she looked up through her bangs, her violet eyes glaring at the people walking in and out of Celadon’s Department Store. They entered empty-handed but left with bags piled high in their grip or dangling from their arms.

They fail to realize how lucky they are... Jian thought bitterly, gnawing the inside of her lower lip as they passed her. The girl was small and hardly more than a splash of color against the Department Store’s side painting, and she was easily ignored. It wasn’t as though she wanted or needed to draw attention to herself, though. To steal – though she disliked having to do it – she needed to be unnoticed, but only after she picked out whom she wanted to steal from.

Her eyes focused in on a young-looking man with heavy-looking bags upon his arms. She only got a brief glance of his face, but decided immediately his wallet would be hers, if for no other reason than the fact that its corner was sticking slightly out of the top of his pocket, practically asking to be taken. Swallowing nervously, she pushed herself off the wall and slowly began following him, closing the distance between them steadily as she quickened her pace.

I have to be fast... she told herself. She’d done something like this before only a few times when she found necessary, and each time the regret from it piled higher in her. Her parents had taught her how to behave – they’d given her everything she wanted if she did as she was told. This was completely against it, but it was necessary for her survival.

Here goes nothing... she thought, and sprinted towards the man, her hand extended.

As she drew up beside him silently enough, she forced her hand slightly into his pocket to get it around the wallet. She clenched her jaw as she hesitated slightly, a necessary lapse of precious time to withdraw the article from his pocket - but terrible because there was no way he didn't feel it.

"I'm sorry..." she breathed quietly, stumbling as she bolted again from him, his wallet tucked safely against her chest.

Let me get away...

The most curious sensation she’d ever felt overcame her body, and Jian’s eyes widened in shock when she was lifted from the ground, despite the fact her movements begged to argue that she were still running. Moments after she realized that she was not moving forward, but instead back the way she had come she stilled, swallowing the fear that had begun to rise up in her. This plan had just gone horribly, horribly awry…in a sense, it couldn’t even be called a plan, anymore – just a failed attempt.

This is terrible… the Steel Spirit fretted silently, chewing her lip. In light of things, she was incredible surprised that Plate had not popped out of her pokeball to try to help her in her current situation. Perhaps it wasn’t what she considered dangerous enough? Or she had a sense telling her that things were safe? For her own sake, Jian hoped that the man she’d just attempted to pickpocket wouldn’t react poorly. She felt her mistrust and slight fear of unfamiliar men beginning to well up within her, and she began to tremble as she was halted in mid-air and turned around.

She was met with the sight of the middle of the man’s ribcage and she began trembling visibly. She could feel her heart pounding as though she’d just ran from one city to another, and she loathed to think that it was audible. His voice, smooth and relatively calm caught her somewhat bit off-guard, though it made her all the warier. Her past experience with smooth-talking had quickly followed by pain. Seeing as she was already restrained by a mysterious force – a psychic-type move, most likely, she doubted pain would follow, but she remained fearful of the prospect all the same.

Reluctantly, Jian looked up and at the face of the man who had stopped her more easily than she’d taken his wallet. Shock dumbfounded the young girl and made her jaw drop slightly to accompany the widening of her violet eyes. ”N…no way…” she murmured, not in response to his question but instead to the recognition of who he was. Although she had never been to Sinnoh before, she knew who he was instantly. ”…L-Lucian…” she managed to stammer quietly.

A hot flush of color rose up in her cheeks due to the shame she felt from this whole, short ordeal and tinged her cheeks red. Murmurs reached her ears around the same time as she became aware that she was being stared at. Embarrassment forced even more color to her face as well, turning her skin almost as red as her vibrant hair.

Her grip on the wallet pressed against her clothing loosened, but she didn’t extend her arm yet. ”…make them stop.” she murmured, her voice cracking to something closer to a whimper as she dropped her shamed gaze. ”Get them to stop staring at us…”

The two predominant feelings within Jian at the moment were both the shame and humiliation she was feeling from the multiple eyes of people staring at her and the shock that the person she'd just attempted to pickpocket was Lucian of Sinnoh's Elite Four. Although she'd never been to Sinnoh herself, she'd seen plenty of his battles on the television back home in Rustboro City. Through all of the battles, she'd learned the names of practically every Elite Four member and Champion through the regions.

Her breathing slowed some as she stared at the concrete, her mind attempting to shut out the burning gazes of the people surrounding them. Don't think about it... she told herself silently, as though thoughts would be able to push away the feeling. She felt the invisible force holding her in the air lessen, and her violet eyes blinked in surprise as she dropped towards the ground. The red-haired girl looked through her bangs at the pokemon that had been keeping her afloat as the soles of her shoes met the ground once more.

Jian almost jumped out of her skin when she felt his arm wrap gently around her shoulders and direct her away from the crowd. She walked with him, her normal pace quickened to keep up with his longer stride. Keeping her eyes locked on the ground as they moved, she heard the noise of the buzzing Celadon crowd die down as a quieter street was turned to. The fast (at least for her) pace Lucian had set slowed as they drew somewhere they could talk in more private than simply on the street. His grasp slipped off her shoulders and she stopped moving entirely. Although she felt he knew full well that letting her go was a prime opportunity to see her run once more, they both knew that it would simply wind up like her last attempt - an Alakazam holding her immobile in the air.

His voice made her turn to look at him when he spoke, her violet eyes rising to meet his, which were strangely the same color. That's...sort of cool... she thought, allowing herself to get slightly off-topic before looking down at the wallet clutched against her chest.

Reluctantly, she silently extended her arm forward to place the wallet in his open palm. "...m-maybe next time I should try running faster, huh?" she asked, a pathetic attempt at humor on her part. She raised her voice slightly so he could hear him better. "If I'd uh, seen that it was you, I wouldn't have tried that," she told him, dropping her gaze and looking to the right, shrugging a bit. "...b-but I didn't recognize you from the side."

She swallowed and thought, I probably should have, though...don't know of many men with shoulder-length purple hair...

Normally when somebody shifted their weight from foot to foot, it meant they were either impatient or nervous. For Jian it was the latter. She hoped Lucian wouldn’t do anything drastic that would force her to take off at a run again. It was bad enough that she to stand here and wait until they parted ways lest she got pulled backwards through the air thanks to Psychic again. His response made her chew her lip slightly in what balanced the line between frustration and embarrassment precariously. She was smart enough to know not to pickpocket period. She hoped he realized that. If he did, then there was no reason for him to have told her not to try pickpocketing. However…obviously her attempt would give off the impression that she, in fact, held no regard for the basic rule of society to not steal, and possibly didn’t know otherwise.

That didn’t go as I’d hoped… she thought, glancing down to avert her eyes from his. She shuffled her feet slightly, kicking up a tiny cloud of dirt between the two of them. It was small enough to settle back to the ground before it even reached his shoes. She didn’t want to have to explain everything, but she felt like simply flat-out lying to him wouldn’t get her anywhere either. I guess I’ll have to beat around the bush… Jian told herself, glancing up through her red bangs at him. She took in a breath before speaking again.

”You can call me Ani…” she told Lucian, forcing her voice to stay still and not make how awkward she was feeling obvious. Normally she was terrible in this sort of situation, but the fear of possibly being arrested for trying to steal in a city like Celadon of all places. It relieved her some to hear that he didn’t intend to turn her in, though his intent to help had her somewhat confused.

People that helped someone out that just tried to wrong them still existed? That was something new.

”The berry trees around here are picked clean practically as soon as possible, and my parents used to tell me that Celadon City had street vendors that would hand out free things like treats for pokemon and pokemon food.” She shrugged a little. ”Thanks to the war there’s nothing like that now…especially not here.” The red-haired girl tried to remember what she’d heard about the City. ”It’s mostly a place just for the rich, right? No need for free samples for anyone.”

Jian turned her gaze to the Alakazam behind Lucian, looking into its eyes before away, though this time as though something had caught her attention.

”You can’t really help me.” she said with a shrug, her voice more of a murmur. With the way he phrased that question there wasn’t exactly any indirect way to say it - ”I have no guardians…of any sort.”

She didn’t react when he responded, and kept her purple eyes glued to the light at the far end of the alley to her left. She wasn’t going to run, no, but she just wouldn’t meet his gaze either. Her parents would have been ashamed of her actions here. Under normal circumstances, the hot flush of shame would have stayed on her cheeks, but now it had finally vanished entirely as she dropped her hands in the two pockets on her dress, curling her hands around the pokeballs of her friends. Sorry. she thought at them, I’ll keep trying to get you some food...that’s better than what you’d eat normally, anyway.

Although Jian wanted to spring up and respond as soon as he brought up a few of his points, she stopped herself. Cutting him off and interrupting what he had to say would be incredibly rude. ”Foster care...” she mumbled the word scornfully. ”..it hasn’t done anything for me in the past.” Her fingers curled up in her pockets. ”Besides, can you think of anybody that likes that?” she asked, looking up at him, her jaw set unhappily in what could be called an unhappy (though not quite ‘sad’) pout, for lack of a better word.

”If I go to jail, then I won’t be able to have a decent life.” she blinked once, ”I’m sure in jail there’s someone that has no qualms about harming a child...getting arrested will have been the least of my worries.” She was attempting to play what logic she saw in the world to her advantage. ”At this point you may not believe it, but I was raised to know better than to try stealing anything, no matter how small. It’s not in my nature to pickpocket...and if I ever need to resort to something like this in the future I’m by far smart enough not to try it in the same place, Sir Lucian.”